Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 241 - Chapter 240: Trying Out - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 241 - Chapter 240: Trying Out Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 241: Chapter 240: Trying Out

Finally, after all the hyping, Minecraft and Thousand Hells announced their release dates.

Both games were released on the first of August. Thousand Hells was priced at 1288 RMB, whereas Minecraft was priced at 128, a tenth of Thousand Hells.

Based on its pricing, Thousand Hells looked to be a middle of the road VR game, but in reality, its quality was below average.

Because it had a monotonous playstyle just like Diablo. There weren't many microtransactions in the game either, meaning that most of the profits would come from selling actual copies of the game. The game was actually relatively cheap compared to other VR games when taking into account the fact that players wouldn't have to spend a simple penny after buying the game.

Of course this didn't mean that Emperor Dynasty Entertainment had a change of heart. It was just that Thousand Hells didn't take up a lot of resources and many of the maps were reused, significantly reducing development costs.

Emperor Dynasty Entertainment also priced it lower in hopes of selling more copies.

Minecraft on the other hand...

Many were surprised at how low Minecraft was priced. It was almost a freebie charging one hundred and twenty eight RMB for a VR game.

(Normally, a VR game is ten times the price of PC games, that means Minecraft was priced equivalently as a PC game at twelve RMB.)

But in reality, Chen Mo was still highballing it.

Minecraft didn't require much investment during its development at all. The costs in the PC version were basically negligible, and all the improvement and changes in the VR version cost around ten million RMB.

And ten million RMB wasn't much at all for Chen Mo, the main cost of the development of Minecraft was the timesink.

Therefore Chen Mo priced it lower to sell more copies. Only when the number of players go up will Minecraft's true potential be realised.

Chen Mo wanted Minecraft to be installed on every VR gaming pod in China.

First of August, Minecraft and Thousand Hells was officially released!

The players who had their eyes on the games downloaded as soon as they could as they couldn't wait to experience the games in VR.

On Lin Xue's stream on Moyu.

The screen was still dark and a lot of discussion was happening among the viewers.

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"Is Xue changing over to VR? Is she streaming a VR game today?"

"Yeah, I heard Thousand Hells was released today, she'd probably be playing the official release. Xue was Diablo's diehard fan after all."

"Uhh... Shouldn't a diehard Diablo fan play Chen Mo's new game?"

"As if, who would want to watch a building game."

"Hmm? I think the VR gaming pod is now connected."

The scene from the VR gaming pod was now on the stream.

VR games can be streamed in this world, requiring the signals from the gaming pod to be translated into a stream friendly signal.

For example, a first person RPG like Thousand Hells that have their players playing in first person mode with a 124 field of view, but after the conversion the signal will become a third person view (similar to a camera behind the player), and the field of view will be converted to the normal 90.

A direct stream from a first person view would be too jittery and cause nausea in many of the viewers.

On the screen was more or less the VR version of the Desktop. There were many games displayed, with Thousand Hells in a more obvious position.

Before the chat could start celebrating, Lin Xue launched Minecraft.

The chat was shocking.

"Huh? Minecraft? Actually playing Minecraft?"

"What happened to Xue? When did she start playing these types of building games?"

"My goodness, I really don't wanna watch this!"

"If you don't wanna watch, feel free to leave. We'll watch anything Xue play's"

"We'll try out Minecraft today, which was developed by Chen Mo. Let's just start playing rather than going through all the explanations," said Lin Xue.

Lin Xue's somewhat vague remarks caused a lot of chatter in the chat.

"What is this Xue, what do you mean no explanations?"

"I feel like Xue trusts Chen Mo a lot..."

"Why do I smell something different!"

The screen swapped over to Minecraft among all the chatter.

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Lin Xue was in the middle of a plains with a rising sun in the background.

There were a few clouds in the air that spelled out Minecraft.

Lin Xue also had a little hut on her left with the words Minecraft written on it.

Further left was a path that led into a dense forest and many buildings could be made out, with a sign saying 'Somebody Else's World'.

On her right was a huge observatory with a huge globe on top, with the text 'Everybody's World'.

There was a small teleporter to the right of the observatory that said 'Chen Mo's World'.

There was also a building that looked like a shed next to the hut that said 'Resource Centre'.

Of course, all these buildings were built by blocks that give off strong pixelated feels.

This was probably the main menu.

Lin Xue walked around before looking downwards and realising she was a toy person in game.

The third person perspective of the audience could see that even clearer. Lin Xue looked like a toy from the Frozen Leggo set. Quite cute, 3:1 ratio of body :head, blonde with a white dress and stockings. She had a really cute walking animation too.

The game would collect data of the player from the gaming pod once the player starts the game to decide the gender of the character the player played as.

A cute dog with a sign in its mouth walked in front of Lin Xue.

"We've picked a random character based on your gender provided from the gaming pod, would you like to customise?"

Lin Xue clicked 'yes' with no histation.

She would've been fine if there was no way of customising, but why wouldn't she customise if she could?

Lin Xue's perspective changed from first to third person as if her soul jumped out of her body.

At the same time, two UIs popped up allowing Lin Xue to customize her looks.

"There seems to be quite a lot of options."

Lin Mo looked through the menus. She found that although this game looked simple, everything was quite well developed. Take this customisation menu for example, she could change her face, hat, top, pants, and shoes. She could even change her height within a certain range.

Lin Xue finally settled with something she was happy with after half an hour.

"Hmm... Which should we start with?"

"Let's try the game out in single player first, it'd be terrible if we dragged others down in multiplayer," said Lin Xue after a few moments.

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Chapter 242: A Confusing First Day

Lin Xue walked towards the little hut labeled Singleplayer mode. The puppy with the sign game along once again, "It appears that its your first time playing, would you like to view the tutorial?"

Lin Xue hesitated for a few moments before hitting yes.

A huge screen appeared in front of her, on it was a video for newbies.

It was a simple video made by Chen Mo that went through mechanics of survival mode including gathering, building, killing mobs, crafting tools, and making beds.

The video was about eight minutes long and the player could toggle the playback speed and view it as many times as they wished.

Lin Xue felt like she had a good understanding of the basics of the game after watching it once, so she walked into the hut and chose Survival mode.

Soon, Lin Xue was transported into a whole new world.

She was on top of a hill that was completely built with blocks. There were many trees on the hill as well as on the plains around her, she could even see the ocean from the top of the hill (or perhaps river or lake).

Lin Xue was playing the game in first person mode, meaning she could see her hands and legs by looking down.

There were two UI bars on the edge of her vision, red representing her health, yellow representing her hunger.

The thought of the inventory bar brought up her inventory, with the options of picking any equipment in her inventory.

Lin Xue had a basic looking axe, a gift from Chen Mo to all newbies.

(It wouldn't be great if they had to punch trees the first time they played it.)

Lin Xue selected the axe and held it in her hand.

"Umm... According to the tutorial, there's quite a bit I need to do on the first day. I'll need to gather resources, and probably build a house to avoid attack from the monsters during the night.

Lin Xue started chopping away at trees with her axe in hand.

After being destroyed, the logs dropped onto the ground as tiny little blocks. These were automatically picked up and stored in her inventory as she walked close to them.

Lin Xue tried placing a block with it in her hand, and a 1m*1m*1m block appeared where she wanted it.

"Huh, pretty cool. So this is how you're supposed to build houses right?

"But the tutorial mentioned to best craft a crafting table first, that way I can craft other tools. Let's do that first."

Lin Xue collected materials as she wandered. She had gathered quite a few pieces of wood, but hadn't decided on where to build her house.

Lin Xue had thought long about where to build her house. She wanted to pick somewhere that was easy to travel to, with a hill behind her and water in front of her. But before she could find her perfect spot, the sun setted.

"Huh? The sun's set already? My goodness, I haven't built my house yet!"

Lin Xue now had plenty of resources on hand, but it turned dark before she noticed. Lin Xue ran to the top of a hill, thinking of building a house on top of it.

But before she got there, she felt a huge shock behind her, and at the same time, she lost about twenty percent of her health.

"Ah! What hit me!"

Lin Xue jumped when she got hit. She turned around to discover a skeleton with a bow in their hand shooter at her.

"My goodness, there's mobs already? Help!"

Lin Xue was quite shook. Although the skeleton wasn't spooky at all, it was dark around her and the skeleton was a proper enemy, it was still quite scary as the skeleton wanted to end her life.

Lin Xue tried her best to run away from her, but it seemed that the skeleton moved slightly faster than she did, moreover it had a ranged attack. Lin Xue's health quickly fell below half.

"What to do, what to do!"

Lin Xue was panicking. Obviously she couldn't beat it with just an axe in hand. It's used for cutting trees, it must be terrible for killing mobs!

But an idea came to her all of a sudden.

"I can dig a hole!"

She quickly ignored the skeleton, hiding behind a tree and frantically dug downwards with her axe in hand.

Soon, there was a pit in the ground, and Lin Xue jumped into it.

But the skeleton was still trailing behind her.

Lin Xue brought out a piece of dirt from her inventory and blocked the hole on top of her.

"That was scary! Thank goodness I lived!"

Lin Xue breathed a sigh of relief. Even though it was a building game, it felt more like a horror game in that instance.

The growling of the skeleton was still above her, evidently it was still nearby.

"What should I do, I don't think I can leave. Whatever, I'll just keep digging down."

Lin Xue threw away her worries and frantically dug down ten or so metres before stopping.

"That's about alright," muttered Lin Xue.

It was completely dark in the cave, yet there was still a sliver of light allowing Lin Xue to take in her surroundings. She continued digging around using her axe and finally made a sizable cave.

Just as the tutorial recommended, Lin Xue built a crafting table, wooden pickaxe, then started gathering cobblestone to make a furnace then a torch. She was then finally able to illuminate her cave.

"Geez, much better. Is this what home feels like?"

Lin Xue ran around in her little hole happily before feeling the urge to clean up the sides of the cave and lit it up symmetrically.

Of course, the only problem was that the only exit was above her, and was blocked off by her too.

There were a lot of complaints from the chat.

"Wow, what's Xue doing? I thought you build houses in this game, why is Xue frantically digging holes?"

"What is she doing? Why is it completely different from Chen Mo's videos?"

"But the game feels quite fun, the ones with OCD among us must feel so satisfied!"

"Did Xue bury herself in the tomb she dug out herself?"

"You could probably film a grave robbing movie here, LOL!"

"How will Xue go out? She blocked off the entrance, and she can't fly either!"

Lin Xue kept digging with her wooden pickaxe and explained, "Don't worry, isn't it easy to leave? I'll just dig a staircase upwards."

"Yeah, I'll just keep digging up."

"We're not in a hurry anyways as it's still nighttime. Maybe I should make a bed and think about it more when the night's over."

Luckily Lin Xue managed to kill a few sheep on the way and got a few pieces of wool, allowing her to craft a bed.

"So, my fellow viewers, we'll have to make due with this bed tonight, let's dig a staircase upwards when day comes!"

Lin Xue layed down on the bed and completed her first day in Minecraft.

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Chapter 243: Xue's Tomb Making Journey

It was day when she woke up from her sleep.

Lin Xue continued digging a staircase upwards. Luckily she was still in plains and not a lake of some kind, otherwise her cave would be flooded.

She continued wandering, cutting down trees, killing sheep, digging out things here and there.

The viewers were quite enjoying the show as many made fun of what she was doing.

"Is Xue preparing to bury herself again?"

"Grave Robbing the fifth: Xue's Tomb.[1]"

"Hahaha, Xue was chased by the skeleton for so long last night she was going to cry."

"Isn't this a building game? Why does it feel like a horror game?"

"Didn't she go through the tutorial? Why does she look completely clueless still? LOL"

But some viewers had some questions.

"Why does this game Xue's playing right now feel completely different to Chen Mo's advertisements?"

"Yeah, Chen Mo built the entire Forbidden City, but Xue only dug a hole this whole time she had been playing the game?"

"Build a house, Xue! We want to see some buildings!"

"Yeah, just start simple by building a castle!"

Lin Xue was getting a bit bothered by this, "Could you guys be more reasonable? I need to worry about my survival first!"

Lin Xue was also a bit confused. The game didn't feel this difficult before. How come mobs show up in the dark. Not only do they attack, they make scary noises too! And it's extremely scary when it's pitch black during night in VR!

"Alright, we'll leave survival mode at this for now. I see many want to watch me build houses right? I'll do that in creative mode!"

Lin Xue walked into the singleplayer hut in the main menu once again. But this time she chose creative mode and set it so it was perpetually day.

Lin Xue spawned in another world. It was similar to her previous world, but this time she had access to every block in the game and could fly.

"Huh? I can fly!"

Lin Xue was really enjoying the flight. She had a set of silver wings behind her and could fly freely in the sky.

After exploring from a bird's eye view, Lin Xue found a hill that looked to be to her liking.

"Alright, we'll build our house here. There's a hill behind us as water in front of us. This is where my mansion will be!"

Lin Xue was really determined to give it everything she had.

First was flattening the terrain. She flattened out a huge chunk of land close to the hell and started laying down the foundations, setting down the outlines to her house.

She built a rectangular area using stone.

Then she laid down a support beam from the mountain.

Lin Xue even made sure that the beam was properly centered to satisfy her OCD needs.

"Yep, this beam is placed perfectly. Alright! Can you guys stop spamming 'Armstrong cannon' or whatever? It's just a beam!

"Alright, next we'll lay down the foundations of the house. I'll use wood and stone, doesn't that look great?"

Although it sounded great on paper, Lin Xue was just placing down dirt and stone as the roof of her house.

"Stop saying it looks ugly. It's just the foundation, how good can the foundation look?

"I want to make a nice chinese style roof, the type with eaves that slopes down from the middle. Look at the beam I placed before, that'll be the highest point of the house.

"Next... We'll build the two walls. They say 'A house is at least four walls', I don't even have four walls yet.

Lin Xue had three metre high walls on both sides, and punched a few holes for the windows.

Next, Lin Xue started building the roof. The highest point of the house was the beam in the middle, sloping down towards the side. That was how she built her clumsy roof.

"Yep, the Chinese style roof is already quite obvious other than the fact that it's a bit ugly. Geez, stop saying it's ugly, I'll beautify it later.

And with a bit more dirt, she called the roof complete.

But from afar, Lin Xue's idea of 'Beautiful Chinese style roof' wasn't there as it looked like a huge tombstone instead.

The chat was already going wild.

"It looks more and more like a tomb!"

"Are you afraid that grass is going to grow on your tomb once it rains? Hahaha"

"Xue, I thought you said you were building it out of wood and stone, why is it all dirt? It looks exactly like a tomb!"

"There's a few holes too, are those made by raiders?"

"Just give up, Xue. Your house is hideous! You have no talent!"

"I heard you live in the Imperial Capital, Xue. Do you live in Princess Tomb[2]?

Lin Xue cleared her throat, "This is art, you guys just don't understand! Not everybody can understand the meaning behind art. These must be slowly taken in and enjoyed, I'll give you guys some time to do that.

"Huh, turns out I was using dirt to build my house. My goodness, I just picked a block and didn't notice! Don't worry, since the foundations are already there, I'll just swap out the dirt for wood.

"Don't worry, it'll lose its tomb look after all the dirt is gone!"

The chat didn't care at all.

"Is this where they are filming the new movie?"

"It looks like a tomb no matter what, there's even a platform for the dead."

"Xue, I'll be raiding once you're done. Remember to leave some valuables behind."

Lin Xue continued to swap out all the dirt for wood.

The house looked much more like a house after swapping out the dirt for wood.

One problem was that it was huge as it stood at nearly ten metres. It was also similar in width with a completely empty interior.

Lin Xue said, "Don't worry, I'll put a torch inside the house.

Lin Xue placed a torch onto the wall, one in the front and one in the back, and one in each of the corners. The interior was now brightly lit.

"Nice!" Lin Xue nodded, full of herself as she looked at the huge row of torches.

This got the chat riled up again.

"It wasn't that bad before, but now it looks like a funeral hall!"

"My goodness, isn't opening up windows the first reaction to a dark room, why did she use torches?"

"Hahaha, I think Xue is still in the mindset of digging holes. She confused this with her tomb!"

"It's actually a tomb!"

TL note: [1] They referenced a real chinese movie titled Kong Fu Youth, but obviously wouldn't work as well.

[2] Like an area name, exists in real life too Gongzhufen (公主坟).

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Chapter 244: Visiting

Lin Xue suddenly got an idea out, "Huh? Yeah, I should add windows!"

She ran out of the house and knocked a few holes in the wall and replaced them with glass.

She went to the front and added a door to the building.

But this didn't make it look better, on the contrary, it made it look more like a tomb.

Lin Xue didn't want to budge, swapping out more planks for glass, making the interior building brighter.

"Tadaa! How's that, doesn't it look a lot better? How about I call it Lin Xue's glass castle?"

"Hey, it's a glass castle, not a glass tomb. I'll get mobs to ban you if you keep saying that!"

Lin Xue was quite angry as the chat seemed to be filled with professionals architectures, some say it looked ugly, some said she was dumb, but it really was quite difficult to build a good looking building!

Although it wasn't technically difficult, as there was nothing to go off of and everything had to come from her imagination. She then had to put each block down piece and piece, it wasn't as easy as she thought.

However, Lin Xue was not discouraged. Instead, she thought it was quite interesting. Building houses was at least a month's worth of content.

While she was playing, a voice appeared behind her out of nowhere, "Are you... refurbishing the tomb?"

Lin Xue was shocked. She turned around to find another character with wings behind them, watching her work.

Why was the voice so familiar?

It looked a few seconds for Lin Xue to come back to her senses, "Chen Mo?"

Chen Mo replied, "Of course it's me, is there anyone else that could just pop into your singleplayer world?"

"Oh yeah, I'm playing single player, how did you join? Did you use your developer permissions?"

"Relax, I'm just here to see how you're doing and if you need any guidance. But it looks like you're doing quite well, you've already managed to build a pretty good looking tomb, are you filming a movie?"

Lin Xue frantically said, "Ahhh! That's my house!"

Chen Mo flew around the house, "Tsk tsk, alright, just keep at it. Are you really not planning to plant a few trees or it, or have a tombstone on the side?"

Lin Xue broke down, "Shut up! Right, I was about to give you a bad review! Your advertisements are all false to cheat us out of our money!"

Chen Mo asked, "Why?"

Lin Xue said confidently, "You're asking me why? Where's the Forbidden City? Old Summer Palace? Why is it just empty space? And there aren't that many things to build with. Did you really build the Forbidden City? You must've done it using a program!"

Chen Mo used 'hands wide open' emote, "I really did build it. You're in single player mode in a game called 'My World', since it's your world, why would the buildings I built appear in your world?"

"... Makes sense, I've not nothing to say. Then where do I have to go to take a look at the Forbidden City?"

"Are you sure you wanna see? It might affect your passion for building."

"I'm sure!"

Chen Mo used a emote, "Alright, I sent you a friend request. You'll have to quit Singleplayer and enter 'Chen Mo's World'.

Lin Xue accepted Chen Mo's friend request and quit single player mode.

Back at the main menu, there was a smaller portal next to the observatory that had the words 'Chen Mo's World' on top of it.

Lin Xue secretly said "narcissistic manager" as she walked into the portal.

Countless blocks flew across Lin Xue's eyes to form a huge pixelated vortex. Soon, Lin Xue was transported to a new world.

The first thing she saw was a huge arch that was several dozen meters tall, with "Chen Mo's World" written on top of it.

It was a beautiful and grand arch. She felt tiny as she looked up at it from below. The style of the arch was pretty unique, however, as it wasn't Chinese style, nor was it a style from overseas. She couldn't tell which era it was from either.

Past the arch was a dense forest with trees pver ten meters tall. She also noticed that something was different past this dense forest.

There was a huge valley with countless peaks. There were many buildings in the valleys and between the peaks. It looked incredible from afar.

There seemed to be buildings in the sky too. It looked like a huge flying city, but she could barely make it out with the clouds in the way.

Lin Xue could barely contain her excitement. Even though she only saw a fraction of this world, she felt that there were countless more amazing things to see in this world.

"Huh, where's the manager?" Lin Xue said looking around.

Chen Mo's character appeared next to her.

After joining parties, both characters will have colour names to make it easier for players to find one another.

There were many other players outside of Chen Mo as they couldn't wait to explore the world.

Flying was enabled in 'Chen Mo's world', similar to creative mode. However, players couldn't make any changes to the world, as digging and placing blocks weren't allowed.

Lin Xue was quite excited, "Let's go, manager!"

"Hold on."

A crystal appeared in Chen Mo's hands. He placed down one after another in the shape of a winged dragon. He then pulled out a control core and placed it in the chest of the dragon.

The crystal dragon then came to life, and even stretched its neck.

Chen Mo repeated the same procedure and created another crystal dragon.

"Alright, get on," said Chen Mo.

Lin Xue was stunned looking at the dragon. EVidently it was a model from the base game as it looked just as polished as playable characters. It also looked incredible because of how transparent it was too.

Lin Xue hopped onto the dragon to discover that she actually could control the dragon to fly as she wished.

"Alright, let's go," said Chen Mo.

With Chen Mo in front and Lin Xue trailing behind, they travelled across the map on their crystal dragons.

There were already many players in 'Chen Mo's World' as many players went straight to 'Chen Mo's World' in search of the Forbidden City before they even touched single player mode.

But as these players were casually flying around, 'woosh' went two crystal dragons as they flew past them.

The players were all really confused.

"What was that, was that a dragon?'

"How do you get a dragon?"

"Do you have to play? You can buy that?"

"What, I didn't even think you could meet whales in a building game!"

"My goodness, this game is unplayable!"

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Chapter 245: Chen Mo's World

Chen Mo and Lin Xue's dragons caught the attention of quite a few players.

Many went straight to Chen Mo's World after buying the game so there were quite a few players here. The two crystal dragons flying by obviously caught a lot of attention.

Many tried to chase after it in hopes of learning where they got the dragon. However, the dragon was too fast and it didn't take long for them to be dropped.

Lin Xue was on the dragon in the sky, feeling great as everything flew by in a flash, leaving the other players in the dust.

"Is this what it feels like to spend a bunch of money in a game?"

Chen Mo kept flying upwards as they flew past the huge dense forest. Soon, the two of them reached a location with great views, overlooking the buildings underneath them.

"My goodness!" Lin Xue was so shocked words failed to come out of her mouth.

The world was split into many huge valleys, something one could only notice from high up in the sky. There were many buildings in each of the valleys, closely resembling a town in real life.

There was a huge modern city in the middle as she could barely make out the skyscrapers and a few other noteworthy buildings such as Eiffel Tower, and Oriental Pearl TV Tower. These buildings were scattered across the huge city, blending into their surroundings so as to not stick out.

Many of the buildings in the modern city were from buildings in real life, an amalgamation of buildings of different themes of sorts.

Of course, this city was a ways away from a real life city. Although it was small, it had everything a city needed, commercial area, industrial area, residential area, villa area. The composition was also quite logical and completely stunning.

"This is the central city. Most real-life buildings exist here," explained Chen MO.

He then pointed at the huge area to the left of the central city, "That is the ancient distinct, the Forbidden City and Old Summer Palace are there."

That was a group of Chinese style buildings. The Forbidden City was at the most northern part of the city facing south, occupying the most dominant position in the city.

Not far away from the Forbidden City was the Old Summer Palace, which also took up a huge area.

Other than these buildings that appeared in videos, she could make out other ancient Chinese buildings such as Yueyang Tower, Yellow Crane Tower, Classical Gardens of Suzhou, Songyue Pagoda, Qianling Mausoleum, Temple of Heaven, and Yongle Palace.

As these buildings had different styles, there were forests separating these buildings.

The tombs of emperors like Qianling Mausoleum were simply built on a relatively distant hillside and only reachable via a long stone path.

Chen Mo pointed at a random mountain (Of course, Lin Xue couldn't tell which he was pointing at because it was so far away), "Do you see the mountain below Qianling Mausoleum? I plan to build the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum there, but I haven't gotten around to it yet."

Lin Xue was utterly shocked, "Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum? That hadn't even been excavated yet, right? How are you going to build it?"

"I'll just have to imagine it, there have been many descriptions in the past anyways. Even if I really can't handle it, I should at least have the Terracotta Army built."

"I'm on my knees."

Chen Mo continued to go through the buildings, "The northwest of the ancient building district contains western fantasy buildings.

Lin Xue was struggling to distinguish between the buildings, "What are these? There seemed to be buildings from the middle ages, as well as a couple other weird ones, and... Huh? Isn't that Tristam Cathedral?"

"Yeah, the distinct is split into two smaller areas. On the left is Diablo related buildings, containing buildings such as Tristram Cathedral and Bastion's Keep. The right side contains buildings from the world of Azeroth such as Stormwind City and Lordaeron Ruins.

"Stormwind City?" exclaimed Lin Xue, "My goodness, you even built buildings from the world of Azeroth? What about the Frozen Throne?"

"... I haven't' gotten around to that yet," replied Chen Mo, "I'm slowly chipping through them as there's so much to work on. Stormwind City and Lordaeron Ruins are the two buildings that are close to completion in the western fantasy district.

"That's incredible, I wanna go see Stormwind City!"

"Hold on, let me go through the other districts first.

"The large open space on the east side of the western fantasy area is reserved for the new game, things will be added to it once that comes out, but I haven't decided on what theme yet.

"The huge patch of ocean to the right of the central city is the lost city of Atlantis.

The south of Atlantis will be world buildings. It's empty so far, but I plan to add the Sphinx, pyramids and Hanging Gardens of Babylon there.

There are three smaller distincts to the south of the central city that will serve as a display area. I will add interesting tools and weapons, split into ancient, modern, and future.

"Ancient weapons include cold weapons, carriages, as well as mythical creatures such as dragons and Gryphons.

"Modern area includes tanks and planes.

"Future will contain spaceships and space stations.

"But most of these are still empty as I haven't had the time to do it.

Lin Xue was completely shocked. What was going on?

Is this the same game I'm playing?

Lin Xue exclaimed, "I-is this what your team built during the development phase? That means that in half a year, not only was the game in development, a massive project like this was in the works too?

"Uhh, more accurately, it's built by me alone, why else would it be called 'Chen Mo's World?'" replied Chen Mo.

Lin Xue was so shocked words weren't coming out of her mouth.

Chen Mo had the crystal dragon descend, "Come, let's give Stormwind City a visit.

The dragons were fast, but even then it took them nearly ten minutes to reach their destination.

Chen Mo and Lin Xue landed their crystal dragons at the main entrance of Stormwind City.

Past the front gate, Lin Xue was on the main path of Stormwind City, with statues filling up the sides of the moat.

"That's Turalyon, Khadgar, Alleria Windrunner... There aren't any signs yet, I'll add them later," explained Chen Mo.

Lin Xue raised her head to look at the massive sculptures. Although they were pixel art, they were incredibly detailed. She could understand the postures and even a little bit of their expressions.

"How did you make the nose and mouth?" asked Lin Xue.

"Oh, there's a chisel mode. You can split any block into sixty-four smaller blocks for finer detailed works."

Lin Xue got back on her crystal dragon to admire these statues further away.

"...Manager, you're not human!"

Chapter 246: Prices of Buildings

Lin Xue and Chen Mo were on their Crystal Dragons exploring the different areas.

Stormwind City, Lordaeron Ruins, Tristram Cathedral...

Forbidden City, Old Summer Palace, Yellow Crane Tower...

Lin Xue was utterly shocked as they looked at the various builds.

Lin Xue was still most interested in Stormwind City and Lordaeron Ruins as these two areas had a lot of records in the world of Azeroth, yet there wasn't anything resembling a floor plan, so the players could only imagine what it looked like.

But here, Lin Xue could have a bird's eye view of Stormwind City from her crystal dragon, giving her a view of the structure of the entire city.

Business District, the old city, Wizard area, Stormwind Fortress... All of Stormwind City was split clearly into different areas with different styles in each area. From the sky, the entire city looked incredibly complete.

Lin Xue also walked around in the city and even found the Auctioneer in the Auction House in the trading district. There were many guards patrolling in the city as well. There was so much detail she couldn't help but give Chen Mo a like.

Lordaeron Ruins were also incredibly well done. Lin Xue managed to find the throne where Arthas killed his father just like what happened in the cinematic among the ruins.

Moreover, there was a huge underground city beneath Lordaeron Ruins. According to Chen Mo, this was known as the Undercity, occupied by the source after Sylvanas took over the city by leading the Forsaken, and was now one of the main cities of the Scourge.

Lin Xue's viewers were also utterly shocked,

My goodness, Chen Mo built all of Stormwind City in game? Lordaeron Ruins too!"

"Those sculptures are amazing!"

"I didn't really care about the Forbidden City as it's a building in real life as reference, but building Stormwind City is insane, it's all from his imagination!"

"My goodness, this game sure is worth it. It's like buy one get N free, just look at how detailed the buildings are!"

"That's amazing. Will I be able to do the same if I play this game?"

"From Xue's performance, I have my doubts..."

"Man I really want to play it now. Alright, I'm buying the game!"

After going through the Western and Ancient buildings, the two of them returned to the central city, which was also the largest, modern city.

The city looked exactly like a real city from afar. You could tell the pixelated nature of the game leaving its marks on some of the rounded buildings, but the rectangular buildings looked exactly like real life.

With the excellent lights and shadows, Lin Xue would sometimes confuse herself thinking it was real life.

What was even more impressive was placements of the buildings which made logical sense. Bridges, rails, gardens, commercial areas, and many landmark buildings were all well placed.

Moreover, Lin Xue even noticed signs when she was walking, noting the street names or area nme.

She also noticed that all the buildings she entered were fully furnished, with a distinct difference in decor from floor to floor.

Moreover, there were obviously more players in the central city. Lin Xue noticed that there were many players in the sky as well as on foot taking in the city from a more normal angle.

And in VR mode, players could freely chat to one another, and there was a lot of discussion among players.

"My goodness, it's insane that someone built this!"

"I found a railway line too, there were even interchanges!"

"I went up the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. Although it's not at the same scale, it looks exactly the same on the outside!"

"Have you guys been to the other areas?"

"We haven't gotten to that yet as this is huge, it'd take so long to fly there. Who know how long Chen Mo spent on this."

"Hmm? Aren't those the two rich players riding the crystal dragon? Ask them where they got it!"

A few players gathered around them.

"Excuse me, could you tell us where you got your dragons, did you buy it using money?" someone asked.

Chen Mo replied right as Lin Xue was about to answer, "Yeah we bought it, you can buy them at the three smaller areas down south. Moreover, everything here can be bought as long as you guys have the money."

As Chen Mo hid his ID in game, none of them could tell who he was.

The players were shocked, "EVerything can be bought?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Yeah everything."

He then pointed at the tower next to him, "If you scan the tower, you'll get its blueprint if you fork out money. Then with enough resources in singleplayer or multiplayer, you'll be able to recreate this according to the blueprint."

The players were shocked to learn that.

"Doesn't that mean if we had the blueprint for Forbidden City, we'll be able to build one in online mode?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Yes, that's right."

"That's incredible, let's see... my goodness the blueprint for the tower is forty RMB!"

"What about the lamp. Oh, one RMB."

"What about the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. The TV tower is really expensive, it costs one hundred and eighty RMB."

As though discovering a whole new world, the players scrambled to check the prices of various buildings.

There was one player who stayed back, "This lamp doesn't look too complicated and yet it costs one RMB. What if I built it myself?"

"It wouldn't cost anything if you built it yourself. You could sell your own blueprints for money too." replied Chen Mo.

The player got really excited, "I can do that? The buildings I built can be sold for cash? My goodness, I just discovered a great way to make money. I'll be off to singleplayer then!"

After all the players were gone, Lin Xue asked, "Manager, I have a question. Aren't you afraid that the players are going to resell the blueprints after buying your's?"

"Resell? Impossible."

"Anything that was built from a blueprint cannot be resold as a blueprint. For example, if you bought Oriental Pearl TV Tower, changed some of the interior and added some decor, it's impossible to resell that.

"You can't sell your build if it contains a single piece of item that was recreated using blueprints. Unless you swapped out every single block, but that'd take a lot of effort. You'd be better off building a new building with that energy."

"Is that so. You've really thought of everything haven't you, manager."

Chen Mo said, full of himself, "Of course, I'm a professional designer afterall, how could something like this get past me? It had to do with profit no less."

"You're only thinking that far when it has to do with profits then!"

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Chapter 247: Online Multiplayer

The two of them spent some more time in the central city.

"Geez these buildings sure do look nice. I want to buy one of them now. Makes me mad to think about the den I built," said Lin Xue.

"So that really isn't a tomb then?" asked Chen Mo.

Lin Xue used an 'angry' emote, "Get out of here!"

Chen Mo laughed, "Although I really do hope you spend money on the game, but I recommend you hold off on that."

"Why?"

Chen Mo brought Lin Xue to a rooftop of a tall building that overlooked the city.

"To be honest, I wouldn't recommend anyone buy these blueprints. Although it is a feature, I hope that everyone tries to build their own things and experience the joy of creating. The point of the game is lost if you bought everything."

Lin Xue seemed to have understood that, "Huh, is that so."

Chen Mo added, "Moreover, you'd still have to gather all the resources once you buy it."

Lin Xue was shocked, "Huh? But don't you have infinite resources in creative mode?"

"Sure you have infinite resources in creative mode, but even if you recreate one of these buildings, who would see it? How many others would join your world and look at it?" explained Chen Mo.

Lin Xue took a few seconds to process that, "That does seem to be the case."

Chen Mo continued, "So if you want to show off a massive building you bought, you best go to a multiplayer server. But it'd take a lot of resources and a lot of gathering to build the building, so it'd be quite difficult to do that alone.

Lin Xue thought for a second, "So it's best to start a gang on a multiplayer server before buying one of those?"

"... Must you use the word 'gang'?"

"I understand now!" said Lin Xue, "How about we explore multiplayer mode?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Sure, I've been wanting to check how the players are doing anyways."

The two of them quit Chen Mo's world and entered 'Everybody's World'.

This time, the two of them spawned in a valley surrounded by massive trees with a river =in front of them.

There were quite a few players in this valley, at least thirty to forty players from the looks of it. They were all gathering wood and digging dirt. Some of them already crafted crafting tables and were using them.

Lin Xue looked around and noticed that she didn't have anything other than the basic axe.

"Huh? How come I have nothing but the axe?" exclaimed Lin Xue.

"Of course," Chen Mo said looking at her, "Everybody starts from nothing in multiplayer, so everybody should work together."

Evidently, this valley was where the players spawned. But unlike other online games, there wasn't even an NPC guiding players in Minecraft, nor were there tasks. The players spawn in this valley surrounded by trees with nothing else in possession.

There were many spawns like this. Chen Mo had set the spawns, terrain, and starting buildings, meaning the players will have to move around when they spawn.

A player named 'Cool Gust' walked towards Chen Mo and Lin Xue. He had a pickaxe in hand and appeared to have been mining before this.

"Nice to meet you two. If you guys are new, please join our guild. Strength in numbers. It'd make surviving and growing easier too," explained Cool Gust.

Lin Xue looked at Chen Mo.

Chen Mo nodded, "Sure, the two of us are newbies, please look after us guildmaster."

Lin Xue was speechless.

Cool Gust was quite happy, "Alright, I'll send you a guild invite, just hit accept."

Chen Mo and Lin Xue both agreed and joined Cool Gust's guild.

"I've also started recently, but I've gotten hang of it quite quickly, perhaps it's because I like these types of building games, " Cool Gust said passionately.

"We are currently splitting up and having everyone work on something different. You should go gather some wood. You'll be able to get it by using your axe on a tree. We'll build a house once we have enough resources.

Lin Xue nodded, "Sure."

The two of them got their axes out and started hacking away.

Lin Xue noticed as she was chopping down trees that the players had distinct jobs to do in this guild. Some were gathering wood, others gathering cobblestone, there were even some responsible for crafting.

Daytime was much longer in multiplayer mode, but because players couldn't skip night by sleeping, multiplayer was much more dangerous compared to single player.

But with such a huge group of players, mobs would easily die if everyone hit them once. Danger was just a concept in this case.

Soon, Chen Mo and Lin Xue brought back the huge pile of wood they gathered.

With plenty of cobblestone and wood, Cool Gust decided to start building after some consideration.

"Alright, throw all the things you've gathered on the ground, I'll use them to build the house. Yeah, just throw them there. I plan to build quite a large house on this patch on empty land. Let's do four houses for now, it'll be our houses for the time being. I'll start off and the three of you will try and copy what I do as close as you can.

AFter saying that, Cool Gust and three others started building the house, including Chen Mo.

"Alright, I'm about the start. I'll try and go slower, so pay attention and build exactly as I do. Otherwise you guys will have to destroy and rebuild it."

Cool Gust then started building the house.

Lin Xue couldn't help but think that players who play a building game like this must have OCD!

Cool Gust was a decent builder. He built a border using cobblestone, then laid down planks, then a wall, then the roof, then windows...

It actually looked quite decent.

Cool Gust wasn't building too quickly as the others had to follow along. He stopped after every small section and waited for everyone else to catch up.

"It's wrong here, please redo that."

"Isn't this wall one block short? Look."

Cool Gust's house looked quite nice despite only being half done.

Cool Gust was walking along and pointing out mistakes.

But he was utterly shocked at the last house.

"W-what is this!"

It was an incredibly beautiful wooden double-story house. Moreover, it wasn't just hanging in the air as it even had supporting beams. The was also a proper set of stairs to the upper floor.

There were guardrails on every single window with a pointed roof, skylights and a chimney, and an incredibly beautiful french window in the middle.

Cool Gust felt that his build was an eyesore compared to this!

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Chapter 248: Server Status

Cool Gust was completely Dumbfounded, "W-where did this come from? Who built this?"

The other players turned their heads to Chen Mo in unison.

Cool Gust used a shocked emote, "Boss, I'm on my knees for you! Your house is incredible, teach me how you did this!"

Chen Mo used a head scratching emote, "Oh, I can't explain it either. I just thought of it and this was how it came out. Maybe it's from all the Leggo I've done in the past."

Cool Gust was shocked, "Well, what do you usually do, boss?"

Chen Mo gave it some thought, "Umm, professional Leggo builder?"

Cool Gust used an impressed emote, "Boss is incredible! I'm thoroughly impressed! You're fit for a professional builder!"

Lin Xue was struggling to hold back her laughter.

The chat couldn't hold back either.

"My goodness, Chen Mo the actor is here again!"

"Kill this serial liar!"

"Since when were you a professional builder! Have some dignity!"

"He even said he just thought of it and built it? Rot in hell!"

"I've never seen someone so shameless!"

Of course the players in the server didn't know about this as they were investigating how the house was built.

They gave up after a while as there was no way they could build a similar one given their skill levels.

But upon looking back at the other three houses, nobody wanted to live in them anymore.

"You can use the blueprint for this house. You'll be able to build one once you gather enough ingredients," said Chen Mo.

"Huh? Boss will give us the blueprint for this?" exclaimed Cool Gust.

Chen Mo nodded, "Yeah, we'll just trade one by one."

Everybody there got riled up upon hearing about the free blueprint, queueing one after another to trade with Chen Mo.

After generating the blueprint for the house, Chen Mo gave everyone there a copy of it.

"Thanks boss! Boss you're the best!"

With the blueprint in hand, everyone happily started gathering the ingredients to start building. The more Cool Gust looked at the other three houses, the more of an eyesore it was, so much so that Cool Gust decided to take them apart himself.

Everyone became increasingly passionate about the game as they enthusiastically cut down trees. A few hundred metres squared of area was cleared out, and even mined out a huge cave in the side of a mountain.

After gathering the appropriate ingredients, Cool Gust picked an empty piece of land and flattened it.

Afterwards, he took out the blueprint, picked out a suitable area and placed it down.

The blocks seemed to appear out of nowhere as they assembled themselves one after another. The blocks slowly fell out of Cool Gusts inventory, and not long after, an identical two-story building was built.

"Incredible!" Cool Gust hurriedly went into the building, exploring every nook and cranny of it.

When Cool Gust finally came out, he asked Chen Mo, "Boss, do I have your permission to modify this building?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Of course, go ahead. But you can't generate another blueprint after you make changes, it has to be built from scratch."

"Alright, thanks so much boss! I'll need to properly analyse this house!" said Cool Gust.

This little house got many of the players riled up as many of them were looking into how the house was built before trying to build one from scratch themselves.

Chen Mo then said to Lin Xue, "You go ahead, I have to go and check how the players of other servers are doing."

Lin Xue nodded, "Sure, no problem."

After exiting his VR pod, Chen Mo left the second floor of the experience store and entered the office.

Qian Kun came forward upon seeing Chen Mo's arrival.

"Manager, the sales look quite good, we've sold more than ten thousand copies!" Qian Kun said enthusiastically.

Chen Mo replied with a "Oh", "Doesn't that mean we should start a second server? Keep your eye on it, we might experience more growth down the line."

"No problem, rest assured, manager." Qian Kun went back to monitoring the statistics related to the game.

It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since Minecraft was released so many statistics weren't available yet. But theoretically, it shouldn't be a problem selling fifteen thousand copies on the first day.

This might not seem like an incredible number as Don't Starve sold twenty-four thousand copies in the first day, whereas Minecraft sold over one hundred million copies in his previous life.

But upon considering the platform it was on as there were naturally less VR players than mobile for PC, and Minecraft's miraculous sales in his previous life from selling on PC, mobile, and various consoles.

Whereas Chen Mo currently only had it on VR and was only selling it in China, so it was natural that the sales were on the lower end.

Of course, this number was decent for a VR game. Most importantly, Minecraft was priced quite low, so many who own VR gaming pods wouldn't even think twice before buying the game.

Chen Mo's Forbidden City and Old Summer Palace also did a good job of promoting the game.

Chen Mo wasn't worried either as Minecraft had a long lifespan and was a game that was slow to grow. Only when there was enough participation from players, will the true potential of the game be released.

Chen Mo got to a computer and logged into the backend management terminal to check how the servers were doing.

So far, ten thousand players have filled up the first server. The players were at different corners of the world as they gave it their all in exploration, gathering, and building.

Of course not all ten thousand players will remain. Chen Mo estimated that the world will operate smoothly with around three thousand players.

The world was massive, but the world was just a solar system of eight different planets. All planets combined had about one hundred thousand square kilometers, meaning each planet had around ten thousand square kilometres.

Chen Mo also gave an order to these eight planets. The players would spawn on Earth, which was the third planet.

Ten thousand square kilometres for ten thousand players, meaning each player had one square kilometre. This meant players had one million blocks in terms of area, not to mention the blocks underground. This was more than enough blocks to keep the players occupied.

Of course the players wouldn't be playing alone, they would most certainly start guilds and work together. It was even more likely that a guild of a hundred people would work together to control a few hundred square kilometres and develop and build in that area.

The status of the players was about the same as what Chen Mo had in mind. There were many bright points on the map, signifying active players.

Players were still gathered around spawn thus far, with a huge gap from spawn to spawn, meaning that different guilds hadn't met each other yet.

The construction in all guilds was going full steam ahead.

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Chapter 249: Splitting Jobs

In Minecraft, buildings can take a lot of effort to build, but are very easy to destroy. Chen Mo had also made changes to amend that.

Guilds can pick one or multiple plots of land to claim it as their own, they will have absolute complete control over all the plots in the areas. The guildmaster can accept and kick guild members freely, and only players with permissions are allowed to place or destroy blocks in the areas claimed by the guild.

The 'areas claimed by the guild' was more or less a territory, allowing them to feel the greater sense of belonging, as if the plot of land was their home. Nobody would destroy their home for no reason.

As the guilds grew (dependent on number of players, time, and area built), the area claimed by the guild will also become bigger and bigger. Two guilds cannot have claim over the same area, and if that happens they'll have to combine guilds to declare war.

Of course, players could destroy the buildings of other guilds, but they have to use special tools, and it would take a long time to destroy them.

At the same time, the guildmaster has the ability to save the state of the areas of the guild and can restore it with a cooldown.

This didn't exist in the original Minecraft, so there was still a risk involved in making an online version. Buildings in Minecraft were too easy to destroy after all, as many blocks could easily be mined.

However, Chen Mo hypothesised that with these rules in place, griefing should be reduced to a minimal.

Moreover, the core mechanic of online mode was freedom, meaning that the state of the world completely depended on what the players wanted. If most players had the intentions to destroy the world they played in, it most certainly would be in disarray.

If most players in the world wanted to build the most incredible city, of course they could band together and banish the ones trying to create chaos.

All Chen Mo had to do was make some balance changes.

Players were going quite well so far.

Most guilds were progressing well in terms of building. There were quite a few that were good at that, and professional architects were getting quite a bit of attention.

After all, the houses built by the guild represented the guild, and the first impressions the guilds have on new players would strongly affect their ability to gather new players. It could be said that it's the main source of competition.

There were many guilds who were similar to professional builders in his previous life, creating a professional team with dozens of players to build all sorts of incredible buildings before securing them using their guild to allow others enjoy the view.

In 'Chen Mo's World', there were many whales who forked out a lot of money to buy blueprints. Unique and high quality buildings such as Stormwind City, Yellow Crane Tower, and Forbidden City were incredibly popular.

Of course, these buildings were also incredibly expensive. Buildings like Oriental Pearl TV Tower cost one hundred and eight RMB, but a building like Stormwind city was in the thousands.

Yet, people still bought them.

Even after buying them, they couldn't build them as they didn't have enough resources. These whales started poaching guilds with the incentive of them being rich as well having the blueprint to gather as many people as possible to complete the building.

To many of these whales, it was an incredibly interesting consumer experience as they could build the buildings in multiplayer mode and would even have their names on it, feeding their ego as hundreds or even thousands of players would see it.

At the same time, there were also players who focused on the tech tree.

It didn't take long before players got the hang of beginner mechanics such as building a crafting table using four plants, or crafting a stone axe using cobblestone and sticks, or cooking meat in the furnace.

And the more passionate players, especially big guilds that controlled a lot of resources, quickly discovered even more tech.

After taming horses, they could craft a carriage using wood.

They could also use various complicated ingredients and potions to craft a control core (living things), then gather a special crystal through mining to summon the crystal dragon.

They could even make cars, but that'd require even more ingredients, requiring control units (mechanical), fuel, reinforcement, switch module, tyres, etc...

Many of these required rare ores that spawned in the ground where there was a high chance of meeting terrible monsters.

If the players wanted to progress through the tech tree, they'd have to go through wood, stone, and metals step by step. After gathering metal tools, they'll equip everyone with metal weapons and armour in order to kill mobs and better gather resources.

This way, the equipment players had would be better and better, the players would also get better at killing mobs, which allowed them to gather more resources. This would help them create more high tech equipment, or even create a modern city.

It didn't take long before players had specialised roles within guilds.

Managers took on the role of distributing jobs, managing their expansion,

Architects researched buildings and were responsible for building.

Scientists looked deeper into the tech tree and focused on gathering

Warriors fought mobs and battled other players.

Miners gathered various resources.

Once everyone got their roles, the efficiency of the group increased dramatically. Moreover, there wasn't a difference in power in the game as players worked towards a common goal of building the better building.

These groups started posting their experiences on the forums, and soon the other groups also used the same strategy, resulting in most guilds following the same structure as they all headed towards a more proper, lawful direction.

There were many posts on the forum of players detailing their process of grinding or sharing some of the buildings they built.

Although there weren't many Minecraft players as of yet, the players who were playing were really passionate about the game. Most players were passionate about creating and liked sharing their experiences. As a result, the Minecraft forums were incredibly lively, perhaps even more so than some of the bigger games.

The players were shocked at how rich the gameplay was as they investigated the most optimal way to play the game.

Of course there was still some fighting.

There were posts from ones who didn't listen to instructions from their guild and got kicked from them. Sometimes other guilds would make posts yelling at one another after having some confrontation in game. There were quite a few of these posts and quite a lot of fighting.

Chen Mo didn't mind too much as long as it wasn't the game at fault. There was bound to be conflict with people, and it wasn't surprising for people to fight over things like these.

It's healthy to have some conflict once in a while anyways.

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Chapter 250: First Day Sales

Soon, the statistics for Thousand Hells and Minecraft was released.

The two games looked to be on even ground from the initial promotions. Thousand Hells got a lot of help from Emperor Dynasty Entertainment and even got the best promotional spot on Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform's front page.

Whereas Minecraft gained most of its popularity from Forbidden City and Old Summer Palace. At the same time, the Game Committee gave Minecraft a promotional spot too.

The twenty-four hour sales for the games: Thousand Hells sold 8739 copies, whereas Minecraft sold seventeen thousand four hundred copies.

Minecraft sold double the amount Thousand Hells didn, but it wasn't even close in terms of revenue as Thousand Hells was priced at twelve hundred eight eight, ten times the amount of Minecraft.

Thousand Hells made eleven million on the first day, and it seemed more than likely that it would make over two hundred million RMB in the first month, potentially even more than three hundred million.

Minecraft on the other hand made 3.47 million RMB in its first day. Two million or so of that game from selling the actual game, and the rest came from players spending money in game (blueprints).

Many whales were spending repeatedly, up to several thousand RMB as they bought all of the high quality buildings.

From the looks of it, Minecraft would probably make one hundred million in its first month which was quite far away from Thousand Hell's three hundred million.

Yan Zhenyuan breathed a sigh of relief after seeing this number.

He had been really uneasy since Chen Mo's videogame conference, and for some reason his eyelids were always twitching.

Maybe it had to do with Chen Mo's praises?

Yan Zhenyuan didn't dare look down at Chen Mo either as he knew that the videogame industry is incredibly unpredictable as miracles can often happen.

A smaller game might gain a lot of popularity and spread all across the globe.

Moreover, Chen Mo seemed to have created many of these miracles.

Therefore, the more successful a videogame designer was, the more careful they usually were.

But from the looks of it, Minecraft didn't seem to be able to move Thousand Hell's position.

Thousand Hells should be able to reach the top of the VR best sellers and stay there for a week or two, and Yan Zhenyuan was more than satisfied by a result like that.

Although the games were of different genres and didn't compete with one another directly, they were both VR games that sold at the same time. It would still be fine if they had lower sales, but they would certainly be a bit embarrassed if Minecraft trumped them in terms of monthly revenue as well.

Emperor Dynasty Entertainment were already celebrating as they finally beat Chen Mo!

Although it might've been overkill, and the games were of different genres as well, but a win's a win!

And thinking back on the beef between Chen Mo and Emperor Dynasty Entertainment, it was normal for the designers at Emperor Dynasty Entertainment to be celebrating.

Chen Mo's side on the other hand was quite calm.

Everyone was still quite emotionally stable upon seeing the statistics.

They did sell quite a few copies, but because of how low the game was priced at a tenth of what Thousand Hells cost, it was normal for them to lose in terms of monthly income.

They might not be able to sell the same amount of copies if they raised the price either. All that could be said is that smaller games don't get the same treatment as larger games on VR.

In the office, assistant Lin Xiao was having a discussion with Su Jinyu.

"Ms Goldfish, I want to ask you something. Minecraft's sales for the first day is out, should we organise a celebration dinner? I'm not sure if the manager is satisfied with numbers like these. Normally, we should organise a dinner," asked Lin Xiao.

Su Jinyu replied after a few moments of thought, "You should ask him yourself. I don't know what he's thinking either."

Lin Xiao was a bit hesitant, "It's because I don't know what he has in mind that makes it so difficult to approach him with this question."

"Don't worry, the manager has a good mentality. You don't need to worry so much, just go ahead and ask him," assured Su Jinyu.

"Alright," Lin Xiao nodded and decided to ask Chen Mo directly.

Lin Xiao got to the second floor of the experience store to find Chen Mo was still looking into various statistics for Minecraft while building.

Lin Xiao knocked on the door gently, "Manager?"

Chen Mo turned around to look at her, "Come in, is something wrong?"

Lin Xiao walked forwards and asked hesitantly, "Manager, Minecraft's statistics for the first day is out, should we organise a celebratory dinner?"

"Celebratory dinner?" Chen Mo gave it some thought, "Of course!"

Lin Xiao nodded, "Alright, I'll get that organised right away."

Chen Mo quickly waved his hands, "No no no, wait. We don't need to rush this. Wouldn't it be better if we celebrate after the income of Minecraft surpasses Thousand Hells?"

"Huh?" Lin Xiao was confused, "Have the dinner after we surpass Thousand Hells?"

From the income of the first day, Minecraft was about a third of Thousand Hells, how would it surpass them?

Of course Lin Xiao didn't dare ask any further. She had already reminded the boss about the dinner, it was completely up to them when to host the dinner or if at all.

"Alright, just let me know when, manager." said Lin Xiao before leaving.

Chen Mo continued building calmly.

For certain games, the first day's sales were incredibly important as after a long promotional period, the players who buy the game on the first day are the target audience for the game. The feedback from these players were incredibly important to the videogame designers.

Normally, a game that had done sufficient promotions would have one of the highest if not the highest amount of sales in the first day. Especially when pre orders are taken to account, the number of sales the game would get could safely be extrapolated.

But that wasn't the case for sandbox games.

When sandbox games are just released, the players would still be exploring the game so the fun of the game wouldn't be fully realised. That comes with sufficient participation and ingenuity from the players. A second wave would follow, allowing for more growth.

Although Chen Mo had used various methods to show the fun in building in Minecraft, there was still a gap between him and the players.

Chen Mo was the developer of the game after all. Most players would think that there might've been some special effects upon looking at his creations.

Players will only realise the fun of the game when they build amazing buildings with their two hands.

As it was only the first day since release so Chen Mo wasn't worried at all.

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Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 251 - Reversal - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 251 - Reversal Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 251: Reversal

More and more reviews for Thousand Hells and Minecraft came up ss more and more players have had their chance at the game.

Most players that have never played Diablo rated Thousand Hells more highly than normal. Strictly speaking, Thousand Hells only borrow some ideas from Diablo. After porting the game from PC to VR and changing the western fantasy theme to an angel and demons theme, most players could never tell that Thousand Hells took heavy inspiration from Diablo.

But there were various different reviews for Minecraft.

"Is there anybody who understands the point of this game? All I do is dig up dirt and build houses. Is there nothing else to this game?"

"I think that this game is kinda boring. Sure it's satisfying to build my own house, but the houses I build are more akin to matchboxes than houses!"

"Because the game you are playing is called 'My World', but the fun part is in 'Somebody else's world'!"

"The online mode is great, let's dig up dirt and build houses together!"

"I don't get the point of this game with all the guilds and building. Haven't there been games like these before? What's new?"

"Yeah, it's just a building game. What can you really build?"

"Hehe, last poster, stop pretending when you haven't even bought the game. You must spend some time on the game before you can understand it. People who don't spend time in games like you will never understand that!"

However, these arguments were few and far between, and they rarely ever heat up. This was because players who didn't care about Minecraft wouldn't go out of their way to talk trash about the game, and the players who bought Minecraft?

They were all too busy building.

A week after the game was released, there were quite a few videos on various streaming platforms.

"Minecraft first experience: Is this a horror game?"

"The city in the sky that we built"

"Minecraft new player tutorial"

"Original build: recreating Siheyuan"

"Original build: recreating Classical Gardens of Suzhou"

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There were three main types of videos.

First was the comedic first experience type videos, digging holes, chased by zombies, and building awful houses.

Second was the educational type where more experience players go over some tips and tricks for the game.

Last was building videos, where players record their amazing builds in creative mode or online multiplayer mode to share (pronounced brag).

Minecraft was a very topical game as the rich gameplay allowed for different streamers or video makers to use their imagination to differentiate themselves from others.

Other RPG games would more or less be going over the story or showcase high skilled gameplay, making it difficult for streamers to differentiate themselves from others.

Whereas a sandbox game allowed for talented players to show off their building skills, while others showed off some interesting gameplay, while others explored the world...

When different players played the game differently, there would naturally be more diverse gameplay.

Minecraft slowly crept up on various video streaming and live streaming sites before many noticed, and started a Minecraft wave.

Many players were really confused.

"How come there are this many Minecraft videos?"

"The gaming area is basically a Minecraft area!"

"Many streamers are off to play this game as well."

"Have you seen Xue's livestream? Chen Mo showed himself there and showed off many incredible builds."

"There's a streamer who became a guildmaster in Minecraft and they were incredibly progressional! He got some to mine, others to build, and already managed to build a little town!"

"I think the best part of the game comes from online multiplayer. It's so satisfying to work together with many others to build a whole city."

"Single Player is pretty fun too as you can craft whatever you want. It suits socially anxious people like me."

"They're all fun! The game is fun because everybody gets to have their fun!"

"Geez, after watching so many videos and livestreams, I want to get the game too! I want to test out my architectural prowess"

"You will realise it's all somebody else's world! It's all lies!"

As Minecraft gained traction on various live streaming and video streaming sites, the sales followed suit.

Moreover, there were already some who've started selling blueprints to their buildings. There are even groups who specialised in building for money.

Soon, a string of statistics was released.

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First week sales: Thousand Hells fifty four thousand copies, Minecraft two hundred and sixty four thousand copies.

First Month sales:Thousand Hells two hundred and thirty seven thousand copies, Minecraft 3.013 million copies.

And when including various in-app purchases, Thousand Hells made three hundred and ninety million RMB in its first month, whereas Minecraft made four hundred and thirty million RMB!

Minecraft only got three hundred and eighty five million from selling copies of the game, and everything else came from in-app purchases, aka whales spending money on blueprints.

When Minecraft broke three million players, there were thirty open servers, with thousands upon thousands of different guilds.

Most of these guilds have their whales, and even if they didn't they'd band together to buy a blueprint. As it directly affects how the guild is portrayed, the players didn't skimp on spending money on these.

There were even some whales who would blueprints just to collect them. Some diehard World of Azeroth fans bought Stormwind City and Lordaeron Ruins just to have them.

Even though Thousand Hells had tripled the revenue of Minecraft in the first day, Minecraft somehow turned that around in a month!

This number confused Yan Zhenyuan.

Seventeen thousand in a day, twenty-six thousand in a week, three million in a month?!

A difference of one hundred and seventy times between sales in the first day and the first month? Is he a monster?

Moreover, Yan Zhenyuan was puzzled about the slow rate of growth of Thousand Hells!

Thousand Hells had great reviews on various websites, video game media, and videogame platforms, maintaining a score of above 8.7. The player feedback was alright too. Emperor Dynasty Entertainment also promoted the game as best they could. And yet it felt like something was lacking?

No matter how hard they promoted it, it wasn't hugely popular and didn't show any signs of doing so either!

On the other hand, although Chen Mo did start spending some money to promote Minecraft from the second week, it was still quite far away from how much Thousand Hells was putting out. How come it just keeps growing?

The worst thing is the ridiculous number of sales it got! It'd be completely out of proportion if it continues at this pace!

There have always been fewer VR gamers in China compared to mobile and PC. If it continued like this, wouldn't all VR gaming pods in China have Minecraft installed!

That's ridiculous! How did a strategy of selling the game cheap to sell more copies work on a VR game?

Yan Zhenyuan was speechless and was especially confused about Thousand Hells' lacklustre performance. Even if Thousand Hells didn't take over the VR market, it should at least resemble Diablo's success on the PC right?

The more Yan Zhenyuan thought about it, the less it made sense.

Maybe... It's some kind of black magic?

It doesn't make sense!

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Chapter 252: Minecraft Big Data

It was all celebrations in the office.

The atmosphere was slightly depressing when the statistics for the first day was released. Although the sold quite a few copies and was considered a great success, it wasn't explosively popular as they were completely outclassed by Thousand Hells which happened to be outside of their expectation.

But what happened later was also completely outside of their expectation and completely surprised them.

From the first week to the first month, Minecraft's sales and revenue kept going up as it gained more and more popularity on various video streaming, live streaming, and video game forums. At the end of the first month, Thousand Hells was almost completely defeated by Minecraft.

This also wiped out the somewhat depressed atmosphere of the entire studio!

Qian Kun was putting a lot of effort into building houses in Minecraft on PC.

He had a blueprint on hand and carefully placed down each and every block according to the blueprint.

Su Jinyu was behind him, "You sure are patient."

Qian Kun said while having his full concentration on building, "It's alright. After realising the fun in building, I'm completely addicted to the game. Time goes by in a blink of an eye when you're having fun."

Zheng Hongxi said, "I think compared to patience, the bigger challenge is the pressure from the manager."

Su Jinyu couldn't help but laugh, "Yeah, Qian Kun. You spent days building this building whereas the manager would probably spend ten minutes on this."

"Can you guys stop attacking me like this?" pleaded Qian Kun, "The manager... He's not normal. There's no competition between me and him in any game."

Su Jinyu nodded, "Fair point... Anyways, where's the manager?"

Chen Mo was making a video on the second floor of the experience store.

This was a special video, not a building video like the Forbidden City or Old Summer Palace.

The building videos were stunning at the start, but as the players' building prowess are continually being challenged, more and more professional groups appeared, and with that more and more incredible builds.

Players slowly getting used to these types of insane builds after seeing them again and again in "Somebody else's world".

And the video Chen Mo was making one was something that would allow others to feel the charms of Minecraft even better than building videos.

Chen Mo did all the recording, editing, and post-production all by himself as it wasn't anything difficult and it was something most video makers could do, and was of course even simpler for Chen Mo.

The video making process wasn't difficult, the difficult part was collecting data capturing the correct point of views in game, something only Chen Mo could do.

After looking through it one last time, Chen Mo felt that it was good enough and uploaded it onto the internet via Weibo.

Chen Mo's Webio was now the best place for players to get news about new games. Many of them would check Chen Mo's Webio everyday when they have nothing to do to see if Chen Mo had posted anything.

The post attracted many reposts once it was released.

"Minecraft Big Data! Take a look at what these players built!"

The players were all confused, Big Data?

Big Data was a high level term commonly used in the IT industry, referring to the cleaning and summarising of a large amount of data to gain some insight.

Of course, this term is sometimes misused to describe some shocking statistics.

But normally, the video game industry rarely touched the term Big Data. Although there are various sources of data in video games, the designers usually kept it for their own eyes and would rarely release them.

What was this Big Data Chen Mo was referring to?

They played the video.

There was nothing special about the video as it featured some Minecraft gameplay. The important point was the information revealed in the video.

"Over three million Minecraft players a month after it's release.

"There are thirty Minecraft world servers thus far, totalling three million square kilometres, equivalent to the area China occupies on land and on sea.

"Every server has one hundred thousand square kilometres in area, comparable to a province in real life.

"So far, players have built on 158038 square kilometres across thirty servers, meaning players have terraformed 5267.9 square kilometres per server, about half of the starting planet.

"Each player has modified (dug or placed) five hundred and twenty thousand blocks."

"The player who modified most blocks is Lin Zhan in server one, modifying 1.483 million blocks. If these blocks were placed in a single layer, it would cover one hundred and forty football fields.

"The guild that modified the most blocks goes to Huaxia Geographical Society, with a total of 783 million blocks modified. In a single layer, it would be similar in area to Magic City.

"These players who are so good at the game, do your families know about this?

"Nxet is some interesting stats about the servers.

"The first server is the oldest server and is said to contain the most real life architects. These architects have given it their all to show us the best advanced building techniques in the game.

"For example, a city in the sky built entirely with glass, or a underground dungeon below magma, or an ever growing pyramid in the desert... Apparently someone plans to dig through the planet and build a train through the centre of the planet. I sincerely advise against that."

"The biggest guild in server three is Huaxia Geographical Society, they have tasked themselves as the guild to terraform an entire planet to look like Huaxia[1].

"Of course, this is an incredibly ambitious task. So far they have built Hengduan Mountains, and Chengdu, Chengdu Plains, and Sichuan Basin[2, as well as other famous locations. And because of this, the tech levels of this server are quite far behind and still remain in the era of cold weapons.

"Server seven is where battlehungry players gather, as the servers are filled with chaos and explosions every day. Thirteen guilds are constantly fighting one another, putting every inch of the planet in war."

"Of course, server seven also happens to be the most advanced in terms of military technology. All investments in the tech tree went to warfare, and there had already been four large airports."

"Server eight is the server for love and peace. They focus on progressing through the tech tree with the aim of having manned spaceflight. They have been progressing steadily, searching for various rare materials to craft various parts that are required for rockets.

"Let's hope they'll eventually achieve manned space flights and achieve a history leap in online Minecraft!

"Server fourteen has the most whales. The entire server has spent over 1.94 million RMB on blueprints although most of them haven't been crafted."

"Moreover, players Seraph and MilkBread are the two whales who have spent the most money on blueprints. The former bought out the entire central city, while the later bought out the entire western fantasy area including Stormwind City and Lordaeron Ruins.

"That was how each server was doing. There are more exciting things to be done in Minecraft's online mode! PS: Don't forget to go shopping in Chen Mo's World.

TL note[1] like an old name for China https/en./wiki/Huaxia

[2] The author used a collective word for these places

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Chapter 253: Redstone Technology

This video attracted the attention of many Minecraft players. Through the collected reposts, many players who didn't play Minecraft were also discussing about the video.

"My goodness is this data official? Those guys are insane diggers!"

"The guys on server one dug out an area equivalent to the entire Magic City?"

"The other servers are in a similar place too. Minecraft players are crazy!"

"That guy from server one dug out one hundred and forty football fields? That's crazy! You'd only be able to play a few hours in VR, he's way too efficient!"

"The later statistics are quite interesting too. I'm on server seven and I thought other servers are constantly fighting just like we are... turns out we are the exception!"

"Last poster, you guys are living in terrible states, come join us in server eight! We are all working together and are pretty close to building a rocket! Haha!"

"Huaxia Geographical Society sure are a weird bunch. Do they really plan on recreating Huaxia in its entirety? They're playing a different game than we are!"

"I'm from server fourteen and I watch the two whales outcompete one another in spending. I think if Chen Mo does a custom build thing, they'd buy them with no hesitation."

There was also plenty of discussion of this video on the forums, and the different playstyles of different servers gained the attention of many players.

The way the servers were set up was in hopes of players would modify the world according to their playstyle anyways.

After hearing about the status of various servers, many noticed they had been playing the game wrong and changed how they played the game while others continued their playstyle and played as they wished.

Some players with the same idea in mind planned to go to a new server to create a world that was even more perfect.

At the same time, more and more different playstyles appeared.

Chen Mo's Minecraft hinted at Redstone related tech. With just a little effort, the players could easily understand the theory behind redstone.

Moreover, many buildings in Chem Mo's World had redstone circuits in them for things like automatic doors. The players could learn more about the upper limits of redstone if they spend some time looking into them after buying the blueprints.

The players then started putting more emphasis on the magical redstone and started using them more and more in building their worlds.

The theory behind redstone was quite simple, building a complete redstone circuit using redstone related items such as redstone torches, levels, pressure plates, redstone dust, repeaters, pistons and rails in order to create interactive elements.

It was now the programmers and musicians time to shine.

Some made smart homes with automatic doors and lights.

Some used redstone to recreate music like Gokuraku Jodo or Croatian Rhapsody.

Some were trying to make machines that moved in Minecraft, and even TNT launchers.

Some used redstone to create a huge maze that would change itself every minute.

Some made 3D printers that would recreate anything below them, above them, known as a 'Creator System'.

Some players even made a computer in Minecraft, and implemented apps like calculators and snake on them. Some of them could even change weather and environment in single player using the keyboard of the computers in the game.

Some even made phones that can turn on, slide unlock, and click on icons. Some of them even had working versions of Flappybird.

Of course because of the limits in the speed of redstone, these phones and computers were really slow and quite laggy, but it was an incredibly interesting concept in a game.

With these various professionals in Minecraft, the potential of Minecraft was finally realised.

Minecraft players often made fun that the game wasn't called 'My world', but 'Somebody Else's World'.

Of course, many started working harder to learn the game after getting inspiration from others.

There were also more and more Minecraft videos that increased its popularity even more. "A cheap building game where everything is possible" became what Minecraft nickname and was known among most VR players.

Chen Mo's strategy of pricing it cheap to sell more copies was finally paying dividends. Although there weren't many VR players, after Minecraft gained a lot of popularity, almost all VR players had the game. Even if they weren't immediately interested in playing, they'd choose to buy the game and play it when they were finally interested in playing it.

Moreover, different players could gain something different from Minecraft.

Some liked to build houses in singleplayer or explore the tech tree with a few other friends in survival mode.

Some liked playing with redstone, making various redstone related videos.

Some liked to lead others in multiplayer worlds to terraform the world.

It was just like a shrunk down society in online mode. Everyone had their place and could gain recognition and respect through their hard work.

Some treated the game as a travelling game and would spend time in Chen Mo's world if they had nothing to do, checking for any new builds and if they should buy them.

Some became reporters, exploring the various servers, gathering their status and reporting back to the players on the forums.

Although it was just a building game, it had unexpectedly allowed many to realise the child inside them, allowing them to rediscover the fun of creating,

Moreover, Minecraft became one of the least hostile online games. As there were a lot of resources, there didn't need to be any competition between players, allowing them to work together.

Only with cooperation and exploration of the techtree will the players be able to enter space to gather even more rare resources to explore the tech tree. Therefore every new player had their value, allowing a healthy relationship between veterans and newbies.

The newbies are eager to learn and the veterans are eager to teach, creating a healthy positive environment.

The rich content made Minecraft's one hundred and twenty eight RMB price tag seem extremely great value. Combined with the liking the Game Committee took to the game and the continuous promotion on the official app store, Minecraft gained more and more sales and more and more popularity!

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Chapter 254: Father and Daughter

The entire video game industry was dumbfounded at Minecraft's miraculous number of sales.

It might be the cheapest VR game ever and didn't have the best profit model, but its increase in sales was horrifying.

So far in China, there were over 1.3 billion mobile users, five hundred million PC users, and a measly one hundred million VR users.

There are one hundred and fifty six million private car owners in China. People that could afford to buy cars should be way higher when taking the purchase restriction policies into account.

In theory, anyone who would afford a car could afford a VR gaming pod as well. But as VR gaming pods are purely for entertainment, there were naturally fewer players who would go out of their way to buy a gaming pod, resulting in the number of around one hundred million gaming pods.

But this was still a huge market.

VR gaming pods are even more common in advanced countries in the west, and the market looked really optimistic too.

So far Minecraft sold three million copies and it shouldn't be a problem to break a hundred million in a few more months. That would mean that one in ten VR gaming pods have Minecraft installed.

This also suggested that the game was about to be the 'most installed VR game'.

After Minecraft's miraculous growth, the gaming industry started looking deeper into its success. There was even expert analysis from the Game Committee, going through Minecraft's unique points.

"Minecraft is an incredibly unique VR game. It's ability to allow players to realise their imagination and creativity is its biggest differentiating factor.

"There are many games on the market that take inspiration from fun activities in real life and built their entire world around those features.

"In these types of games, the players will follow the easy to understand rules to work towards a goal and from that get a sense of satisfaction. This was the core of many of these games.

"But these games are relatively shallow as the players can only do so much within the restrictions of the game. They can't freely make changes and have limited scalability.

"But adding anymore to these games would actually do the opposite and shave off the original point of the game. It may even cause a loss of direction.

"But nothing of sorts happened in Minecraft.

"The game is incredibly rich. Players could play survival, play with others as a team, they could build, or even create various interesting things using redstone.

"Everybody would have their own way of playing the game and they would be able to search for the way of playing the game that would best fulfil them.

"It's hard to say what the core enjoyment of Minecraft is. I could only tell you that it gives you a fun space, all you had to do was to insert whatever you want to experience into that space and enjoy that experience.

As Minecraft continued to gain popularity, it became the most topical VR game, completely overshadowing Thousand Hells.

-In the experience store.

Chen Mo was laying down on the sofa testing how Minecraft ran on tablets.

It was alright, but obviously not comparable to VR.

During the development process, Chen Mo worked on the PC version, then ported that onto VR. Mobile Minecraft was just something that happened along the way.

But the problem was that compared to VR, the PC and mobile version of Minecraft wasn't a complete game as VR Minecraft had been modified by CHen Mo, whereas Minecraft on PC and mobile were the same quality as the original Minecraft.

This meant that PC and mobile versions of Minecraft didn't have online Multiplayer or 'Chen Mo's World', and its graphics weren't as polished either.

PC was relatively better, but the controls for the mobile version caused quite a bit of problems as the virtual joystick wasn't the best solution. Clicking to place and holding to dig wasn't the most intuitive thing either.

Moreover, the mobile version couldn't support large buildings because of the hardware restrictions of mobile. If the players couldn't build huge buildings, the most the players could do was to build a little wooden shack in singleplayer or hang around in survival mode, dramatically affecting the entertainment value of the game.

It was natural to release a PC and mobile version from how popular VR Minecraft was, nor was Chen Mo going to pass up this opportunity. However, Chen Mo still needed to do some polishing.

While he was in the middle of his train of thought, a pair walked into the experience store.

They looked like father and daughter. The dad looked quite young in his forties, and the daughter looked around twelve years old.

The daughter was holding her father's hand, "Papa, is this where Minecraft was made?"

She had a really soft and cute voice, as if from an anime.

The father bent over slightly and patted her on the head, "Yep, you'll be able to play Minecraft soon."

Chen Mo was surprised as he'd never seen a child in his experience store before.

Experience stores have the same rules as internet cafes, where children are banned from using the facilities.

Although minors could spend a short amount of time trying out mobile games under adult supervision, it was rare to see someone who would bring their children to an experience store to try out mobile games?

The pair walked to the front desk.

"Hi, can I try out Minecraft here?" asked the father.

Su Jinyu was no longer working at the front desk, and in her place was another girl who recently graduated.

She said embarrassingly, "Sorry, because Minecraft is just a VR game and we only have computers and mobile phones in the experience store thus far, there is no way to try out the game."

The father was shocked, "Huh? How come we can't try out your game in your experience store?"

The front desk lady replied, "I'm really sorry, as Minecraft is our first VR game and we can't fit any VR gaming pods in the experience store. I'm really sorry."

The dad seemed a bit disappointed, nodding, "Alright, thanks."

The daughter pouted, "Papa?"

The father held her hand to the door and squatted down, "I'm sorry Nini, they don't have Minecraft at the experience store. Let's figure something else out alright?"

The girl's eyes were getting a bit red as if she was about to cry, but she still nodded, "Alright, let's do then papa."

The father pinched Nini's cheek lightly, heartbroken before standing up and leaving.

"Wait," Chen Mo stood up, "Are you guys here to play Minecraft?"

The dad was shocked, "Yes, and you are?"

Chen Mo stuck his hand out, "I'm Chen Mo, I'm the designer of Minecraft."

The dad shook Chen Mo's hand, exclaiming, "You're Minecraft's designer? Great to meet you."

Chen Mo looked at Nini, "You want to play Minecraft?"

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Chapter 255: Nini's Present

The father nodded, "Yeah, because Nini's friends have been playing Minecraft, she wanted to try it out after hearing from them. I've looked it up online and found that it's a building game, so it's probably suitable for children, but we don't have a VR gaming pod at home. So we thought we'd try our luck at your experience store and see if she can try the game out.

Chen Mo understood the situation now. From the way the father dressed, he was probably an average working class and didn't look like the gaming type, and was reluctant to buy a VR gaming pod.

But Minecraft could only be played in VR gaming pods, so the father thought he'd bring his daughter to the experience store to try it out.

From the looks of it, they got here via public transport or by train, and seemed to live quite far away.

"There's a VR gaming pod on the second floor, follow me," offered Chen Mo.

The father was happily surprised, "Really? Thank you so much!"

Nini's frown was also turned upside down.

Chen Mo could tell that Nini was quite mature for her age, but still enjoyed fun and games like other kids of her age.

Chen Mo brought the pair to his office on the second floor.

The father was a bit hesitant, "Is this your office? Is this alright?"

Chen Mo smiled, "It's fine. Come, take a seat, I'll pour you a glass of water."

Chen Mo had the father sit on the single sofa and poured him a glass of water.

Nini stood beside him obediently, but had her eyes glued to the gaming pod.

Chen Mo kneeled down as said to Nini, "Nini you can play Minecraft in the VR gaming pod, but remember, you'll only be able to play for an hour alright?"

Nini nodded vigorously.

Chen Mo smiled, "Come, I'll help you do some adjustments."

Nini walked to the VR pod with a spring in her step before laying down in it.

Chen Mo did some minor adjustments to allow for a better experience for a girl like her.

Such gaming pods allowed minors to use them, but because of how tiring VR games were, their playtime needed to be strictly monitored. It was recommended to keep their playtime within an hour, and definitely not over two hours.

Moreover, because many VR games had gore or violence, many VR internet cafes banned minors just like regular cafes, even under adult supervision.

Therefore, if minors wanted to play VR games, their only hope was their VR gaming pod at home.

As Nini didn't have on at home, her dad decided to bring her to the experience store.

Chen Mo said to Nini through the little window in the VR gaming pod, "Nini, it's starting soon. Do you see that icon? Select that to enter the game."

VR gaming pods had a sober mode and a fully immersed mode. The fully immersed mode provided a better experience but didn't suit minors as well, so Chen Mo decided to have Nini play in the sober mode.

Chen Mo used a cable to stream the gameplay onto his laptop, then placed the laptop in front of the father.

"Thanks so much!" The father was really happy to watch Nini play.

After going through the tutorial, Nini excitedly entered creative mode. Evidently it was something she talked about with her friends.

Nini found a piece of flat land and started building a house.

They could tell from the computer that Nini was playing as a princess in a dress, placing down pieces of wood seriously.

First she arranged a square on the ground before placing down a second layer.

After a short pause, Nini found a place to insert a door.

Nini couldn't reach the top anymore when she was up to the fourth layer, but evidently she wanted to build more.

This stopped Nini for a bit, but she soon managed to solve the problem by placing a piece of wood underneath her to build the fourth layer.

Then Nini moved to the inside of the house to build the roof.

The inside of the house was completely dark after building the roof. Nini punched a few holes on the side of the walls and replaced them with class.

The father had a huge smile on his face watching Nini's each and every movement.

There were a few times that Nini encountered a problem, but the father held himself back to not help her, allowing her to figure out her own problems.

Soon, the hour was up.

Nini's building resembled a house. It was completely made of wood, had doors, windows and a bed. Nini even added some decor on the root and added a supporting beam to make it look better.

Of course, the house looked hideous as an adult, but it was something a twelve year old would take a lot of effort to make.

Chen Mo knocked on the VR gaming pod, "Nini, time's up!"

"Okay!"

Although she didn't want to leave, Nini took one last look at her build before quitting the game.

Nini was still really excited as she exited the gaming pod as she ran to her father, "Papa I built a beautiful house in game!"

The father had a smile on his face as he patted her head, "Yeah, papa saw everything. Nini's a great builder, you'll be a great architect when you grow up!"

Nini was still a bit unsatisfied, "If I had a bit more time, I'll make the house look even better!"

The father smiled, "Nini, it's time for us to go."

Nini nodded and stood by her father's side.

The father said to Chen Mo, "Thanks for today. The kid has been telling me all about Minecraft on the way here. She'd be sad for a long time if she didn't get to play today."

Chen Mo smiled, "It's nothing, it's my honour to have people like you who like my game."

"Thanks for having us."

"Alright, I'll walk you out."

Chen Mo walked the pair downstairs to the entrance of the experience store.

"Hold onto this for now, it has the mobile version of Minecraft installed on it," Chen Mo handed a tablet to the father.

The father was shocked and quickly declined, "We can't take that! Moreover, it's already a lot to have taken up so much of your time, how could I accept gifts like these from you?"

"This is a present for Nini. Moreover, Minecraft will release on Mobile and PC soon, before that happens, Nini can hold onto this tablet. You guys can return this when the PC and mobile version is released.

Nini obviously really wanted it but she didn't say anything and stared at her father.

The father couldn't help but give in, "Thank you so much, I'll return it in due time."

Chen Mo handed the tablet to Nini, "Remember to listen to your dad and don't spend too much time on it, alright?"

Nini grabbed the tablet and held onto it like a baby, "Yep, understood!"

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Chapter 256: Location of New Experience Store

Chen Mo walked back into the experience store after sending off the pair.

Chen Mo was quite touched by the whole interaction with Nini as it reminded him of something he had neglected.

What is a game?

To a designer, there are many aspects to a game.

The idea of a game also differs from person to person.

It could be a work of art that combines many different design and artistic concepts.

It could be a great source of entertainment and the best way to deal with work related stress.

It could be a job, eSports, and a way to challenge oneself.

It could be a drug, an unkillable monster, something that many cannot escape.

Everybody knew that videogames could be emotional, it could bring happiness, and it could bring negative emotions.

Of course, games can also empty your wallet and bring the developers a lot of money.

But Chen Mo also noticed that during the process of churning out games, he seemed to have forgotten the most basic primitive thing: that video games should bring happiness.

Ever since he entered the industry, Chen Mo had been smoothly sailing in the eye's of the others, making a great deal of money with all the games he released. But in reality, nobody had seen any of his hardships.

Chen Mo had never stopped making games ever since he entered the industry, maintaining three to four games a year, and one of which will be an investment of over one hundred million RMb.

Other than that, in order to help him gain capital for more investments to allow this speed of developing video games surpass what the other designers were used to, Chen Mo had made quite a few pay to win games.

He had been working almost every single day.

Before development, he'd to market research to see what players were into, and work on the design document. During the development, he'd overlook how everyone was doing, and monitor all aspects of the game including playstyle, art, and music. Before the game is released, he'd promote the game using various methods. After the game is released, he'd make changes according to player feedback, then move onto the next game soon after.

It could be said that Chen Mo could take the place of anyone on the team, and nobody could take Chen Mo's place.

Even taking out various aspects of it, even if it's just in terms of work ethic, Chen Mo wouldn't be inferior to anyone in the videogame industry.

Of course this was helped by Chen Mo's personality as well as the environment he was in.

Although Chen Mo had many ideas from classic games, ideas aren't worth much in the videogame industry.

Compared to distribution and capital, creativity is sometimes a weak force.

Therefore, Chen Mo had to take each move carefully as losing grip of an opportunity could mean never seeing it again.

But after watching Nini play Minecraft, Chen Mo realised something.

Thunderbolt Entertainment was now an incredibly influential video game company. He no longer was the videogame designer that nobody cared about.

He could slow down slightly and didn't need to calculate every step he took and make sure that there were no missteps.

He should treat every player as a person and not just numbers.

He should consider things outside of making money.

-In the second floor of the experience store, Chen Mo's own office.-

Lin Xiao handed over some documents to Chen Mo, "Manager, the design of the new experience store is basically complete. It's just as you requested, and this is the detailed report."

Chen Mo grabbed the documents, "Alright, thanks for that."

Lin Xiao asked, "Then when are we moving to the new office manager? If the date has been decided, I'll let everyone else know."

Chen Mo replied after a few moments, "Let's do next week, you can let the others know now."

Lin Xiao nodded, "Alright."

After Lin Xiao's departure, Chen Mo started looking through the documents.

The matters about the new experience store had been in the works in last November, or before the development of Minecraft started. Lin Xiao had looked at many places within the Imperial City.

Chen Mo finally settled on a four-story office building.

It was located in the northeastern corner of the Imperial City between the third and fourth ring road, right by a train station. As there were historical sites nearby and tall buildings weren't allowed to be built, the building was only four floors tall.

The floor was still in construction and was due to be completed in March. As Chen Mo was quite happy with the location and structure of the building, he decided to buy the building.

It cost forty-six thousand RMB per square metre, and had sixty-four hundred square metres across the four floors for a total of two hundred and ninety million RMB. This was on the expensive side but it had its upsides. First was the easy access to public transport, and was located pretty close to Chen Mo's current experience store. Moreover, the area and the number of floors suited Chen Mo's needs, which was why he decided to buy the entire building.

When the construction was finished in March, Chen Mo got professional interior designers to renovate it and made slight changes to the structure of the building and added decor to the inside and outside of the building.

In addition to various spendings as well as various fees he had to pay to buy the experience store, Chen Mo spent over three million RMB. And now, all of the experience store's renovations were done.

The structure of the entire experience store was handled by Chen Mo himself.

It's a five minutes walk from the train station to the main entrance of the expensive store. The front desk and the resting area was located on the first floor, with many sofas to allow players to relax and chat. Coffee and vending machines were also provided.

The elevators were directly opposite of the main entrance, and there were two elevators that provided access to all floors.

Next to the elevators was a public area that led to the PC experience area decorated similar to an internet cafe. The two areas next to the hall combined were about twelve hundred metres squared and contained two hundred computers.

The holographic projection viewing area and the mobile expensive area was located on the second floor. There wasn't a need for a main hall in the second, third and fourth, but all of them will have someone working at a front desk.

There was one large holographic projector and two smaller ones in the holographic projection area, and in game scenes or gameplay can be shown holographically here.

But holographic projection weren't mainstream in this world as they were quite expensive and weren't all that useful. Chen Mo bought it in consideration of future eSports competition.

Moreover, there was a massive LED screen in the viewing area, similar to ones that were present in concerts or eSports competitions that were in place for a better viewing experience.

A portion of the area was used as seating and another was used as the mobile gaming experience area. At each seat was a tablet and a mobile phone for the players.

The VR experience area was on the third floor, stocked with eighty VR gaming pods. The pricing for a VR experience was more expensive and had time limits, but it was cheaper than VR internet cafes.

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Chapter 257: New Experience Store's Holographic Projection

The fourth floor was the office area and Chen Mo's break area.

The office area was much more spacious this time. There were meeting rooms of various sizes, a kitchenette, and a break room. All the main creative staff also had their own VR gaming pod, where the others had upgraded drawing tablets and computers.

Chen Mo's resting area was an area specially set aside, decorated similar to the second floor of the previous experience store. It was set as an area for Chen Mo to think in peace.

Chen Mo also said goodbye to living in the experience store, renting a two bedroom apartment nearby for the time being. But upon considering that he might be working with a tighter development schedule in the future, Chen Mo didn't rule out that he might need to spend the night in the experience store.

In theory, the fourth floor would not be open for players. It was partially to keep their works as a secret, and partially to allow the staff a quiet work environment.

Of course, Chen Mo encouraged his staff to visit the other floors and interact with the players and gather some feedback.

Everybody was happy when they heard the announcement of a new experience store.

The new location of the experience store wasn't a secret of anything and many of them were waiting for the new experience store to complete. The current location was still big enough to support everyone, albeit a bit tight, so everyone looked forward to a new location.

The players were excited about the new experience store too as there were less than twenty computers in the first floor of this experience store, meaning players frequently had to queue up.

The next will will consist of working on the PC and mobile versions of Minecraft as well as the preparations for the move.

The old experience store belonged to the competition officials. But because how well Chen Mo's games have been selling, greatly surpassing their expectations, they allowed him to use the experience store free of charge.

There were also some procedures that needed to be done now that he was moving, but he didn't need to worry about that as Lin Xiao would take over.

Fifth of September, the new experience store was officially in use.

As a lot of the equipment was brand new, they didn't need to move many things over to the new office, it didn't take long for them to pack their stuff to the new location.

Everyone was really satisfied with the new experience store. Other than having a bigger area to work in as well as all round upgrades, the experience store had a lot of minute details that represented the culture of Thunderbolt Entertainment, which was to everyone's liking.

There was a huge three metre tall Arthas statue at the front door of the experience store. Thunderbolt Entertainment's logo was plastered all over the glass on the outside of the experience, making the experience store look incredibly modern and stood out from its surroundings.

The hall in the first floor had various decor related to games Thunderbolt Entertainment developed, such as Arthas' sword Frostmourne, Hellscream's Great Axe, and Tyreal's sword.

There were various artworks in the hallways, and everyone of them had a different style. Some were based on Warcraft, some Diablo, some Onmyoji, as well as Wuxia themes.

These were all artworks from the development process, and there was a piece of history behind each of these artworks. Looking through all these artworks told the growth of Thunderbolt Entertainment from the moment it was conceived.

In PC, mobile, and VR experience areas there were special exhibition areas for figurines in glass cabinets for the players to enjoy.

Some players game to show their support too as the new experience wasn't all that far from the old one, being two stations apart.

Many players went straight for the VR experience area the moment they got to the experience store to try out Minecraft. As the previous experience store wasn't equipped with VR equipment, it was a long time coming for the players who couldn't afford VR gaming pods.

However, the players and staff were more interested in the holographic projection area in the second floor.

Many had even seen holographic projection technology, and were extremely interested in it.

Zou Zhuo went straight for the holographic projection area, exploring the equipment.

"Manager, how do you use this holographic projection stuff? It looks incredible!" said Zou Zhuo.

There was one large holographic projectors and two smaller pnes. The large one was in the middle of the area, while the smaller ones were on the side.

These projectors were about half a metre in height and had a square base.

The large projector was about three metres in length, or about nine square metres, about the same area as a small cubicle.

The smaller one had two metre sides, resulting in four metres squared, about the same area as a double bed.

These projectors hadn't been turned on yet, so they looked like three silver boxes. If it weren't for the borders on its topside, some might mistake it as a stage and stand on top of it.

Chen Mo laughed, "Do you wanna play a match of Warcraft?"

Zou Zhuo was shocked, happily surprised, "Will this thing display Warcraft?"

"Of course, why else would buy it?"

There were two smaller soundproof rooms at opposite sides of the room, each room had five high-specced computers. Chen Mo and fatty entered different rooms and launched Warcraft.

The other players gathered around the projector to watch.

Chen Mo and Zou Zhuo started a two person map. When the game started, the holographic projector turned on too.

The whole map showed up on the large projector in the middle. They should see that Chen MO spawned in the top left corner of the map and Zou Zhuo spawned in the bottom right of the map.

The two of them started building, training, and farming.

The holographic projector showed a lot of details, including buildings, heroes, or other units. Moreover, it wasn't limited by the edge of displays, so everyone could see whatever was happening around the map at all times.

Theo other two projectors showed what was happening at Zou Zhuo and Chen Mo's base, both projected showing half the map.

With this combination of projectors, everyone could clearly see what was happening around the map, creating an incredibly satisfying viewing expectations.

Especially micromanagement that was previously hard to comprehend was made easy on these holographic displays.

Moreover, compared to PC graphics, these holographic displays had a better 3D feeling, making the graphics look even better.

"Geez, the fatty's spider is done for. Another one succumbing to Chen Mo's balde!"

"And Chen Mo is secretly mining on the other side of the map, fatty hadn't realised that yet! My goodness!"

"Looks like fatty is at a disadvantage again. Did I say again?"

Soon, more and more players gathered around and the holographic projector was surrounded by people.

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Chapter 258: Minecraft Pocket Edition

Zou Zhuo was done after the first match.

"Hold on a second manager. I just realised that I wanted to look at the holographic projections. I never got the chance to look at it since I was so occupied with the game!"

Chen Mo laughed, "That's true, anybody else wants to play Warcraft? Just head into the other room and give Zou Zhuo a chance to look at the projections."

Two excited volunteers offered themselves and entered the soundproof rooms.

Another game started and Zou Zhuo was utterly shocked upon seeing the holographic projection.

"This is amazing!

"I can see each and every detail of the entire map! All the micromanagements can be seen so easily.

"And all the characters and terrain are 3D, so it looks much better than on PC.

"Wouldn't this look amazing if it was 2v2?

"But there's a problem, if it was an eight person map, it would look too good right? Heroes might do alright, but the minions would look tiny."

Chen Mo nodded, "Yeah, this projector setup works best for smaller 1v1 maps. Moreover, this isn't just for Warcraft, it has other uses as well."

Zou Zhuo was shocked, "Huh? What else?"

Chen Mo had a mysterious smile on his face, "For the new game of course."

The theory behind holographic projects were quite simple. In this world, although holographic projections were expensive, they did a really good job.

Holographic projections work well with many different types of games as long as the game was fully 3D (3D models and scenes), then the holographic projector will do a good job of showing the bird's eye view of the game.

There were two different ways of displaying the game. First was a tracking mode, meaning tracking a player's perspective or certain units. Games such as Diablo would be more suited to a tracking mode.

But a game like Warcraft didn't suit tracking mode because of how much micromanagement there was. A lot of aspects of micromanagement would be missed if they chose to follow a hero, and if they followed the player's perspective, it would result in a terrible viewing experience because of how quickly the player's screen would change.

The other was a fixed mode, meaning fixed on a certain area or perspective. Warcraft would be better suited for fixed mode.

Of course, a problem arises if the map was too big, such as Warcraft's eight people maps. With a fixed perspective, smaller units such as Peasants will be too small to view comfortably.

But a lot of Warcraft was about 1v1 on smaller maps, so this wasn't a big problem. Moreover, Chen Mo didn't buy this holographic projection setup just for Warcraft, he also considered a use case for the new game.

Moreover, there was a huge LED screen in the holographic projection area, similar to ones used in concerts. The viewing experience of a huge LED screen combined with the holographic projectors would most certainly be great.

The experience with the holographic projector was overwhelmingly positive. Chen Mo also hinted at a new game, but no matter how much Zou Zhuo pushed for an answer, Chen Mo kept his mouth sealed.

Back at the fourth floor, Chen Mo got the other main creative staff and finalised their development plans.

There were many things that had to be returned to order after the move to a new experience store, and many hadn't yet stabilized from the move, so Chen Mo didn't plan to start on another large work immediately.

Because of the one-two punch of Diablo and Minecraft, everyone was quite tired because of how close together the timing was and needed some rest. This was why Chen Mo wanted to work on a few smaller games to pick at their brains.

The final design plan is as follows.

Finish up the move to the new experience store before the end of September and release PC, mobile and international version of Minecraft. These were relatively easy jobs just to keep the staff stimulated.

They will release one smaller, high quality game at the end of October and November. It served as warmup and to fill up some space on the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.

They will start working on the next big game from December onwards.

-In the office.-

Qian Kun handed a tablet to Chen Mo.

"Manager, the mobile version of Minecraft is more or less done, please take a look. The controls are still kind of weird."

Chen Mo grabbed the tablet and played for a few minutes.

"Yeah, that's about right, we can consider releasing it now," said Chen Mo, "The controls are more or less done at this stage. Because of the platform itself, it will never be the same as PC or VR versions.

Qian Kun nodded, "Alright, I'll arrange that."

After a month or so of development, the mobile version of Minecraft was finally released.

This timeframe was just as Chen Mo expected.

In fact, the development of Minecraft's PC and mobile versions were quite painless as the PC version was developed before the VR version, so compared to the PC version, the mobile version was relatively easy.

The reason it took so long was due to some minute details in the gameplay.

Chen Mo had made huge changes to the VR version and had much more content than the original Minecraft. Online mode, 'Chen Mo's World', skill trees... supported Minecraft's explosive growth.

And selling buildings became an important source of income from the game too.

Many players were giving it their all to figure out building techniques, creating various buildings or moving mechanisms just to earn some cash in game.

PC was alright compared to mobile. Because of various restrictions of mobile, it couldn't communicate seamlessly with the VR version.

In multiplayer mode, there often would be many people connected to the same server. Setting aside the huge resource requirement as well as a good internet connection, graphics itself was a huge problem. With twenty to thirty people in a small area, the mobile version had no chance because of how small the screen of a phone is.

The buildings Chen Mo built also had extraordinarily high resource requirements, so it's unlikely that mobile phones could support them.

There was also a problem of the controls. The controls of Minecraft on the mobile version were quite terrible, creating an awful fighting experience. However, despite this problem also affecting the original version, it didn't affect its explosive popularity.

Therefore Chen Mo decided to have identical versions for PC and VR while excluding a portion of the functions on mobile, serving as Minecraft: Pocket Edition.

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Chapter 259: Players' Eager Anticipation

The pocket version of Minecraft was to allow players to experience the fun of the game on mobile, but compared to the PC and VR version, the mobile version loses out on a lot of content.

The mobile version didn't support 'Everybody's World' and 'Chen Mo's World', but everything else was still there.

The VR, PC, and mobile versions shared the same code, meaning that the buildings players built on the mobile version could also be sold as blueprints and built on PC.

Chen Mo felt that the mobile version was in a good place, and the hardware wouldn't support it even if he wanted to improve it anymore.

Thus, Minecraft's PC, mobile, and international versions were all complete.

Minecraft was still continuing to gain popularity on various websites and forums.

And many designers were surprised at how well the game was still doing.

A month after its release, it already beat Thousand Hells' in many aspects coming from a ten times price difference, making it an even more interesting topic.

Moreover, from the looks of the trending searches, topics on various forums, as well as various statistics, Minecraft kept its momentum as there were various types of content released daily as the player base continued to grow.

The most dumbfounded out of everyone was probably the designer of Thousand Hells, Yan Zhenyuan.

From an investment and game quality perspective, Thousand Hells was absolutely better than Minecraft, and from the feedback, player's tastes as well as expert opinion, Thousand Hells was a flawless game.

But somehow, it just never gained popularity.

In theory, although Thousand Hells was priced higher than Minecraft, but because it was still within a reasonable price for VR games, there was no way it would lose out that badly.

But this game was lacklustre in many statistics and managed to earn a pretty penny, but it was completely overwhelmed by Minecraft, even giving the players an impression that Thousand Hells' hype had already died down.

And even Yan Zhenyuan couldn't understand this and concluded with this: Blackmagic.

And often when others talk about this topic, they'd think of what Chen Mo said during his video game announcement.

"Thousand Hells is a really fun game. It'll surely sit at the top of the best sellers and be incredibly popular!"

Did Chen Mo really jinx it?

No way right?

Although this was completely ridiculous, Chen Mo's jinx left an impression in the minds of many.

A most gained the attention of many players on Minecraft's discussion forums.

It was titled: "Incredibly touching! Designer Mr Chen Mo's gift to my daughter Nini."

This post was from Nini's father himself. Not only did he go through everything that happened, he even included a little clip.

The video was filmed from the father's phone. In the video, Nini was focused on building a house in game with a tablet in her hand. Evidently, Nini's building skills were much better than before, and even used stone to build a good looking wall.

The post gained the attention of many players.

"Wow, Nini's so cute!"

"Chen Mo even gave Nini a present— Mobile version of Minecraft? My goodness, Chen Mo's so nice, I'd marry him!"

"Yeah, Chen Mo is so sensitive!"

"Nini seemed like a building prodigy. Her house looks amazing, probably all thanks to the inspiration from the game right?"

"Kids probably shouldn't' spend that much time on mobile devices, it's not good for their eyes. Take care of Nini, OP(original poster)."

"You guys aren't focusing on the right thing! Shouldn't we be talking about the mobile version of Minecraft?"

"Yeah, I was about to ask. Clearly Minecraft has a mobile version, when will Chen Mo announce it? I want to build houses anywhere too!"

"Yeah, release the mobile version too! So us without VR pods can play too!"

"Yeah, I was still struggling if I wanted to buy a VR gaming pod for this. I don't have to anymore, please release the VR version."

Eventually the topic revolved into everyone ushering Chen Mo to release the mobile version of Minecraft.

Although Minecraft was incredibly popular taking over many video and streaming websites, a huge portion of players have never tried the game.

The reason was simple, they didn't have a VR gaming pod.

One in five PC players owned a VR gaming pod, meaning only twenty percent of players could play the game. All the other players could do was watch others play in an attempt to quench their thirst.

These were all waiting to play Minecraft to prove that they were building prodigies and gain the respect of many.

But the entry level was too high.

There were only two ways they could play the game. First was buying a VR gaming pod then spending one hundred and twenty eight to buy the game. The other was spending that one hundred and twenty eight RMB to buy the game then pay fifty RMB every hour to play in a VR internet cafe.

But Minecraft wasn't the type of game to playthrough just for the experience. It didn't have extraordinary production value, and players had to spend a sufficient amount of time to fully realise the fun of the game, so it would be painful to go through that experience in an internet cafe.

Therefore, these players that have been eyeing the game were still hesitant on buying the game because of their wallets.

Some industry professionals have concluded that although Minecraft had rich gameplay, it wasn't resource intensive and would have no difficulties if it was ported onto PC. Porting it to mobile however may warrant some decrease in content, but the core of the game would still be there.

Therefore, everybody thought that Chen Mo must make a PC and mobile version. If he didn't, other companies would most certainly take this opportunity to make knockoffs, and Chen Mo wouldn't be dubm enough to make that mistake.

And with this video of Nini release, the players are confident that Chen Mo had the mobile version of the game planned, and it was almost finished.

Under the watchful eyes of many, Chen Mo released a Weibo announcing PC, mobile, and international versions of Minecraft, officially released on the twenty eighth of September

And Chen Mo added that VR, PC, and Mobile versions will have crossplay.

The players were incredibly happy to hear this. VR players were releasing guides and tutorials for the game, and those who have never played Minecraft looked forward to the release of PC and mobile versions.

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Chapter 260: Thanks Uncle Chen Mo

On the 28th of September, Minecraft's PC, mobile, and international versions were released at the same time.

Many players were waiting eagerly in front of their computers, purchasing and downloading the game as soon as they could.

Moreover, Chen Mo had already mentioned that the PC could do everything the VR version could, only that the graphics were slightly worse; There was crossplay between PC, VR, and mobile versions, just that the mobile version didn't support online multiplayer and 'Chen Mo's World'.

The PC version of Minecraft was priced at twenty eight RMB, the mobile version at twelve RMb, and the international version sold for thirty-nine USD.

The international version only supported the VR version for now. The game didn't grab as much attention as Warcraft and Diablo did so it was unlikely that it would be all that popular in a short amount of time. It would most likely take some time to snowball its popularity.

But compared to Chinese players, there were many international players who liked the exploration and creating aspect of the game. And from his previous life, the original Minecraft gained popularity really quickly, so Chen Mo wasn't worried at all.

What Chen Mo cared about was the PC and mobile version in China.

Everybody had their eyes on the statistics for the PC and mobile version of Minecraft.

The number of sales on the first day was soon released.

Minecraft PC version: sixty-five thousand.

Minecraft mobile version: one hundred and thirty-seven thousand.

The entire gaming industry was dumbfounded again.

This completely exceeded their expectations. To put it simply, the PC sales exceeded Diablo, and the mobile version approached Onmyoji (Average daily downloads in the first week).

Of course it wasn't the best comparison due to the cost to develop the games and its profit model, but just from these sales, Minecraft was incredibly successful.

Moreover, Diablo and Onmyoji had incredible graphics and had been promoted for a long time before its release.

Onmyoji in particular could be described as having the stars align for it. It was completely normal for a free game like Onmyoji to reach incredibly high downloads when mobile card games were incredibly popular.

But Minecraft?

VR, PC, and mobile versions were considered separate copies, and the all three had crossplay. Many thought that there was no reason for VR players to buy the PC or mobile versions, so the playerbases must be different.

But in reality, this was completely wrong.

Many players who already bought the VR version bought the PC and mobile version without a second thought, and this was the majority of players too.

And most players who hadn't tried out the VR version would buy the PC or mobile version.

The reason being that Minecraft was a relatively unique game.

As the mobile version was the cheapest, many players who wanted to try the most classic experience bought this to try it out.

And the PC version was the most ideal version, as it was more convenient than the VR version, the players could build for a long time, and had better graphics than the mobile version. Therefore, many players who owned the VR version would buy the PC version as well.

And because of how much hype the VR version generated, the game was incredibly well known and many players were waiting for the PC and mobile versions, which played a big part in the huge number of sales.

With Minecraft's release on PC and mobile, many players who have been itching to play the game were finally able to scratch that itch.

"This newbie finally got the PC version, could a high skill player suggest which server I should play on?"

"To be honest the PC version is quite great. Although it doesn't look as good as the VR version, it doesn't lack in any other aspect at all. The best part is the complete crossplay support. Hooray!"

"The mobile version isn't bad either. Being able to play anywhere is incredible!"

After trying out the PC version, I've decided that I would finally buy a VR gaming pod. I think that the VR version should be even more immersive."

"I finally understand why you guys call this game 'Somebody else's world' after building a house for some time on PC. I'm destroying this matchbox that I build, nobody get in my way!"

On the other side of things, Minecraft's international version also received great reviews.

Many players were confused, why would the company that made Warcraft and Diablo make a puzzle game?

But after trying it out, the players were stunned at how playable it was. The international version sold quite a few copies, and even had better reviews than Diablo.

Some of the international players also started reposting some of the more classic building guides and tutorials. The building game also gained the attention of some smaller communities, and some technology nerds started delving deeper and deeper into the unique charisma of the game.

Today, there were two special guests in the experience store.

Chen Mo was in the office working on what's coming up next, but he got a phone call from the front desk on the first floor, where a pair of father and daughter wanted to see him.

Chen Mo went down to the first floor to find Nini.

Nini was incredibly happy to see Chen Mo, running towards him to pass the tablet to Chen Mo.

The father said, "Nini, why remember to thank uncle Chen Mo."

Nini said cutely, "Thanks uncle Chen Mo!"

Chen Mo corrected her, "It's big brother Chen Mo! Remember that alright?"

Nini nodded, "I'll remember it, uncle Chen Mo!"

Chen Mo was speechless.

The father also laughed at Nini's actions, and said to Chen Mo, "I'd like to thank you again for last time."

Chen Mo waved his hand, "It was nothing. It's my honour to have a player like Nini. Also, the experience store now has VR gaming pods, you can get Nini to try that out."

Nini cheered, "Papa, I want to play in the gaming pod!"

The father seemingly helpless, patted her on the head, "Alright, papa got it. I'll bring you to the gaming pod alright?"

Chen Mo smiled, "Just take the elevator to the third floor. Nini, you can only play for an hour alright?"

Nini was already skipping and jumping towards the elevators, "Okay uncle Chen Mo!"

Chen Mo was speechless.

Nini was still waving excitedly at Chen Mo as the doors to the elevator slowly closed.

Seeing how happy Nini was, Chen Mo knew that it was a great idea to bring Minecraft to this world. At least to Nini, this game brought her a lot of joy.

Isn't the point of making games to bring people happiness?

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Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 261 - The Stanley Parable and ICEY - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 261 - The Stanley Parable and ICEY Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 261: The Stanley Parable and ICEY

-In the second floor of the new experience, at the holographic projection area.-

Qian Kun was playing Diablo with many people watching him play.

On the projectors, Qian Kun's Barbarian was spinning around, surrounded by countless whirlwinds hitting the various monsters around him.

The game looked incredibly 3D with the help of the holographic projector. It created an incredibly satisfying viewing experience when combined with the satisfying combat and flashy visual effects.

The viewers were incredibly impressed.

"This holographic projector is quite fun. It does a good job for Warcraft and Diablo."

"Wouldn't it be incredible if this replaced your monitor?"

"Don't think it would work, the display would be too big and it would make it hard to control. It'd be difficult just to move your mouse around."

"At least it'll look great."

"It's also incredibly expensive. I think the smaller ones cost hundreds of thousands, and this large one costs over one million RMB. Who'd buy this just to play games on it? It's more than enough to buy a few gaming pods with that money."

"Yeah, even if you have the money, you'd need the space for it too... A normal living room probably wouldn't even fit such a large holographic projector, not to mention the property prices in the Imperial Capital..."

"Whatever, I'll just enjoy it here."

Many of the regulars quickly found the new experience store since the move as they weren't far apart to begin with, so many of the regulars came over too.

Other than the regulars, there were more and more new faces as Thunderbolt Gaming was more and more popular.

In the midst of their chat, Su Jinyu came along too.

"Qian Kun, the manager is asking you to join the meeting!"

Qian didn't react at all.

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Su Jinyu felt helpless and said under her breath, the soundproofing of these rooms are really something.

She walked in front of the soundproof rooms and knocked on the glass, gesturing for Qian Kun to come out.

Qian Kun then opened the door.

"Let's go, the manager is calling us for a meeting."

"Alright," Qian Kun quit the game and followed Su Jinyu to the fourth floor.

Everyone who needed to be there was already waiting in the meeting room.

Everyone was quite relaxed and were having their own fun as Minecraft's PC, mobile and international versions were quite successful, and Chen Mo hadn't announced the next plans yet.

Their confidence was also much higher because of Minecraft's huge success.

Minecraft served as Thunderbolt Entertainment's first step into VR, which happened to be incredibly successful. The game utilized their strengths and allowed them to play around their weaknesses. They managed to create a sandbox game that took a place in the heart of millions of players becoming a hot topic despite falling short of graphics, models, and scenes.

They were also eager to hear Chen Mo's next plan.

He probably plans to continue deeper into the VR territory, perhaps make a large scale VR game?

An FPS, first person adventure game, or perhaps an MMORPG?

Everyone was waiting eagerly.

Chen Mo stood up seeing that everyone was there.

"Now that we are all here, let's start.

"First, everybody probably knows that the PC and mobile versions of Minecraft had incredible success, the international version is doing quite well too. Minecraft was something that everybody worked extremely hard, so I'd like to thank everyone for that."

A loud round of applause followed.

Although a lot of it was an incredible effort from Chen Mo, it was all a team effort in its development, with a lot of blood sweat and tears over this project.

Everyone felt proud about Minecraft's huge success.

Chen Mo continued, "Next, I'll go over a few important points.

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"First is about hiring. Our current team has expanded since last year. After working through key projects like Diablo and Minecraft, everybody lived up to my standards, especially the few main staff. Well done everyone.

"Next, we might develop games that are even more complicated, and we might even have to work faster. If you feel like you're lacking some manpour, contact Lin Xiao and go through the interviews yourselves. I'll get the final call once you've decided on someone. I'll let you guys decide how many and who to hire, of course, I'll get the final say in all this.

"I hope to never hear about a lack of help in future works, I only ask the games to be completed on time.

Chen Mo looked around to take in their reactions. Everybody seemed quite calm, evidently agreeing with the statement.

Chen Mo continued, "Next is our next plan.

"I can tell you guys now that I don't plan on developing huge games in short term, meaning the next two months or so. This is because I have other things to work on and consider at this time, and I'd like to focus on that.

"Of course, even if we aren't working on big games, we'll be working on smaller ones. As to what games, we'll go through that later.

"And during this time, everyone will focus on the development process. Goldfish, could you oversee the development process?"

Su Jinyu nodded, "Alright manager, no problem!"

Chen Mo continued, "There's also a few minor things I'd like to mention related to our future. We don't have many games thus far on the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform. Although they are all quite high quality, we can't compare in numbers to the likes of Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform or Fantasy Gaming Platform.

"So we'll spend the next little while on expanding the number of games Thunderbolt Gaming Platform has. The next two games we make have this point in mind.

"Of course, if anyone has better ideas, feel free to show me a design document. If the idea is decent, you could use the company's resources to develop it and release it onto Thunderbolt Gaming Platform. And the profit split...

Chen Mo took a few moments, "Won't be revealed for now, but it'll certainly be more than the other platforms. A lot a lot more.

This caught the attention of many.

Su Jinyu, Qian Kun, and Zheng Hongxi had been working under Chen Mo for a few years now. Even if they weren't that great at the start, they were now incredibly experienced after being influenced by Chen Mo.

Especially in terms of design ideas and concepts, which was much more developed than many indie designers.

They have quite a few decent ideas, but because of how busy they were with work, they didn't have the time to realise them.

But upon hearing from Chen Mo that they could use the company's resources, they were incredibly happy and eager to shoot their shots.

Chen Mo continued, "Alright, that's about it, next we'll talk about the two new games we will be working on.

"The Stanley Parable and ICEY."

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Chapter 262: Gaming Platform Status

Chen Mo started going through the key points for The Stanley Parable and ICEY.

Both these games weren't too difficult for the skill level the team was at. Moreover, these two games had really good reviews and were incredibly suitable to be used as filler.

The Stanley Parable is a classic meta game. The entire game is in first person, so all all that needed to be done was a few different endings and lines the player would experience. As long as the script was up to par, all that was left was creating the scenes in game.

And ICEY was a meta action game. The more complicated parts of the action aspect of the game included different moves and the designs of monsters. They were there to create an excellent combat experience, allowing players to kill monsters smoothly.

Moreover, the main selling point of ICEY was the story, and just like The Stanley Parable, it contained a lot of meta elements.

Both games were easy to develop and didn't have a need for complicated scenes. Although there were many different branching stories, it wasn't too difficult to make these games as long as the story was good.

In Chen Mo's previous life, these two games gained immense popularity because they were meta games.

Meta games could be understood as a game about games. These show up often in TV series or novels, but games that utilize this are few and far between.

To put it simply, normally players would play from games for a bird eye view and the characters in game would never know the existence of the player. But in meta games, the fourth wall was constantly being broken, and the characters in the game would know the existence of the player and converse with them.

The main gist of it was, when you are playing the game watching the characters each and every movement as if you were some kind of higher being, but all of a sudden the character will turn around and look at you coldly saying, "Stop telling me what to do."

And when the fourth wall is broken to a certain extent, it will be considered a meta game.

Excellent meta games will make the players feel surprised, or even that they have been played.

These games didn't have much content, and the gameplay was fairly straight forward, everybody more or less understood the intentions behind the game after a simple explanation from Chen Mo.

There weren't many questions this time around. Although they were surprised at a game like this, but all in all, everybody felt that a design like this was quite interesting.

Moreover, sales didn't matter so much as these were smaller games. Especially when Chen Mo had made successful games on mobile, PC, and VR, he had enough funds to try making games he wanted.

The two games will be developed in parallel. Qian Kun was responsible for ICEY, Su Jinyu overlooked The Stanley Parable, and Zheng Hongxi Xi dealt with the story of both games.

Chen Mo on the other hand had bigger fish to fry.

In his own office, Chen Mo leaned into his chair, thinking.

On his screen were various statistics related to the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.

Thunderbolt Gaming Platform had twelve games so far.

Mobile games included Flappybird, Plants vs Zombies, I Am MT, Thunderbolt Tabletop, Lifeline, Onmyoji, and Anipop.

PC games included Warcraft, Wulin Legend, Diablo, and Don't Starve.

VR games included Minecraft.

And some of them were across multiple platforms.

Each and every game had different difficulties of development and different amounts of investment, but overall they were all successful games.

And players started getting the idea that Chen Mo's game must be a high quality, something that only large overseas developers get.

All these games were oversaw by Chen Mo to ensure that they exceeded the quality of the originals in his previous life.

In reality, the number of games didn't matter so much to the gaming platform. For example, in his previous life only had six games, but it didn't change the fact that it was one of the most successful gaming platforms in China.

The main point was still the quality of the game.

But the reason for Chen Mo making his own platform wasn't just to have his own gaming platform like Blizzard.

He wanted Thunderbolt Gaming Platform to be a comprehensive distribution platform like Stanley.

And from some experience he had from his previous life, Chen Mo put a lot of emphasis on the importance of a video game distribution platform.

To developers, sure the quality of the game is incredibly important. As long as the games were good, their name would be well known, they wouldn't have to worry about having no players or no money.

But the functions of a distribution platform greatly exceeds the players' expectations. Many developers get down on all fours in front of video game distributions as they are forced to change many aspects of their finished game. There have even been cases of developers who buried their own game because they couldn't find a good distributor.

And the power of the distributor's game from its user base aka the players.

If a distributor had one million players, it could comfortably make money.

If a distributor had ten million players, even a garbage game could make money with promotion from the platform.

If a distributor had one hundred million players, it wouldn't be far from monopolizing the entire video game industry.

Moreover, some of the games that gained immense popularity didn't just depend on its quality, the power of the distributors shouldn't be overlooked. In the videogame industry, whoever had the most players and built the biggest distributor, held the most power.

Chen Mo had been smooth sailing thus far, but he didn't want to be restricted by any distribution platforms in the future.

Therefore Chen Mo decided to not depend on a single platform from the start. Even if he could lose players from this, he insisted on building his own platform, and even made games to expand the amount of players he had on Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.

At this point, Thunderbolt Gaming Platform was similar to in his previous life, just a platform that collects games coupled with basic functions, yet it still did well for itself.

Thunderbolt Gaming Platform had 5.4 active users in the long term, and around 1.7 million daily active users, a night and day difference from when he started.

Most of these active players came from Thunderbolt Tabletop, Onmyoji, and Anipop. Warcraft players have been stable, and Minecraft players are seen to continuously increase.

This meant that Thunderbolt Gaming Plants was already one of the most influential gaming platforms in China.

Other than the official app store, the biggest gaming platforms in China included Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform, Fantasy Gaming Platform, and Thunderbolt Gaming Platform (in order of largest to smallest), with Zen Entertainment following closely behind.

However, there was a difference between these four companies. Emperor Dynasty Entertainment focused on developing and its platform, Fantasy Gaming Platform basically only focused on its platform, and Zen Entertainment focused on developing games and largely ignored building their platform.

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Chapter 263: A Tossed Stone Raises a Thousand Ripples

And now, Thunderbolt Gaming Platform was at a crucial turning point as it was about to make its first move.

And what Chen Mo will do next will shock the entire video game industry.

Eighth of October.

It was the first day after national day, where most have yet to recover from their holiday mindset.

It was the afternoon, and many office workers were finishing up what they left behind from last week, haphazardly planning out this week's work before heading to their lunch break to deal with their first day back from a break.

During their lunch break, many will pull out their phones to play a game and kill some time.

And at this moment, they received shocking news.

This spread like wildfire in the videogame industry the moment it was out.

Chen Mo released an important message on the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform's front page..

From today onwards, Thunderbolt Gaming Platform will become a comprehensive gaming platform as well as a social platform. The difference was that it allowed any other indie game developer to sell their games on the platform and promote the games for them. They will provide them with free resources and get a cut.

Of course, these games must have gone through the Game Committee's review, and only then will they be able to release them on Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.

This meant that Thunderbolt Gaming Platform will no longer be just Chen Mo's game, and will be similar to Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform or Fantasy Gaming platform, hosting games of other developers and use the resources of the platform to promote their games.

And there was even more shocking news to follow.

About the sales.

First, the developer can sell their games on other platforms after hosting their gaming on Thunderbolt Gaming Platform, but the game cannot charge money bypassing Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.

Second, Thunderbolt Gaming Platform will give developers pricing and marketing strategy suggestions, but the developer has the final say.

Third, Thunderbolt Gaming Platform will only take a ten to thirty percent of the gross revenue of the games, and everything else goes back to the developer. This will be decided by the quality of the game. If the game is of good quality, there will be a one to nine slight (one for platform, nine for developer).

The first two were nothing special as most other platforms had the same.

Although there are some exclusive games overseas, in general, in China, most games were across multiple platforms, especially on PC and mobile.

Different gaming platforms had different marketing strategies. Emperor Gaming Platform and Fantasy Game Platform will push for their own strategy when faced with designers that didn't have much power, and sometimes abuse the game to gain the maximum amount of profit.

This meant that Chen Mo would provide guidance, but absolutely wouldn't interfere with their decision.

The most shocking one was the third point, especially the mention of a one to nine split.

The official app store had a two to eight split, twenty percent of the profits taken by the Game Committee for operations costs. This was already an incredibly low number.

The other distributors usually did a fifty fifty split. Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform for example, only the great games got a fifty fifty split. Works from newer designers that didn't seem incredible might only get ten to twenty percent of the revenue if they posted it onto Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform, with the platform taking eighty percent of it.

To the developer however, because of how many players Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform had, the revenue still looked great with eighty percent of it taken away.

Therefore, distributors still held great power in the videogame industry. Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's development was comparable to Zen Entertainment's, yet they were able to keep Zen Entertainment under control, all due to Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform.

And Chen Mo's profit splitting strategy was straight up breaking the unspoken rule of the gaming industry.

According to Chen Mo's strategy, Thunderbolt Gaming Platform would only take thirty percent of the profit of games. if the game was a better performing one, this could be reduced to ten percent.

This was extremely attractive to some of the newer developers.

As Thunderbolt Gaming Platform was one of the three largest video game platforms in China with a huge player base, there was no questioning its promoting abilities.

And the ultra-low cut that the platform takes could increase the profits of the developers by multiple times, much better than Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform.

(Of course, the official app store also takes a tiny cut. But because of the large number of games and the restrictive promoting strategies, new games must start from nothing, so the promotion wouldn't be as good.)

A tossed stone raises a thousand ripples[1].

This was a hot topic among players, designers and large distributors alike.

-In a designer circle-

"Have you heard that Chen Mo's Thunderbolt Gaming Platform is about to be opened to the public, so you can upload your games onto his platform1"

"I've heard about it, and they take a tiny cut too, thirty percent at the highest!"

"This is absolutely good news! I plan to post my new game onto the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform to test the waters."

"Beware of scams."

"That wouldn't happen. Thunderbolt Gaming Platform is the third largest platform in China. And Chen Mo said that there wasn't any exclusive rights, no direct interference with promoting and pricing strategies, and takes a thirty percent cut at most. He already posted this onto the front page of the platform with countless witnesses, how could he take that back?"

"Yeah, Thunderbolt Gaming Platform had been doing so well these few years. It's an incredibly influential platform in China now."

"It really is a good opportunity. Sad indie developers like us could finally make a buck or two."

"But what is Chen Mo thinking? Setting aside the ability for him to make money from such a low cut, isn't he plainly attacking Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform and Fantasy Gaming Platform?"

"Yeah, isn't it in the unwritten rules that it should at least be a fifty percent cut? Chen Mo reduced that all the way to thirty percent, isn't he trying to start something?"

"Chen Mo is going to end up on the bad side of many this time."

"Yeah, although he had never been too friendly with Emperor Dynasty Entertainment in the past, he's a videogame designer and a developer after all. But now he used his identity as a distributor and did that, he's stopping the others from making money!"

"I think Chen Mo has quite the ambition. Perhaps he plans to turn Thunderbolt Gaming Platform into the largest gaming distributor. This is just a battle of pricing!"

TL note: [1] It's a Chinese idiom

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Chapter 264: Retaliation From Distributors

"Price war?"

"Yeah, he's trying to out compete them using a low price. Just like the App wars with free apps. First they spend money to get all designers, games and players over then raising the price, harvesting the fruits of their labour after they take up a huge chunk of the market."

"Tsk... Is Chen Mo really planning to do that?"

"I don't know what he's planning, but I think that is highly likely. Think about what kind of person Chen Mo is. He's not a charity. Why would he take twenty to thirty percent when he can take fifty?"

"That's true. He'd lose so much money based on how many users Thunderbolt Gaming Platform had."

"Well, there's quite a lot to take in then."

"Isn't this a perfect example that the seller knows better than the buyers? There' no way Chen Mo made a mistake here being as smart as he is."

"Yeah, why would he go through the trouble of killing off all the distribution platforms in China if it weren't for his personal gains?"

"Geez, whatever. I don't care what he thinks. But in the short term, this will be a great plus to us video game designers. If the distributors are going to fight the price war, us designers will surely benefit from it."

"That's true. It's a war among gods, us peasants will just have to stand back and watch."

Emperor Dynasty Entertainment HQ.

Xu Xiaojun was reporting to Lin Chaoxu about some important statistics related to Thunderbolt Gaming Platform as well as a few high priority reports regarding Chen Mo's announcement.

Lin Chaoxu didn't do too good as he was visibly upset, yet managed to control his temper and was thinking in silence.

After some time, Lin Chaoxu finally said, "What do you think Chen Mo is trying to do?"

Xu Xiaojun replied in a few moments, "I think Chen Mo's intentions are clear, the same as when he made Thunderbolt Tabletop, trying to gain players through a more competitive price and expand Thunderbolt Gaming Platform's influence to beat down on the other platforms."

Lin Chaoxu nodded and muttered, "This kid sure is stubborn."

Xu Xiaojun added, "Brave too."

Lin Chaoxuo seemed to have something in mind, "That's one thing that separates him from other designers, he always looked out for the long term. He knows the difference between a short term gain and a long term day clear as day, and always managed to suppress temptations in front of his eyes.

"How much would he lose with the three to seven split based on Thunderbolt Gaming Platform's current performance? It's amazing for someone as young as he is to let so much money go."

Xu Xiaojun asked, "What do you mean, Mr Lin?"

Lin Chaoxu sat in silence for a few seconds before replying, "First, we'll need to try and hold onto the indie developers on our platform, and cut down on our split or have exclusive contracts as a last resort. Basically, don't let go of too many of the other designers.

"Then we'll need to do some things on public opinion. You should know what to do by now, I'll leave you to it.

"If these plans fail... There's nothing else to do but let in and fight the price war. We don't have to be too quick on that either as Ding Xing at Fantasy Gaming Platform is probably more worried than we are, they probably won't sit and do nothing."

Xu Xiaojun nodded, "Alright Mr Lin, I'll do as you ordered."

"The other distributors will probably make their moves soon."

When Chen Mo announced that Thunderbolt Gaming Platform will allow any video game designer to post their games, many other distribution platforms quickly started their retaliations.

First was to sign an exclusive agreement with many of these indie developers.

Many of the designers were considering if they should post their game onto Thunderbolt Gaming Platform. On the other hand, the distributors that they have been working with were working towards a better price and exclusivity agreements.

For example, promising a higher share of the profits (an unprecedented four to six split, with developers getting sixty percent), while promising promotional spots and advertising strategies.

These words were also extremely alluring.

"Thunderbolt Gaming Platform is a new platform, they are surely weaker in terms of promotion, so what if they offer higher cuts? If the game isn't promoted sufficiently, you wouldn't be making money either way. Take a look at the official app store. They only take twenty percent, but how much money does your game make on there?

"We've already worked together for so long and know each other in and out. We've been in the business for so long, so there's a certain amount of guarantee there.

"Moreover, how many developers would want to post their games onto their platform the second the news came out? Thunderbolt Gaming Platform only has so many promotional spots, and with that many games at once, the competition would surely be fierce!

"Think about it, well you get an advantage based on the quality of your game? If you can't, why bother?

"It's true that we are impacted by this, that's why we decided on an exclusive agreement. A four-six split, with you getting six. This is unprecedented! Moreover, we'll arrange a bunch of services. Not only will you get various promotional splots, you'll even get resources for advertising. We'll guarantee that your game gets the attention it deserves.

"Of course, once you sign the exclusivity agreement, you won't be able to post your game onto Thunderbolt Gaming Platform. But just as I said before, think about it, there's no good coming out of their side!"

The intentions of the distributors were clear. They were trying their best to retain these indie developers and rope them in.

This was to prevent a large scale move of developers to the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform. Once the move starts, it'll be near impossible to stop.

Moreover, attacks against Chen Mo and Thunderbolt Gaming Platform also started appearing.

There was a paragraph on a QA section that got over ten thousand likes and were being reprinted by various media.

"Exposing Thunderbolt Gaming Platform: Is Chen Mo really starting a charity?"

One of the paragraphs was as so.

"Do you really think that Thunderbolt Gaming Platform undercutting the entire industry is a good thing for the development of the videogame industry?

"This was similar to some app wars. Some software advertised themselves as free to outcompete the other serious companies.

"And when they got their hold on the market share, these software companies finally bare their fangs. Although they were still free, they added various plug-ins in their software to steal the data of their customers, among other nasty things.

"There's no such thing as a free lunch. Whatever benefits the designers enjoy now will be paid back with interest.

"And when that day comes, the companies that didn't want to comply would go bankrupt, and the surviving ones would all look the same. And there's so saving it then!

"Please open your eyes, don't get blinded by short term benefits!"

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Chapter 265: I'll Give You Twenty-Four Hours

There were many similar discussions. The internet was all riled up out of nowhere, and 'Chen Mo's Price War' became a trending topic.

Various defamatory pieces started appearing, and all of them had the same talking points.

They compared Chen Mo's lower priced platforms to the free apps in the app war, with one key argument: Chen Mo did this to break the rules of the game, attracting developers with short term benefits to gain an advantage over other distributors before forming a monopoly to gain even more benefits.

At the same time, many discussions defaming Chen Mo also started appearing.

"Chen Mo opened a can of worms when the invented pay to win games like I Am MT and Onmyoji, and you still think he's the good guy? Are you kidding me by saying he doesn't love money?"

"In terms of making money, he's better than any other large companies. He's only been in the industry for a few years and has billions in net worth. Who else can you compare him to?"

"Don't buy into his lies. It'll be difficult to restore the ecosystem once it's destroyed! Boycott Thunderbolt Gaming Platform!"

"Yeah, Boycott Thunderbolt Gaming Platform!"

A lot of them were paid haters, but there were innocent bystanders that were mistaken among them too.

Some of them were pretending with ulterior motives, and there were some who weren't pretending as they were used.

Soon, a huge verbal war across the internet started as Thunderbolt Entertainment's players and Chen Mo's fans retailated.

"Heh, you guys are brainwashed quite easily huh. How many other companies copied I Am MT? Just think about it! Moreover, Chen Mo had made quite a few nice, non pay to win games. Bunch of blind dogs!"

"This perfectly describes the saying: a knave thinks of others in terms of his own desires!"

"You guys must be pretending, this is completely different from the app wars alright? Aren't the distributors you guys are supporting bullying and abusing new developers for money? Emperor Dynasty and Fantasy sometimes take eighty to ninety percent of the profit. You guys are now whining now that your source of income is disrupted?"

"Support Chen Mo!"

Of course Chen Mo's fans couldn't take the defamatory comments of the haters. Obviously it is a good thing that Chen Mo opened up his platform, using it to help out some designers who don't make much money by promoting their games.

The intentions of the attackers were clear too; they were trying to create a bad public opinion to protect their interests.

Once Thunderbolt Gaming Platform gains momentum, the other distributors would surely be affected, and the days of making big banks would surely be over.

This became a trending topic for quite some time as both sides constantly attacked one another.

Inevitably, Chen Mo's Weibo became the main battleground for the arguments.

There was to guarantee that the words of the haters on other forums and sites would be seen by Chen Mo, so there was no point.

This wasn't the case on Weibo as Chen Mo was quite active there, making posts before every game release. Although he almost never replies to comments and private messages, many thought that he most certainly would see them.

In a short few days, there were many Weibo posts about this matter as everybody got all riled up. This also affected people who didn't care, every time they went on Weibo, they would see two people going at each other's throats.

And on the fifth day of Chen Mo's silence, the attackers went even further. The tags, private messages and comments went from bad publicity to personal attacks, even going as far as spreading rumours with fake accounts.

"Heh, is Chen Mo really going to stay silent? How come he's not saying anything? Isn't he usually active? Nothing to say this time?"

"Guilty as charged then. He doesn't know what to say in retaliation."

"You could just come out and pretend to be a good guy. Just say: 'The platform is not for money, but for the benefit of all designers'. Look, I've even thought of the line for you."

"Heh, these garbage designers that make garbage games only have so many tricks up their sleeves. Disgusting!"

Chen Mo's fans were trying their best to defend Chen Mo, but since their opponents were well organised, taking the offensive at all fronts. There wasn't much they could do other than fighting back with anger.

As each and every of Chen Mo's moves could be used as ammunition. Many of these attackers were under the cover as 'players' and would never reveal the mastermind behind them.

Many thought that there was most certainly a distributor behind all these attackers, but there was no way for them to find out where it game from.

The war entered a stalemate.

Many communities were discussing this matter.

"What does the actions of Chen Mo mean? Silence is golden?"

"That's not right. In theory, if he does plan to fight the price war, he could totally dress himself as the good guy. If his points are good, he should be the guy on the moral high ground right?"

"That's weird, could it be that Chen Mo is extremely calm and doesn't get their logic clouded by emotions?"

"He's extremely calm? I think that was the best joke in history. Just ask Shi Huazhe and Qiu Bin and see if they agree. Have you guys forgotten how hot headed he was when he entered the industry? Is it because he hasn't had any heat on him for a long time?"

"Chen Mo isn't someone to back down. He challenged Emperor Dynasty Entertainment when he was still a C-grade videogame designer. You think these guys are enough to scare Chen Mo? I think he's just waiting for cooldowns to get fit of everyone in one fell swoop"

Indeed, Chen Mo no longer kept his silence on the evening of the fifth day.

Chen Mo sent out a Weibo at 8pm that night.

"There have been quite a few attackers in the last few days. I wasn't going to care since I've been so busy, but seeing how hardworking and enthusiastic you guys have been, let's have a chat. I'll give you twenty-four hours to say whatever you want to say. How much money you attackers can earn will all depend on the next twenty-four hours. Please bring your performance!"

This gave the bystanders who were drowsy from dinner a jolt.

What does this mean?

"Let's have a chat?"

Does that mean Chen Mo is about to participate in the war himself?

Of course, Chen Mo wasn't someone who would bow down to others. The attacks are right at his door, how could he stay completely silent? That doesn't make sense!

The attackers also got excited. The main event finally showed up after all their efforts in the past few days!

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Chapter 266: Flame War

Soon, a flame war began on Weibo.

ZzzzOO: "@ Chen Mo, you've finally shown yourself? Must be great hiding in your shell the last few days huh? I've @ you for a few days now, took you long enough!"

After sending the Weibo, this attacker with the username ZzzzOO did as they did before, thinking of a reply while waiting for Chen Mo's reply.

It didn't take long for Chen Mo to send out his response.

"After all, my job is making games, and your job is to attack others on Weibo.

ZzzzOO choked on his spit, my goodness, Chen Mo replied so quickly! Not only did he retaliate, he even suggested that he was paid by someone to attack him!

Although they couldn't think of anything quick, seeing that Chen Mo replied to one of the attacks triggered the other attackers to hop on.

"Haha, Chen Mo finally accepts the battle!"

"I knew that he couldn't hold it in. Quick, get everyone in here, we'll fight this to the end!"

"Remember everyone, we all have our jobs. Don't just do personal attacks, we must combine that with dirt, and his private matters!"

"My turn!"

Soon, the haters came from all over the place to join in.

TaMo: "Hehe, you have no idea what's about to hit you. Just you wait. Remember to have your phone by your side and have the emergency number on speedial."

Chen Mo quickly replied.

"I heard inbred kids like using empty words to threaten others, mainly to ease their stress for being alive."

This TaMo user was so mad that his head was about to explode, inbred? Isn't Chen Mo a decent person? Why does he go for low blows like that?

The bystanders were enjoying the show, commenting under Chen Mo's reply, "Haha, that threat was just like telling a kid to go straight home after school. You think Chen Mo is afraid of you? One punch from everyone in the experience store would be more than able to crush you!"

The haters were now mad.

Attacking others is what we do. No matter huge stars or influencers, we've attacked anyone who had the slightest bit of internet fame! You think a simple videogame designer would be able to beat us?

Get him! For our honour!

MellO: "Not doing your job properly as a videogame designer. No wonder you're here counting your Weibo followers while other companies are counting bills."

Chen Mo: "And you can only count your IQ using your ten fingers."

InOutCode: "My goodness, isn't it just someone who makes games? I thought it was some kind of huge star or entrepreneur, why is he so good at this?"

Chen Mo: "Have you trolls not done your homework? Whatever, I'll do it for you. I'm Chen Mo. So far I've released the most profitable mobile game with nearly four hundred million RMB made in its first month. I've also made Warcraft, the most popular RTS on Earth. Thunderbolt Gaming Platform is the third largest video game platform in China, with fifty million long-term users. Of course, I'm also good at making casual games, Chinese style games, sandbox games, puzzle games... Could any of you trolls explain what these numbers mean?"

This got the stamp of approval from many of the onlookers.

"MY goodness, Chen Mo's ego is through the roof, but I like this!"

"They asked if he was some kind of star or entrepreneur? How many entrepreneurs out there have higher net worth than Chen Mo? I don't think there has been anyone of Chen Mo's age who started from nothing to reach his level!"

"Hahaha, the trolls are so unprofessional. How could you not have heard of Chen Mo if you paid the slightest bit of attention to the video gaming industry?"

"They even managed to ask stupid questions like that. They are just embarrassing themselves, back off while you can!"

The attackers were really mad. Who hired that guy? He was terrible and unprofessional, even embarrassed us!

Get a professional here!

OrangeSauce: "Isn't the whole point of fighting the price war for money? Why else would you do something charitable like that? You say one thing but you do other, I've seen many just like you!"

Chen Mo replied, "Only willing to act for profit is the old man's instinct, but now it has become a norm of behavior for young people. Geez, do you guys not see anything other than money?"

OrangeSauce replied, "Are you saying that what you're doing is purely for the benefit of the public? Let me ask you this, aren't you losing money to promote your platform maliciously?"

"Some platforms take advantage of the new designers who don't have any bargaining power and take seventy to eight percent of their revenues. You know deep down that the services they provide aren't worth the money they are being paid. The garbage promotion that they provide, they'd still be overpaid if they took thirty percent. I'm not maliciously lowering the price, I'm just returning the price to where it should be."

OrangeSauce: "Are you saying that the cut the other platforms take are bloated?"

Chen Mo: "You can decide for yourself if that is bloated. I'm not going to bother with trolls like you, all the industry professionals certainly understand this fact."

SSAW: "I think there's something wrong with your head. You're a well regarded videogame designer and yet you're here arguing with the fans. You'll never gain my support!"

Chen Mo: "If I really do have fans like you, I'll try everything to get rid of them. I'm really curious as to how you're fertilizing yourself to grow into something so beautiful?"

SSAW: "You! You're petty!"

Chen Mo: "I'm sorry but I am who I am. If I knew I would make someone so bad that they have to be admitted to the hospital, let the others know that they shouldn't bother."

They stopped replying.

Chen Mo looked around and didn't find anything else that was worth replying to, then sent out another Weibo.

"Quickly, I thought there were quite a few of you, why are you guys taking so long? Where's the professionalism?"

The trolls were utterly bad upon seeing this post, he's even provoking us!

We'll keep going at it, he'll learn that this is what happens!

After a full twenty-four hours.

The attackers gave it their all. Some were commenting brainlessly, some tried to spill dirt, some sounded smart but didn't give out any meaningful arguments, some were pretending to be for Chen Mo but were against him...

But Chen Mo managed to chase off all of them. Something they spent half an hour thinking would get a retaliation from Chen Mo in less than two minutes, and end up completely speechless!

From 8pm the first day to 8pm the next.

Chen Mo looked around and found that they didn't have anything new to say. Some of their comments weren't even coherent and seemed like they were confused.

Some of them went back to old topics from yesterday, probably just waking up to take their shift and haven't caught up with yesterday's arguments.

Chen Mo disappointingly shook his head. He still had quite a bit in him, but the attackers seemed out of gas.

"Not a single worthy one."

Chen Mo seemed quite disappointed.

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Chapter 267: The Tides Turn

Seeing as the trolls' ability to retaliate was basically gone, Chen Mo planned to go to sleep.

Chen Mo released one last Weibo.

"You guys are too weak. We'll leave it here for now. I hope you guys will hone your craft and work on your professionalism so you guys won't lose so badly when you encounter someone like me next time.

"Alright, I'm in quite a good mood after this chat, so I'll go over some questions seriously.

"When I announced that Thunderbolt Gaming Platform would be taking a lower cut, many thought that it was completely malicious and even brought out app wars from the past. All you're saying is that I'm a dragon warrior, and would eventually grow scales and a tail to become the new evil dragon.

"I can tell you right here and now, I don't have any plans to become the new evil dragon, nor am I interested in all the treasures you guys have gathered for so long. I just want to slay dragons, it is as simple as that.

"As to if I'll be hated, forgotten or cast aside by the villagers after slaying the dragon, it doesn't matter.

"I don't care about these extremely rich distributions, but what is important to me is them without you.

"I'd like everyone here to be my witness: I promise that Thunderbolt Gaming Platform will never influence designers or their design or their marketing strategy, and we'll never take more than thirty percent.

"The worry you guys have of Thunderbolt Gaming Platform beating other platforms with a lower price then becoming the new tyrant will never happen.

"Thunderbolt Gaming Platform will focus on promoting players more, better games. I'm here to make a platform, not to make money.

"To the distributors out there who are deathly afraid, you guys don't need to be doubtful anymore. I'm not here to start a price war, nor do I want to monopolise the distribution channels. What I want to do is simple, I want you guys who are used to taking advantage of designers to have a taste of your own medicine.

"I'd like to announce that the days where distribution is king is now over!"

The twenty four hour flame war got the topic incredibly popular and even became the top trending search on Weibo, and Chen Mo's final Weibo drew even more attention to the matter.

The distributors only had one thing in mind after seeing Chen Mo's Weibo post.

Chen Mo's crazy!

He's not here to stir things up, he's being serious!

Soon, the twenty-four hour flame war and the contents of the final Weibo was all over the internet. Everyone was discussing the matter, no matter the average gamer or industry professionals.

"Have you seen Weibo yesterday? Chen Mo finally showed himself and fought against the trolls for twenty-four hours, and he managed to push them back!"

"Really? You can push trolls back?"

"My goodness you missed it? Chen Mo is vicious. He'd get them completely speechless in one line, with many incredible quotes created in the process! You can still see them on Weibo, just go take a look."

"Really? I want to see how Chen Mo attacks others to be able to push back trolls. Chen Mo's incredible!"

"Hahaha, Chen Mo even expressed his disappointment at the professionalism and performance of the trolls and hopes that they learn better techniques in the future, that's incredible!"

"Chen Mo really is incredible. He stayed silent for a few days, I really thought he was just hoping that he could silently wait it out. But he somehow attacks them back!"

"Flame War?"

"Incredible! The final Weibo is crazy, shutting up all of the doubters with all their thoughts of a price war and decreasing the price before increasing it. Chen Mo straight up told us that it wasn't going to happen!"

This Weibo post destroyed any of the arguments the trolls had.

Chen Mo's classy announcement that Thunderbolt Gaming Platform will always stay true to their principles and will take thirty percent at most managed to shut all the trolls up and cut off a way of making money.

No matter what Thunderbolt Gaming Platform would look like in the future, Chen Mo could never think of increasing the cut the platform takes. If it goes above thirty percent, he'll surely get attacked by many of the witnesses.

This was what caused the distributors such a huge headache. They finally understood that Chen Mo wasn't doing this for money.

It seemed like Chen Mo set aside all these desires and decided to turn Thunderbolt Gaming Platform into an ethical distribution platform, giving up a potentially incredible way of making money. No attacks will work on someone like him.

Although there were still attacks against Chen Mo, the war was now on Chen Mo's side.

Although it was incredibly chaotic on the internet, Chen Mo's experience store looked like nothing of the sorts was happening.

Chen Mo left his break room after cleaning himself, stretching his arms.

He was quite tired after going in a flame war against all the trolls, going to bed to regain some strength.

It was now 11am and time for lunch.

As he was thinking about which restaurant to order takeout from, he received a call.

It was from Lin Mao.

Chen Mo had remained in contact with Lin Mao, but because of everything that had been going on with moving experience stores, the new games, as well as the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform, they hadn't met in two or three months.

Lin Mao said, Chen Mo, Zhao Zihao came back to China a few days ago, let's try and grab a meal together. I also want to ask some questions about your gaming platform.

Chen Mo seemed to have the same idea, "Sure, you guys can come to me. I'll send you the address of the restaurant, and we can head to the experience store afterwards."

As Chen Mo couldn't be bothered to go too far, he decided to meet up at a nearby restaurant that cost around five hundred per person.

Zhao Zihao and Lin Mao arrived after half an hour.

"Chen Mo!"

Zhao Zihao was extremely happy to see Chen Mo as they hadn't seen each other in two to three years.

Chen Mo happily walked towards him, "Not bad to head out of the country two three years at a time. Why didn't you come back to visit once in a while? What have you been doing?"

Zhao Zihao waved his hand, "Geez, don't mention it, it's just running errands for the family. I've been back a few times during this time, but I've been so busy that I couldn't make time to meet up with you guys."

"Alright, stop standing at the door, let's eat while we chat," ushered Lin Mao.

The three of them entered the restaurant, got a private room and ordered a few dishes.

Chen Mo asked Zhao Zihao, "How is it, are you still going overseas in the future?"

Zhao Zihao shook his head, "That should be done. But you've made quite a ruckus in the past few years. I've even heard of you while I was overseas. Incredible of you to sell Warcraft and Diablo overseas."

Chen Mo laughed, "You've been playing while you were overseas too?"

"Of course!" said Zhao Zihao,"Not just me, a few close friends were playing it too, we'd play some RPG maps together as well."

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Chapter 268: PVP Map COG

Lin Mao asked, "Chen Mo, the stuff about your video game platform has been quite heated recently. I commend you for being so brave, you must've gotten on many people's bad side."

Chen Mo laughed, "Getting on other's bad side? ARe you talking about the distributors? I never liked them. Anyways, what do you mean 'get on their bad side'? I don't need to care what they think now, them being happy doesn't affect me at all. In truth, they should be the ones trying to get on my good side."

Lin Mao laughed too, "Alright, alright, don't get too full of yourself, but there's nothing wrong with being proud. Here's one for your cockyness!"

The three of them raised their glasses and had a drink.

Chen Mo filled up their glasses with more beer.

Lin Mao also grabbed a bottle of beer to fill up Chen Mo's glass too, "To be honest, I'm curious as to why you're making a video game platform too. Thunderbolt Gaming Platform is now the third largest gaming platform in China, there's nothing stopping you from taking seventy to eight percent of the designers' revenue and make bank. Why did you drop the rate to thirty percent?"

Chen Mo asked, "They don't know, but you don't know either?"

Lin Mao blinked his eyes, "You just don't like them?"

Chen Mo laughed, "Yep, it's just because I don't like them."

Zhao Zihao had his thumb out, "Incredible."

Chen Mo explained, "In truth, the bigger distribution platforms overseas would take thirty percent on average, fifty percent at most. But the distributors in China? They abuse their power to take control over the designers who have no power over them, taking eighty to ninety percent of their revenue!

"Moreover, with their monopoly, they'll recommend the players a bunch of garbage games just for money, it does nothing good for the players.

"This causes the players and designers to be in a tough spot, but there's not much the designer could do other than bow down to them just to get a promotional spot so that more players would notice their game. They'd even get forced into changing the profit method of their games, messing up a decent game.

"Many designers who have integrity decide to release their games overseas, and overtime, there would be fewer and fewer creative games in China.

"That's why I don't like them, and many of the distributors who have power choose to follow their awful ways. But I choose to be different. Although I work on a distribution platform, I'm also a designer. If I don't care about this, nobody else would, that's why I have to make my stance.

"Many think that I'm starting a price war. That's not the case. I have the money and the resources now, so I'm choosing to do the right thing, that is all."

Lin Mao nodded, "Alright. I'm completely impressed by what you said Chen Mo! Honestly I'm quite impressed by your bravery. You're basically destroying their source of income."

Chen Mo laughed, "So what? Online stores destroyed the source of income of physical stores, so what? Things that shouldn't survive will die off. It's enough for me that I know I'm doing the right thing."

"Well said," praised Lin Mao, "And right on cue, my new game is almost finished. I plan on giving you some support and releasing it onto your platform."

Chen Mo nodded, "Welcome! Don't worry, I'll promote your game the best I can. How far along is it?"

"It's almost done, I should be good to release it in the next few days. Also, how many designers have contacted you?" asked Lin Mao.

Chen Mo replied after some thought, "So far there's been a few dozen. Most are still choosing to observe as Thunderbolt Gaming Platform has never promoted games of other designers. Moreover, the various other distributions are putting them in an awkward spot, so it's normal for them to be hesitant."

Lin Mao said, "Don't worry, you can take it slow."

Lin Mao had made four games so far, releasing one a year. He's also now a B-grade designer. Lin Mao had been doing well for himself, but looked unimpressive when compared to someone like Chen Mo.

The three of them continued chatting.

All of a sudden, Zhao Zihao thought of something and said to Chen Mo, "By the way, I found a decent RPG map in Warcraft that isn't popular in China called COG, Clash of Gods. Have you tried it?"

Chen Mo was shocked, "That translates into... Fight among gods?"

Zhao Zihao nodded, "Yeah that's it. It's quite interesting and similar to the Chenghai3C map that you made. It also only has three lanes but arranged slightly differently. 5v5 as well."

Chen Mo furrowed his brows, "Huh, do you have a video?"

"Yeah, give me a second."

Zhao Zihao spent quite some time looking around on his phone, finding some gameplay of COG to show Chen MO.

This video was filmed using a phone so it looked quite terrible. The average joe would struggle to make sense of it, but Chen Mo clearly understood it.

It was a map made in the Warcraft World Editor. Similar to Chenghai3C, it had three lanes and already had something resembling a jungle and neutral creeps.

Ten players could each control a hero (according to the mod, they are called gods) to destroy the base of the enemy.

There wasn't much that could be gathered from the video, but Chen Mo could tell what the map looked like from the minimap.

Chen Mo nodded, "Hmm, interesting."

"The map is quite popular overseas especially in Europe and America. It recently reached the top of PvP maps," explained Zhao Zihao, "I quite like the map too, I think it's more balanced than Chenghai3C and it's easier to get into."

Chen Mo could check the statistics for Warcraft's international version, but because he had been busy recently, he hadn't bothered to constantly monitor it. If it wasn't for Zhao Zihao mentioning it, he might've discovered that a week or two later.

Chen Mo asked, "Are there many western companies who plan to make it onto a standalone game?"

Zhao Zihao replied after some thought, "Uhh, I think the author is trying to find a company for it, but because his price is quite high, he hadn't found a deal yet. Not sure what happened after that."

Chen Mo nodded, thankfully it was still within his expectations.

The author must understand the potential of a gamemode like this, but because COG is a fork off Warcraft, they need to make huge changes from the engine to the characters in order to profit off it. Obviously the author didn't have the power to do that yet.

But the large western video game companies aren't necessarily going to spend so much resources for a random map, so it'd be difficult for them to strike a deal in a short amount of time. COG was still quite a ways away from becoming a standalone game.

Chen Mo asked, "Would you be able to get in contact with the author?"

Zhao Zihao was shocked, "Uhh, probably, why?"

"I plan to have a chat with him."

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Chapter 269: Gaming Platform Facelift

After their meal, Chen Mo brought Zhao Zihao and Lin Mao to visit his experience store.

Zhaoo Zihao was incredibly interested in the holographic projectors on the second floor. After watching others play a match or two of Warcraft, he decided to buy one at home.

Lin Mao on the other hand was more interested in Chen Mo's office. Chen Mo showed him what he was working on and introduced the two games that were in development.

As the two of them know each other really well, Chen Mo didn't need to hide things in front of his brothers.

Chen Mo also asked Zhao Yunting to give Lin Mao's new game a better promotional spot.

Zhao Yunting was responsible for the operations of various games as well as overlooking Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.

Chen Mo chatted with Lin Mao and Zhao Zihao for some more time. Before they left, Zhao Zihao managed to get the contact for the author for COG.

As the author for the map wasn't a well known designer or anything, Zhao Zihao had to go through various different channels through a few friends from overseas to get the author's email.

After sending off Lin Mao and Zhao Zihao, Chen Mo sent the author an email.

It was someone named Clive Raman. They were so low profile that Chen Mo couldn't get anything other than either name.

But one thing's for sure, he probably wasn't working for any large videogame company nor has he made anything else noteworthy. COG was probably inspired from playing Chenghai3C.

Chen Mo wrote an email in english, introducing himself (Designer of Warcraft), expressed his interest in the map, and hopes that they could work something out.

He didn't receive an immediate reply and that could've been from a time difference issue and they could still be asleep.

Clive Raman finally replied around 9pm.

Fortunately he didn't think that the email was a fraud attempt.

"Nice to meet you Mr Silent."

"To be honest, I was surprised to receive an email from you. I'm not familiar with countries across the sea, and I never thought that the designer of Warcraft would notice the map I've designed. It's an honour to meet you.

"Regarding a collaboration, I'm sorry but I'm afraid it cannot happen. I've already signed an agreement with another company (I can't reveal anything at this point), and the higher ups plans to provide me with a lot of resources to develop COG. We are both happy with our sides of the agreement and I plan to sign the contract soon.

"Moreover, I don't fancy the idea of working with someone overseas. This might be offensive, but I think people outside the country, especially the Chinese are sometimes quite nerdy (of course this is a neutral nerd with no derogatory meaning, and you're obviously not included in that generalisation), I doubt if someone outside of the country could understand my design intentions well.

"Moreover, I have my own decisions and hope to have absolute power over the project. Not many can accept this. Therefore, I could only apologise regarding your proposal, and I won't be changing my mind."

Chen Mo closed the email after reading through it.

THey were quite absolute about their decisions, so Chen Mo didn't want to waste either of their time.

Chen Mo's 'collaboration' was actually a hire attempt. He felt that their ideas were decent and wanted to add him to his team.

And the design process? He'd probably still overlook it himself.

But from the looks of the email, he can probably write that off.

Moreover, Chen Mo didn't like their hinted underestimation of Chinese developers. Although it's common to have prejudice against Chinese developers, Chen Mo still wasn't taking it.

"Whatever, I'll just pretend that never happened. My plans have been set regardless of the existence of this map.

Chen Mo closed his laptop and tried to forget about it.

After intense preparations, Thunderbolt Gaming Platform updated in all aspects..

This update introduced huge changes to the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.

Chen Mo's games were the official games and were still placed on the best spots and were constantly being updated.

In addition, they added a new feature: Game Library.

The game library was split into multiple sections, including a store, recommended page, account, wishlist, communities, and developer platforms.

Some of these were already there, while others were new additions.

Moreover, each of these modules had many features.

The store sorted games by categories, had different leaderboards, a 'popular games among friends list', and popular games. The players could search and download various games here.

The recommended page included editor picks, featured games, special offers, free this weekend, recommended by reviewers, best rated games, release soon, and many other recommended lists.

In account, players could check their personal details, messages from friends and achievements from games.

In wishlist, players could freely add games into their wishlist to purchase when they go on sale.

In the community tab, players could freely join different communities to discuss various games.

The developers area was provided for various developers, allowing them to manage the games they published onto the Thunderbolt Game Platform, such as new updates.

Chen Mo's designs skills were incredibly good, and when combined with various successful works from his previous life as reference, Thunderbolt Gaming Platform felt incredibly complete, fulfilling the needs of the majority of players and developers.

At the same time, various games of other developers were also released on the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform store, totalling one hundred and three different games.

A majority of them are indie games that weren't all that great, but there were some high quality ones among them.

Zhao Yunting picked a few decent games and gave them recommended spots.

They were incredibly lucky to be among the first games as they easily reached the front page of Thunderbolt Gaming Platform, the third largest platform in China.

Of course, this could be considered as a return on being an early supporter of Chen Mo.

Although most of them were indie games, there were many of them, more than enough to fill up the store to start off with.

Chen Mo knew that it wouldn't take long before more designers would fall into the embrace of Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.

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Chapter 270: Wails of Distributors

Thunderbolt Gaming Platform's facelift gained plenty of attention from the players.

The matter gained plenty of attention since Chen Mo announced that he would use Thunderbolt Gaming Platform to promote the games of their designers.

But after a long argument among fans, a twenty four hour session against Chen Mo, and Chen Mo's long Weibo post, the matter became an extremely hot topic.

Many players who didn't play Chen Mo's games downloaded Thunderbolt Gaming Platform just to check out what was happening.

Right now, hate towards Thunderbolt Gaming Platform had slowly died down as everybody got it out of their system. After Chen Mo announced his intentions in an incredibly classy way, there was not much else the trolls could do to attack him, and the tides were now in Chen Mo's favour.

And Thunderbolt Gaming Platform's complete overhaul got the other distributors sweating.

If Thunderbolt Gaming Platform wasn't successful, such as the games don't sell well after posting them there with little to no attention, it would most certainly be good news for them.

But if Thunderbolt Gaming Platform did well? It would most certainly be bad news for them.

When that time comes, if the distributors wanted to continue operating, they would have to reduce their cut similar to Thunderbolt Gaming Platform, meaning their revenue would be reduced dramatically.

The players also had their eyes on the performance of Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.

"Thunderbolt Gaming Platform got an update today, you can download the games of other designers now!"

"Really? Let me check it out!"

"There are so few games. There's only a hundred or so of them!"

"They just started after all, they are likely to add more in the future."

"The few recommended games are decent indie games. Seems like Chen Mo has a good eye."

"Coincidentally, there's a game from a designer I quite fancy, I'll buy it here as they take a smaller cut, meaning that the designer gets more money. It's like a way I could support them."

"The new update is pretty good. I feel like it's different from Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform and Fantasy Gaming Platform, but is still quite rich in features."

"Yeah, especially the promoted pages. There are so many different types of recommendations, even by category. They even recommend games based on what the players like. And there's so many promotions too, providing free trials during weekends and special discounts!"

"Wishlist? Oh it's like a shopping cart. I could wait till the games go on sale before buying. This feature is quite nice!"

"I really do feel an urge to shop all of a sudden."

"And the various features are really well done too. Other than statistics for games, there is a strategy tab, ratings and reviews... Seems much more feature rich than other platforms."

"Not bad! I've never really cared about Chinese indie games because the other platforms seem to always promote garbage games, so it's really difficult for me to find a good indie game. Now I finally managed to find a few deceind games. I'll buy them right now!"

"Yep, it appears that I have another game in my library!"

The players more or less managed to find a game that was to their liking on the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform, purchasing them.

Twenty-four hours after Thunderbolt Gaming Platform was updated, Zhao Yunting summarised the statistics of the first day into a report and submitted it to Chen Mo.

The best selling game on Thunderbolt Gaming Platform sold thirty-nine thousand copies. This was because the game was relatively cheap at one RMB. The most profitable game was a high quality puzzle game titled "Fly Into the Future". It sold twenty-two thousand copies, with two hundred and twenty-thousand RMB in revenue.

These two games were on better promotional spots, and were the reason they sold so well.

Moreover, because of how well reviewed the games were, they secured a 1:9 split, meaning that the profits the designers received were 24.5 thousand and 138 thousand RMB respectively.

The release of these statistics promptly caused an uproar among videogame designers!

The first day statistics proved that Thunderbolt Gaming Platform deserved its title as the third largest gaming platform in China, and its promotional powers were clear as day. The willingness of the players to purchase was very strong too.

At the same time, with Thunderbolt Gaming Platform's help, there were a lot of player ratings and discussions. The designers could gain a lot of feedback from the players and make changes to their game accordingly.

The designer of Fly Into the Future was very emotional and posted a thank you letter on the discussion forums.

If he maintains his momentum, he would certainly receive around three million net revenue at the end of the month, something he wouldn't even dare to dream of previously.

He had tried releasing it onto other distribution platforms, but because they took seventy to eighty percent of his profits, he'd only receive pennies. And after tax as well as the cost of developing the game, there would be barely anything in his pocket for a tough year of work, barely able to stay afloat.

And Fly Into the Future was a good game, but the support from the platform also played a huge part in its success. Chen Mo giving ninety percent of the profits back to the designers were basically increasing their profits by four to five times!

And the financially unstable designers were all quite excited as they rushed to post their games onto Thunderbolt Gaming Platform to get the best promotional spot they could.

And the designers who signed exclusive agreements were deeply regretting it as they blame themselves for taking their bait instead of observing the situation for a little while longer.

The distributors were all quite dejected. Who knows how many happy CEOs were flipping tables in their beautiful office buildings.

In a week's time, most large distribution platforms started adjusting the cuts they take from designers, from their 2:8 or 1:9 cut (with distributors taking the majority), to 4:6 or 3:7 (with designers taking the majority).

Larger platforms like Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform or Fantasy Gaming Platform could afford to be a bit more stubborn, whereas the smaller ones couldn't help but make 2:8 (designers taking the bigger cut) the norm for designers. And with that, there were fewer and fewer games being released on their platform.

The smaller distributors were wailing in unison. Who knows how many were resenting Chen Mo's existence.

There was now a future where the split between distributors and developers approached a 3:7 split. The days of distributors using players to abuse developers will soon be over.

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Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 271 - The Stanley Parable - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 271 - The Stanley Parable Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 271: The Stanley Parable

There were more and more players visiting the experience store. The PC area in the first floor would reach ninety percent capacity during the weekends with ten or so PCs left unused.

The mobile and VR experience areas weren't as packed, but were still around fifty percent capacity.

There were usually many players gathered around the holographic projection area as well. But just like with anything, the players would eventually get used to it.

-In the first floor of the experience store-

As it was a Thursday, there weren't too many people in the experience store.

Chen Mo was on a sofa with a drink in one hand looking through the books that recently arrived.

There were two massive bookshelves on the sides of the halls filled with many gaming related books. Of course, a lot of them were novels, comics, or gaming albums. There were also some related to gaming design, but those were rarely touched.

"Manager," a man in his late twenties in a suit swiped his ID at the front desk, greeting Chen Mo while he was doing that.

Chen Mo nodded in acknowledgement, "Isn't it a Thursday? No work?"

They nodded, "Yeah, I took the day off."

That was Zhao Lei, a regular at the experience store. They moved up north to find work and were currently working in a metals company. It was a high paying job and high stress to go with it.

Unlike other players, he didn't visit the experience store to play games. He'd usually sit around in the main hall and chat with the others.

Zhao Lei didn't have a big social circle, and mostly dealt with work related stuff in his work circle. But in the experience store, he found comfort.

Therefore, Zhao Lei frequented the experience store during the weekends. Overtime he familiarised himself with Chen Mo, Su Jinyu, and other regulars of the experience store.

Zhao Lei sat on the sofa next to him, ordered a cup of ice coffee and grabbed a comic book from the shelves.

Chen Mo looked at Zhao Lei's tired face and asked, "What's wrong, had a lot of stress lately?"

Zhao Lei nodded, "Yep. I don't even know why, but I've been encountering idiots during work. I've had to entertain my clients quite a bit. I've had four of those drinking sessions last week, I've had to work overtime this weekend as well. I've decided I had enough for today so I took a day off."

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Chen Mo said sympathetically, "Yeah, take care of yourself. Do a health checkup when you can."

Zhao Lei laughed, and said half jokingly, "Checkup? I'm afraid of finding out some serious disease that I can't afford to fix."

"Don't be, health comes first."

Zhao Lei nodded, "Yeah, I understand.

"Oh by the way manager, you haven't released a new game in some time, is it because of the gaming platform?"

"That's part of it, but then again, Minecraft has been out for less than two months. New games aren't produced that quickly, you should enjoy the fruits of your labour anyways."

"Oh, it's only been two months? Geez, I've been losing track of time, it felt like it's almost been half a year."

Chen Mo laughed, "You've been too stressed, you should take it easy from time to time. If you stay highly stressed all the time like this, you're bound to burn out eventually."

"I don't have any good way to destress. I don't have many friends, nor do I have any hobbies. It feels like there's not much I can do outside of working to provide for the family. I'd come over here to set around and relax a little."

Chen Mo replied after some thought, "Actually, I have a game in the works that might suit you. Do you want to try it?"

Zhao Lei was surprised, "New game? Didn't you say you haven't had the time?"

Chen Mo stood up, "Aren't you familiar with my work efficiency? Still in development means the game hasn't been released but is already playable. Follow me."

Zhao Lei quickly got on his feet and followed Chen Mo to the PC area of the experience store.

Zhao Lei sat down at a computer while Chen Mo got onto the management terminal and downloaded the game that was recently completed onto that computer.

"The Stanley Parable?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Yes."

Zhao Lei was a bit confused, "You said this game suited me? What kind of game is this, a puzzle game?"

Chen Mo shook his head, "You'll understand once you play it.

Zhao Lei doubtfully clicked on the icon to start the game.

There wasn't a cool loading screen nor was there an epic cinematic. The game started right away.

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The title of the game, The Stanley Parable was on the top left of the screen , the bottom left had eht options Start Game, Options, credits, and quit. The UI was abnormally simplistic.

However, Zhao Lei quickly noticed that something was out of place.

There was an office desk that had a phone and a computer on the screen. There was a filing cabinet on the left with a decorative painting on the wall, like something most companies would have. A meaningless, boring picture.

The strange thing was that the computer screen in the game looked identical to what he was seeing in the game. It also had the title of the game, options as well as a tiny cursor.

It felt like a picture in a picture. Everything the player did would be replicated on the computer in the game.

Zhao Lei clicked on Start Game, and the same thing happened to the computer in the game.

Zhao Lei was a bit weirded out but he didn't think much of it. It was probably something odd Chen Mo included, an easter egg of sorts.

The loading screen was completely black, except for a line of english words in grey at the bottom: "THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END..."

It looped infinitely, starting from the left and ended on the right of the screen. If it was broken down into a complete sentence, it probably wrote "THE END IS NEVER THE END" probably meaning the game never ends.

But they stitched the "THE END" from the start and end together to form a never ending loop.

This made Zhao Lei even more confused, What kind of game is this?

The game finally started as he was filled with thoughts and questions.

Before anything appeared on the screen, Zhao Lei could hear a conversation going on.

It was a deep male voice who spoke concisely, of moderate speed, and good rhythm. It was hard to interpret any sort of emotion from his speech as though he was narrating an exceedingly normal story.

"This is the story of a man named "Stanley"."

"Stanley worked for a company in a big building where he was Employee #427."

There was a light soft background music, and the graphics started showing up. The camera went through a hallway into room number 427. In the room was a man sitting away from the camera, at a desk that looked like the one from the starting screen, including the computer, the phone, and the filing cabinet.

Orders came to him through a monitor on his desk telling him what buttons to push, how long to push them, and in what order

The camera switched to a top down view of the monitor, showing a close up of the character's movements.

Stanley started at the screen pressing on buttons on the keyboard with his right hand. His head bobbed like a buoy in the sea as he look up and down.

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Chapter 272: Game with no Difficulty

"This is what Employee #427 did every day of every month of every year, and although others may have considered it soul rending, Stanley relished every moment that the orders came in, as though he had been made exactly for this job.

"And Stanley was happy.

"The camera panned away before fading black, and this time the title of the game appeared on the screen.

"And then one day, something very peculiar happened."

Something that would forever change Stanley; something he would never quite forget.

The game faded back in, showing Stanley who was still in front of the computer, but this time he wasn't moving.

"He had been at his desk for nearly an hour when he had realized not one single order had arrived on the monitor for him to follow.

"No one had shown up to give him instructions, call a meeting, or even say 'hi'. Never in all his years at the company had this happened, this complete isolation.

The camera showed the other seats in the office which all happened to be empty.

Something was very clearly wrong.

Shocked, frozen solid, Stanley found himself unable to move for the longest time.

But as he came to his wits and regained his senses, he got up from his desk and stepped out of his office."

As the narration finished, the camera panned away from the screen. Zhao Lei then realised he could control Stanley and start the game.

"What a weird start to the game."

Zhao Lei was really confused, but he understood why Chen Mo said the game suited him. He was just like Stanley, someone who couldn't escape work. On the surface he was incredibly happy and satisfied, but underneath that was someone incredibly sad and depressed.

Stanley's job of pressing buttons on the keyboards following the instructions of the monitor, there was virtually no difference compared to a machine. But Zhao Lei couldn't help but associate that with his job. Sure it was more complicated, but was he that much different from Stanley pressing on the keyboard?

Zhao Lei shook his head to usher away the weird thoughts in his mind, and looked around the room using his mouse.

The office was incredibly empty and quite small. He couldn't interact with the computer, the filing cabinet, or the documents on the table. Zhao Lei left the office after triple checking he couldn't do anything.

The rooms labeled 428 and 429 couldn't be opened either.

The narration continued.

All of his coworkers were gone. What could it mean?

Stanley decided to go to the meeting room; perhaps he had simply missed a memo.

There was a soft yet mysterious track in the background, and a weird narration to go with it. But the two combined fitted the game so well that Zhao Lei didn't feel like anything was out of place, and even forgot that most games didn't have weird narrations like these.

When Stanley came to a set of 2 open doors, he entered the door on his left.

The tone of the narrator was an incredibly natural one, as if it was something that was certain to happen. Zhao Lei didn't put too much thought into it and walked through the door on the left.

The narrator would guide Zhao Lei through the next little bit of the game.

The meeting room was also completely empty, and so was the boss's office.

Although there were a few forks in the road, Zhao Lei suppressed his curiosity and followed the instructions given by the narrator.

"Shocked, unraveled, Stanley wondered in disbelief who orchestrated this, what dark secret was being held from him!

"What he could not have known was that the keypad behind the boss's desk guarded the terrible truth that his boss had been keeping from him.

"And so the boss had assigned it an extra secret PIN number. 2845.

"But of course, Stanley couldn't possibly have known this."

Zhao Lei quickly found the keypad as it wasn't well hidden at all, typing in the pin as described by the narrator to reveal a secret passageway in the boss's office.

"Yet incredibly, by simply pushing random buttons on the keypad, Stanley happened to input the correct code by sheer luck. Amazing."

Zhao Lei needed a reason to complain about this narrator.

What? The keypad wasn't hidden at all, nor was the pin complicated!

He thought it was a puzzle game, but it was too simple, it couldn't even be considered a puzzle! He just had to key in the numbers like the narrator described to reveal the hidden passageway?

Holding back his complaints, Zhao Lei went into the passageway.

"He stepped into the newly opened passageway."

He reached somewhere that was completely to the office that he was just it. It looked like a strange facility that was under construction. He then reached deep into the building through a creaking and shaking elevator.

After navigating a few more turns, he reached a large door that had the words "Mind Control Facility" written on it.

There were countless monitors on the walls of this huge room. Stanley pressed on a button, waking up all the monitors.

Stanley and his co-workers were seen on these monitors. Everyone was being monitored with no freedom in sight.

Stanley reached the core control center and discovered there were various mood controlling buttons: "Happy", "Sad", and "Satisfied"

He then reached the facility power room and turned off the power.

In the darkness came rays of light. There were blue skies, clouds, grass, everything freedom looked like.

Accompanied by the soothing music was the praises of the narrator as Stanley walked out of the facility power room.

"Stanley felt the cool breeze upon his skin, the feeling of liberation, the immense possibility of the new path before him.

"This was exactly the way, right now, that things were meant to happen.

"And Stanley was happy."

This was where the game ended and Zhao Lei was returned to the starting screen.

Zhao Lei was confused that he beat the game like that.

Although the story was quite educational, going through the process of an office worker seeking freedom, wasn't that too simplistic?

And could this really be considered a game?

Zhao Lei had a strange feeling inside of him throughout the game. There were various mysterious scenes, forks, and unfathomable narratives. He thought that it was a horror game and was expecting a jump scare.

But nothing came. He just kept following the guidance from the narrator, pressed a few buttons and managed to beat the game.

Zhao Lei was incredibly confused.

He looked at Chen Mo who was sitting next to him who had a smile on his face but didn't seem to want to share why.

Zhao Lei started a new game thinking that there he must've missed something.

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Chapter 273: Deep and Meaningful

Zhao Lei looked at the time and discovered that it only took him ten minutes to complete the game.

This included him running around in circles, as well as some meaningless clicking around.

Moreover, the controls were incredibly simple. There wasn't any combat or monsters. The whole game was just walking around and clicking.

Considering the various choices the player had to make, the game was clearly a puzzle game.

Meaning that the game was probably about exploring different paths to reach different endings.

After figuring that out, Zhao Lei felt that he knew what he should do next.

He should try out different options.

The game started for the second time.

According to the hints, Stanley should exit his office to look for his colleagues in the meeting room. But Zhao Lei got an idea, what if he doesn't go out? What if he closes the door??

They clicked on the door of his office, and the door closed with it.

"But Stanley simply couldn't handle the pressure. What if he had to make a decision? What if a crucial outcome fell under his responsibility? He had never been trained for that! No, this couldn't go any way except badly.

"The right thing to do now, Stanley thought to himself, is to wait. Nothing will hurt me. Nothing will break me. In here, I can be happy, forever. I will be happy."

Zhao Lei was incredibly confused.

Am I locked in here?

He walked around then clicked on the door to try to leave, but it was all in vain. HE also discovered something incredibly interesting. The clock on the wall that previously didn't move started moving, as though reminding Stanley that time was passing.

"But the one thing he knew, for sure, beyond any doubt, was that if he waited long enough, the answers would come. Eventually, some day, they would arrive. Soon...

"Very soon now, this will end. He will be spoken to. He will be told what to do. Now it's just a little bit closer. Now it's even closer. Here it comes..

The narration ended abruptly and his screen went black. Zhao Lei couldn't guess what had happened to Stanley.

The game ended, turns out that was another ending.

Zhao Lei realised that the endings he got were quite simple, but were quite meaningful.

It was just like the name of the game described, The Stanley Parable. Parables are succinct, didactic stories, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles.

Evidently, it would only take a few minutes to reach a seemingly perfect 'freedom ending' if they followed the narrator. But Zhao Lei felt that this 'freedom ending' may as well be called 'deception ending' as Stanley followed what the narrator said without exploring anything else in the world.

What did the two endings represent?

Perish in silence because of shutting oneself in because of a lack of courage?

Or, following instructions to complete a journey, to tell a lie to themselves?

Zhao Lei thought that the game was quite interesting and started exploring different paths that were presented to him.

The game started once again.

This time, Zhao Lei thought of the button in the facility power room.

There were two buttons in front of them when he powered off the mind control facility, one was labeled 'off', the other 'on'. What would happen if he pressed 'on'?

As Zhao Lei was familiar with the game already, he quickly followed the narration to reach the facility power room.

"And as the cold reality of his past began to sink in, Stanley decided that this machinery would never again exert it's terrible power over another human life. For he would dismantle the controls once and for all.

Even though the narration was hinting strongly that he should turn off the machine, Zhao Lei hit the 'on' button.

"Oh Stanley, you didn't just activate the controls, did you? After they kept you enslaved all these years you go and you try to take control of the machine for yourself, is that what you wanted? Control?"

The huge screen in front of him turned red with the words 'LOADING MIND CONTROL SYSTEM' on it. The background music also turned intense.

"Oh...Stanley. *sigh* I applaud your effort, I really do, but you need to understand; there's only so much that machine can do. You were supposed to let it go, turn the controls off, and leave. If you want to throw my story off track, you're going to have to do much better than that.

"I'm afraid you don't have nearly the power you think you do; for example, and I believe you'll find this pertinent:

"Stanley suddenly realized that he had just initiated the network's emergency detonation system. In the event that this machine is activated without proper DNA identification, nuclear detonators are set to explode, eliminating the entire complex.

"How long until detonation, then? Hmm...let's say, um...two minutes.

"Ah, now this is making things a little more fun, isn't it, Stanley? It's your time to shine! You are the star! It's your story now; shape it to your heart's desires.

"Ooh, this is much better than what I had in mind! What a shame we have so little time left to enjoy it."

Zhao Lei was confused, feeling as though he had been played by the narrator.

Zhao Lei had stanley explored the building. There were many buttons around the facility, pressing any that he came across. But alas, none of them did anything to stop the countdown.

He even went to a door that he could escape from, but the door was closed shut.

If it was a normal game, there would most certainly be a way to beat the game. But Zhao Lei suspected that although there were many buttons and switches in the room, nothing would stop the bomb from going off; everything was in vain.

The narration continued.

"What's that? You'd like to know where your co-workers are? A moment of solace before you're obliterated? Alright. I'm in a good mood, and you're going to die anyway. I'll tell you exactly what happened to them:

" I erased them. I turned off the machine; I set you free. Of course, that was merely in this instance of the story. Sometimes when I tell it, I simply let you sit there in your office forever, pushing buttons endlessly and then dying alone.

"Other times, I let the office sink into the ground, swallowing everyone inside; or I let it burn to a crisp.

Zhao Lei didn't pay any attention to the narration as he continued to wander around the building in search for a button that would diffuse the situation.

But the next lines took Zhao Lei by surprise.

"Oh, dear me, what's the matter, Stanley? Is it that you have no idea where you are going or what you're supposed to be doing right now? Or did you just assume when you saw that timer that something in this room is capable of turning it off?

"I mean, look at you, running from button to button, screen to screen, clicking on every little thing in this room! These numbered buttons! No! These colored ones! Or maybe this big, red button! Or this door! Everything! Anything! Something here will save me!

"Why would you think that, Stanley? That this video game can be beaten, won, solved? Do you have any idea what your purpose in this place is?

"You're only still playing instead of watching a cutscene because I want to watch you for every moment that you're powerless, to see you made humble."

The timer ended.

The silence following the huge explosion was deafening.

Zhao Lei was shocked. Obviously it was another ending, but this ending was more shocking than the previous ones.

The narration was particularly interesting, as though they were mocking the player, like they were speaking to the player through the screen.

Obviously this was all designed by Chen Mo beforehand, but Zhao Lei still felt that there was some interaction between him and the narration.

Moreover, the narration hinted at some truth. The narrator had absolute control over the game. He could freely change the story and chose if Stanley lives or dies, it all depended on his mood.

Realising that, Zhao Lei gained immense interest in the game as he couldn't wait to explore more endings for the game.

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Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 274 - The meaning of a meta game - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 274 - The meaning of a meta game Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 274: The meaning of a meta game

Zhao Lei began to explore different routes and tried different outcomes. He even deliberately chose the opposite route.

……

If Stanley didn't choose to go to the boss and kept going downstairs, then he would fall into an endless loop. Stanley would start to dream and eventually fall into madness.

……

At an office table by the window, Stanley could get out of the window and land outside, entering a pure white space.

However, this wasn't a BUG, because the caption would remind you that this was part of the game, and it also added some self-deprecation.

[At first, Stanley thought that he destroyed the map, but it wasn't until he heard the narration that he realized that this was part of the game. He then praised the game's profound and humorous criticism of the video game architecture, as well as its attempt at a metaphor for the narrative structure.

……

If one entered the boss's office and left before the door closed, the voice-over would be "locked" in the boss's office. Players will no longer hear the voice-over.

When the players returned to Room 427, they would find that the door next to it was open, and a message appeared that guided the players to the rescue cabin.

On the way to the escape capsule, Stanley kept going up the stairs. He found that there was Room 427 on every floor, and every floor had the same structure. In the end, he would enter the escape capsule and escape from this place (perhaps).

……

If he chose the door on the right and took the elevator to the maintenance area, then the explanation would be completely dumbfounded, and he wouldn't even be able to find the way Stanley was supposed to go.

Stanley walked on a path that was completely different from the narration, and the whole scenario was spoiled. The narration had no choice but to restart the game.

However, the game became even more chaotic after the restart. Every time the game was restarted, it would fall into new problems.

For example, the door had disappeared.

For example, Stanley had entered a completely different scene.

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The narrator even had to draw a long yellow arrow on the ground, but this still couldn't save the game's story line that had been completely confused.

In the end, Stanley would come to a room with the words "chaotic ending" written on it, and the entire process of the chaotic ending would be shown on the screen.

Even the voice-over was shocked. He refused to restart the game according to the process on the screen, but an unknown existence forced the game to restart.

……

The more he played, the more Zhao Lei realized that there were too many things in the game that he was completely unaware of. No matter what choice he made, the narrator would always have a set of explanations, as if she had already guessed that he would do that.

Moreover, there were many interesting Easter eggs in the game, and teasing the voice-over had become a very interesting thing.

If you kept entering the wrong password in your boss's office, the narrator would hint at you again and again that it was the correct password, and even angrily emphasize it in red font. In the end, you would have no choice but to open the door yourself.

There were even times when the voice-over would be shocked by what happened in the game, causing the entire game to fall into multiple layers of chaos.

Stanley's [player] and [voice-over] were higher existences, and they formed a huge mystery, making Zhao Lei want to constantly search for clues in the game to find the truth behind all this.

He was already deeply attracted to this game.

……

Before he knew it, more than two hours had passed.

Zhao Lei looked at the time and realized that he had been in the game for a long time.

However, he had a vague feeling that there were still many endings in the game that he had not played out, and there were still many Easter eggs that he had not discovered.

This was the second time Chen Mo had come to check on his progress.

"How was it? was it fun?" Chen Mo asked with a smile.

Zhao Lei rubbed his neck and said,"it's not exactly fun, but ... It's very interesting." When will the game be released?"

"Probably next week," Chen Zhao said.

"Alright," Zhao Lei nodded."I'll definitely buy a copy for my collection when the game is released."

He paused for a moment before continuing,"also, I feel like the game is hinting at something. If you look deeper into it, there seems to be a lot of hidden meanings ..."

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Chen Mo smiled but didn't say anything.

"Can you explain to me what this game is about?" Zhao Lei asked. What's the meaning behind it?"

Chen Mo shook his head,"it can only be understood, not explained."

Zhao Lei was speechless. He stood up and said,""It's getting late. I have to go back and have a good sleep. I have to continue working tomorrow."

"Yes," Chen Zhao nodded."Rest well."

The two of them walked to the door. Before Zhao Lei left, he looked at Chen Zhao."Thank you for the game. Although it's useless to understand some principles, at least it makes me feel better."

Chen Mo laughed,"don't think too much. It's just a game. Life still has to go on, doesn't it?"

……

The Stanley Parable was not a simple puzzle game.

It was a very classic META game, and it had a deep philosophical meaning. The fun of this game was not in solving riddles or exploring different endings, but in experiencing and interpreting the countless fables in the game.

This game was actually full of designs that went against conventional games. It was more like a joke about the meaning of the "game" itself, or the relationship between the designer and the player.

The game had no clear goal, no difficult challenges, and no rewards in the general sense. When the players 'time stopped in the storage room, the narrator would even mock them."Oh my God, are you trying to show off to your friends that you got the storage room ending?"

Moreover, the game was full of sarcasm about the "fun of the game". For example, Stanley's job every day was to press the buttons, and he felt that he was very happy. Wasn't this a reference to the gamers?

The players followed the voice-over's instructions, opening the secret door step by step, turning on the switch, and finally reaching a seemingly perfect ending. Wasn't that what normal games would ask the players to do?

The content made the players realize that they seemed to be Stanley. They seemed to have freedom and happiness, but this feeling was very fake.

Behind each ending, there was a kind of philosophical thinking.

For example, the lie ending was the lie of losing free will, the nuclear explosion ending was the consolidation of the creator's position, the return home ending was a kind of despair with no other choice, the chaos ending was the thought about the end, and the Starlight ending was the use of Stanley as a lab rat for experiments ...

And that was the biggest meaning of this game.

It was a reflection of the game itself and life. The players would reflect on their experiences in real life and think about what they should choose.

Of course, the game itself did not have a clear background story. It was more like a work of stream of consciousness. There were a thousand hamlets in a thousand readers, and everyone would experience something different when playing the game.

However, to be able to give the players such an experience was the greatest meaning of the game.

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Chapter 275: The cooperation between the Emperor dynasty and the divine illusion Guild

The development of Stanley's fables and eich ICEY went smoothly, and Chen Mo released the two games on Thunderbolt gaming platform after they were completed.

This time, Chen Mo didn't spend too much effort on advertising his own games, since Thunderbolt gaming platform had a special area for his own games. It was already the equivalent of a huge recommendation, and with so many of his previous games 'reputation, he didn't need to waste too much effort on advertising them.

To Chen Mo, these two games were very special, but not too shocking. He only took it out to fill up the game library and enrich the game types on the platform.

Just as Chen Mo expected, the players soon discovered the uniqueness of the two games and became addicted to them. These two classic META Games quickly became a trend among the players. Everyone was interested in the game's content, especially the "teasing the innocent".

"Wow, Stanley's fable is so fun. Chen Mo's starting to play this kind of stupid game again. I think he's slacking off a little, but I really want to say that he's a genius!"

"I think eich is more fun. At first, I thought that it was just a normal horizontal action game, but halfway through, I realized that the core of the game was to tease the voice-overs!"

"Yeah, I thought my computer was infected with a virus during the plot kill!"

"And the voice-over can be teased! I repeatedly jumped into the pit, and he would even complain,'are you so weak that you can't even jump into a few pits?' It's simply a demon!"

"The funniest part is that in the middle of the script, there was a scene where the author who was reading the script received calls from finance, designers, and artists. Everyone expressed their resignation. This is too much!"

"Fun, fun! Chen Mo is so cool, I feel like he's gone beyond scamming money and is trying all sorts of fun games?"

"Hmm, that's a good sign! I support Chen Mo!"

……

Both games were well received on Thunderbolt gaming platform, with Stanley's fable at 9.1 and eich at 8.8.

The two games were sold for 30 yuan, and there was a discount in the first week. After the discount, they were sold for 21 Yuan, which greatly increased the enthusiasm of players in the first week.

The first week of sales for both games were pretty good. The Stanley Parable sold 78000 and eich sold 103000.

The Stanley Parable was better in terms of META and the depth of the story, so the overall rating was higher. However, it was a pure META game with a small audience, so the sales were not as good as eich.

After all, eich had elements of an action game, and the fighting was more satisfying, so the sales were better. However, due to the relatively lacking META elements and plot, the rating was slightly lower.

Regardless, these two games were both very successful. Whether it was sales or reviews, they completely surpassed other standalone games at the same price.

The players were all praising Chen Mo's attempt, which allowed him to gain more and more fans, which was even helpful to the development of Thunderbolt gaming platform.

……

……

Emperor dynasty entertainment, CEO's office.

The atmosphere in the huge office was a little heavy. Lin chaoxu stood by the window and sized up the potted plant that was as tall as a person. No one knew what he was thinking.

On the sofa in the office sat another influential figure in the domestic gaming circle, the president of fantasy gaming platform, ding Xing.

Speaking of ding Xing, he could be considered a legend in the domestic game circle. His biggest characteristic was that he knew nothing about game design.

Like Emperor dynasty Entertainment's CEO Lin chaoxu, ZEN Entertainment's CEO Liu Yuanfeng, they were the best video game designers in the country, but after they expanded and created Giants like Emperor dynasty entertainment and ZEN Entertainment, they slowly left the frontlines of research and development and handed over the task of developing games to their own designers.

Of course, if they wanted to, they could intervene in the development of the game at any time.

But ding Xing was different. He wasn't a game designer and had never used a game editor. He was an entrepreneur and a gamer.

Perhaps it was because ding Xing had always considered things from the perspective of an entrepreneur or a player, and he liked to interfere with game development, that fantasy gaming platform's game development was a failure.

It was ironic that he had the second largest distribution channel in the country but couldn't make a popular game.

However, ding Xing also had his own unique points. He was a businessman with a very keen sense of smell, and he did things swiftly and decisively, so he had a good grasp of the development prospects of the game market.

Emperor dynasty gaming platform and fantasy gaming platform were the two biggest distributors in the country and were originally at loggerheads with each other, but Chen Mo's sudden appearance had changed their relationship.

Ding Xing's expression was gloomy as he rapped the table, as aggressive as a sharp knife.

"These Terms are too much for me. President Lin, this doesn't seem like the right attitude to discuss things, right?"

Lin chaoxu laughed. He wasn't affected by ding Xing's aura at all, and said calmly,""I'm willing to negotiate with you. This is already the biggest concession I can make."

Ding Xing's face became even uglier, giving people the feeling that he could slam the table and leave at any time.

Lin chaoxu continued unhurriedly,"in fact, when Chen Mo created Thunderbolt gaming platform, your fantasy gaming platform was the one that suffered the most." As for Emperor dynasty, it's fine even if we lower our cut to 30% as well, because we still have research and development to do. But what about you guys? if the channel profits plummet, I'm afraid the financial report won't look good, right?"

"So, you just want to see me make a fool of myself and don't want to talk?" ding Xing coldly said.

Lin chaoxu shook his head,"of course not. Don't misunderstand. I just hope that you can understand your current situation. Since we're going to talk about cooperation, let's cut to the chase. No matter how aggressive you are, you have to understand that the Emperor dynasty is the one who has the initiative now. "

He paused for a moment before continuing,"as for cooperation, of course, the Emperor dynasty would like to cooperate, because cooperation is a win-win situation." In fact, I think we should work together too. Chen Zhao is an idealist or a lunatic. He doesn't need money, but we're both realistic businessmen. We can't let a lunatic ruin our jobs, right?"

"You're right,"ding Xing nodded. Alright, let's put away all the empty talk and talk about cooperation. Chen Mo's platform is a huge threat to all distributors in the country, we have to think of something. "

————

Pushing the book "the literary life of women's clothing," if you guys want to see women's clothing every day, then go and see real women's clothing!

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Chapter 276: New channel, new game

On November 3rd, just when everyone thought that Chen Mo's battle had come to an end and that he had won, another piece of news caused another wave.

Emperor dynasty entertainment and fantasy gaming platform announced that they would form a strategic partnership and share resources. Any game that was released on either platform would automatically be released on the other platform and would receive a recommendation spot.

Apart from that, there were more than ten other smaller channels that joined the Alliance between Emperor dynasty entertainment and fantasy gaming platform.

In other words, Emperor dynasty entertainment and fantasy gaming platform took the lead and combined all the resources from the smaller channels to build a huge platform.

All games that are released on any of the above platforms will be released on other platforms at the same time and may receive a very strong recommendation: It was recommended to all channels.

If a game was lucky enough to receive such a recommendation, it would be recommended on the front page of all the gaming platforms mentioned above. The effect of such a recommendation could be said to be terrifying.

Thunderbolt gaming platform was the third largest gaming platform in the country, and their number of users wasn't even comparable to Emperor dynasty gaming platform or fantasy gaming platform. However, after these distributors worked together to create a platform, the resources of both sides were pulled apart.

Even though Emperor dynasty entertainment and fantasy gaming platform didn't mention anything about 'Thunderbolt gaming platform', it was clear that this was a counterattack. Against a strong disrupter, these old distributors had no choice but to work together to protect their own interests.

The situation became confusing again.

……

Emperor dynasty Entertainment's headquarters.

In Lin chaoxu's office, the three S-grade video game designers were all present.

Qiu Jiang and Yan Zhenyuan were sitting on the long sofa, while Qin Xiao was sitting on a single sofa, his legs resting on the coffee table.

"You guys know about the all-channel transportation, right?" Lin chaoxu asked.

"Got it," Yan Zhenyuan nodded.

Qiu Jiang was playing with her nails, bored.""With such a huge commotion, how could they not know?"

Lin chaoxu nodded,"yes, this is the reason I called you guys over." I'll be direct, from the looks of it, the all-channel joint transport is going well. Ding Xing bit the bullet this time and sacrificed a lot of benefits to facilitate this cooperation, but overall, it's a good thing for both US and fantasy gaming platform. "

"The most important thing now is that we need a key game to show the players and independent designers the power of the new platform.

"A new game?" Qin Xiao asked, interested.

Lin chaoxu nodded."That's right. Ding Xing is also talking to Liu Yuanfeng in private. He hopes that ZEN Entertainment can also release a competitive game." It's the same for our Empire. "

"This time, we'll release three to five new games. Then, we'll compete internally. The best two games will receive the strongest recommendation from all channels. This means that other than Thunderbolt gaming platform, all other gaming platforms will see the two new games. "

Qin Xiao, Qiu Jiang, and Yan Zhenyuan all listened intently. It was obvious that this was a great opportunity for them.

"The game we're going to make this time has to be super popular," Lin chaoxu continued."In other words, it has to capture the largest number of players."

Qin Xiao pondered for a moment before asking,"where's the platform?"

"There's no limit to the platform," Lin chaoxu said."But the type of game definitely can't be a simple game like tabletop games. It's meaningless even if that kind of game increases the number of players."

Qiu Jiang thought about it. "Mmorpgs, then. I'm good at it."

"That's not for sure. There are quite a number of FPS players in the country as well." Qin Xiao replied.

Qiu Jiang glanced at him."However, most FPS games don't have both VR and PC. Mmorpgs can have both."

Qin Xiao was speechless.

Lin chaoxu said,"all three platforms have their own advantages. The mobile platform has the most players and is the easiest to promote. The VR platform is easier to produce high-quality works. The PC platform is relatively more of a compromise."

Yan Zhenyuan nodded."That's right. But from the looks of it, mmorpgs are still the best if we want to capture the most number of users. Especially since we can do both VR and PC games. The advantage is huge."

Qin Xiao shook his head,"I don't think so." Legend of the Sword, the moon god's prophecy, and heavenly justice of the Three Kingdoms were the three most successful RPG games in the country, but none of them managed to take down the other. Was he trying to create a new MMORPG that could take over all three of them and dominate the MMORPG market? I think the possibility of that is very low. "

Lin chaoxu asked Qiu Jiang,"what do you think?" Does MMORPG still have room for development?"

Qiu Jiang pondered for a moment and said,"it's hard to say." Based on the current operation of the moon god's prophecy, mmorpgs still had a lot of potential. However, if you want to make a game that can dominate the MMORPG market, you have to fulfill at least two conditions. "

"First, improve your technical level, art performance, and other aspects. Second, there are major changes in the way you play and the structure of the world. "

"Based on the current situation, it's impossible to improve my technical skills and art performance in all aspects. The only opportunity is to improve my playstyle and world setting."

"That means there's no chance," Qin Xiao interjected."There won't be any major changes to mmorpgs in the short term. As for the world views, I haven't seen anything particularly impressive yet."

Qiu Jiang rolled her eyes at him.

Lin chaoxu replied,"it's okay, there's no need to rush." No one could say for sure what the next game to dominate the domestic game market would be. You guys can think about it and not limit your thinking to mmorpgs. For example, two days ago, I found a very good game prototype overseas. "

As Lin chaoxu spoke, he pulled out a video from his laptop.

"What's this, isn't this Warcraft?"

Qin Xiao, Qiu Jiang, and Yan Zhenyuan were all surprised.

Lin chaoxu shook his head."No, it's an RPG map in Warcraft. It's called COG, the Battle of the Gods."

The three of them watched the entire video in detail.

"According to insider information," Lin chaoxu said,"the author of this picture has decided to work with GA to make COG an independent game that's no longer part of Warcraft."

Qin Xiao furrowed his brows,"GA? Would they be interested in such a simple map? And it's even a Warcraft drawing?"

It was no wonder that Qin Xiao would be so confused.

GA was a very famous game developer, its full name was GeniusArt. It could be ranked in the top three in the entire European and American region, and could be said to be a veritable industry giant.

From the video, COG was an RPG map that was completely attached to Warcraft, so it had a third person God's perspective.

Moreover, the game's content wasn't rich, and they were fighting on the same map back and forth. The only commendable thing was that its hero and equipment system were more complicated.

Such a simple map could win the favor of an GA? This sounded like a fantasy.

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Chapter 277: Chapter 276-mock trial

Qiu Jiang said,""Although GA is a big company, they release a lot of lousy games every year, especially when they often buy some small studios. As long as they think the game has a little bit of potential, they'll buy it. As for whether it can be made or not, they don't care at all."

Lin chaoxu shook his head."Although you're not wrong, the GA are probably serious this time. They do have a few higher-ups who are very optimistic about this game."

"Why?" Qin Xiao furrowed his brows.

Lin chaoxu said,"I've tried out the game too, and I have the same opinion as your Ga." It's a very promising game type, and its biggest feature is its creativity. "

Lin chaoxu briefly explained to the three of them the core gameplay, key points of strategy, and main fun points of the game.

Qin Xiao pondered for a moment."Playing the same map back and forth. Each time, it's like a whole new experience?"

Lin chaoxu nodded,"actually, you can see it as an RTS game where you only need to control one unit. It has greatly lowered the entry requirements." Different heroes are suitable for players with different preferences. The five of them can work together to achieve victory, and the pace is almost the same as an RTS game. These are all its advantages. "

Qiu Jiang nodded."The fast pace is indeed an advantage. The biggest problem with mmorpgs is that the character's level and equipment have to be accumulated. It's hard for new players to keep up with the progress of the old players, and the level difference causes a natural division in the player community."

She thought for a moment and then said,""However, if the game loses its growth potential, the players will probably lack a long-term goal, right?"

Qin Xiao shook his head,"that won't happen. Just look at FPS and RTS games. You'll know." The advantage of FPS games was that they were easy to get started with, had a fast pace, and could be re-played. There was no level growth, and it would not affect the fun of the players in the later stages. I think this game should have the same routine. "

Lin chaoxu nodded," This map was very popular in Europe and America, with tens of thousands of players playing it every day. It completely dominated the other Warcraft maps. Although it hasn't completely become popular in China, it should be soon. "

"From the players" feedback, they didn't feel that they would get tired of this map after playing it for a long time. Instead, they were enjoying it. It's also because of this player's data that the author of this picture has the confidence to talk about cooperation with an GA. "

"Then, What do you mean, President Lin?" Yan Zhenyuan asked.

"I'm planning to talk to the GA," Lin chaoxu said seriously."I'll try to get the game's Domestic Agency rights."

……

……

In Chen Mo's Experience Store.

Everyone was worried about Emperor dynasty entertainment and fantasy gaming platform working together to create a huge distribution channel, but Chen Mo acted like nothing had happened, and was at ease every day.

Recently, more and more people were playing Warcraft in the PC experience area, but most of them weren't playing the battle mode. Instead, they were playing a whole new map: COG。

"Good Morning, manager." Zou Zhuo was walking towards the PC experience area with a bag of chips in his hand when he ran into Chen Mo who was just coming down.

Chen Mo looked at the chips in his hand,""Even though I'm happy that you keep buying the snacks from the experience store, I still think that you should control yourself a little, or you might not be able to find a girlfriend."

Zou Zhuo grabbed two chips and popped them into his mouth,""But manager, you're so skinny, but you still don't have a girlfriend."

Chen Zhao was speechless.

There's no way to continue this conversation!

"Oh right, manager, are you free today? Wan na play some games together?" zou Zhuo asked.

"No," Chen Mo rejected sternly,"it's still working hours. As the boss, I should set a good example. How can I play games secretly?"

Zou Zhuo nodded,"Oh, I see." Then why don't you just announce that you're taking a break today? You're the boss, so we'll rest whenever you want. "

Chen Zhao thought for a moment."You're right. Wait a moment."

Not long after, Chen Zhao took the elevator back from the fourth floor.

"Alright, I've told everyone that we're taking a break today. We can play games now."

"……"

Zou Zhuo's mouth was full of chips, but he couldn't say anything. He only gave Chen Mo a thumbs up.

Chen Mo and zou Zhuo sat down in the PC area and opened up Warcraft.

Chen Mo had already closed the friend and battle invite Windows, so even though the ID 'tiny' was quite famous, it wasn't harassed much.

Zou Zhuo found the map, COG, and built a room.

"You haven't been playing battle mode recently?" Chen Mo asked.

Zou Zhuo nodded,"yeah, it's mainly because I feel like I've reached the ceiling of my personal ability. I'm stuck at 3800 points. I can't go any further." Moreover, this COG is really fun to play. I'll feel uncomfortable if I don't play it for a day. "

Very quickly, the 10-person room was filled.

COG was slowly becoming popular in China, and there were Chinese teams that translated the game's content into Chinese. Even though it wasn't as popular as overseas, it was already the most popular confrontation map in China, surpassing the Chenghai 3c that Chen Mo had released as an official.

"Manager, you've never played this map before, have you?" zou Zhuo was excited.

Chen Mo nodded,"yeah, I've never played it before."

Zou Zhuo said,"that's great, I can finally teach the manager how to play games!" Manager, let me tell you, this map is quite complicated. There are more than 30 heroes in it, and each hero has different skills and characteristics. They are matched with different equipment. Tsk, this game is really rich in content. "

"Manager, you might not be used to it at the beginning. I suggest you play the God of the jungle. This hero is relatively simple to operate and is suitable for novices."

Chen Mo took a look. The God of the forest was Malfurion from Warcraft and had four skills: summon Treant, bind (crowd control skill, single target target lock), heal (healing skill, single target recovery), and Emerald Dream (crowd control skill, hypnotize enemies within range).

Indeed, this champion looked like a support and was very suitable for novices.

"Yeah," Chen Zhao said."This hero suits me, but I choose the dark Ranger."

Before zou Zhuo could stop him, Chen Mo had already chosen Sylvanas the dark Ranger and entered the game.

Zou Zhuo,"...Alright, manager. You're good at it. You can play whatever you want."

They started sending troops as soon as they entered the game. Chen Mo quickly looked through the equipment system and hero skills as he walked towards his own tower.

The image of COG was created using Warcraft's models. It looked like DOTA from Chen Mo's previous life, but there was still a huge difference.

For example, in terms of hero settings and skills, although COG had made some changes to Warcraft's skill system, it didn't break away from Warcraft's style, or rather, it didn't form its own style.

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Chapter 278: Chapter 277 my mid

For [God of the jungle, it made use of Malfurion's model and had a relatively clear position. It was a very strong support for control and healing.

This design was quite successful because it took advantage of some of Warcraft's skill settings and fit the hero's appearance.

However[Dark Ranger] was a different story.

Her skills were silence, dark arrow, Archer talent, and charm.

Silence, dark arrow, and charm were the same as Warcraft, while life drain was replaced with an Archer's talent. It was a passive skill that permanently increased the dark Ranger's range and critical chance.

Obviously, the designer of COG, Clive Lehmann, realized that life drain was somewhat contrary to the dark Ranger's hero setting, so he changed it to a more suitable skill for archers.

However, in Chen Mo's opinion, it was too overpowered to use the dark Ranger on this map.

First of all, dark Rangers could rely on dark arrows to summon skeleton soldiers without limit. In the early stages, they could push the lane like crazy and suppress the opponent.

Furthermore, he did not know if it was intentional or negligently designed by the designer, but the other party did not pay for the skeleton soldiers that they killed, and only gave a very small amount of experience.

In other words, by relying on this skill alone, the dark Ranger could gain an absolute advantage in the lane and could attract aggro by using minions to carry towers to madly consume the other party's HP.

Moreover, dark Rangers could rely on the Archer talent skill to permanently increase their range and critical chance, which was equivalent to bringing forward the strong period of a hero that was originally set to be carried in the later stages.

When the dark Ranger was Level 6, she could lead a group of skeleton soldiers and lured wild monsters to invade the enemy's wild area. Even if she couldn't kill the enemy, she could still snatch the wild area's resources and greatly supplement her own development.

Therefore, in the hands of those who knew how to play, the dark Ranger would definitely become a strong hero in the early, middle, and late stages through rolling a snowball. This was obviously too strong, and it was contrary to the position of this hero.

If she already had a strong late-game carry ability, she shouldn't have such a strong online suppression.

Of course, this was mostly because the designer of COG, Clive Lehman, was still in the fumbling stage and didn't know so much.

The players didn't realize that the design was unreasonable. They only had a vague feeling that the dark Ranger was very powerful.

Chen Zhao could tell how perverted this hero was, so he chose her without hesitation.

Chen Zhao's Dark Ranger arrived at the tower in the middle.

COG's map was similar to Chenghai 3C 's. There were three roads from left to right. The middle road was the closest, while the top and bottom roads were further apart.

However, there was already the concept of a jungle in COG. There were many wild monsters in the jungle, such as low-level murlocs and tortoises, and high-level Red Dragons and mountain giants.

In terms of the distribution of turrets, COG was also more scientific. There were three turrets on each road, which could ensure the safety of some late-game Champions in the lane. They would not be caught until they had doubts about their lives.

At this time, the other side's players typed in the public chat: "A high imitation of S-God?"

A moment later, Chen Mo's teammate also typed: "It doesn't look like a high-quality imitation. It's S-God. The letters are exactly the same."

"F * ck, Chen Mo?"

"Even Chen Mo is playing this map?"

"It's really Chen Mo! It was not a high imitation! My heavens!"

His three teammates and five opponents were all excited. They confirmed again and again that the dark Ranger in the middle lane was indeed Chen Mo 's.

These people immediately began to chat on the public screen.

"I've already taken a screenshot. Playing with S-God, I can brag about it for a week!"

"It's really Chen Mo. I wanted to ask when you're going to release a new RPG map?"

"I'm asking for a friend spot, big brother!"

Chen Zhao was speechless. He really couldn't keep a low profile.

There was nothing I could do about it. Even though I had intentionally tried to hide it, I was still such an eye-catching man. My melancholic eyes, my moustached beard, my amazing skills, and my mischievous appearance under the tower had all deeply betrayed me.

Dark Ranger (everyone):"fight well. You screwed up your title."

Everyone was speechless.

Everyone gave up on the idea of watching Chen Zhao and quickly returned to their seats.

"S-God, do you want me to follow you and heal you?" a teammate asked.

"No, I'm mid."

Although the players in this world didn't know what "mid" meant, just by looking at the literal meaning, everyone could understand the meaning of the word.

Considering that Chen Mo was the designer of Warcraft, everyone suppressed their desire to teach him how to play the game. These people wanted to tell Chen Mo that dark Rangers usually took the bottom lane and worked with support champions.

Chen Mo's opponent was Bloodmage, the Warcraft hero Kael 'thas. Of course, his skills were completely different from the crazed Carl in DOTA.

The blood mage's skills were flaming storm, banish, blood sacrifice, and fire Phoenix.

It was similar to the skills in Warcraft, except that the drain was replaced by blood sacrifice. The passive effect of this skill could permanently increase the maximum health of the blood mage. After activation, the blood mage could use their health instead of mana to cast the skill.

In addition, the fire Phoenix's effect was to first deal damage to the area before summoning the fire Phoenix, which was a bit similar to Hellfire.

The Bloodmage's position was a high-explosive mage. The three-hit combo of banish, flaming storm, and fire Phoenix could complete the instant kill of most fragile heroes. Although his skills consumed a lot of blue, he could use his health points to release skills in an emergency, which made up for the blue consumption problem to a certain extent.

The enemy's blood mage was very aggressive. He used a flaming storm to burn Chen Mo's minions and then pushed the lane like crazy, trying to keep Chen Mo under the tower.

Chen Zhao didn't panic. He waited for the enemy minions to reach the tower and used dark arrow to finish them off. Soon, six skeletons stood up.

With Chen Mo's current reaction speed and mechanics, it was impossible for him to miss a minion.

While the blood mage was still in awe of Chen Mo's farming skills, the six little skeletons had already started pushing the lane for the dark Ranger.

Zou Zhuo was at the top lane, and he was concerned about Chen Mo as he played,""Manager, can you do it? The blood mage dealt AoE damage and seemed to be more effective against the dark Ranger. The dark Ranger had to learn silence before it was easier to fight. Why don't you hold on and wait for me to help you?"

Before zou Zhuo could finish, the system prompted,""The dark Ranger has killed the blood mage!"

Zou Zhuo was speechless.

Chapter 279: Chapter 278-five against one and killed

Chen Mo was very disappointed. There was no "FIRST BLOOD" sound effect. It was not cool at all.

At least, you could have a 'solo kill' sound effect, right?

Zou Zhuo was shocked,"manager, how ... How did you do that?" he asked.

"How did you do it?" Chen Zhao said,"he kept walking forward like an idiot. Then I surrounded him with six skeleton soldiers."

Zou Zhuo,"you're awesome!"

The blood mage on the other side was also dumbfounded. This could be done?

After the first wave of minions entered the tower, Chen Mo used his Level 1 Dark Ranger to kill six minions and summoned six skeletons.

The two of them were still Level 1. The Bloodmage wanted to use another flaming storm to drain Chen Mo's health, but as soon as he moved forward, Chen Mo had the six little skeletons surround him and beat him up.

The level 1 blood mage didn't have much health left before he arrived. After being surrounded, there was no response from anyone and he was shot to death by the dark Ranger.

Moreover, Chen Zhao also used Cross Kill and skeleton to cover. The blood mage struggled but couldn't escape.

Bloodmage (everyone) said,"God S, you're really good. I'm impressed!"

Chen Mo didn't care. While the blood mage was resurrected, he used dark arrow to kill all the enemy minions, then turned off dark arrow to kill all the minions on his side, whittled down the tower's health, and sent three little skeletons to Scout the way.

A champion that could control multiple units at the same time was perfect for someone like Chen Mo.

The Bloodmage came online again. This time, he had learned his lesson. Seeing that there was a gap between their levels, he quietly dealt the last blow under the tower.

Three minutes later.

[The dark Ranger has killed the Bloodmage!] The system notification appeared.

Everyone was speechless.

Even the blood mage's teammates could not stand it anymore."Big brother, you're not messing with us, right? Even if it was Chen Mo, you wouldn't die Twice in five minutes, you're still Level 1?"

"I ... I really can't play this!"

He resurrected and returned online for the third time.

The blood mage was in an unspeakable predicament. The first time he was killed, he was surrounded by skeletons by accident. The second time, he was completely helpless.

Chen Mo could use the dark Ranger and little skeleton to farm the minions, killing both the enemy and his own minions, causing the blood mage to stay at Level 1 the entire time.

Moreover, once Chen Mo's little skeletons reached the tower, they would try to surround the blood mage and drain his health. With the little skeleton attracting the aggro of the defensive tower, the dark Ranger completely ignored the existence of the defensive tower and attacked the blood mage crazily. Soon, the blood mage was killed.

In the beginning, the blood mage could still use firestorm to burn two skeleton soldiers to death. When the dark Ranger reached Level 3 and learned silence, the blood mage could not do anything. When he was surrounded, he would use silence to kill them.

The Bloodmage's teammates were helpless.

The death Knight thought,'damn, you were killed under the tower? Are you disabled? Was he born with one less hand than others? You go down, I'll guard the tower in the middle!"

The Bloodmage was furious, but he couldn't refute it. After all, he was too miserable. The dark Ranger was already Level 4, but he was only Level 1. If he were to argue with his teammates now, he would definitely not want to play anymore.

The Bloodmage had just finished off two waves of minions when he heard a system notification."The dark Ranger has killed the death Knight!"

Everyone was speechless.

"Damn it," the death Knight said."The Bloodmage has raised the dark Rangers too well. I can't play with them anymore!"

Ten minutes into the game, Chen Mo's Dark Ranger had already killed four players and reached level 8.

At this point, the Pandaren Brewmaster had the highest level, Level 6, while the blood mage had the lowest level, Level 3.

The dark Ranger's equipment was the [Dark Bone bow] and the [storm horn]. They were supposed to be obtained in the middle of the game, but he had already obtained them in the early stage.

Moreover, she was surrounded by more than a dozen little skeletons and two wild monsters. She was like an Army. With the little skeletons attracting the damage of the defensive towers, the dark Ranger could easily cross the tower and kill any hero.

Zou Zhuo was just about to think that he could win this time, but he suddenly realized that the enemy heroes on the map were all gone.

Zou Zhuo quickly reminded,""Be careful, manager. They might be after you!"

Before zou Zhuo could finish his sentence, five huge red dots appeared in the middle lane almost at the same time. They came out of the jungle and went straight for the dark Ranger.

Zou Zhuo panicked. It was too late for him to help now. If the dark Ranger died, it would provide him with a lot of experience and extra rewards. It would be a huge loss!

A minute later.

[The dark Ranger has killed the Bloodmage!] The system notification appeared.

[The dark Ranger has killed the death Knight!] A system notification appeared.

[The dark Ranger has killed Windrunner!] The system prompted.

[The dark Ranger has killed the Pandaren Brewmaster!]

[The dark Ranger has killed The Alchemist!]

The screen was flooded!

Everyone was speechless.

F * ck, are you trying to defy the heavens?

On the map, the dark Ranger's skeleton soldiers were almost all dead, and the two charmed monsters were also dead. The dark Ranger had less than one-fifth of his HP left.

However, the other party had already been annihilated.

Chen Mo mumbled to himself in dissatisfaction,""There's no PENTAKILL and no ACE. This is so boring. "

Zou Zhuo was stunned. What was this? five against one and they were all killed?

The five players on the other side were already on the verge of exploding. It was a long-planned ambush, but Chen Mo seemed to have anticipated it. The skeleton soldiers blocked the way, the two charmed monsters absorbed the damage, and the dark Ranger attacked while moving. With the difference in equipment and level, the five players were all shot down very quickly.

[Death Knight (everyone): God S, hurry up. We just want to take a picture with you ...]

Chen Mo was helpless. Giving up just like that? He had to encourage his teammates to turn the tables. He had to stabilize his mentality!

At this time, shouldn't he send a voice message,"hold on, we can win"?

Cough, cough. I'm sorry, I was acting.

[Dark Ranger (everyone): AFK and banned.]

Everyone was speechless.

The gaming experience was terrible!

After a symbolic resistance of ten minutes, the blood mages 'base was destroyed.

Zou Zhuo sighed,"manager, I didn't expect you to be this good at a game you didn't make." Another round?"

Chen Mo shook his head."I'm not playing anymore. This game is too simple. It's boring."

Zou Zhuo,"manager, can you think about our feelings before you say that?"

Chen Mo stood up,"keep working hard. This game might become really popular in the future. You can still make it in time to change classes. When you become a professional, you won't have to worry about not having a girlfriend."

Zou Zhuo,"manager, you're running your mouth again, I'd be a fool to believe you!" If he plays games as his profession, he'll probably starve to death!"

Chen Zhao was happy. He patted his shoulder and left.

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Chapter 280: Two choices

Even though many players enjoyed it, Chen Mo knew that the overall gameplay of COG was full of loopholes, and it was still far from being a qualified MOBA game.

In the eyes of ordinary players, this map was very interesting and different from any other game on the market.

All heroes had different positions and could cooperate closely.

They only needed to control one hero, which was more friendly to new players.

The pace was relatively fast, with a maximum of 40 minutes per game.

It took into account team cooperation and individual heroism.

Of course, it was hard for the players to sense the huge potential behind this game. They only had a vague feeling that this game was very fun.

However, this was not the case for Chen Zhao.

After seeing DOTA and LOL in his previous life, the two MOBA games that were extremely well-developed yet had completely different characteristics, the current COG was like a sieve in Chen Mo's eyes, full of holes and loopholes.

There was no clear position in the hero design, and the balance was extremely poor.

The map layout was unreasonable, and the jungle was narrow and long, which made it easy to GANK in the lane.

The positive motivation for the players was seriously insufficient, and there were no special rewards or sound effects for killing or killing more.

The cost of learning was very high.

The equipment system was loose and did not form a system.

His mechanics were still similar to those of an RTS game, and he was extremely unfriendly to players with poor gaming skills.

The snowball effect was too obvious, and there was very little to turn over.

The players were having a great time now, only because game such as COG had just appeared. Everyone was a noob, and they were happy when they won, but they didn't feel as frustrated when they lost.

In such an environment where rookies pecked at each other, the fun of COG was infinitely magnified, so it looked very beautiful.

However, what would happen if the players improved their skills, had a deeper understanding of the game, and developed more strategies?

Players needed a ruler to measure their own level, so the stairway to heaven was born. What would happen when everyone played the game for the sake of winning and a large group of players with a deep understanding of the game and good operation skills gathered on the stairway?

Then the flaw of COG would be infinitely magnified.

The dark Ranger's winning rate is too high. She's too strong. Let's weaken the blood mage!

Perhaps people would say that the number of monsters in your jungle was too unreasonable, that your jungle was too small, that you were too tired from playing the game, and that you had too little inventory ...

Every imperfect little setting would become a crack in the dam, and eventually cause the game to collapse.

This was also the reason why Chen Mo didn't bring out MOBA games from the start.

The balancing of the numbers was too important, it could even be said to determine the life of a MOBA game. If Chen Mo released an imperfect MOBA game, it would be the same as giving the advanced concept to other video game designers. In the end, the other companies would come up with a better MOBA game, and Chen Mo would lose all his money.

This was something Chen Zhao could not tolerate.

However, at this stage, Chen Mo finally had the ability to bring MOBA games into the world.

Chen Mo had already set a development plan, but with so many things coming together, the development of the game was even more urgent.

After Emperor dynasty entertainment and fantasy gaming platform teamed up, almost all the distributors in the country teamed up to attack Chen Mo's Thunderbolt gaming platform.

In other countries, there were also games with MOBA elements, and they had already formed a partnership with the GA. He believed that they would soon release a more complete version of MOBA games.

To Chen Mo, he had to create a game that could dominate the entire Chinese market, only then could he destroy the distribution channel that Emperor dynasty and divine fantasy had set up, and only then could he keep the money tree of MOBA in his hands.

In Chen Mo's previous life, DOTA and LOL were the two most popular MOBA games, and had basically explored the game genre to the extreme. However, these two games ended up on completely different paths.

DOTA was balanced to the extreme, and almost every champion had their own place to be used. There were all sorts of tactics, and the competitive nature of the game was top-notch.

However, due to the difficulty of getting started, the style of the game, and historical reasons, DOTA had not been able to expand and harvest the MOBA market on a large scale even though it was the first to appear.

As for LOL, it was a different path.

By changing the art style, simplifying the operations, and fixing the routine, LOL had greatly reduced the difficulty of MOBA games, allowing it to be popularized to many people who didn't play DOTA before. Under the stacking of various objective factors, it had completed the harvest of the MOBA market, becoming the most popular game in the world.

However, this also brought about other problems, such as fixed routines, poor balance, low operating limits (relatively speaking), and so on.

Every time LOL was updated, there would be some unpopular and popular heroes. Although some heroes could be developed, there were still a large number of heroes who could only sit on the bench and not participate in the high-end games and professional competitions.

In that case, could he make a perfect MOBA game with the advantages of the two?

It was basically impossible.

Obviously, these two games could see each other's strengths and weaknesses, and they both tried to make some changes in their own direction. However, they had already embarked on two completely different paths.

In order to simplify the operations and expand the user base, it was necessary to lower the upper limit of the game's operations and even destroy some balance. One could not have both the fish and the bear's paw.

These two games were MOBA games that had been developed to the extreme. DOTA was like go. There were many variations, but it was difficult to get started and had a relatively small audience. LOL was like Chinese Chess, the rules were clear, the number of players was high, but the strategies were fixed.

To Chen Mo, DOTA was great, but he had to expand his player base as much as possible, and fight for the player base with the local distributors that had already joined forces. He had to stabilize his player base with an earth-shattering game.

At the same time, he wanted to use this game to monopolize the MOBA game market to the greatest extent, and destroy any games that tried to imitate or catch up to him.

Overall, LOL was more suitable for Chen Mo's current needs.

Of course, another important reason was that Chen Mo didn't know how to play DOTA in his previous life.

Even after using memory playback potions to recall some of the hero's skills, Chen Mo still found it difficult to perfectly recreate DOTA.

As for League of Legends, Chen Mo definitely wouldn't use it the same way, since he was already very good at numerics.

In Chen Mo's previous life, League of Legends had been constantly changing and improving over the years, so Chen Mo didn't stick to the obviously outdated design concepts.

While Emperor dynasty entertainment and fantasy gaming platform were working together to prove their marketing capabilities, Chen Mo was also planning to teach them a lesson with the most popular game.

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