Translated by Coldtaco
Edited by Aelryinth
Chen Mo woke up the next day at nine o'clock. After grabbing a shower, he went out to buy breakfast.
Chen Mo woke up late because he liked sleeping, only feeling a hundred percent when he got enough sleep, due to habits from his previous life.
In his previous life working in the video game industry, he would often need to work through the night and his start time at work was later than normal. His sleep schedule wasn't adjusted to what would be considered normal.
---
After having breakfast, Chen Mo returned to his office to brainstorm his first game.
Chen Mo had numerous games in mind, but he still had to give some thought to which one he was basing it off.
In this world the cost of starting the development of a game was quite low. There was no need to rent an office or hire a programmer, saving any starting capital required to start game development, though it didn't mean there weren't any associated costs or limits with game development.
One of the bigger limiting factors was art resources.
Video game background music could be solved using money by hiring someone. As long as the quality wasn't too bad, gamers usually wouldn't nitpick too much.
However, the visuals of the game were different. If Chen Mo wanted to develop a larger game, the characters, models, and scenes all might need to be done from scratch, and the free resources from the game engine might not be suitable.
Moreover, those cost quite a bit!
Using a simple example: graphics for playing cards for a mobile game. The lower end would be eight to nine hundred RMB, at the other end of the spectrum it might cost seven to eight hundred. Higher standards were available for a higher price. Just the cost for the art would be a huge sum of money.
Moreover, there were the models, animations, special effects, and so on. These wouldn't be any cheaper than the art, and were quite troublesome to make.
The game engine did have large amounts of free resources, but the majority of them were just free resources of average quality.
Flappybird was able to use publicly available art because it had a simple art style. After hand drawing the bird, everything else could be found and used without much, if any, modifications.
However, if Chen Mo wanted to fully recreate a large game from his previous life, the art would need to look the same as the original. That would be troublesome!
As for why the art needed to be the same, it was because games were quite delicate, like an intricate pocket watch. If any one of the parts were swapped out, it was not guaranteed to run smoothly.
Of course, that ignored the crude knockoffs, games never meant to take off.
The games that did take off always had their playstyle, art style, music, etc. in perfect harmony. They were the ones picked out among dozens of ideas by a designer.
Any changes Chen Mo wanted to make had to be thoroughly thought out. Otherwise, like changing a poem, changing a word might make it seem like the work of an ameteur.
Therefore, Chen Mo would try to the best of his abilities to preserve every single detail of the classics, including identical art styles.
The second biggest barrier was Chen Mo's own abilities.
Although Chen Mo was the producer, he had his own specializations, so he wasn't good at everything.
Coding and level design had their own more specialized engineers. Although Chen Mo knew some of it, he wasn't super well-versed in it.
Some games might seem simple, but in reality the requirements were quite high. For example, Anipop! Although the rules were quite simple and seemed quite simple in design, it actually had very high requirements for their level design. Every level was more difficult than the last, while keeping up the tempo. This was not doable with his current abilities!
Some of the Chinese pay-to-win games might seem like they had low development requirements, but more than half of the skill requirements were on the coding side of things.
For example, how do you differentiate between different levels of VIP? What's the difference in abilities between different VIP players? How much do you gain from topping up? How far can a player get in the game within a certain amount of days? How do you control the tempo of the game?
All these were coding problems. Although Chen Mo knew this, he couldn't solve them with a hundred percent certainty.
In the end, Flappybird was still an extremely simple game with no requirements for coding and level design. The explosive growth of games like those could not be replicated. Looking farther ahead, Chen Mo had to eventually be able to cover all of that. He must raise all coding related stats to above eighty to be able to recreate a classic from his previous life.
How could these problems be solved?
Pay to win! Were there any other choices? Paying to win changed lives!
"If you encounter a difficult situation, it can only mean that you haven't paid enough money." Chen Mo said, laughing at himself as he turned on the virtual display on his bracelet.
Chen Mo had received three hundred thousand RMB in development funds, and planned to take out two hundred thousand of that to draw some prizes. The remaining hundred thousand would be saved for emergencies.
The thing that troubled Chen Mo the most was that Flappybird had to be free to play for players to try out for three months after winning the video game designing competition. It would not be gaining any profit during the three months.
Chen Mo knew this at the start of the competition, but Chen Mo didn't know how this world would react to Flappybird or how popular it could get. Moreover he really did want the experience store, and with the resource constraints, Flappybird was his only choice.
Therefore, although he knew there would be some losses involved, Chen Mo chose to enter using Flappybird.
However, it hurt whenever Chen Mo thought about how Flappybird brought its maker nearly three hundred thousand RMB every day, feeling as if he had missed out on hundreds of millions.
During the next three months, Chen Mo wouldn't be expecting Flappybird to bring him any money. The best move would be to make his next game.
After navigating to the top-up screen. Chen Mo transferred two hundred thousand RMB into the bracelet. The bracelet credits now displayed two million ninety seven thousand three hundred and forty. After giving it some thought, Chen Mo topped up some more, to make it a round 2.1 million credits.
After dumping in two hundred thousand RMB, the three hundred RMB wasn't much. It was better to make it a round number and calm his mild OCD.
Two million one hundred thousand credits, a hundred thousand credits per spin; enough for twenty-one spins!
At this point Chen Mo noticed the virtual display now had a new "Draw ten" button.
"... How nice! The reason the button wasn't here before was because I didn't have enough credits to draw ten times, huh?" Chen Mo complained to nobody.
The draw ten button also fine print: Guaranteed rare items.
This was comparable to a strong point of pay to win games in his previous life, in order to encourage players to top-up by any means.
Chen Mo knew in ninety-nine percent of the games, ten draws were a better deal than one. It was in his best interest to do ten draws.
Chen Mo walked around in his office, then washed his hands and face.
Preparations must be made before drawing ten!
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After calming down, Chen Mo decided to draw one to test out his luck.
Clack clack clack...
The wheel started spinning, ending with a clack on the blue area: Rare Skill Book.
"Hmm? Not bad." Chen Mo was awake all of a sudden. This was the first time he had drawn a blue skill book; maybe the effects of washing his hands and face?
Chen Mo clicked on the blue skill book, and noticed the description on it: Special Skill Book: +10 to music and audio effects.