Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Translated by Coldtaco
Edited by Aelryinth
Shi Huazhe wasn’t stupid and knew that Chen Mo had many weird and wonderful ideas up his sleeves. It was entirely possible that Chen Mo could make something that would attract the attention of many people, driving up the sales quickly. Therefore, in order to try and keep what remained of his dignity, Shi Huazhe didn’t dare lowball his estimate.
But, what if he really made it to a hundred thousand?
There wasn’t an inch of Shi Huazhe that wanted to believe that. In his view, the success of Flappybird was completely accidental, as all of Chen Mo’s skills were utterly terrible. Surely he was not able to get lucky like that again and again in the future?
——
12 PM…
Plants vs Zombies was released into the market on time. The players that had been waiting for it were all racing to download the game.
PC players were few and far between in this world, making it an unexplored territory. Therefore, Chen Mo chose to focus on the mobile players.
Despite having the game on the PC market as well, Chen Mo didn’t expect it to get close to the top there.
Chen Mo set the price at 10 RMB.
The app store had set the pricing on games, ranging from free, one RMB, ten RMB, twenty RMB, fifty RMB, or above fifty RMB.
As the official app store in this world mainly catered to users inside China, there wasn’t a problem with currency exchange, so there was no need for 6 RMB or other odd numbers like that.
Chen Mo could’ve made it free or just one RMB, which would make it much easier to increase the number of downloads, but he felt that he was losing out on too much by doing that.
Plants vs Zombies wasn’t suited for in-game ads, and Chen Mo didn’t want it to affect the experience of the players, either.
If he sold it at one RMB, two hundred thousand copies would only result in a hundred thousand RMB net, which wasn’t even enough for him to make ten draws!
Therefore, ten RMB was quite an approachable price. Of course, this didn’t mean Chen Mo was running a charity, he was just going for low price at high volume.
Plants vs Zombies was expected to be popular among all ages. Primary or high school students with not much money, or even the older generation, were part of Chen Mo’s target market. Making it cheap enough to fork out money without much hesitation was part of Chen Mo’s plan.
——
Jia Peng and his friends inside the experience store had already downloaded it, and gave it a five star rating.
“Manager, we’ve downloaded the game and gave it a five star review!” said Jia Peng.
Chen Mo said, “Thanks! I’ll give you all a free cup of milk tea for your trouble.”
“Thanks, manager!” Jia Peng and his friends were very happy.
Jia Peng said, “Senior Wen and the others will come over during the afternoon, as they have class during the morning.”
Another guy said, “That’s great, we can watch the game completely destroy the new games list together.”
Jia Peng said, “Of course! It will surely dominate the leaderboards, it’s so fun! We’ll be the witnesses here!”
——
Many others also had their eye on the sales of Plants vs Zombies.
On the official app store, the statistics for games were updated hourly, the games leaderboards were updated every three hours, and recommended spaces were updated every twenty-four hours.
Many gamers were downloading the game.
Some of them were brought over from the ads on Flappybird, others came from Chen Mo’s Weibo, and some of them just liked the idea behind the game.
However, many players were still observing from the sidelines, waiting for the hour to pass and check the reviews before deciding if they should buy it.
——
At 1 PM, the statistics for Plants vs Zombies were finally updated!
Jia Peng rubbed his eyes. “Wow, did they misplace the decimal point and made it seem ten times more than it should be? That number’s unreal!”
Plants vs Zombies had received 887 downloads, with a score of 9.7/10 after an hour.
Despite not being too familiar with the video game industry, the students knew the significance of those numbers.
Adventures of the Storm Rider was considered doing quite well with four hundred downloads in twenty-four hours, but Plants vs Zombies managed eight hundred and eight-seven in an hour!
Just looking at the twenty-four hour downloads, this wasn’t just a popular game, but an extremely popular game, and made in only a few months at that!
Chen Mo was quite calm. Although these numbers were better than he had thought, it was still within the realms of his consideration.
Flappybird would be continually driving players to Plants vs Zombies, and the video game media had basically promoted Chen Mo’s game for free, with more than a thousand reposts on Chen Mo’s post. As a result, the people that had seen the game might be in the hundred thousands, all of which were potential players.
Plants vs Zombies wasn’t on any leaderboards or promotional places, only because they hadn’t been updated yet. With numbers like that, Plants vs Zombies would without a doubt kill the new games leaderboard.
——
As the topic gained traction, the downloads of Plants vs Zombies kept increasing.
1,333 downloads at 2 PM.
1,914 downloads at 3 PM.
It seemed like the downloads were increasing by five hundred every hour, with no sign of slowing down.
At a speed like that, including the late night slow down and the increased traffic from eight to ten PM, Plants vs Zombies might break ten thousand in twenty-four hours!
Ten thousand copies on the first day?
That was crazy!
Moreover, the ratings were ranging between 9.1 to 9.4, and never dipping below 9. This meant that the players rated the game very highly, and would more than likely maintain this in the future.
Jia Peng was shocked, and exclaimed, “Look at the new games leaderboard!”
First place on the new mobile games leaderboard was now Plants vs Zombies!
“Yeesh, isn’t that too fast? Being on the leaderboard just after one cycle, that’s insanely good!” Jia Peng couldn’t believe it either.
The new games leaderboard wasn’t impossible to climb. Companies like Emperor Dynasty Entertainment or Zen Entertainment could easily reach the top of the leaderboard right after release by advertising and hyping up the game.
However, Chen Mo hadn’t spent a single cent on advertising Plants vs Zombies! Reaching the top of the new games leaderboards one hour after release, that was the stuff of fairy tales!
On the new games leaderboard, Adventures of the Storm Rider was in third place, while Plants vs Zombies was at the top in first place.
After receiving a recommended space, Adventures of the Storm Rider had been gaining momentum. But it stood no chance against Plants vs Zombies.
If Adventures of the Storm Rider had a standing start, Plants vs Zombies had a shooting start. How can you compare when the number of players are of different magnitudes?
The video games media was also shocked. They also thought that Plants vs Zombies had a high chance of going viral, and becoming the biggest dark horse of the month!
Although the statistics at the twenty-four hour mark were more significant for extrapolation, the three hour numbers for Plants vs Zombies were extremely good, even beating some works from large companies!
The explosiveness of Plants vs Zombies caused some minor panic within the video game media, but this was all within Chen Mo’s calculations.
Climbing to the top of the new games leaderboard? That wasn’t even a small goal for Chen Mo…