Translated by Coldtaco
Edited by Aelryinth
If the IP was the soul of card games, the numbers would be its lifeline. If the numbers system crumbled, the game would follow.
Conversely, if the numerical system was very well done and complete, the game would have very strong survivability.
A good example would be a card game from his previous life, OMG! Kingdoms. It was still making tens of millions in profit two years after its release, an incredible result in the card game world.
Despite it being a card game, its IP was terrible and could be compared to not having an IP at all. When it entered the market, the Three Kingdoms had already been driven into the ground. There would be several games with a Three Kingdoms theme every month. If it was solely on the basis of IP, OMG! Kingdoms would have no chance of differentiating itself from the other games.
There were many games with Three Kingdoms that were quite successful, such as OMG! Kingdoms, Junior Three Kingdom, Immortal Conquest, and Gong Cheng Lue Di. These games gave players a misconception that Three Kingdoms was an alright IP.
If they actually tried to make a Three Kingdoms game themselves, they would realize that this IP was a trap.
As there would be a few Three Kingdoms games every month, it was completely overdone. If the gameplay was average, they would have no chance of making a break in the market. IPs like anime or popular novels would blow Three Kingdoms out of the water.
For example, if he made a One Piece game now, there would be a large number of players playing it, but if he made a game with Three Kingdoms in its title, would anyone play it?
There were many companies using Three Kingdoms in their games who intentionally excluded the words ‘Three Kingdoms’ from their titles. For example, Rivaless Thrashing, Beating Wei Shuwu, Immortal Conquest, and Gong Cheng Lue Di had emphasis on warring and sieging in their titles in order to reduce the bad taste the players would have surrounding that theme.
A feature of a good IP was it being able to make money and differentiate itself. If you had an IP like One Piece or Naruto, even if the game was just a reskinned first generation card game, it would still be raking in money.
But what about Three Kingdoms? If you reskinned a game using Three Kingdoms, not only would you not be making money, you would look bad doing it too!
That was proof that the IP of Three Kingdoms didn’t add anything to the game.
Then why was OMG! Kingdoms so popular? It wasn’t because of its theme, but its game quality.
The system functions, playstyle, and numerical settings of OMG! Kingdoms were the top among card games. Its success was entirely on its game quality, and not the IP.
Even if it was called Let Go of Water Margin it would still be popular, albeit slightly less.
If it was able to get One Piece or Naruto as its IP? It would probably hit the moon, doubling or tripling its monthly income.
This was what many players neglected, the charm of the playstyle itself.
Why were Chinese card games done over and over again, despite there being so many more other games on the market? Why did the players continue coughing up money, despite it all being based on the same genre?
For example, Onmyoji was very popular, a game that managed to perfect its artwork. Ignoring how well it did in the art department, it was still a card game at its core.
Chen Mo was working in the direction of OMG! Kingdoms and Junior Three Kingdom, replicating anything he could. Even if the game didn’t reply on the IP of I Am MT, it would still be a fun card game!
——
Two weeks later…
It had been a whole month since the start of the development of I Am MT.
Other than making the video game project, Su Jinyu continued drawing. So far the art had progressed almost halfway, and the game was almost finished.
The only thing left was continuing to improve on the number system, finalizing the attributes of each card, and wait for the remaining artwork.
The development of the game progressed quite quickly, as the ruleset of the game was quite simple.
Everyone other than Chen Mo, including Su Jinyu, was feeling lukewarm towards the game. Su Jinyu was just doing it solely because it was part of her job.
However, everyone’s interest in the animation was growing.
————–
“I think this concept of achievements is quite good. Just imagine, after doing something, a pop-up appears with a ping; wouldn’t that make you feel you accomplished something?”
“Did you guys think that the rules of that world would be so fun? After the characters die, all they have to do is to move their soul to their bodies to be revived.”
“Yeah, that setting is quite forgiving. The characters in other series could never die, but in this one they can die again and again. This allows for more creative freedom in some scenes.”
“I think this rune thing is quite interesting, too. They just have to use a rune to get back to the Inn. This feels like something from a game, which probably makes it quite an interesting series to watch for gamers.”
“I’ve actually done some research on that. Apparently it comes from the Middle Ages, where they would take a piece of stone from their fireplace at home if they were to leave on a journey. When they get homesick, they’d look at that stone to ease the sickness. In the end, the series somehow made it into something useful. That’s quite interesting!”
“I really don’t know how the manager manages to think up things like this. However, wouldn’t these creativity juices be better spent on making games?”
“I don’t really understand what the manager is thinking, but this world is way too expansive. I think you’d need to be an A or S-level videogame designer to be able to handle it. Could it be that it was too far out of reach for the manager, which is why he chose to make a mobile game instead?”
“But you can really tell that the effort the manager spent on the animation and the world was way more than the game itself.”
“What is he trying to do? Even if he made an excellent animated series, what does it have to do with the game? Is everyone who liked the series going to play the game?”
“Who knows… However, I really want to see the world of Azeroth being made into a VR game. Just imagine being a Tauren running around on the endless plains.”
———-
Chen Mo had been paying attention to their chatter.
At the start, everyone was waiting for the next episode to come out solely because it was a cool new theme. However, they were slowly becoming more and more curious about the world behind it.
There were many interesting settings going on on Azeroth, such as returning to the Inn using a rune, travel speed was increased while mounted on a wyvern or a griffin, reaching your body with your soul after dying would result in resurrection, leveling up after completing tasks, and getting achievements for doing special tasks…
Some of these settings were very reminiscent of games, but they were quite easy for everyone to understand, as everyone there was a gamer. They wouldn’t feel weird about it, but might even find it quite interesting.
On the other hand, Chen Mo had gained another task on hand; creating the Universe of Azeroth!