Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Zheng Hongxi finished the questions in about half an hour.
Chen Mo was pretty happy with the results.
First question, Zheng Hongxi decided to have two different camps – Gods and Demons, with different martial arts separating them further. The two classes requested were monks and priests. One would be a tanky class, the other would be a caster class.
Zheng Hongxi jotten down a few weapons such as Ringed Blade, Scimitar, and Green Dragon Crescent Blade. and sorted them according to their rarity.
The next three questions were relevant to the World of Azeroth. As Zheng Hongxi was quite familiar with Azeroth, there were relatively more being written.
Take the fifth question for example, where Chen Mo intentionally omitted much of the information. Tirion Fordring was a key character in the lore of World of Warcraft, and his son Taelan was a member of the Scarlet Crusade. This questline played a key role in the ‘Love and Family’ chapter in the Plaguelands.
It was because of Taelan’s death that Tirion Fordring decided to restart the order of the Silver Hand, eventually playing a huge role in leading the charge to beating the Scourge.
Chen Mo hadn’t given that much detail on “World of Azeroth ”, only vaguely going over the relationship between Tirion Fordring and his son Taelan. Although Zheng Hongxi’s reimagination of the story was far off from the original, it was still acceptable.
Chen Mo was still quite satisfied after looking at the whole thing.
“Alright, not bad. Let’s talk about your salary. How much were you earning in your previous company?” asked Chen Mo.
“Six thousand.”
“How about this, I’ll give you eight thousand a month, with a month of trialing. If there isn’t much development going on, you’ll work Monday to Friday ten to seven. Otherwise, you’ll work OT on Saturdays, is that alright?” said Chen Mo after some thought.
Zheng Hongxi was very happy, “Yeah that’s great! What will I be mainly working on?”
“Mainly the story stuff, such as the main story, quest lines, equipment descriptions. Maybe designing entire worlds in the future, and possibly having you responsible for some story driven games,” replied Chen Mo.
Zheng Hongxi agreed, “Sure.”
Chen Mo said, “Alright, we’ll do the contracts in a bit. You can take this time to go back to the Magic City to pack your stuff. Are you alright to start working in a week?”
“Sure, I don’t really have many things back home anyways, shouldn’t take too long,” said Zheng Hongxi.
—
After sending off Zheng Hongxi, Chen Mo returned to the experience store.
Wen Lingwei said, “So, did you manage to acquire your second partner? I’m getting the feeling that the stubborn manager no longer wants to do this alone.”
“Manager, the weekend is around the corner, you said you were taking a week’s break before working on the next game,” reminded Su Jinyu.
Chen Mo was speechless, “Why are you in such a hurry? You’re not taking a good rest if you’re thinking of work all the time.”
Su Jinyu replied, “Manager, how could you be such a salted fish?”
“Alright, alright. Just hold on, I’ll send you a mindmap tomorrow, this time you’ll do everything by yourself,” said Chen Mo.
Su Jinyu was shocked, “Huh? I’m doing everything? Can I do it?”
Chen Mo reassured Su Jinyu, “Don’t worry, you can do it. This game is very simple, if you can’t do it, I might need to hire a new assistant.”
Su Jinyu was speechless.
“What about you manager? I think you said that you’ll be working on a new game yourself too right?” asked Su Jinyu.
Chen Mo nodded, “That’s right, I’m also doing one myself. You’ll know about it when it’s time.”
“Manager, please don’t make a game that relies on luck, I can’t handle that anymore!” pleaded Jia Peng.
“Oh, this game would probably be the most luck relient game ever made. Sorry about that,” apologised Chen Mo.
“… You guys go ahead, I’ll be leaving.” Jia Peng said coldly.”
“Tsk tsk. So the manager plans to make another money scamming game?” questioned Wen Lingwei.
Chen Mo shook his head, “I’m not scamming money this time. I told you I’m trying to work back some good karma to avoid an early death. It’ll be a very fair game this time.”
A visibly excited Jia Peng shouted, “A very fair game?!”
Wen Lingwei refused to believe that.
“Moreover, you guys have probably played it, even if you haven’t you’ve probably at least heard of it,” said Chen Mo.
“What is it?” Jia Peng dying to know.
“Alright, you guys will know when the time comes, I’ll be working on the mind map for the design document,” Chen Mo said asserting himself.
As Chen Mo finished his sentence, he went back upstairs to his office.
—
Ignoring the sounds of some angry fans, I Am MT was doing quite well. The specifications for Chinese card games were well thought out, everything the player does will be checked against the server, making it difficult for players to cheat or tamper with in-game data.
Moreover, these types of games were usually quite long term as mechanics such as acquiring cards and the difficulty of levels were planned and balanced extensively. It was even possible to calculate the time it would take for players to reach the later stages of the game.
Chen Mo wouldn’t have to make any changes to I Am MT for at least two months. He will have to release a few new cards and introduce mechanics here and there. These things wouldn’t take much time and could be done by setting aside a few hours.
As for even further into the future… It’s just a card game after all, and Chen Mo didn’t plan to live off it the rest of his life. When he’s made enough money from it, he’ll move on to the next game.
Chen Mo only received 12.8 million out of the 23 million from I Am MT in the first month.
This was already quite already as Chen Mo didn’t have any other platform to publish his games on.
The official app store only took twenty percent, other platforms such as Emperor Dynasty gaming platform or Fantasy Gaming Platform took varying cuts, up to eighty or ninety percent, leaving only ten to twenty percent to the videogame designer.
Moreover, this was only the first month, as the players increased over the next two or three months, the monthly revenue could increase too. As I Am MT is an online game, its profitability is naturally better than paid games.
Because of how profitable I Am MT was, Chen Mo didn’t even need to worry about needing the animation to make a profit. It was also quite difficult to have to find sponsors for animations, not to mention thanking said sponsors, so the profitability doesn’t come close to the game.
Therefore Chen Mo had no expectation on the profitability of the animated series, nor did he worry about that, only using it for publicity.
Now that he had the money to do so, he could do a few more draws to increase his attributes to the next level.
Within Chen Mo’s plans, Plants vs Zombies was to get his feet off the ground, I Am MT was to bring in money, the next game would have to deal with the problem of bringing in players. When all these preparations are done, he can finally make a game that would represent him and his company.
However, some planning was required to solve the problem of bringing in players.
Did Chen Mo have players? Yes, but also no.
There were many players from Plants vs Zombies and I Am MT. Although these players had Thunderbolt Gaming game passes, they weren’t considered Chen Mo’s players.