Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
As the release of Thunderbolt Tabletop had given Emperor Dynasty Entertainment a massive headache, the Chairman of Fantasy Gaming Platform, Ding Xing was also highly anxious.
Fantasy Gaming Platform was also a big distribution in China, but they weren’t as big into development as Emperor Dynasty Entertainment or Zen Entertainment.
Fantasy Gaming Platform placed huge emphasis on tabletop games, and was also a huge part in growing their player base. Understandably, Ding Xing was shocked when Thunderbolt Tabletop was released.
What is this?
Ding Xing felt that he was caught between the crossfire. Why was he caught between Chen Mo taking on the titans of Emperor Dynasty Entertainment.
And Chen Mo actually used the promotional spot on Emperor Dynasty Entertainment to promote his own tabletop games?
Emperor Dynasty Entertainment too, why did they actually promote it?
Aren’t they giving him the shovel to dig their own grave?
Chen Mo is giving away gaming pods through a tournament too? What a barbaric way to do things!
The most infuriating thing was that the players are actually falling for it?
What is the meaning of this!
Ever since Thunderbolt Tabletop went live, the daily active users for Fantasy Tabletop had dropped by tens of thousands, of course Ding Xin was worried.
Ding Xing also wondered how he was caught in the crossfire when it was clearly between Emperor Dynasty Entertainment and Chen Mo.
Ding Xing was now in the same situation as Lin Chaoxu, he wanted to retaliate, but what could he do? His games didn’t have a tournament mode at all!
Lucky draws? It wouldn’t work well! Even if they had to throw money at it to fix the problem, it wouldn’t fix the root of the problem!
However, even if it was in vain, he had to do something. If nothing was done, the players would continue falling, and before long, all of the users of Fantasy Gaming Platform would be gone.
Ding Xing had to bite the bullet, “We are also giving out gaming pods! Everyone will be working overtime to make a tournament mode as well!”
—
Chem Mo’s actions had stirred waves within the tabletop games community. There were countless video game designers working overtime just to make a tournament mode. If Chen Mo’s hate meter could level up, it probably would’ve gone up by three levels in one week.
However, the fans that were waiting for drama finally got what they asked for. Around four tabletop games started giving out prizes, and many of them started to log into multiple accounts to try and have a chance at the lucky draws.
However, the efforts by the other games are largely meaningless, as the tabletop games that use lucky draw systems didn’t require the player to pay attention. It was only because Thunderbolt Tabletop had a tournament mode that players were inclined to grind out in Thunderbolt Tabletop for credits to increase their placing on the leaderboard.
—
Sunday.
Dou Dizhu, Mahjong as well as Thunderbolt Poker within Thunderbolt Tabletop had started their finals round. After an hour of exciting gameplay, the first three places of all three games finally emerged.
Chen Mo also had his eyes on the matter, livestreaming the entire competition on Weibo, and released the winners at the end of it as well. He also contacted the winners as soon as possible to send out the prizes as early as possible.
When the competition finished, more focus was drawn to the game, and now more players had their eyes on future tournaments.
“I was shaking the entire lifestream. These final contestants are insane! I didn’t know there were this many pros in these tabletop games…”
“Transparent competition with no chance of pulling shenanigans. A few of the competitors were my buddies too. I’ll have to give Chen Mo a thumbs up for that.”
“Impressive. Chen Mo even managed to give tabletop games an interesting gimmick. All I can say is that he’s number one at whatever he does!”
“The designers for other games must be super nervous to experience the wrath of Thunderbolt Gaming once again…”
“Chen Mo really has many good ideas. I don’t usually play tabletop games and I was still drawn in by this. Even though I never came close to entering the finals, I still continue to play every day.”
“There’s no way I could go back to other tabletop games after getting used to Thunderbolt Tabletop. Everything else is just too crude! Thunderbolt Tabletop has the best player experience for tabletop games in the market, bar none!”
“Please let Emperor Dynasty Tabletop know that I’m not coming back…”
“+1”
“Let Fantasy Tabletop know that I’m not going back either.”
“Wait for me, previous poster. I’ll be right there after I get my hands on the lucky draw!”
—
After the first week, Thunderbolt Tabletop reached 2.2 million users, the number of users I Am MT reached in a month.
If this hype keeps going, Chen Mo estimated that Thunderbolt Tabletop could bring Thunderbolt Gaming Platform more than eight million users, and optimistically ten million.
How many players were ten million?
In season one of League of Legends, they had 1.4 million users, and when Season 2 came around, that number became 11.5 million.
That was basically slightly under the number of players Dota2 and Overwatch had.
Of course, there were many inactive players in tabletop games compared to MOBAs. Half of the players were probably inactive players, and there probably weren’t many loyal players. Most of the players would probably play a game or two before their long hiatus away from the game.
Moreover, the number of players Thunderbolt Tabletop achieved didn’t even come close to the two hundred million of Tencent Tabletop from his previous world.
However, Chen Mo was quite satisfied at this number. At least he now had a playerbase to advertise his future games to.
Chen Mo didn’t expect this to profit. He planned to return all the profits back into the community, and even use some of I Am MT’s profits as well, continuing to host competitions every week, and giving out gaming pods every week.
If he continued at this pace, he would be giving out one million RMB worth of stuff a month. Chen Mo could still afford that cost, even when including the customer service team as well as the cost of the servers.
Just like the wars on ride sharing apps or bicycle renting apps in his previous life, money burning out of your pocket wasn’t a sign to stop. As Chen Mo was set on contending the spot on the hill, he couldn’t stop until he converted all the players from other platforms.
Moreover, how much did it actually cost? One to two million a month for that many users? That was a good price to pay in the long run.
—
Emperor Dynasty Tabletop and Fantasy Tabletop also started releasing their own tournament modes in the second week, they were also giving out prizes through the tournaments as well.
This managed to salvage a portion of their playerbase, but it was still just in retaliation. As they had a huge number of players, combined with the fact that Thunderbolt Tabletop had a better user experience, releasing the tournament first, Thunderbolt Tabletop without a doubt had all the attention on them in this war of attrition.
The power transfer was already complete. The tabletop games industry which was originally held by Emperor Dynasty Tabletop and Fantasy Tabletop had been severely impacted by Thunderbolt Tabletop’s explosive entry to the industry, taking away a huge number of their player base and becoming the third most influential game.
And there wasn’t much else the other tabletop games could do other than shiver in their boots.