Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
It didn’t take long before games took notice of Lifeline on Thunderbolt Platform and discussion to start.
“Interactive fiction? My goodness, I thought Chen Mo fell into the abyss of pay to win games and was a lost cause. I didn’t expect him to release a standalone game.”
“A scammy game, then a tabletop game, then an interactive fiction. This amount of tossing and turning is impressive!”
“My god, Thunderbolt Tabletop had only been out for a week. This guy is printing out these games!”
“One RMB is quite cheap, buy first talk later���”
“Clearance sale! It’s the genuine stuff! There’s no need to ask for the price, everything here is one RMB! It’s just one RMB, you wouldn’t even feel scammed at that amount. If you can’t even spare one RMB you wouldn’t be able to buy anything, you’re just poor!”
“My goodness, I almost thought you were a sales person hired by Chen Mo, previous OP.”
“Has anyone tried it? Is it good?”
“I tried it and it seems quite interesting! I’m not going to spoil the story, but I’m really into the game right now.”
“Anyone else look up 150 rads like I did?”
“The story is amazing, did Chen Mo write that? I only just found out that he was this good as writing, I’m impressed.”
“Are you guys serious? Could you be that into an interactive fiction? Have you guys not seen a real game? Whatever, I’m done with you guys I’m off to chat with Taylor.”
“Help, has anyone gotten the perfect ending?
—
It didn’t take long before the downloads for Lifeline to explode.
As the popularity of Thunderbolt continued to increase, there were millions of users everyday, and each and everyone of them would see Lifeline.
And the ratings of Lifeline were quite high, maintaining around 4.5 stars, which also drew players to get the game.
Moreover, at just one RMB, Lifeline was a steal.
Many players shared the game to their friends and on Weibo. 150 rads even became a trending topic on search engines.
Soon, the number of sales of Lifeline for the first twenty four hours was released, thirty-nine thousand eight hundred and seventy-four!
This was double the amount of sales Plants vs Zombies achieved, but it was slightly lower than Guardian of the Holy Spring.
Of course, this also had to do with the lower price as the game was a tenth of the price. In terms of revenue, Lifeline might only bring in thirty to forty thousand, a ways away from Plants vs Zombies.
Moreover, the difference in revenue will be even bigger down the line as it had a niche audience.
However, it didn’t matter as Chen Mo intended to use it as a test for how well Thunderbolt Gaming Platform did as a distribution platform. And from the looks of it, Thunderbolt Gaming Platform had similar effects to that of a middle of the road advertising space on the official app store.
This wasn’t a bad result to be able to compete with strong foes in an environment like this. It could even be called a miracle for being able to gather this many players in a week.
—
Lin Chaoxu didn’t think that just one promotional space on the first page managed to cause so many waves.
He thought that Chen Mo would use that promotional space to promote I Am MT to bring another ten million or so revenue to his pocket every month, which wouldn’t have done too much damage to Emperor Dynasty Entertainment.
But upon seeing Thunderbolt Tabletop, Lin Chaoxu knew that Chen Mo wasn’t a shortsighted videogame designer, and his ambition was much higher than everyone thought!
A young man who hadn’t even been in the industry for a year managed to make four games from different genres, all of which did really well!
The release of Thunderbolt Gaming Platform further revealed Chen Mo’s true intentions.
But at this point, there wasn’t much more Lin Chaoxu could do as Thunderbolt Gaming Platform had gathered a very loyal fanbase.
Now Chen Mo had money and the user base, the only thing he was lacking was a product to be his poster child.
A game like I Am MT wasn’t suitable despite it bringing in a lot of revenue, it’s public image was terrible. On the other hand, Plants vs Zombies was just a casual standalone game. Many players and industry professionals felt that Chen Mo couldn’t stand side by side with other video game designers.
It would need to take a few more months for the dust to settle, and many players and designers were waiting for Chen Mo’s next move.
What was he trying to do?
Make more scammy games? Continue expanding his userbase? Or will he make another game from a different genre?
Nobody knew what Chen Mo was planning.
—
Within two months, the playerbase of Thunderbolt Gaming Platform grew steadily.
The user base of Thunderbolt Tabletop stabilised at around nine million, with around 2.7 million daily active players, becoming Thunderbolt Gaming Platform’s biggest and main game.
Although Thunderbolt Gaming Platform was still unable to knock down Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform and Fantasy Gaming Platform, it was now at least a small player in the industry.
I Am MT was operating as usual, although the monthly revenue dropped slightly, Chen Mo still managed to get close to ten million net revenue every month from it.
And there were a few changes within the industry in this time.
There were now around eight new tabletop games on the official app store as well as other major distributors, all of which had different themes such as Wuxia, Fantasy, anime, homebrew IPs, popular novels, and animations. However, they all shared the same feature, they were essentially carbon copies of I Am MT.
From combat system to the VIP system, even the player guides, they were all referencing I Am MT. The changes they would make would only be aesthetically as nobody dared to change the core of the format.
As the designers didn’t comprehensively understand the mechanisms that made I Am MT so profitable, they were afraid that any changes they made to the game would cause it to perform terribly.
Even Emperor Dynasty Entertainment who released a game called Demon Slayers, based on a popular web novel by the same name, had a gameplay comparable to that of I Am MT.
It couldn’t be helped as I Am MT was entirely unique, from its gameplay to its method of revenue. No matter how other games try to hide it, players who’ve played I Am MT would be able to easily tell that it was based on I Am MT.
If they really wanted to make it different from I Am MT, that would mean making a game of a different genre and profit method, completely losing the meaning of copying.
These games were released within two to three weeks of one another, all of them wanted to release as early as possible, as being late to the party would mean missed opportunities.
It didn’t take long before the players cracked.
Was one scammy game not enough? Look at now many of you guys are gathering together now! Why did you have to choose Chen Mo of all people to mimic?