Chapter 23: Cost of the Experience Store

Chen Mo received a call at the break of dawn from Lin Mao.

“Chen Mo, I’m releasing my game tomorrow. I named it Adventures of the Storm Rider. I’ve sent you a copy of it, go ahead and try it out. Also, how’s your game going?”

Chen Mo replied, “Cool, I’ll check it out! My game has been going pretty well, it’s basically finished. I’ll be testing it out in my experience store for feedback for the next two days.”

Lin Mao replied, “Huh? Finished? It’s only been three months! How did you complete it so quickly?”

Chen Mo replied, “Casual game. It wasn’t big, either. I’ll send you the installer in two days for you to test out.”

Lin Mao replied, “Alright. Let’s give each other opinions and improve together!”

——

Chen Mo installed the game had Lin Mao sent over on his phone.

Adventures of the Storm Rider. The installer was 94MB and had a little man raising his sword as the icon.

This game had been developed by Lin Mao for nearly half a year, taking another three months after getting Chen Mo’s opinion. That included testing, micro-adjustments, and pre-release preparations.

Comparatively, Chen Mo’s Plants vs Zombies was much faster. In the time Lin Mao took to make the adjustments, Chen Mo was able to finish an entire game!

——

Entering the game…

Chen Mo noticed that there were subtle changes made to the background, character, and playstyle compared to the previous version. The changes weren’t obvious, so only someone like Chen Mo who paid attention to little details like this would realize.

It seemed that Lin Mao had put a lot of effort into the gaming experience.

On the other hand, Lin Mao had completely revamped the playstyle according to Chen Mo’s suggestions.

First was the complete overhaul of the combat system, adding a lot of extra content while keeping the essence of the previous combat system. A noteworthy change was the addition of the new ability, Storm.

The main character was a knight who had the powers of the storm, able to utilize strong winds to slow down enemies and reduce their vision, or using heavy rain to slow down enemy attacks and afflict light status conditions. They could also summon a hurricane to blow away smaller, lighter enemies.

A few smaller storm attacks were permanent, but larger stronger attacks required energy to cast.

On the same note, there were now many more monsters which had different features. Different monsters might resist different storm attacks, while others were more effective.

For example, strong winds wouldn’t do much to an armored monster in full plate armor, and hurricanes wouldn’t be able to blow it away, either. However, rain could create muddy surfaces, drastically slowing its movement speed, even inflicting statuses such as sickness and rust, slowly reducing its attack.

Chen Mo admired the fact that the changes made to the combat weren’t as he had described, but took inspiration from what he had said.

Moreover, the core of the combat system: storm could be directly inferred from the name title. Chen Mo thought this was quite smart.

The name Adventures of the Storm Rider let the audience immediately know what the game was about, but still left enough to the imagination for the audience to be curious about the contents, making the game very attractive.

Another, bigger change to the game was the complete overhaul of the story. First, there were now four different endings, depending on the choices the players made throughout the game.

Ending One: The knight defeats the dragon, saving the princess and becomes the hero, living a happily ever after life with the princess.

Ending Two: The knight fails to save the princess, perishing in anger alongside the dragon.

Ending Three: The knight defeats the dragon, but does not kill it, instead signing a contract with it. From then on, the dragon becomes the guardian of the Imperials.

Ending Four: The knight defeats the dragon, but in the face of the allure of treasures, becomes the new dragon.

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The copy Chen Mo had included GM tools, allowing him to make changes to the attributes of the characters. In the end he spent three hours testing it, going over all four endings once.

If it was a normal playthrough, a run would take around six to eight hours, much more if the player wanted to go through all four endings.

Out of the three recommendations provided by Chen Mo, Lin Mao took two, not including the extreme difficulty. Chen Mo thought that it was the right choice, as the three weren’t completely compatible.

Chen Mo thought that the game needed some luck to become the next big thing, but being mildly popular wasn’t a problem.

——

Chen Mo sent a text to Lin Mao: I went over the game. Not bad! It’s bound to be popular.

Lin Mao replied quickly: I’ll take your blessings. I’m quite busy for the next two days with the release of the game. I’ll come over to your experience store and try out your game once this is settled.

Chen Mo replied: Alright, I’ll see you then.

After having lunch, Chen Mo took an hour-long nap. He woke up at 2 PM, ready to open the experience store.

But before he opened it, Chen Mo had some preparations to do.

First was checking if everything worked in the store, and if all the computers had the game installed.

Second was the price charged to use the experience store.

The price of the experience was completely up to the designer. Chen Mo could make it free and allow anyone to try out for free.

However, making it free had a flaw. What happened if the game was hugely popular?

If Chen Mo made a popular online game and many of the players were staying at the experience store for long periods of them, potentially hogging an entire PC, it would be problematic, as many of his fans wouldn’t be able to try it out.

Go free for now, then raise the price? That wouldn’t do, either.

The price of the experience store shouldn’t be changed willy-nilly. Reducing it was fine, but increasing it might anger some long-time fans.

It was only an experience store, so there wasn’t any pressure to make money. Chen Mo didn’t want to control the number of players in the future by increasing the price, either.

Therefore he needed to charge a fee from day one, and it couldn’t be a small amount, either.

Under circumstances where there are many players, he might even need to limit the play time per player.

In this world, the internet cafes in the Imperial Capital ranged from three to ten RMB an hour. Three RMB per hour was the minimum, and wasn’t common.

Of course, there were higher class internet cafes for the local tycoons, but Chen Mo had the majority of the players in mind when he was considering it.

In the end, Chen Mo decided to make it five RMB per hour, as the experience store was better than the average internet cafe, and much more spacious than normal.

The price was definitely on the expensive end for now, but Chen Mo wanted to maintain it at this price in the future. As he made more and more games, the price would seem more and more affordable.

The drinks in the experience store were according to the recommended retail prices, not charging any extra. Chen Mo didn’t care about small profits like that, either.

The price only applied while they were playing games. If the experience store was full, he would enforce a four-hour limit for each player, requiring them to requeue after four hours.

The experience store would be open from 10 AM to 8 PM, no overnights or hogging a PC if you’re not playing.

After preparations were complete, Chen Mo’s experience store was officially open for business at 2:30 PM!

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