Chapter 87: Poker

–Inside the experience store.–

Su Jinyu and Zheng Hongxi were working hard at Lifeline.

The others were doing their own things, Wen Lingwei was on a massage chair catching up on drama using a tablet.

The experience store was now the place where Wen Lingwei and the others would gather most frequently. They would visit if they had nothing to do, ushering Chen Mo to release new games.

Chen Mo said, “Let’s take a break and play a game.”

“Hmm?” Su Jinyu was shocked, “Play a game? What kind of game?”

Zheng Hongxi lifted his head up at a loss as he was stuck in the middle of his thought.

Jia Peng replied, “Sure thing, don’t have much to do anyways. What type of game is it?”

Chen Mo took out a set of poker cards, “Poker.”

“…You guys go ahead, I’ll take my leave,” said Jia Peng.

Chen Mo laughed, “Don’t worry, you can watch or be the dealer.”

“Manager, don’t tell us you plan to play Dou Dizhu, we have eight people here,” Wen Lingwei said lazily.

“Not Dou Dizhu, it’s a game that you guys have never played before,” explained Chen Mo.

Chang Xiuya was shocked, “A game none of us have played? That can’t be possible!”

“Come over here, it’s good that we have eight people. If Jia Peng deals, we’ll play with a table of seven,” said Chen Mo.

Su Jinyu asked, “Is there a requirement with the number of players?”

Chen Mo shook his head, “We can play with two to nine players.”

“What about more than nine?” asked Su Jinyu.

“Oh, in theory we can play with more than nine players, but we wouldn’t fit at the table,” explained Chen Mo.

“…How convenient,” said Su Jinyu.

Chen Mo ushered everyone to join, “Come, I’ll teach you the rules in the meeting room.”

“What can you do with a set of poker cards… Is there a prize for winning? I’m not joining if there isn’t,” said Wen Lingwei.

“Of course there is, I’ll buy anything within five thousand RMB for whatever the winner desires,” said Chen Mo.

“Five thousand?”

“Anything?”

“The manager sure is different now that he has money!”

Soon, everyone started making their way into the meeting room.

Zheng Hongxi was speechless.

Everyone was now sat around the table in the meeting room/

Chen Mo took out a set of chips that were custom made.

Su Jinyu exclaimed, “What is that, manager?”

“Chips, it’s basically money. But we can’t use money because that would be gambling,” explained Chen Mo as he distributed the chips.

The chips were tiles slightly bigger than a coin, each of them had a different number of them of different colours.

Everyone was given one five hundred, three one hundreds, six twenty fives, and ten fives.

“Now everyone has one thousand in chips. Whoever gets all the chips in the end wins. There will only be one winner,” explained Chen Mo.

Su Jinyu asked as she fiddled with the chips, “Manager, are you sure we won’t be arrested for gambling?”

“…No, as long as nobody puts money on the table,” said Chen Mo.

Wen Lingwei was also playing with the chips, “Do you need these to play? It’s not like Dou Dizhu?”

Chen Mo nodded, “Yep, we need chips to play. Alright, now that everyone’s seated, Jia Peng will sit in the middle, yes, right in the middle. You’ll be the dealer.”

Weng Lingwei raised her hand, “I object, I feel like if he deals, everyone’s cards will be terrible.”

Jia Peng was speechless, “Senior, you know I have feelings too right?”

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fair if all our hands are bad,” said Chen Mo.

“I don’t feel any better!” exclaimed Jia Peng.

Chen Mo spread out the cards on the table face down, “We’ll make it simple as we are playing by ourselves. Everyone grab a card, and whoever gets the largest card will be the dealer.”

Su Jinyu asked, “What does the dealer do?”

Chen Mo asked, “The dealer has a better position. Pick a card.”

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Wen Lingwei thought she drew the biggest card with a King, but Zheng Hongxi came out with an Ace.

Jia Peng said, “I’m just from looking at how lucky you guys are.”

Chen Mo put a doll in front of Zheng Hongxi, This represents the dealer. The dealer will move clockwise to the next person after every hand.”

“We’ll do a testing round first.”

Chen Mo started explaining the rules of Texas hold ’em.

Texas hold ’em was one of those games that are easy to learn, hard to master. It wouldn’t take more than five minutes for someone to understand the rules.

Under the guidance of Chen Mo, everyone started getting a hang of it.

—

After half an hour and observing two rounds, Chen Mo returned upstairs to work on the design document after making sure everyone understood the rules.

In order to understand how the people of this world would understand Texas hold ’em, Chen Mo decided to teach them how to play. It was essentially a preview of how the promotion of the game would go.

The rules of Texas hold ’em were complete as it had been tested thoroughly and withstood the test of time in the previous world. It could even be described as flawless. However, Chen Mo had to consider if he should use its uniqueness to promote Thunderbolt Tabletop.

Texas hold ’em was popular overseas because professional poker players were able to make a living out of it. In the end, it was money that provided the most excitement.

But Chen Mo couldn’t do that as it would be considered gambling if money was involved, making it illegal. Moreover, there were societal impacts to gambling, and Chen Mo didn’t want to be responsible for making a game that would destroy families.

Therefore Chen Mo wanted to remove as much of the gamlbing aspect from Texas hold ’em as possible, and promote it as a competition. This would give the players a sense of the excitement from player Texas hold ’em.

Just like Dou Dizhu and Mahjong, once the gamlbing aspect is removed, they are all fantastic tabletop games.

Many big players of the tech or investing industry liked to play poker wasn’t for the money as every one of them had millions in net worth.

Texas hold ’em were a type of puzzle game to them, and were similar to starting businesses and investing, all requiring them to understand what their competitors would do and changing tactics based on that, as well as knowing when to back out to cut losses.

After confirming that Texas hold ’em also had the same attraction to the people of this world, Chen Mo already had an idea of how to promote this game. This idea would be the best way to acquire the most players, having them taste the fun of Texas hold ’em, and eventually keeping them as players.

—

As the days go by, the development of Lifeline and Thunderbolt Tabletop continues steadily.

Zheng Hongxi won the first Texas hold ’em competition using his amazing luck, beating Wen Lingwei and receiving five thousand RMB in prizes.

Chen Mo even ordered a trophy, with the words: “Champion of the First internal Thunderbolt Poker competition”/

From then on, everyone was interested in playing it, the few who don’t have anything would play poker in the meeting room, all trying to win the poker tournament next week to get the prize as well as the trophy.

What surprised everyone was that the more they get into, the more tricks they uncover, precisely the “easy to learn, difficult to master” type of game.

After two weeks, most of them were completely obsessed with poker.

Of course, this was under the driving force of winning prizes.

Their interest would undoubtedly be much lower without the few thousand RMB in prizes.

As for the story for Lifeline, it’s been refreshed multiple times, so much that Zheng Hongxi couldn’t keep track of how many drafts he had done. But the more changes he made, the more interested and complex the story became.

Chen Mo did a quick once over the dialogues and concluded that the game had about the same pace as the one from the previous world. Of course there were some differences in the content, but it wasn’t a problem.

The two games this time were very simple for Chen Mo, including the artworks, it was done in a month’s time. The next step would be constantly making changes and improvements, as well as improving the user experience.

In this seemingly quiet month within the mobile community, there was something dark brewing.

Just from rumours Chen Mo heard from different channels, there were at least three or four companies developing card games similar to I Am MT.

And these were the ones that Chen Mo caught wind of, there would be even more than he had never heard of so far. In terms of development it could take two to four months. They would most certainly go live in the first moments they are completed.

There could be waves of new mobile card games just as Chen Mo’s previous life, and the players would experience the horror of being overwhelmed by these games.

Perhaps the games would have different art styles and themes, but there was something that had to be the same, their source of revenue and the how the numbers were structured, all undoubtedly taking a page out of I Am MT’s book.

However, Chen Mo didn’t mind as it wasn’t at all a bad news for him.

I Am MT had been strongly holding onto the advantage of being first, and the other games would forever live in the shadows of I Am MT, it would be impossible for any of them to disturb I Am MT’s standings.

These games might even expand the card game user base.

Of course, the companies that work faster would earn a lot of money, but it was inevitable. Chen Mo was fine with them earning money as long as he earned more.

Moreover, the waves of card games serve as a good distraction of the gaming community, given Chen Mo more breathing room to set his foundation for future games.

The games that would threaten I Am MT would be games such as Soul Hunters who completely revamp the playstyle, and surpassing the first generation of Chinese card games. Chen Mo estimated that the other videogame designers would take at least a year to reach the level of Soul Hunters.

Due to the nature of card games allowing their designers to earn money easily, most designers lose interest in improving, even staying in their comfort zone, unwilling to make any big changes to the first generation of card games.

Only when the players lose interest and start to hate it will designers try to make improvements, changing the playstyle of the first generation of card games.

And Chen Mo could do so much more with a year.

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