Almighty Video Game Designer

Chapter 220: Revenue

Many industry professionals had their eyes on Reaper of Souls as well.

Everybody knew about Diablo’s crippling decline. Players and designers alike were trying to figure out how to reverse the process and extend Diablo’s life, but nothing conclusive was reached.

Many suggestions pitched by players or designers were quickly shut down by others. These suggestions would always entail changing the core of Diablo or make it decline faster.

As a hack and slash game, it was natural that people would get bored of it quickly.

And in the eyes of many designers, there was nothing that could be done as in order to solve the problem, the core of the game must be changed, which would obviously affect how fun the game was.

The pros and cons of a game like this were two sides of the same coin, and improvements difficult to implement.

But nobody expected Chen Mo to double down on the hack and slash element of the game.

You think grinding is boring?

Alright, I’ll just add more ways to make you grind. Are you still bored?

Many players realised that it wasn’t boring, but was actually quite fun!

It was like reverse psychology. Although the game seemed to be even more grindy after the release of ranked seasons and the leaderboards, people gained more enjoyment out of it.

There were even articles analyzing how Reaper of Souls managed to save Diablo’s post game.

“As someone who got bored of Diablo, it’s hard to imagine that Reaper of Souls had made such a big change in the game.

“First it increased the content.

“The expansion pack continued to maintain its unique atmosphere with mountains of corpses, feeling townspeople, and demons all over the place. This was maintained all the way, and you could feel the world calling.

“The best part was the confrontation between the main character and Adria. It was so satisfying to be able to kill that horrible witch again and again!

“What’s most surprising was the Nephalem Rift mechanic. Different maps and random elements are joined together, making it so every level after being teleported into the realm feels like a crazy fever dream.

“And when you kill the last boss, the ground is positively littered with loot, and ancient equipment would drop almost every single time. Chen Mo created a simple yet effective system, launch the game, kill bosses, get rewards, quit the game. The players can skip over all the convoluted steps and enjoy the best of hacking and slashing.

“In truth, through the expansion pack, Chen Mo let us know that the core of the game is still grinding. Chen Mo used a few new game modes that suited Diablo really well to revive this game.

“The pros of this game: Dark atmosphere, adventures, long-lasting satisfaction, and amazing visual effects.

“If you like games where you kill hordes upon hordes of mobs, then without a shadow of a doubt, Diablo: Reaper of Souls is your best pick”

—

Diablo’s expansion pack, Reaper of Souls, gave a new life to the game, extending its lifespan, solidifying Diablo’s position in this genre.

And its unique art style and game play became a popular branch under the RPG tree as video game designers look into it again and again.

And the designer who was most inspired by Reaper of Souls was probably Yan Zhenyuan.

Reaper of Souls arrived after he decided on the post game of this new project, and even started working on the design documents of the game.

After investigating the features of Reaper of Souls, Yan Zhenyuan spent three days making huge changes to the design of the game.

Although this meant that a lot of work had to be redone, dramatically increasing the workload, Yan Zhenyuan was sure that it would be worth it in the end.

After seeing how Reaper of Souls solved Diablo’s lack of a postgame, Yan Zhenyuan also noticed the problem in his previous thought process.

Yan Zhenyuan planned to incorporate techniques used in online games to extend the playtime, but from the looks of it, this way of extending playtime would surely affect the quality of the game.

And Chen Mo’s way of solving that same problem was probably the most ideal thus far.

Of course there were differences in the design concept in VR and PC games, and as a S-grade videogame designer, Yan Zhenyuan wouldn’t blindly copy it. However, he got some inspiration for this and gained a whole new found respect for Chen Mo.

“This guy is really something else.”

—

The development of Diablo wasn’t just to pave the way for future development of RPG games, but more importantly, it was a test in many aspects.

Testing the acceptance of players towards third person RPGs.

Testing the acceptance of dark, scary themes.

Testing the acceptance towards grinding.

And Don’t Starve’s release was to test the acceptance of players towards sandbox games.

Each of these points can be developed into games of different genres, and was a roadmap for Chen Mo’s game development in the future.

Following Reaper of Souls’ great success, Chen Mo had plenty of money on hand.

Diablo sold 9.8 million copies world wide. Although this doesn’t come close to thirty million by Blizzard in his previous life, it was certainly a result to be proud of.

Reaper of Souls had sold 2.9 million copies, and this was before its release internationally. Almost all the players who would Diablo bought the expansion pack.

(And the Chinese players in this world finally got a taste of getting a game before the rest of the world.)

Don’t Starve sold 4.35 million copies in China. This doesn’t compare to his previous life, but it was almost a miracle for such a tiny sandbox game to do so well in this world.

Chen Mo managed to gain a lot in terms of popularity and money selling these two games.

Chen Mo had around seven hundred million RMB on hand for development. Diablo cost quite a bit in its development, and including Reaper of Souls, it cost nearly two hundred million RMb. Don’t Starve’s cost was barely anything in comparison.

High quality games like these cost a lot of money after all.

Thankfully, Diablo did equally well in the international market. Chen Mo’s revenue is as follows:

Diablo Chinese profits: three hundred and forty million.

Diablo International profits: 1.23 billion.

Don’t Starve Chinese profits: sixty-one million.

Reaper of Souls Chinese profits: two hundred and thirty six million.

Of course, Onmyoji and Warcraft were still bringing Chen Mo profits.

After working for so long, Chen Mo finally broke a milestone of three billion RMB for development.