Chapter 17: Ten Consecutive Draws
The next day, Chen Mo woke up at nine, took a shower, went downstairs for a walk, and bought breakfast.
Chen Mo got up relatively late, partly because he was quite fond of sleeping and always felt his mind was clearer after getting enough rest, and partly due to habits from his previous life.
In his past life, the gaming industry often required staying up late at night, and morning work hours tended to be later. As a result, Chen Mo's daily schedule hadn't fully adjusted to the most scientifically optimal routine.
After finishing breakfast, Chen Mo returned to his studio and began brainstorming his first game.
Countless games existed in Chen Mo's mind, but he needed to carefully consider which one to develop.
In this world, the cost of developing games was very low. There was no need to rent office space or hire programmers, and most of the major expenses for game development could be saved.
However, this didn't mean there were no costs or limitations to developing games in this world.
One of the bigger limitations was art resources.
Game music could be commissioned from others; as long as you had money, it could be arranged, and as long as the quality wasn't too poor, players wouldn't be overly picky.
But game art was different. If Chen Mo wanted to develop large-scale games, the character concept art, models, scene concept art, and models would all need to be created from scratch. The free resources on the editor might not necessarily be usable.
Moreover, these things were quite expensive.
To give a simple example, for an ordinary mobile game's card illustrations, cheap ones cost eight or nine hundred, while expensive ones could go up to seven or eight thousand. For higher-quality work, even pricier options existed. Just the concept art alone was a huge expense.
Not to mention models, animations, special effects, and so on. These wouldn't be cheaper than concept art, and they were also troublesome to produce.
The game editor did have a large number of free resources, but those were all generic resources of average quality.
*Flappy Bird* could use public art resources because its assets were extremely simple. After Chen Mo hand-drew the bird, he could find similar substitutes for all the other art assets and use them directly.
However, if Chen Mo wanted to faithfully recreate a large-scale game from his previous life, the art resources would inevitably need to match the original, which was much more troublesome.
Why did the art have to match the original? Because a game is a relatively delicate thing, like a precisely functioning pocket watch. If any part is replaced, it might malfunction.
Of course, those shoddily made reskinned games didn't count; such games could never become blockbusters.
Every blockbuster game had its gameplay, art, and music perfectly aligned in every aspect, all carefully selected by designers from dozens of options.
Chen Mo had to be extremely cautious about changing any part of them; otherwise, it would be like casually altering a timeless poem. Even changing a single word could reduce the poem to third-rate quality.
Therefore, Chen Mo had to restore every detail of these classic games as faithfully as possible, including the art, which had to be identical.
The second major limitation was Chen Mo's own abilities.
Although Chen Mo had been a lead designer in his previous life, everyone had their specialties, and he wasn't good at everything.
Numerical design and level design had always been handled by dedicated designers. Chen Mo understood some of it, but he couldn't claim to be exceptionally proficient.
Some games seemed simple but actually had high requirements. For example, *Happy Match* (a fictional game resembling Candy Crush) had simple rules and seemed easy, but its level design was actually very sophisticated. The difficulty increased steadily from one level to the next, and the game's pacing had to be tightly controlled. With Chen Mo's current level design abilities, he couldn't achieve that.
There were also some domestic pay-to-win games that seemed to lack technical depth, but in reality, more than half of their technical content lay in the numerical design.
For example, how should VIP levels be set? What should the power gap be between different VIP players? How much power could a player gain by spending money? On which day should a player be able to push through to which chapter? How should the game's pacing be controlled?
All of these were numerical issues. Chen Mo understood them, but he couldn't claim to be one hundred percent confident.
*Flappy Bird* was ultimately an extremely simple little game that didn't need to consider numerical design or levels at all. But the explosive popularity of such small games couldn't be replicated. In the long run, Chen Mo had to be versatile and raise all his abilities to above 80 points to perfectly recreate some of the classic masterpieces from his previous life.
So, how to solve these problems?
Spend money! Was there any other choice? Spending money changes fate!
"If you encounter a difficult problem, it must be because you haven't spent enough money," Chen Mo muttered to himself as he opened the virtual screen on his wristband.
Chen Mo had received 300,000 in development funds and planned to use 200,000 of it for draws. As for the remaining 100,000, he would keep it for emergencies.
One thing that really bothered Chen Mo was that *Flappy Bird* had to be offered for free to players for three months as the winning entry of the game design competition. There would be no profit during those three months.
Chen Mo had known this from the beginning of the competition, but at that time, first, he didn't know how well *Flappy Bird* would be received in this world or how popular it could become; second, he really wanted the experience store, and with such limited resources, *Flappy Bird* had become his only choice.
So, even though he anticipated some loss, Chen Mo still chose to use *Flappy Bird* to compete.
But now, thinking about how *Flappy Bird* in his previous life earned its creator nearly 300,000 a day, Chen Mo felt a pang of pain, as if he had missed out on several hundred million.
At least for these three months, Chen Mo couldn't count on *Flappy Bird* to make him money. Quickly developing the next game was the right path.
Opening the recharge interface, Chen Mo deposited all 200,000 into his wristband. The balance displayed: 2,097,340. Chen Mo thought for a moment, then added a bit more to round it off to 2,100,000 points.
Since he had already spent 200,000, he didn't mind the extra three hundred. Rounding it off also served as a small indulgence for his mild obsessive-compulsive disorder.
2,100,000 points, with 100,000 points per draw, was enough for 21 draws.
At that moment, Chen Mo noticed a new option on the virtual screen's wheel: [Ten Consecutive Draws].
"...How thoughtful! Was [Ten Consecutive Draws] not available before because I didn't have enough points for ten draws?" Chen Mo grumbled.
[Ten Consecutive Draws] also had a small note: "Guaranteed to yield a rare item."
It was just like the pay-to-win games from his previous life, using every trick to encourage players to spend more money.
Chen Mo knew that in 99% of games, ten consecutive draws were more cost-effective than single draws, so his best choice was to go straight for the ten consecutive draw.
Chen Mo paced around his studio, then went to wash his hands and face.
Before the ten consecutive draw, he had to make adequate preparations.
Calming himself down, Chen Mo decided to try a single draw first to test his luck.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...
The wheel spun rapidly, then clicked to a stop on the blue area: [Rare Skill Book].
"Oh? Not bad."
Chen Mo perked up. This was his first time drawing a blue skill book. It seemed washing his hands and face had worked.
Chen Mo clicked on the blue skill book and saw a prompt: "Special Skill Book: Music and Sound Effects Skill +10."