Chapter 19: The New Game Is Finalized
In Chen Mo's plans, he was still focusing on PC games and mobile games, without considering browser games.
Browser games had indeed experienced a period of great popularity in his previous life, enjoying a time of glory. But the biggest problem was that browser games thrived under specific circumstances and among specific player groups. Their success was short-lived and difficult to replicate.
In Chen Mo's previous life, browser games were only popular for three to five years before rapidly declining, replaced by mobile games. And mobile games, within an extremely short time, transformed from shoddy productions to high-quality products, and this pace was constantly accelerating.
The cost-effectiveness of browser games was indeed high, but without a player base, everything else was meaningless.
What kind of players existed in this world?
They had seen many large-scale VR games, and the quality of virtual games was even higher than the AAA masterpieces of Chen Mo's previous life. For these people, would you give them browser games to play?
Pull a "Legendary Dragon Blade, Click to Claim"?
That would probably result in losing your pants.
In fact, for Chen Mo, mobile games were the evolved form of browser games, completely dominating them in every aspect.
In terms of convenience, playing browser games at work required nervously closing the webpage. Mobile games could be played anytime; when the boss came, you just flipped the phone face down on the desk.
In terms of graphics, browser games were limited by their production methods, requiring constant resource loading. Incomplete image loading was common, severely impacting the gaming experience.
In terms of gameplay, the classic mechanics of browser games were mostly inherited by mobile games, and mobile games, through continuous development, had introduced many new gameplay elements.
Therefore, browser games were essentially a genre completely replaced by mobile games. For Chen Mo to develop browser games now, he would have to have a screw loose.
Chen Mo thought for a long time. For his first real game, he ultimately settled on a classic casual game from his previous life: *Plants vs. Zombies*.
This wasn't the most profitable option, but it was the safest and most long-term choice.
What did Chen Mo need most right now?
Money? He needed it, but it wasn't the most crucial.
What he needed most right now was fame.
Chen Mo's choice of *Plants vs. Zombies* for his first game was mainly based on three considerations.
First, the resource size of this game was small. The installation package was only about 100 MB, and all resources could be controlled within 300 MB. (Game installation packages are usually compressed and don't represent the actual resource size.)
Moreover, the numerical settings of this game were relatively transparent, and the level design was very clear. With Chen Mo's current numerical and level design abilities, he could handle it.
In terms of art and music, the main difficulty lay in the design, but since Chen Mo was essentially copying it, there wasn't much challenge.
So, this was a relatively controllable game for Chen Mo.
Second, Chen Mo needed fame and reputation. Making pay-to-win games could indeed make money, but it was hard to achieve explosive popularity, and it would likely invite criticism.
For his first game, Chen Mo wanted to create a national-level game, allowing as many players as possible to see the Thunder Game logo and know him as the designer, Chen Mo.
Getting all players to know him was a long-term goal, but it had to be planned from the very first game.
Third, *Plants vs. Zombies* seemed simple, but it was actually a very comprehensive game. Its strategic elements were particularly outstanding, making it a timeless, highly replayable game.
Assuming it took about three months to develop a game, each of Chen Mo's games had to keep players engaged for at least a month without getting bored. From this perspective, *Plants vs. Zombies* crushed a large number of single-player casual games.
Furthermore, this game could be released simultaneously on PC and mobile phones, and even achieving cross-platform data synchronization was no problem.
Ultimately, Chen Mo decided: Thunder Interactive's first game would be *Plants vs. Zombies*!
Chen Mo stood up and walked around the experience store, resting for about ten minutes before starting the formal development.
Chen Mo didn't rush to use the memory recall potion. The potion's effective time was only four hours. He had to first try hard to recall and build the overall framework of the game. The potion would be used to recall the parts he truly couldn't remember.
First, he wrote the design documents, then input the basic rules of the game into the Fantasy World Editor, which would generate the game's basic framework.
In his previous life, Chen Mo was very fast at writing design documents, basically one to two times faster than other designers. A system design draft of over ten thousand words, including conceptualizing, drawing prototypes, sorting out logic, and finalizing, would take about five to seven working days.
And this included time for deliberation and revision.
Of course, depending on the game's architecture, the number of design documents would vary. Generally, even for a mid-tier mobile game, there would be at least 20 to 30 design documents, large and small, covering different systems.
As for various configuration tables and resource requirement tables, there were even more, and a large portion of them would never be seen in the game.
Writing design documents mainly took time for thinking and weighing different design options. However, since the settings of *Plants vs. Zombies* were very complete and Chen Mo didn't want to make any changes, he wrote very quickly.
Interface layout, battle system, level settings, plant types, zombie types, special gameplay... Soon, the big framework for each design document was in place.
Then, Chen Mo started searching for free resources in the editor and downloading them using his resource quota.
For the art resources, to ensure this game could best reproduce the original, Chen Mo had to personally hand-draw and oversee them.
These free resources were just substitutes, used to avoid hindering the development progress. Once the game was mostly complete, Chen Mo would replace all these art resources.
Green fields, plants, zombies—there were actually quite a few art assets with similar elements, but only a small portion were barely usable, and the art styles were all over the place. But since they were just substitute resources, they would have to do.
Just writing the big framework of the design documents and finding art resources took Chen Mo three days.
During this time, the company's review passed, and "Thunder Interactive" was officially established. Chen Mo's titles on Weibo and in the editor also gained one more: Founder of Thunder Interactive.
Of course, this title was currently empty, because the company was just a shell with nothing.
According to Chen Mo's plans, Thunder Interactive might have multiple branches, such as Thunder Games, Thunder Literature, Thunder Animation, Thunder Films, and so on.
Of course, these were just some strategic plans. If the opportunity arose, he would pursue them; if not, he wouldn't. Chen Mo's own idea was to deeply cultivate the gaming field. As for other things like literature and animation, they were indeed very helpful to games, but they weren't Chen Mo's main focus.
The company name and logo were finalized. Chen Mo called the competition staff and asked them to help make a sign for the experience store.
They were very efficient. The sign was ready in two days, and a specialist came to install it at the main entrance of the experience store.
The sign had several artistic characters: "Thunder Game Experience Store," along with the Thunder Interactive logo. Chen Mo looked at it and was quite satisfied with the result.
After finishing these tasks, Chen Mo continued to lock himself in the studio, organizing the framework of the design documents and the substitute art resources.
Another day passed, and the big framework of the design documents was finally completed. The art resources were also about sixty to seventy percent found.