Chapter 22: Experience Store Pricing
Early this morning, Chen Mo received a message from Lin Mao.
"Chen Mo, my game is set to launch tomorrow. It's called 'Storm Knight Adventure.' I sent you the installation package—you can give it a try. Also, how's your own game development going?"
Chen Mo replied, "Okay, I'll play it. My game is going smoothly; it's basically finished. I'm planning to put it in the experience store in a couple of days to gather player feedback."
Lin Mao: "What? You're done? That's only three months! Are you riding a rocket or something???"
Chen Mo: "It's a casual game, not that big. In a couple of days, I'll send you an installation package to play too."
Lin Mao: "Alright, let's give each other feedback and improve together."
Chen Mo received the game installation package Lin Mao sent and installed it on his phone.
"Storm Knight Adventure," installation package size 94 MB, the icon was a little figure holding a sword.
This game had already been in development by Lin Mao for nearly half a year. After taking Chen Mo's advice, he spent another three months revising it. Adding in testing, fine-tuning, and the preliminary preparations for the app store launch, it had dragged on until now.
In comparison, Chen Mo's development of "Plants vs. Zombies" was much faster. By the time Lin Mao was still fine-tuning, Chen Mo had already finished the entire game.
He entered the game.
Chen Mo had played this game before. This new installation package had some subtle optimizations in scenes, characters, and gameplay, but nothing too obvious. Only someone as perceptive as Chen Mo could notice them.
It seemed Lin Mao had put a lot of effort into the game experience.
Additionally, based on Chen Mo's suggestions, Lin Mao had made some major gameplay changes.
One was a complete overhaul of the combat system. While retaining the essence of the original combat system, he added a lot of new content. One standout feature was the addition of the new combat ability, "Storm."
The protagonist was a knight who could control the power of the storm. He could summon strong winds to slow enemies and reduce their visibility, or heavy rain to hinder enemy movement and cause minor ailments. He could even unleash a terrifying hurricane to blow away some tiny enemies outright.
A few small-scale storm abilities were permanent, while larger storm abilities required accumulated energy to use.
At the same time, the types and traits of monsters changed to match the new combat system. Different monsters were countered by different storm abilities, while also having resistance to some.
For example, a heavily armored monster covered in plate armor was barely affected by strong winds, and hurricanes couldn't budge it. However, heavy rain could make the ground muddy, drastically slowing its movement speed. It would also suffer "disease" and "rust" effects, gradually reducing its combat effectiveness.
Chen Mo appreciated the combat system changes. It was clear that Lin Mao hadn't just stuck to Chen Mo's suggestions but had innovated based on his own ideas.
Moreover, the core combat ability, "Storm," was directly reflected in the game's title. In Chen Mo's view, this was a very clever move.
"Storm Knight Adventure"—the name immediately told players what the game was about while still leaving some mystery, which was great for attracting players.
Another major change was a large-scale rework of the game's branching storylines. The original single ending was replaced with four endings, and the player's choices throughout the game would determine which ending they got.
Ending One: The knight defeats the evil dragon, rescues the princess, becomes a hero, and lives happily ever after with her.
Ending Two: The knight fails to rescue the princess and, filled with grief and rage, perishes alongside the evil dragon.
Ending Three: The knight defeats the evil dragon but doesn't kill it. Instead, he signs a contract with it, and the dragon becomes the kingdom's guardian.
Ending Four: The knight defeats the evil dragon but faces the temptation of treasure. He becomes a new evil dragon.
Chen Mo had the GM tools Lin Mao sent him, allowing him to directly adjust character attributes. So, it only took him three hours to finish the game and see all four endings.
Under normal gameplay, clearing the game would take at least six to eight hours. To experience all four endings, that time would double.
Of the three suggestions Chen Mo had given, Lin Mao adopted two. He didn't adopt the one about ultra-high difficulty. In Chen Mo's view, this was a smart choice because the three suggestions weren't entirely compatible, and Lin Mao's decision was correct.
In Chen Mo's opinion, this game would need luck to become a massive blockbuster, but it had no problem gaining moderate popularity.
Chen Mo messaged Lin Mao: "I played through the whole game. It's really good—it's bound to be a hit."
Lin Mao quickly replied: "I hope your words come true. I'll be busy with the game's launch for the next couple of days. After that, I'll swing by your store to check out your game."
Chen Mo replied: "Alright, it's a deal."
After lunch, Chen Mo took a one-hour nap. He got up at 2:00 PM, ready to officially open for business.
Before the experience store officially opened, Chen Mo had some preparations to make.
One was to check whether all the store's equipment was functioning properly and whether the games were installed correctly.
Another was to set the pricing for the experience store.
As the designer, Chen Mo had full authority over the store's pricing. He could set it to free, allowing anyone to play without charge.
But setting it to free had a problem: what if his games became popular later?
If Chen Mo developed some large-scale online games in the future, people might occupy the experience store day and night, hogging a computer indefinitely. That would ruin the experience for most players.
Start free and then raise prices? That wouldn't work either.
The store's prices should ideally remain stable. Lowering prices was fine, but raising them would definitely upset veteran players.
Since this was just an experience store with no pressure to make a profit, Chen Mo didn't want to rely on price hikes later to control the number of people in the store.
So, he had to charge from the very beginning, and it couldn't be too cheap.
In fact, if too many people showed up, he might even need to limit each person's playtime.
In this world, internet café prices in the capital generally ranged from 3 to 10 yuan per hour. The 3-yuan-per-hour cafés were the cheapest and were becoming rare.
Of course, there were more upscale options, but those were for the wealthy. Chen Mo still had to consider what most players could afford.
In the end, Chen Mo decided to set the price at 5 yuan per hour. His experience store had a better environment than the average internet café and was much more spacious.
At this price, it was definitely on the expensive side for now. But Chen Mo planned to stick with it. As he created more and more high-quality games, this price would come to seem very reasonable.
Beverages in the store were sold at market prices, not marked up. Chen Mo didn't care about such petty profits.
Time was only charged when playing games in the store. If the store was full, each player would be limited to a maximum of four hours. After four hours, they'd have to log off and re-queue.
The store's business hours were from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM. No overnight stays or machine rentals were allowed.
With everything set up, at 2:30 PM, Chen Mo's experience store officially opened its doors for business.