Chapter 581: He Who Wins the Ladies Wins the World
Although most League of Legends players were relatively indifferent to the arrival of Honor of Kings, this game gradually began to expand among other player groups.
To summarize, these player groups were derivative player groups of League of Legends. In other words, these players knew about League of Legends and were somewhat interested in it, but they found it difficult to get into or too tiring. Their attitude toward League of Legends was relatively marginal: they understood it but only played occasionally.
These people were far from loyal to League of Legends; all they needed was a game to kill time. For many, even League of Legends felt like a heavy commitment, exhausting to play. They desperately needed a mobile game that could be played while lying down, had a fast pace, and retained the core essence of a MOBA game.
So when Honor of Kings appeared, these players quickly embraced it. This was precisely Chen Mo’s goal. Creating Honor of Kings wasn’t about stealing players from League of Legends. After all, both games were his own—like the palm and the back of the hand, both were precious. Fighting over players would just be fighting over his own money.
Chen Mo’s aim was to expand MOBA games to these marginal player groups, targeting those who didn’t play League of Legends or had grown tired of it, and sweeping them all up with Honor of Kings.
Don’t think that by quitting League of Legends you could protect your wallet—that’s not happening! Once you see Honor of Kings, you’ll still obediently pull out your money.
Moreover, Honor of Kings was also meant to capture student players and female players, especially female players, who were a key demographic for the game.
There was a very interesting phenomenon in the gaming world.
Some games, though they didn’t win the favor of male players, were unexpectedly popular among female players... And these games exhibited another interesting phenomenon: male players would gradually come over to play just for the girls, as long as the game’s social system was good enough to let them flirt.
If you couldn’t win over male players, it didn’t matter. First, win over female players, and then male players would come knocking on your door. Hence the saying, “He who wins the ladies wins the world.” As long as a game gathered a bunch of female players, there was no need to worry about having no players.
In some games, female players even outnumbered male players, making male players rare creatures, surrounded and protected by the ladies. This gimmick indeed played a crucial role in promoting such games...
Honor of Kings was the same. Perhaps it was the simplest and most accessible MOBA game, so its appeal to female players was far greater than League of Legends.
The art style of Honor of Kings leaned further toward female aesthetics. What kind of hero characters did female players like? They didn’t like Western heroes or tall, burly men. They preferred Chinese-style handsome guys and beautiful girls, or cute, adorable things.
In Honor of Kings, many heroes’ art designs catered to this preference. For example, Li Bai, Han Xin, Zhen Ji, Angela, Da Ji, and so on—all were uniformly handsome men and beautiful women.
Strictly speaking, worldviews like Warcraft’s, though revered as classics by countless players, held little appeal for female players. The fact that there were few female players in Warcraft was undeniable. In contrast, Chinese-style games like Jian Wang San had an abundance of female players, a stark difference...
Honor of Kings was in the same boat. Under Chen Mo’s deliberate promotional efforts, a flood of female players began pouring in. They might not be able to handle League of Legends, or they might be terrible at it, but that didn’t matter at all. As long as they could enjoy the early stages, they would gradually become addicted to the game.
This naturally dragged many male players, like Zou Zhuo, into the pit... To perform well in front of the ladies, they had to study the game mechanics diligently, save up money, and buy those better-looking skins and stronger runes.
A subtle undercurrent began to grow...
...
Meanwhile, many players were astonished when they saw the hero characters in this game.
“Oh my god, that guy holding a wine jug in the CG is actually Li Bai? I thought it would be something like a Drunken Sword Immortal.”
“And there’s Zhong Kui, Miyamoto Musashi, Marco Polo, Di Renjie, Li Yuanfang... There are also characters from the Three Kingdoms period, like Guan Yu and Zhang Fei—all historical figures.”
“It feels a bit knockoff-ish... All these historical figures crossing time and space into the same story background...”
“But I think it’s fine; actually, it feels very familiar. On one hand, these are characters everyone already knows well, like Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. On the other hand, the game has made some creative twists on these heroes, which is fun.”
“Seriously, I originally thought using a Chinese-style theme for heroes would be a disaster, but now it seems Chen Mo did a pretty good job.”
“And some of these heroes are really fun. Li Bai, Han Xin, Guan Yu, Diao Chan... These heroes feel quite unique, not completely copying League of Legends.”
“I think Guan Yu is the most interesting hero. Honestly, his skill mechanics are a bit like Hecarim from League of Legends, but different, and his skill casting method is really suited for a mobile game.”
“Yeah, and this game actually has different mechanics from League of Legends. It has its own unique systems. Although playing League of Legends makes it easy to pick up Honor of Kings, to reach the top rank, you still need a different understanding of this game.”
Players were discussing this new MOBA mobile game, and the buzz around Honor of Kings far surpassed what Ancient Calamity had generated before.
Soon, Honor of Kings began climbing the bestseller charts steadily. Though it didn’t rise as fast as Onmyoji, it kept ascending and quickly entered the top ten, with no signs of falling back.
What others didn’t know was that Honor of Kings’ download data was growing at an even more terrifying rate! This fully demonstrated that the game was expanding to other player groups at an accelerating pace. It was just that these players hadn’t truly gotten into it yet, so they hadn’t formed a spending frenzy.
When this game truly showed its edge on the bestseller charts, Chen Mo believed its potential would astonish everyone.