Chapter 944: Martial Arts Game
Moreover, these independent game designers had an extremely high degree of freedom.
It was like preparing for a war; Chen Mo directly provided ample, high-quality weapons and equipment, allowing those new soldiers on the battlefield, as long as they had some basic knowledge, to play a very crucial role.
Of course, if you were exceptionally skilled and could completely carry the team on your own, that was also acceptable.
Was developing one game a year difficult?
If it were in the past, for these independent game designers, it really was quite difficult.
But now, with an art resource library, a physics engine, an artificial intelligence system, and ready-made IPs, just modifying the original scripts and adding some of your own understanding could create a ready-made game unit. What was so difficult about that?
Making one game a year was more than enough. If you were only considering quantity, making two was also no problem.
It was foreseeable that some classic IPs might have multiple different parallel world scripts. For example, worlds like *Dark Souls*, *Assassin's Creed*, and Azeroth had very rich worldviews, allowing for many entry points. Picking any one entry point to create a small script counted as completing the task.
Furthermore, each game unit, or small script, could be made into a single-player mode, a multiplayer mode, or even a variable mode.
In variable mode, you only needed to assign higher-level AI to some key NPCs, allowing them to take different actions. This way, multiple players could match into the same game unit, each with different goals. They could fight or cooperate, while the NPCs, with their own AI logic, would take different actions each time...
Even within the same script, an NPC turning from loyal to traitor, or from traitor to loyal, could completely derail the entire game's direction, giving players entirely different gaming experiences.
So, for these designers, everything was ready; all that was lacking was a little bit of imagination.
With such a large space to play in, with such good conditions and resources, if they still couldn't complete the task, they might as well just find a block of tofu and hit themselves to death.
Although there was still a full year before the official launch of the [Oasis Project], these independent game designers were all impatient, all energetically starting to develop their own game units.
Obviously, the development journey for the game *Oasis* would be very long in the future, but its impact on the development of the entire game industry would definitely be revolutionary.
...
...
For Chen Mo, what he needed to do for the [Oasis Project] was very simple: establish a complete set of rules for the entire *Oasis*.
For example, after clearing a certain game unit, what would the reward be? How would it be brought out? Were there any restrictions on using the items brought out?
How would players level up? How would player gains be balanced?
What profit model would the game adopt?
How would the power gap between different players be balanced? How would the difficulty coefficients of different game units be distinguished?
To integrate countless complex game worlds into one, under the grand framework of *Oasis*, while ensuring fairness for the vast majority of players, required a series of relatively complex restrictions. And some major restrictions could directly determine the success or failure of this game.
Whether this "seemingly beautiful" game model was truly beautiful or not would only be known after it went online.
But Chen Mo wasn't in a hurry. He would let the independent game designers make enough game scripts during this year, and then integrate them all at once.
During this period, more independent game designers would be continuously recruited to join the [Oasis Project]. The twice-yearly game design competition would provide a steady stream of talent, and they could also be poached from other companies or selected from the Thunder Game Platform.
In recent years, the entire world's game industry had been constantly progressing. As the industry grew larger, the number of talents joining the game industry was also increasing day by day.
Every year, a batch of excellent independent game designers would emerge, so there was no worry about a shortage of manpower in the future.
The popularity of *Monster Hunter* was still rising. For players, it was the most fun time right now. They had become familiar with the entire combat system of *Monster Hunter*, had just passed the key threshold of Diablos and Rathalos, and were in a state of overflowing confidence.
Ahead, there were still higher-difficulty Elder Dragons like Nergigante, Kushala Daora, and Teostra waiting for them to challenge. Whether in terms of skill or equipment, they were far from reaching the limit. The game's lifespan was still very long.
But for Chen Mo, the development of *Monster Hunter* was largely complete. In the future, as long as he continuously updated DLCs and added new monsters, he could maintain the game's popularity very well.
He could start considering planning for a new game.
It was already mid-October, and the annual development plan was nearing its end.
Chen Mo was still highly productive this year: Matrix Glasses, *Assassin's Creed*, *Silent Hill*, *The Legend of Zelda*, *A Way Out*, Labo, *Monster Hunter*... Each one alone was worthy of great praise.
Last year's final work was *The Last of Us*, which swept major game media with a perfect score rating.
And this year, Chen Mo already had the almost-certain Game of the Year, *The Legend of Zelda*, so he didn't need to work so hard to make another perfect-score masterpiece to trouble the judges.
So, what would be the final work of this year?
...
...
In the meeting room, everyone was waiting for Chen Mo to reveal the answer.
Although they had speculated about various possibilities before, when they saw the title of the design concept draft, everyone was still stunned for a moment.
"*Jianghu*?!"
"A Chinese-style game? A martial arts game?"
"This... really unexpected..."
For everyone present, this was a rather surprising thing, because... how long had it been since Chen Mo made a Chinese-style game?
Of course, there was no doubt that Chen Mo could handle Chinese style. He had done a similar theme before with *Martial Arts Heroes*, which, as a PC game, was quite popular at the time and even won an award from the Game Committee.
But after entering the VR game stage, the games Chen Mo developed were all aimed at grand spectacles, mainly in Western fantasy style.
Perhaps on the one hand, it was because he was better at it, and on the other hand, it was to better open up the international market.
After all, different cultures had different voices in the world. The difficulty of promoting Chinese-style games globally was not only because the domestic game industry was relatively lagging but also, more importantly, because Chinese culture was not very popular in the world and had extremely limited influence.
If we were to discuss this topic in detail, the reasons would be complex. But regardless, a Chinese-style game, even if of excellent quality, might not necessarily be well-received in the world market. That was the current state of the industry.
So, could Chen Mo's new game change this state to some extent?
After all, with Chen Mo's current ability and Thunder Interactive's current fame, developing a new game would never be just about satisfying domestic players.
Chen Mo's goal had always been the stars and the sea.