Chapter 225 - Appear, My World[1]
Chapter 225: Appear, My World[1]
There were many reasons for the lack of knockoffs too.
First was sales, a high quality detailed mould was really expensive. If there wasn’t a guarantee of selling millions of it, there’s no doubt that the business would go bankrupt. There was no way these knockoff companies could invest that much money into it, nor could they sell that many.
Second was a problem with quality. Leggo had over seven thousand different parts with twelve different pipelines, the mould would cost anywhere from forty to two hundred thousand Euros to produce.
The error in the parts can’t exceed one hundred of a centimeter, and there was a machine involved in testing if the parts fit well together, with less than twelve faulty parts per hundred thousand.
The maintenance team had to check around three hundred moulds a day. Taking the consideration of human hours and quality assurance, there was no way they could decrease the price.
A core part of Leggo’s competitiveness came from the lack of constraints. They could release one set today, another tomorrow, planes, boats, tanks, cars, buildings… There were always more things to release, so it was hard for competitors to make knockoffs.
That was why knockoff Leggo factories were put in such a bad position. If they decreased the price, there was no way they could guarantee the quality; If they assured the quality with little to no difference in price, why would they buy the knockoffs?
That’s why there were very few players in Leggo despite how fun it was, leading to a gap in the market in enjoyment such as these.
Therefore, following the lack of abundance of Leggo, sandbox building games hadn’t appeared in this world either.
Chen Mo wanted to fill this market gap and let everyone know that the fun in creating is endless.
—
After testing the waters with Don’t Starve, Chen Mo more or less what the players in this world were after. There were many players who liked sandbox games, and the players in this world weren’t any less creative.
Don’t Starve had sold over four million copies and had no signs of stopping. Player made mods were also appearing left and right.
From Plants vs Zombies, to Warcraft and now Don’t Starve, the players had shown time and time again how creative they were.
After some consideration, Chen Mo felt that the time was right to release a sandbox game that had even more potential to be popular.
This will serve as Chen Mo’s first step into VR, and seemed like something safe and had a good outlook.
More importantly, it was a good opportunity for Chen Mo. If the game did exceedingly well, it’d create some talking points surrounding his game and Emperor Dynasty Entertainment’s VR game. By then it’ll be free buzz for his game, which would do wonder in promoting it.
After thinking it out, Chen Mo started working on the design document for Minecraft.
There were only two simple reasons for picking this game. First, it was incredibly successful, it was almost synonymous with sandbox games; second, it was quite easy to make, and was the most feasible one for Chen Mo so far.
However, there were still some risks involved in making a VR game.
As the making of VR games was hugely different from making PC games. Setting aside the technical aspect of making games, there were also differences in design concept, infinitely increasing the risk of making a VR game.
No matter the design concept in his previous life or experience in his parallel world, they were all focused on mobile and PC games, barely touching VR games.
Even if some experience in making console games can be transferred to VR, the differences were stark.
Moreover, the closer a VR game got to real life, the most expensive it was, the more detail that needed to be attended. Various resources would also increase dramatically.
The best part about Minecraft was because it was a game with pixel art, meaning it was less demanding on various resources such as models and animations. With his experience from his previous life in hand, he was incredibly familiar with its design concept.
The first goal of the development was to create Minecraft entirely and port it directly to VR, allowing players to collect, and build in VR, with the core enjoyment of Minecraft still in place.
The second goal was to improve on Minecraft, bringing its graphics and details to another level, making it fit better to the tastes of players in this world.
The third goal of development was to make some changes to its gameplay. Because of various reasons, a lot of interesting playstyles weren’t feasible in the previous world. As the technology was more developed in this world, more ideas can be brought to life that couldn’t be in the previous world.
The core of Minecraft was pretty simple. First was building, which was entirely similar to building Legos. Other game modes like Survival were all additions to the game and could be added later.
—
The design document was done in no time as it was finished within an evening.
The next day, there were still quite a few in the meeting room in the experience store tackling the largest set.
Zheng Hongxi’s cathedral was the third last to be completed. Although it had a lot of parts, its composition was quite simple, there weren’t any huge problems if they followed the manual step by step.
The finished product looked great, the steeple and windows in particular looked identical to cathedrals in real life.
Zhou Hanyu’s sports center was the second last to be completed. Although the sports centre itself was quite complicated, the things surrounding it were quite easy to assemble.
Qian Kun’s mother ship was the last to be finished, as the mothership was huge with many smaller ships inside it, it was a huge hassle to complete.
After completing the mothership, Qian Kun leaned back in his chair to breathe a sigh of relief, “My goodness, that was so a toy like this takes too much effort!”
The meeting room was like an exhibition of Legos with various different themes. There was a T-rex, snow castle, racecar, train, cathedral, and a sci-fi mothership.
And Chen Mo’s bachelor dog of course.
“No kidding. Although there were ancient and modern themes, animals, and robots, everything matches quite well together. The designers at Leggo are quite talented in that aspect,” expressed Zhou Hanyu.
Zheng Hongxi couldn’t get his hands off the cathedral either, even taking a few pictures.
At this moment, Chen Mo walked into the meeting room, “Let’s see… Not bad, so everyone finished their tasks.”
Qian Kun breathed another sigh of relief, “Thank goodness I didn’t drag everyone behind. Thanks for everyone’s help at the end.”
“Manager, you said you’d show us the concept draft for the new once we were done with assembling these sets. Where’s the draft?” asked Su Jinyu.
Chen Mo laughed, “Relax, follow me. We’ll talk more back in the office.”
TL note[1]: Minecraft’s Chinese name directly translates to ‘My World’, so there’s a double meaning there