Almighty Video Game Designer

Chen Mo was looking around on the internet, and an idea came out of nowhere.

 “Right, I don’t think they have Texas hold ’em!

 “But how could there not be Texas hold ’em? This doesn’t make sense!”

 Chen Mo had been thinking long about what game was missing. But turns out that this world doesn’t have Texas hold ’em? That’s nonsense!

 Chem Mo continued sourcing the web, even overseas ones, and concluded that there really wasn’t Texas hold ’em in this world!

 “Indeed, I knew that something was missing, turns out that was Texas hold ’em!

 “Alright, Thunderbolt Tabletop’s last puzzle piece has been found.”

 Chen Mo even got a bit emotional upon finishing the tabletop games library.

 —

 Texas hold ’em weren’t considered popular in China. In terms of users, it wasn’t on the same level as Dou Dizhu, or mahjong. It wasn’t as well known either.

 However, Texas hold ‘me was quite popular in certain communities, and they have even gotten quite in depth.

 IT circles, pioneering communities, adventure capitalists, CEOs all favoured Texas hold ’em. Kai-Fu Lee, Liu Chuanzhi, Jack Ma and many others were all poker fnatics.

 Texas hold ’em was also a global phenomena, especially in the US. If someone said they played poker, they most likely are referring to Texas hold ’em.

 The poker tournaments by World Series of Poker would reach ten million USD at times. There was once a chef from Sweden who got first place and became a millionaire in a night.

 There are many who can’t understand the mysterious power that Texas hold ’em?

 If asked to use one sentence to summarise the difference between Texas hold ’em to other variations of poker, that would be: “Texas hold ’em is a type of poker where someone could make money reliably.”

 It may sound unreal, but that was the truth.

 Other tabletop games such as Dou Dizhu, Mahjong, or Golden Flower had strong ties to gambling. Skill was important, but luck was even more important. A professional Dou Dizhu or Mahjong player would rely heavily on luck to put food on their plate, and that wouldn’t be too different from just gambling.

 And one of the key points in gambling was that playing longer guaranteed losses, and nobody could reliably make money from it.

 But Texas hold ’em was a game that one could reliably profit from. If you are always losing in Texas hold ’em, that could only mean one thing: You’re terrible at the game.

 Outside of China, there are many professional Texas hold ’em players, such as Phil Ivey who have been champion twenty four times in many different tournaments, being in the money (ITM) for over a hundred of them. He had made more than twenty million throughout his career in poker winnings.

 There were also many professional Texas hold ’em players in China, usually making around one hundred thousand RMB a month. This was due to a multitude of reasons, Texas hold ’em had limited popularity in China, that said, there were around sixty million players.

 Why was poker a valid method of making stable income? Because the rules of Texas hold ’em were much more complicated than other poker variations. You can back out anytime, and could go crazy to try and double your chips.

 Moreover, you can vary your strategy based on what your opponent did (betting, calling, etc.) in Texas hold ’em.

 Poker was different to Golden Flower as Golden Flower was completely reliant on your hand. If you got a good hand, you were almost guaranteed to win. But in Texas hold ’em, winning or losing would be decided by the five community cards. In theory, even if you had the statistically worst hand, deuce seven off-suit, it would have a high chance of beating the best hand, pocket aces.

 High amounts of meticulous calculations, controlling your facial expressions, guessing your opponent’s hands based on their behaviour, and keeping a good mindset were all crucial parts of Texas hold ’em. One could say that luck factor would be minimised among all these features of the game.

 For example, if a pro and a noob played each other, perhaps the noob had the better hand every time, but the pro would utilise psychology to completely annihilate the noob wouldn’t be surprising.

 Noobs would be able to win a few rounds just by virtue of good luck in games like Dou Dizhu or Mahjong, but in Texas hold ’em , the noobs would never be given that opportunity.

 —

 After the foundations were laid, Chen Mo started working on the design document.

 The rules of tabletop games were really simple and clear cut, and would take much less time to develop than I Am MT. Chen Mo planned to complete most of the Thunderbolt gaming platform and Thunderbolt Tabletop, and then spend another week tweaking before releasing it.

 –Morning the next day–

 Chen Mo handed over the design document mindmap to Su Jinyu.

 “The mindmap is done. You can fill in the gaps in the ruleset. Don’t worry about the story related things and let Zheng Hongxi handle that when he gets here. You two will work on the game together, and it’ll act as a test for his writing ability too,” said Chen Mo.

 Su Jinyu opened the document Chen Mo sent over. She was shocked that the design document was very very small, only having around two hundred words.

 “Lifeline? Interactive fiction?” Su Jinyu exclaimed.

 Chen Mo nodded, “Yep, it’s really for you and Zheng Hongxi as practice, I’ve already made a few points worth paying attention to clear in the design document. It depends on you guys how well this game goes.”

 “But, manager, this game seems too simple!” asked Su Jinyu.

 Chen Mo smiled, “A smile game can also be really good, don’t underestimate it. Maybe consider adding new mechanics outside of the basics.”

 Su Jinyu nodded, “Alright, I understand.”

 After handing over the design document for Lifeline to Su Jinyu, Chen Mo put all his effort into Thunderbolt gaming platform and Thunderbolt Tabletop.

 Lifeline was an interactive fiction, and Chen Mo planned to use it for Zheng Hongxi to practice on and get a better idea of his writing skills.

 After Thunderbolt Tabletop and Lifeline are both completed, Chen Mo would start planning his first big game.

 —

 Chen Mo spent the next two days improving the design document.

 The three games on Thunderbolt Tabletop, Happy Dou Dizhu, Happy Mahjong, and Thunderbolt Poker (aka. Texas hold ’em) had basically no overlapping playerbase, which was why he chose them. However, many of the artwork can be reused in these three games, such as avatars, UI, and poker cards.

 Chen Mo outsourced these resources as there were many tabletop games in the parallel world, meaning that there were also many of these resources. It would only need small changes to make it usable. As it wasn’t a huge part of the game, Chen Mo didn’t care too much about how it looked, which was why Chen Mo’s only requirement was for it to be quick, and wanted to receive the resources in two weeks.

 And Chen Mo paid special attention to two points during the designing process of these tabletop games, one was making improvements to the tutorials, and the other was to add a tournament mode which other tabletop games didn’t have.