Chapter 36 - Leading the Surge in Casual Games

Translated by Coldtaco

Edited by Aelryinth

Under the watching eyes of the entire gaming industry, the statistics of Plants vs Zombies continued to increase.

First twenty-four hours, 23,187! First three days, 77,409; first week, 122,375; first thirty days, 514,580!

Over that first month, the video game media and video game designers were shocked time and time again. Normally a game would grow in the first week and slowly decrease. Plants vs Zombies had a stable number of downloads even through the fourth week!

Five hundred thousand sales in the first month! What did that mean? Chen Mo had earned more than two million RMB from this game in just one month!

This number was insane for someone fresh to the industry, so much so that Plants vs Zombies had set off a craze in the video game industry!

The players were spreading like a virus, the sales numbers kept on increasing!

Many players formed their own communities to try and figure out strategies for Plants vs Zombies, in particular the endless mode, as the leaderboards shifted day to day.

The video game media had new articles every day, with different industry professionals analyzing the success of Plants vs Zombies.

Many game designers were discussioning the very same topic, even in major discussion forums and the Illusion Game Engine discussions.

How did Plants vs Zombies become so popular?

Can its success be replicated? Can it be used as a reference?

The level design, combat system, code, tutorial, art, music and some other details of Plants vs Zombies were studied again and again, becoming a benchmark for other puzzle games.

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An A-grade Zen Entertainment designer released a long Weibo post, detailing what made Plants vs Zombies so successful. They also mentioned that the puzzle game industry was about to have its renaissance.

In his Weibo post, he said: To be honest, I quite admire Chen Mo, the creator of Plants vs Zombies. As a new video game designer, he has provided us video game designers who overlook casual games with an important lesson.

We always think that casual games are a small matter, and only C and D-grade video game designers use them to hone their skills. Because casual puzzle games like these were never able to have extended playtimes or strongly engage with the players, the players would grow tired of them, resulting in huge losses.

Many of these so-called puzzle games don't have many puzzling elements to them. They are usually child's play, and far off from the larger puzzle games.

However, Plants vs Zombies has overturned that traditional view. Who said puzzle games couldn't be complicated? Who said puzzle games couldn't have extended playtimes? Two of the biggest problems that were holding back puzzle games were solved by Plants vs Zombies!

Obviously, it wasn't the type of game that was the problem; it was our thinking that was limited!

Not only that, Plants vs Zombies showed us that there is a huge market for casual puzzle games. These games aren't niche, but can cover the entire market!

Moreover, Chen Mo has taught an important lesson to all C and D-grade video game designers: even if you have lower resource limits or worse skills, it doesn't matter. Doesn't everyone claim they are full of innovation? If you really are innovative, go ahead and make a casual game like Plants vs Zombies; it will allow you to reach the peak as a videogame designer!

As for Chen Mo, I think he has shown his prowess in puzzle games. As long as he can keep this going and make another two or three puzzle games at the same level as Plants vs Zombies, I can guarantee that he will become not just one of the best, but the best video game designer in China!

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Industry professionals, video game media, player discussion... all of their evaluations were positive. There was nothing like what had happened with Flappybird last time, where a video game designer or game reviewer came out and pointed their finger at Plants vs Zombies and said it was bad. 

Once in a while there would be a hate message, but they would be drowned out by the fans.

Chen Mo knew that he made the right choice, for both fame and fortune. After Plants vs Zombies topped the casual puzzle games chart, Chen Mo was now the word on the street.

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In a month's time, Chen Mo had ninety thousand followers on Weibo, demonstrating the popularity of the game.

However, Chen Mo knew that Plants vs Zombies still had greater potential.

In his previous life, Plants vs Zombies had reached three hundred thousand sales in the first nine days, breaking several records, and had actually taken the world by storm.

Chen Mo had already managed to recreate at least ninety percent of Plants vs Zombies up, but had only received five hundred thousand sales. Evidently there was still a gap between it and the original.

Chen Mo gave the matter some thought.

First was advertising. Chen Mo hadn't done any advertising. The video game media reposts did give him some attention, but it was worlds away from the advertising the big companies were able to do. Plants vs Zombies basically started off on the wrong foot compared to them.

Second was the market problem. Plants vs Zombies was only released in China. If he was able to release it outside of China, the sales should be higher.

However, Chen Mo was satisfied with his performance so far. Although Plants vs Zombies did have the ability to enter the international market, Chen Mo didn't want to invest too much time and effort into it.

In Chen Mo's view, the overseas market was unexplored territory. Were the tastes of the overseas market the same in this parallel world? That required a lot of time and effort to experiment with.

Chen Mo didn't want to consider the overseas market for now, so he didn't put too much effort into it. Chen Mo was quite happy with the fact that Plants vs Zombies was able to achieve results like it had. He didn't expect the game to break the sky.

If just considering the starting steps, Chen Mo had forged a perfect start as a videogame designer. What he could achieve next depended on what he wanted to do!

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10 AM...

Chen Mo sat at the bar table letting out yawns left and right.

He had been out drinking with Lin Mao and Zhao Zihao till 11 PM, and was suffering the effects of that.

Since Chen Mo and Lin Mao had great success with their games, a celebration was required. Therefore Chen Mo decided to let himself enjoy some alcohol this time.

Adventure of the Storm Rider received seventy thousand downloads in the first month. Although it didn't come close to Plants vs Zombies, it was top three on the new games leaderboards, raking in about eight hundred thousand RMB for Lin Mao.

Lin Mao was quite happy with that achievement, as most new video game designers couldn't even hope to achieve results like that.

Of course, Lin Mao was head over heels with results that Plants vs Zombies had achieved. Within his admiration was happiness for Chen Mo.

During the past few days, Wen Lingwei and Jia Peng didn't come to the experience store every day like they had before. After playing it for a month, their passion for Plants vs Zombies had slowly died down.

More and more strategies were being released to the public, and more and more were being discovered, but the passion for the game would die down over time.

Wen Lingwei and the others were urging Chen Mo to release a sequel, or even a new game.

Chen Mo knew in his heart that Plants vs Zombies had a really long lifetime. Some people might be able to play it for one or two years, but for the majority, they'd get sick of it after a month or two.

Of course, for a standalone game, it didn't matter that the gamers were sick of it. What was important was that the game was sold and money was earned. All that was left to do was to release the next game.

Chen Mo was ready to move his focus to his next game, but before that, he wanted to give Plants vs Zombies an update!