Chapter 157 - Early Bird Gets the Worm?

Translator: Exodus Tales  Editor: Exodus Tales

It didn’t take long before many other card game companies found out about the news.

Chen Mo didn’t try to keep it a secret at all. It was difficult to keep it a secret anyways as there was no way from preventing the art company from leaking the news.

Once the news gets out, it wouldn’t take long for the entire mobile game community to hear about it. It wasn’t a good news to any mobile card game designer that Chen Mo was back making mobile games.

And during Chen Mo’s hiatus from mobile games, the other card game designers were having the time of their lives.

The best time of their life even.

At this point, the industry was happy to have everyone make money from mobile card games as opposed to going at each other’s neck.

This was opposed to genres like RPG as the playerbase was incredibly limited, and every company was trying to get as much of it as possible.

But it was different for card games. Since the huge mobile card game industry was still in its early stages and there wasn’t a monopoly, there was a silent agreement that they should all work together in peace.

Because card games were all so similar and no designer dared to make any big changes, which was why the companies relied on big IPs to get a slice of the player base.

You’ll make an anime one, I’ll make one based on a novel. They could all work on the same thing yet have separate playerbases.

It was fine even if they shared the same target audience as they just had to space out the release dates.

Who wouldn’t have the time of their life when they could make money by doing nothing?

This was almost an unspoken rule. It wasn’t that these companies didn’t want to monopolise the industry, it was because they couldn’t, and a game that could do that didn’t exist.

If they wanted to achieve that, they must ensure that the game was better than all the other games on the market and had an IP that covered a huge player base.

Demon Slayers might be the only one that slightly matches the last point. There wasn’t a game that truly covered both points.

But Chen Mo’s move made everything unclear.

Many video game designers were discussing this matter privately.

“Have you heard that Chen Mo is making a card game?”

“What? Is he making a sequel to I Am MT? It can’t be, the animation isn’t all that popular anymore. Are there that many die hard fans of the series?”

“No, I heard it’s a Japanese Shikigami theme. I don’t know much about it.”

“What is it, does it have an IP?”

“No!”

“Then why is he doing it?”

“Who knows! Who knows what Chen Mo is planning?”

“I feel like something is about to go down.”

“Who said it wasn’t, Chen Mo had been doing so well in the PC market, but decided to pivot back into the mobile game industry. Clearly, he’s messing with us!”

“What should we do?”

“Watch! What else can we do? Anyways, the ones at the top should be most affected, Emperor Dynasty Entertainment’s Demon Slayers 2 will cop most of the blow.”

“We’ll see what Emperor Dynasty Entertainment does.”

—

Qiu Bin forwarded the news of Chen Mo making a card game to Lin Chaoxu.

It didn’t take long for Lin Chaoxu to come to a decision.

Promote Demon Slayers 2 now! Release it as fast as possible!

Lin Chaoxu wasn’t as cautious and indecisive as Qiu Bin as he knew what this meant.

This meant that once Chen Mo’s preparations were done, it could be another hugely popular game. This was horrible news to Emperor Dynasty Entertainment!

The early bird gets the worm, release Demon Slayers 2 early and get a bunch of players. Promote the game everywhere in order to get as many players as possible, and make as much money as they could before Chen Mo releases his game.

Even when Chen Mo’s game was really successful, its impact on Demon Slayers 2 will be greatly reduced.

Once Lin Chaoxu gave the green light, the progress of Demon Slayers immediately got fast tracked.

Promoting the game, getting testers, feedback, improving… Qiu Bin was working as hard as he could to get Demon Slayers 2 to a state where it could be released.

Emperor Dynasty Entertainment’s promotions started appearing everywhere. It was on various streaming sites, gaming sites, forums, ad spots…

Various videogame media were also releasing their articles.

Demon Slayers’ sequel, Demon Slayers 2 released soon!

Popular web novel turned mobile game taking the world by storm!

National Phenomena, successor of Demon Slayers

Can Demon Slayers 2 reach a new record for mobile games monthly income?

First mobile card game sequel about to be released!

With enough money, the media was sure to hype it up. Because of how successful Demon Slayers was, it wasn’t too over the top to sing the song of praises for its sequel.

The players watching for the side had all sorts of reactions, but they all looked forward to it because of its success and its playerbase.

Everyone in the videogame industry knew that Emperor Dynasty Entertainment planned to make as much money as possible before Chen Mo releases his new game to reduce the effects of Chen Mo’s new game on them.

Everyone felt bad, only Chen Mo had the power to put Emperor Dynasty Entertainment in this state!

—

On Chen Mo’s side of things, Onmyoji was proceeding as usual.

Shikigami’s sketches, models, and scenes were being moved along nicely, the cinematomatics were being worked on, the combat system, numbers and playstyle were all being planned meticulously.

There wasn’t a whole lot of work for Onmyoji. In this previous life, Onmyoji’s starting team only consisted of nine people, including programmers.

Zheng Hongxi and Qian Kun were quite comfortable with this as they were familiar with mobile card games, and they could direct any questions to Chen Mo.

Su Jinyu had to deal with the difficult parts of the game. As this was a game that focused on artwork, her hands were full from controlling the artstyle for the game to make sure they match.

Chen Mo was also busy as he oversaw all of this. Shikigami sketches, story of the game, the balancing of the game… he probably couldn’t manage without the Super Accelerator.

Chen Mo was already quite tired when he was working on Warcraft as it was more work. But since he had a lot of passion and motivation, Chen Mo didn’t feel tired working on a game that could go down in history.

But Chen Mo felt much more tired working on Onmyoji because he lacked passion as it was fairly similar to I Am MT.

“I’m going to hire a lot more people after this, I can’t keep doing this.”

Chen Mo wanted to maintain a small group as the efficiency would go down when the number of people increased. But from the looks of it, he needed to hire more as he couldn’t do everything himself.

—

As he was working, Zheng Hongxi saw an ad about Demon Slayers 2.

Aside from the advertising Demon Slayers 2, they even stepped on I Am MT.

Qian Kun angrily complained to Chen Mo, “Do you see what the media are saying? Demon Slayers is the number one mobile card game in China? How can they say that?”

Zheng Hongxi agreed, “Yeah, isn’t that just a game that copied I Am MT? Seems that you can do anything with enough promotion!”

“Right? There’s nothing good to come from following manager’s footsteps!” added Su Jinyu.

Chen Mo was speechless, “What do the players think on I Am MT’s forum?”

“What can they think?” said Qian Kun, “Anyone staying in I Am MT are all diehard fans. They aren’t changing their minds. There are many more Demon Slayers fans anyways.”

“Don’t worry, let them be,” said Chen Mo, “Onmyoji is going alone pretty well anyways, just work on the things you need to work on. We’ll release the game one and a half months after their release, they can bask in the sun while they still can.”

Qian Kun was hesitant, “But manager, Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform has so many players, are you sure we won’t suffer by giving them a head start?”

Chen Mo laughed, “Why are you worried? You guys know how good the game is. Put it this way, no matter Demon Slayers 2 or any other card game, they will eventually be consumed by Onmyoji. We won’t suffer from anything.