Chapter 168 - Many Lies

Translator: Exodus Tales  Editor: Exodus Tales

The interview lasted two hours, and every trap Han Lu laid down had been dealt with by Chen Mo. Han Lu even felt that Chen Mo was the one trapping her.

Han Lu decided to leave when she exhausted all her questions.

“Thanks for having me today.”

Han Lu was bothered by the fact that she was alright even though she didn’t get a single serious answer.

Chen Mo replied, “You’re welcome. I hope you’ll do justice to this interview, and show my love for the players to them.”

Han Lu said goodbye before leaving the experience store.

She had written down plenty of notes, but after reading it through again, it didn’t seem like she had much useful information written down at all.

However, she found herself to be alright with that and this was within her expectations.

—

The article was released three days later.

It more or less followed the interview without adding much to it. Han Lu released the interview exactly as Chen Mo said.

It wasn’t that Han Lu didn’t want to add anything to it, she couldn’t!

Han Lu was surprised that the Editor in Chief was happy with the article. It was released on the gaming channel on Tianji.com titled: ‘Interviewing Onmyoji’s creator: Money is something that happens along the way.”

There was a paragraph that was as followed:

“When the author asked if he had a secret as the country’s best videogame designer at making money, Chen Mo responded: Well, I’m not making games just for money, it’s just something that happens along the way and the reason he makes games is to give players happiness, add value to society, in the name of art. He also added that he actually losing money a lot of the time.”

Many fans were angered by this article as it was shared to various forums and websites, and even quoted by other media.

“Another one! This editor is working with Chen Mo to steal my IQ points again!”

“My goodness! I’d have to be stupid to believe this!”

“Onmyoji is more balanced? Are you joking?”

“Last poster, Chen Mo is right. It’s fair when everything comes down to luck.”

“My goodness, eighteen months of bonus? Chen Mo is so rich! Does anybody have Thunderbolt Entertainment’s recruitment line? I wanna be hired as a janitor!”

“Previous poster, you’re wrong, it’s a quarterly bonus.”

“How can someone be so rich! I’m so mad!”

“Refund my hard earned money Chen Mo!”

“He’s here with that ‘create happiness mindfully’ crap again! I knew that this guy was evil deep down. He might seem nice in Warcraft and Tale of Wuxia, but you see his true form when he’s in mobile games!

“Yeah, I’m only playing his PC games in the future, I’m boycotting his mobile games!”

“Can you guys relax? Are you trying to get Chen Mo to move that profit model to the PC market?”

“Huh? He wouldn’t, right?”

“Stop talking about it, it’ll be terrible if he does!”

“My goodness, making money is just a side thing? Casually making two hundred million a month? I’m impressed at how someone can be so alright with being so full of themselves.”

“Casually making money, Silent?”

“He’s saying that he’s the one losing money and we’re the ones gaining? I actually laughed.”

“The video game industry’s king of lies have been born!”

—

Other video game designers are also shocked to see this interview.

“What is this? How can Chen Mo be so full of himself?”

“What is this word of caution that even though the mobile game market is big, it can’t fit anyone else?”

“My goodness, he’s so full of himself!”

“Does he really think that Onmyoji has the whole market in its palms? Does he think he can do anything he wants when he’s rich?”

“I’m going to make another mobile card game just because of this!”

“Hold on, relax! At this point, whoever tries to go against Onmyoji will suffer!”

“I’m so mad! Can someone stop this guy!”

“Who can? Even Demon Slayers 2 is staying Silent!”

—

Another storm in the mobile gaming industry had been whipped up by Onmyoji, and Chen Mo was having the time of his life.

He could finally relax and take in the money.

But he was troubled by the increasing amount of visitors in the experience store. There are more and more Onmyoji players coming from far and wide just to visit the Kagura statue, wishing for an SSR. The experience store had been really full as of late because of that.

And Su Jinyu could barely handle working the front desk while working as an assistant too.

Chen Mo wanted to keep a small team that focused on making medium to small games in order to build capital. It was because smaller teams are more efficient and would have a better effect at training his assistants.

But the popularity of Warcraft and Onmyoji gave Chen Mo a pressure to hire more staff and get a better working environment.

It was quite terrible to have Zheng Hongxi and Qian Kun work in an environment surrounded by players.

Moreover, Chen Mo had a lot of cash in hand following the release of Onmyoji.

Warcraft had 5.7 million sales so far, bringing him six hundred and thirty million RMB in revenue. Onmyoji brought in two hundred and sixty million in revenue a month. These two games formed the majority of Chen Mo’s income.

Chen Mo could barely bring himself to look at the revenue other games brought in as games like Tale of Wuxia contributed peanuts to his income.

Warcraft cost the most in development cost among all his games. It cost more than eighty million including all the cinematics. Onmyoji was much cheaper at around twenty million. And when taking out the promotion and advertising costs for the games, Chen Mo had around seven hundred million at hand.

Of course, most of this money came from Warcraft. Warcraft was doing quite well because of all the new RPG maps, but the sales were sure to slowly slide down in the future.

It naturally had less players as an RTS game. Moreover, Thunderbolt Entertainment had limited impacts overseas, and couldn’t reach the levels of advertisement as Blizzard in his previous life which caused its relatively lower income.

Luckily, as Warcraft’s growth slowed down, Onmyoji’s growth just began. Chen Mo estimated that Onmyoji’s revenue next month would be even higher as he hoped for five or six hundred million RMB.

Chen Mo now had a lot of cash at hand. Chen Mo could now afford to make triple A PC titles that would cost around forty million USD.

The development cost of VR games was usually ten times more than PC games. It would cost him two hundred million USD to port a triple A PC game to VR, which would be very risky.

As Chen Mo now had more financial freedom and three capable assistants, he can consider his next move to expand his brand.