Chapter 420 - The first free VR game?

Su Jinyu thought for a moment and said,”manager, this is a good idea.” However, did he really have a chance to compete for game of the year? As far as I know, this year’s Game Awards are usually given to open world games with more content. ”

“Don’t worry about that,” Chen Mo said,”there aren’t any competitive VR games this year. There might be one or two that are good, but I’m confident in Overwatch.” Besides, didn’t Emperor dynasty Entertainment’s Wolf Soul also win game of the year before? It’s also an FPS. ”

Seeing that no one had any more questions, Chen Mo continued explaining the other parts of the concept draft, including the game modes, hero settings, world backgrounds, map designs, additional playstyles, profit models, and so on.

The more they listened, the more excited they became. This concept draft was Chen Mo’s style, and it was extremely complete. Everyone was especially interested in the heroes and their backstory.

However, there was still quite a bit of controversy regarding the profit model.

“Completely free of charge? Like League of Legends, they only rely on value-added services to charge?”

“Isn’t it a little risky? It’s a VR game, after all, so the investment is much higher than a PC game!”

“Yeah, and manager, there aren’t many VR players in the first place. If we only sell value-added services, will we be able to cover our costs?”

“There’s no VR game on the market that has no barriers to entry, right?”

Obviously, everyone knew the meaning of “no threshold” for competitive games, but the problem was that VR and PC platforms were different.

So far, the cheapest VR game in the country cost tens of Yuan, and no one had ever heard of a free game.

Chen Mo seemed to have expected everyone’s reaction and smiled,””I understand everyone’s meaning. Let’s put it this way, even in the worst case scenario, the game would completely lose money, and it would be fine. This is because our goal is game of the year. ”

“Do I have to make money? Our company isn’t short of money right now, so it doesn’t matter even if this game loses money and earns sales. Moreover, as long as there are enough players, it’s impossible not to make money. ”

“What do you guys think?” Chen Mo looked at everyone.”What’s the most suitable price for Overwatch?”

Everyone looked at each other.

Qian Kun said,”based on the price of Wolf Soul, it could be as low as 488 Yuan, and as high as 1288 or 1688 Yuan.” Minecraft sold for 128 RMB, that’s already a very low price. To many VR players, it’s like giving it away for free. ”

“If Overwatch is sold at 128 RMB, it’ll only be 100 million RMB for a million copies. Do we lack 100 million RMB?” Chen Mo said.

Everyone was speechless.

It was true, Onmyoji’s monthly revenue was already in the hundreds of millions, and Chen Mo didn’t see any point in relying on Overwatch’s sales.

Chen Mo continued,”even if the price is ten times higher, 1288, one million copies would be one billion.” However, you have to consider how many players the Overwatch will lose at the 1288 threshold. ”

“In other words, it’s meaningless to set a low price. It doesn’t matter if it’s worth a few dollars, so it’s better to give it for free. If we set it too high, we’ll lose a lot of players. For us, the number of players is more important than the money we earn from sales. For a competitive game, I don’t need to go into the importance of the depth of the fish pond, do I?”

“What if the Overwatch is completely free? Most of the VR gaming pods in the country or even overseas would probably be installed with Overwatch. Even those who don’t play FPS games would be attracted to play it. As long as half, no, one-tenth of these people stay and become core players, it’ll be a profit for us. ”

Everyone looked at each other and did not speak.

Indeed, Chen Mo’s words were a little shocking. If it was any other videogame designer, they wouldn’t have the confidence to make a high-quality VR game for free and only make a profit by selling skins. What a great insight!

But Chen Mo was different. He had a lot of money now, and he had the final say. He could spend it however he wanted, and he could do whatever he wanted with it. No shareholder or investor would come out and tell him what to do.

Everyone could only sigh with emotion. Being rich was really willful!

However, Chen Mo’s words made sense, since there weren’t many VR players to begin with. If they were to add in a buyout, the depth of the game wouldn’t be guaranteed, and the game wouldn’t be very friendly to new players.

It was obvious that Chen Mo had great ambitions for Overwatch’s performance in VR. He wanted to make it the game with the most players, and also make it the first top quality VR game with zero requirements.

In the end, everyone accepted Chen Mo’s shocking decision to make a completely free VR game, and use it to compete for the Game of the Year award.

After all, he was the boss, and he had the final say.

……

In November, when Chen Mo was preparing for Overwatch, something happened in the gaming industry.

War of Souls, a first-person MOBA game developed by a small company, had quietly gone online and then disappeared.

This game was a PC game with a simple design idea. It was to take advantage of the MOBA trend brought by League of Legends and change the third person God’s perspective to the first person perspective to explore another possibility.

But the result was unsurprisingly a failure, and many players had never even heard of this game.

In fact, when League of Legends first appeared, many designers had considered this problem: Can you change MOBA games to first person?

Many videogame designers gave up on such changes after careful consideration. This was also the main reason why big companies like Emperor dynasty entertainment and ZEN Entertainment didn’t make a ‘first person MOBA’.

The small company that produced War of Souls obviously wanted to try their luck, but they failed without a doubt.

This was because a very important factor in MOBA games was that players had to have a clear view of the entire battle. They had to be very clear about where their teammates were, what they were doing, and the position of the enemy heroes in order to make the right judgment.

Changing the third-person God’s perspective to the first-person perspective directly limited the players ‘vision and caused them to misjudge the battle situation.

Moreover, when using a wide-range skill, it was difficult to judge the actual range of the skill filter in the first-person perspective. Some full-map skills were very difficult to do, and the players ‘judgment of the sense of distance often deviated.

All of these problems severely damaged the core fun of MOBA games. In addition, the level of the game was very average, so it didn’t cause much of a splash.

This game also reinforced the mainstream belief that MOBA games couldn’t be made in first person, much less in VR.