Chapter 419 The First Free VR Game?

Su Jinyu thought for a while: "Manager, this idea is really good. But is there really hope to compete for the annual game? As far as I know, the annual game seems to be awarded to those open world games with richer content."

Chen Mo said: "Don't worry about this, because there are no particularly competitive VR games in China this year. There may be one or two good ones, but I have confidence in "Overwatch". Moreover, the previous "Wolf Soul" by Di Chao Interactive Entertainment Didn't you win Game of the Year too? That's an FPS too."

Seeing that everyone had no doubts, Chen Mo began to explain other parts of the concept draft, including game mode, hero setting, world view background, map design, derivative gameplay, profit model, etc.

Basically, the more people listened, the more excited they became, because this concept draft is still Chen Mo's consistent style, and the completion level is very high, especially the various heroes and their story backgrounds, which are very interesting to everyone.

However, there is still a lot of controversy in the profit model.

"Completely free? Just like "League of Legends" and only charge for value-added services?"

"It's a bit of an adventure, right? This is a VR game after all, and the investment is much larger than that of a PC!"

"Yeah, and the store manager, there are already few players in VR games. If we only sell value-added services, can we recover the cost?"

"There is no VR game with no threshold at all on the market, right?"

Obviously, everyone knows the meaning of "no threshold" for competitive games, but the problem is that VR platforms and PC platforms are different.

So far, the cheapest small-scale VR games in China have to be bought for dozens of dollars, and I have never heard of free ones.

Chen Mo seemed to have expected everyone's reaction and smiled: "I understand what everyone means. Let's put it this way, even in the worst case, it doesn't matter if this game loses money completely. Because our goal this time is the annual game. "

"Do you have to make money? Our company is not short of money now. It doesn't matter if this game loses money and makes a profit. What's more, as long as there are enough players, it is impossible not to make money."

Chen Mo looked at everyone: "What do you think, if "Overwatch" adopts a buyout system, what is the appropriate price?"

Everyone looked at each other.

Qian Kun said: "In terms of the price of "Wolf Soul", the low price is 488, and the high one is 1288 or 1688. If it is lower, like the previous "Minecraft" sold for 128, this is already a very low price.

For many VR gamers, it's like a free gift. "

Chen Mo said: "If "Overwatch" sells 128, it will only sell 1 million copies. Are we short of this 100 million?"

Everyone: "..."

It is true that the monthly flow of "Onmyoji" has already been measured in "billion". For Chen Mo, it is really meaningless to make this money by selling Overwatch.

Chen Mo continued: "Even if the price is tenfolded, 1288, one million copies is one billion. But you have to consider, how many players will Overwatch lose by the 1288 threshold?"

"That is to say, it is meaningless to set a low price, it is not worth a few dollars, it is better to give it away, it sounds good; set a high price and lose a lot of players, for us, the number of players is more important than the money sold by sales. Much, for a competitive game, the importance of the depth of the fish pond does not need me to repeat it?"

"What if "Overwatch" is completely free? Maybe the vast majority of VR game cabins at home and abroad will install "Overwatch", and even those players who don't play FPS games at all will be attracted to play two games, as long as these people Half, no, one-tenth of the people who stay and convert into core players is profitable for us."

Everyone looked at each other and didn't speak.

Indeed, Chen Mo's remarks are a bit shocking. If other designers can't have the confidence to make a boutique VR game, and then make a profit by selling skins for free? What a heart!

But Chen Mo is different. He has a lot of money now, and he has the final say in all this money. He can spend it how he wants, and he can toss as much as he wants. There will never be any shareholders, investors and other characters who will come out to point fingers.

Everyone can only sigh with emotion, rich is self-willed!

However, what Chen Mo said does make sense, because there are already few players on the VR side. If the buyout threshold card is used again, the depth of the fish pond cannot be guaranteed at all. This game will be very unfriendly to new players.

Obviously, Chen Mo has great ambitions for the performance of "Overwatch" on the VR side. He wants to make this game the game with the largest number of players on the VR side, and he also wants to make this game the first VR side with zero barriers to entry. Premium game.

In the end, everyone accepted Chen Mo's shocking approach and decided to make a completely free VR game, and use this game to compete for the best game of the year award.

After all, he is the boss, and he has the final say.

...

In November, when Chen Mo was preparing to make "Overwatch", a small episode occurred in the game circle.

The first-person perspective MOBA game "Soul Wars" developed by a small company quietly went online and disappeared without a sound.

This game is a PC game. The design idea is very simple. It is to take advantage of the MOBA game trend brought by "League of Legends" to change the third-person God's perspective to the first-person perspective to explore another possibility.

But it turned out to be an unsurprising failure, and many players haven't even heard of the game.

In fact, at the beginning of the emergence of "League of Legends", many designers have considered this question: Can the MOBA game be changed to a first-person perspective?

Many designers gave up after carefully evaluating this kind of change, which is the main reason why big companies such as Dichao Interactive Entertainment and Zenyi Interactive Entertainment did not make "first-person MOBA".

The small company that made "Soul Wars" apparently took a fluke to try it, but it failed without a doubt.

Because a very important factor in MOBA games is that players must have a very clear vision of the entire battle situation, they must be very clear about where my teammates are, what they are doing, and also must be very clear about the position of the enemy heroes, in order to make correct judgments .

Changing the third-person God's perspective to the first-person perspective directly leads to a serious limitation of the players' vision and errors in judging the situation of the battle.

Moreover, when releasing range skills, it is also difficult to judge the actual range of the skill filter from the first-person perspective. Some full-graphic skills are very difficult to do, and players often have deviations in their judgment of the sense of distance.

All these problems have seriously damaged the core fun of MOBA games. In addition, the production level of this game is very general, so it will be cool without any splashes.

And this game has further strengthened the mainstream cognition in the game industry, that is, MOBA games cannot be first-person, let alone VR games.