Chen Mo returned to his office on the second floor, opened up the app store, and searched for recent games. He also went online to see what major video game companies were testing.
Most video game companies would release their new games into their experience stores. Therefore, as long as a game was developed, even if it wasn't released into the app store, there would be some rumors about it.
Chen Mo finally found a short demo of Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's new game on a certain video website, the name of the game was Guardian of the Holy Spring.
"Hmm? Even Emperor Dynasty Entertainment is involved? That's right.
"I should pay more attention to a game made by Emperor Dynasty Entertainment."
Chen Mo opened the demo video and started researching Guardian of the Holy Spring.
…
When a game with an innovative gameplay becomes popular, it would definitely lead to a wave of trends, and there would definitely be copycats.
Plants vs Zombies had been popular for two months. If other video game designers wanted to copy it, two months was more than enough time for them to make the game.
Chen Mo was prepared for this, but he didn't expect it to happen so soon.
Plants vs Zombies could be seen as a variant of tower defense games, but its popularity had far surpassed most tower defense games, as its strategy could be said to have crushed all other tower defense games.
For the video game designers of this world, it wasn't hard to figure out what made Plants vs Zombies so successful. Any C-grade video game designer would be able to make a game similar to Plants vs Zombies if they were willing to disregard their reputation and plagiarize it.
Lunar Defense was such a game. A notorious company and a little-known designer spent two months reinventing a game.
The idea behind Lunar Defense was very clear. It was to use the advantage of being free, and try to attract as many fans of Plants vs Zombies as possible, then use advertising to recoup the cost.
They were targeting the players who weren't willing to spend money on Plants vs Zombies, as well as the players who were sick of Plants vs Zombies.
However, Chen Mo knew that their idea would fail, so he didn't take it to heart.
There were three reasons.
First, Lunar Defense was afraid of making too many changes to the rules of Plants vs Zombies. The video game designer wasn't skilled enough, and didn't want to change the highlights of the original game, so they chose to copy it completely.
This made it so that most Plants vs Zombies players couldn't bear to play a game that was so repetitive. If it's exactly the same as the original, why not play the original?
Moreover, the first few stages of Lunar Defense were repetitive tutorials. For Plants vs Zombies players, this was content that they were already sick of. It greatly affected their gaming experience, and most people didn't have the patience for it.
Secondly, this type of game was not suitable for free-to-play.
It didn't matter if it was advertising or selling value-added services, it would make the players feel like the game wasn't good. Comparing it to Plants vs Zombies, Lunar Defense would only leave negative reviews.
Thirdly, Plants vs Zombies' playstyle, skills, and level designs all fit perfectly with the game's world. Forcefully changing the art resources would only make the game feel out of place.
As a result, many players didn't find it fun, but they couldn't tell why. Due to the fact that the plants and zombies had been replaced by the Mechanical Turrets and Zergs, the players' feelings had changed slightly, which had seriously affected the players' mentality when playing the game.
Therefore, Chen Mo didn't care about Defense of the Moon at all. The game had gone down the wrong path from the start. It would only be drowned in the criticism of the players, and it would be difficult to even recoup the cost.
This was a classic example of someone who didn't even know how to copy.
Other than Flying Limit Entertainment who made Defense of the Moon, there were a few smaller companies making imitations of Plants vs Zombies. However, Chen Mo could tell with a glance that the quality of these games wasn't as good as Defense of the Moon, so he didn't have to worry about them becoming a laughing stock.
The only thing that Chen Mo was worried about was Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's Guardian of the Holy Spring.
The designer of Guardian of the Holy Spring was a B-grade videogame designer under Emperor Dynasty Entertainment, Qiu Bin. He had made a few successful games before this.
From the video, Guardian of the Holy Spring was similar to Plants vs Zombies in many ways. However, it was a bit far-fetched to say that it was a plagiarism, as many of the similarities didn't seem right.
Guardian of the Holy Spring's map wasn't like Plants vs Zombies, which had five neat paths. On the map, there were hills, valleys, and other elements like walls.
Players needed to set up various defensive structures around the Holy Spring, such as magic barriers, crystal towers, dragon nests, and the Heroic Barracks, to defend against the attacks of the Demons.
Guardian of the Holy Spring was purposely different from Plants vs Zombies in terms of soldier skills, level difficulty, and expanded playstyles. Only a small portion of the units were the same as Plants vs Zombies.
If someone were to jump out and say that Guardian of the Holy Spring was copying Plants vs Zombies, there would be a large number of players who would refute it.
Copying in spirit but not in form, that was the highest level of copying.
Moreover, to this extent, it was hard to say that it was' copying '. The core of the game had been changed, so how could it be considered copying?
However, it was obvious that the inspiration and creativity for this game came from Plants vs Zombies, even the core of the game was similar to Plants vs Zombies.
Chen Mo had a feeling that once this game was released, the results wouldn't be bad. With Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's support, it wouldn't be strange for the sales to completely overtake Plants vs Zombies.
That was the power of channels.
However, the game was still in the testing phase. According to Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's plan, it would be around three months before it was officially released.
The reason why it took so long was because Guardian of the Holy Spring required a lot of additional content. Perhaps they were worried that the main playstyle would make the players feel like it was copying Plants vs Zombies, so they had to use a lot of additional playstyles and content to lessen that feeling.
Chen Mo knew that he had to speed things up.
Although this' copying 'incident wasn't enough to threaten Chen Mo, it proved one thing, which was that the video game companies in this world were just as sharp and shameless as in his previous life.
In some ways, they were even better than them.
Plants vs Zombies had only been released for two months, and many video game companies had already made copies of it. This was much faster than the video game companies in his previous life.
Just like Galactic Entertainment's Defense of the Moon, they had already thought of using a free game to create a different path. Emperor Dynasty Entertainment also knew that they could use their large user base to 'copy' the gameplay of Plants vs Zombies and make it their own.
Obviously, these video game companies weren't sheep waiting to be slaughtered. They were all hungry wolves, but they hadn't figured it out yet.
Once these video game companies figured it out, Chen Mo's advantage would be gone.
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