Almighty Video Game Designer

Chapter 221: Slacking Off

Chen Mo was enjoying some time in the sun on the balcony on the second floor of the experience store.

He was laying down comfortably on a recliner, with sunglasses on his face and a drink in his hand, just like on would in Hawaii.

Although it wasn’t all that warm outside, it was still quite nice to hang out directly under the sun. One could imagine they were on a beach under the sun if they closed their eyes.

But the cozy atmosphere was soon broken.

“Manager, stop slacking off during office times! I thought you were going to finish the design document for the new game within this week!” Su Jinyu said angrily with her hands on her hips.

With the release of Reaper of Souls, Diablo’s development was over. And due to the nature of Don’t Starve, there wasn’t a need to push frequent updates, which was by naturally starting slacking off, spending his time enjoying the sun, so lazy that he wasn’t even bothered to turn around.

The day to day operations of the company, and the maintenance and balancing of games were covered by the new hires. All Chen Mo had to do now was to distribute the work and had plenty of free time on hand.

“Geez, sure is nice being the boss,” expressed Chen Mo,

“...Manager, get up and start working on the design draft!”

“Geez, Goldfish, how could you still not understand after working with me for so long? Let me ask you, what’s the most important part of making a game?”

Su Jinyu was shocked, “Uhh, execution and inspiration?”

Chen Mo nodded, “Not bad, you’re learning. Then where does inspiration come from?”

Su Jinyu was confused, “Where does inspiration come from...? It just pops into your head out of nowhere.”

Chen Mo shook his head, “No no no, inspiration comes from relaxation. How could inspiration come to you if you were working like a dog every day? I need rest, let my mind clear up, and only then will inspiration arrive.”

“Uhh, do you mean that we’ll only start working once inspiration comes to you?”

Chen Mo nodded, “Of course. Remember, the most important part of making a game is making sure you have your bearings right. If you’re not in the right direction, you’ll just be wasting energy. So you trying to rush me just has the opposite effect.”

“Oh, I’ll leave you to it then. Take your time to gather inspiration then, manager.”

After getting Su Jinyu to leave, Chen Mo continued to enjoy his time in the sun.

He wasn’t waiting for inspiration or anything of the sorts, he was just being lazy.

After confirming the balance of the company, Chen Mo realised that he was much more wealthy than he previously thought.

“Should I consider buying a bigger experience store? Maybe a big house too while I’m at it.

“Yep, when I have a house, I’ll need a wife, then I’ll have kids. Will it be a male ball or a female ball[1]... I meant boy or girl?

“The baby formulas aren’t going to be a problem, but would they need their own apartment close to the uni? I’d be able to afford it, but the problem is having a local household registration[2].

“Whatever, if I don’t have a registration, I’ll just send them overseas. I wonder if they’ll be used to living overseas without the watchful eyes of any relatives.”

Luckily nobody else heard of this as all this was just in Chen Mo’s head. Otherwise Chen Mo would be reminded that all of his previous thoughts required a girlfriend.

If the players found out, they’d most certainly said, “It doesn’t matter if you marry, or have kids, or be a bachelor the rest of your life. The only important thing is... that you get back to developing games!”

He was a warm human living in a cold world.

Chen Mo wasn’t someone who had no desires, but to him, nothing else compared to the satisfaction of making games.

In terms of developing games, Chen Mo was a workaholic, one who would rarely take breaks.

Moreover, developing games were different from other industries as they needed to listen to the feedback from players and make changes according to market demands. This meant that it was hard to stop halfway through something after starting. Only when a game was released and was operating stably could he take time out of his day to relax.

This meant that Chen Mo had been incredibly busy recently.

After having some time to think, his development road map wasn’t exactly exactly as he liked.

He said to Zhuo Yao that he promised Zhuo Yao that he would make an incredibly popular PC game that would drive a lot of attention back to the PC market in two years. It’s been almost three years, yet he doesn’t even have a date planned.

On the contrary, he’d progressed quite a bit in the direction of VR games. Chen Mo thought it’d take him at least five years to even touch VR games, never expecting him to be within reach of VR games this early.

Of course, it didn’t matter than it differed on small details, it was still all within his calculations.

The experience store was incredibly small for how popular and wealthy Chen Mo was. He had enough money and had a certain push to move to a bigger experience store for his ‘face’.

However, upon considering that he was pressed for time for the next game on his agenda combined with the trouble with moving, Chen Mo decided to delay moving until August or September next year.

Chen Mo already had his assistant Lin Xiao look into finding a new place for the experience store, taking every part of that equation into consideration and consolidated it into a complete report.

Moving to a bigger experience store was a big deal after all. Chen Mo wanted it to be sufficient for at least another five or ten years to avoid having to move again soon after they settled down.

Next was to continue spending money to increase his abilities.

Chen Mo sometimes forgets that he was a transmigrater with a system like this.

It was due to how costly this system was, so the frugal Chen Mo would constantly forget its existence.

Moreover, developing new games and moving to a new experience store also cost a lot of money. Chen Mo didn’t want to spend too much money into the system as he maintained his stance of ‘good enough’.

He turned on the virtual screen of the bracelete.

It was one hundred thousand RMB per draw. There were many different types of rewards from drawing, such as design (numerics, story, professional knowledge), presentation (art, music, cinematics), and equipment(consumables and permanent).

As Chen Mo just entered the second stage, strictly speaking he needed all of it.

Chen Mo gave it some thought and decided to spend ten million RMB to start.

Chen Mo decided to calm down on spending too much money on this upon considering his usual unlucky self. This was the most expensive pay to win system in the world bar none after all.

TL note[1]: It’s a quote from a fantasy comedy film called One Hundred Thousand Bad Jokes. https://www.iqiyi.com/v_19rwvnjw40.html

[2]It’s something that’s not required to buy a house in the area in China, but does make the process easier.