Almighty Game Designer

The starting theme song started playing after the start sequence.

“I am MT, I’m built like a wall. I parry, I dodge, I’ll use my body to guard thee…”

Chen Mo felt his passion from his teenage years reigniting upon hearing the melody. He had provided the melody and lyrics for the starting theme. The singer’s voice also fit it quite nicely and was quite infectious.

Su Jinyu was a bit shocked; the song exceeded her expectations!

Nobody in this world had seen Saint Seiya, but this song was composed by Hiroaki Matsuzawa and Nobuo Yamada, embracing the anime style to the fullest; it would remain a classic no matter which dimension it was in.

The story had finally started.

MT came to the Wailing Taverns in order to finish a task. MT met the heavily wounded Shaman at the cave entrance. MT and Shaman. MT and Shaman was trying to save Rogue, who was being chased by Tyran, but Tyran was already guarding his corpse…

Dazzling Aurora Studio was a professional team, after all. Be it the pacing of the story, sound effects, or connection plots, they were all done better than the original. Moreover, Guo Feng made minor adjustments according to what they knew about the story to make it even easier to understand.

Chen Mo also intentionally included some settings from World of Warcraft in order to slowly introduce it to the audience.

Other than that, when Tyran appeared, Chen Mo indicated with text on the screen: Alliance – Tyran. Alliance was written in red word art, introducing the character to the audience.

Tiny changes like that explained most of the things that the original version never explicitly mentioned.

——

Ten minutes went by quickly, and the end theme started playing.

Everyone knew what the melody was. It was L’Internationale. But what made the others curious was that the lyrics had many famous people or places in this world.

Chen Mo turned off the projector and asked, “How does it feel?”

Their expressions were a bit complicated.

Chang Xiuya said after some thought, “There’s a part of the plot that I’m not fully understanding.”

Jia Peng saidm “The production is quite good, basically top notch.”

Weng Lingwei said, “Too short.”

Su Jinyu also nodded, “Yeah, it’s only ten minutes. It feels like it ended before there was any advancement in plot. However, you can kinda feel that the world is massive.”

Jia Peng added, “It is quite funny, but… it feels like I’ll be watching it my entire life. At ten minutes per episode, wouldn’t it be releasing until the world ends?”

Everyone started chattering and discussion, but the general consensus was that it was too short, and the background of the story and setting wasn’t explained enough.

Other than that, the characters, scenes, and story were quite good.

Chen Mo had already seen those points coming. Although Guo Feng and Chen Mo had made some minor changes to it and gradually added some explanation of the world, without basic knowledge of World of Warcraft, it was quite normal for the audience to not understand some parts.

Chen Mo asked, “Be objective on this: If there were more episodes released, would you watch them? Don’t think about the associations of the series and me, just treat it as somebody else’s work.”

Everyone went silent and gave it some thought.

Jia Peng nodded, “I probably would. The theme is quite fresh, and to be honest, I’ve never seen the combination of cute animations, humor, and Western fantasy. I’d probably continue watching it just based on that.”

Chang Xiuya nodded, “Yeah, I think so too. The characters are quite cute, and they all have their own features. I really want to find out what happens to Shaman.”

“What about you guys?” Chen Mo looked at Wen Lingwei and Su Jinyu.

Su Jinyu was a bit hesitant, “Umm… I’d probably watch it. First, because the theme is quite unique, and there was a lot of suspense just from the first episode. It’s probably decent for killing time in the future. Also, the ending theme is awesome.”

Wen Lingwei said, “I don’t know. I’d probably watch it if it was popular, but I might just forget about it if it wasn’t.”

Chen Mo nodded, as it was basically what he had expected.

Was I Am MT completely helpless without World of Warcraft? Obviously not.

For the viewers of the parallel world, although they lost a bit of the familiarity and references, they gained freshness and mystery.

The animations in this world were almost completely devoid of Western fantasy, so the world of I Am MT would be completely new to some of these people. Everything on Azeroth would draw the attention of viewers, and having a minotaur as the main character was an interesting gimmick.

This feeling was reminiscent of when the players in the previous world first experienced the wonders of World of Warcraft.

Moreover, the high production quality of I Am MT, combined with the humor, fast-paced story, and various interesting characters were all features that would draw viewers into continuing to watch.

It didn’t matter even if it didn’t reach the popularity of the previous world. It was more than enough as long as the IP was able to allow the players to recognize the value of the cards in the game!

By Chen Mo’s calculations, if this series did become a hot topic, it would certainly break ten million views in its first month, which would bring in more than enough players into I Am MT.

How much was ten million plays? Just like One Hundred Thousand Bad Jokes[1] in his previous life, breaking ten million views in just three days. The first episode had one hundred and sixty million views in total!

In the parallel world, the quality of Chen Mo’s I Am MT was impeccable, and the story and character designs had withstood the test of the people in his previous life.

Even taking away viewers watching on the basis of throwbacks, the worst case scenario was getting a third of the views. That was enough to support I Am MT the video game!

What if the views were even lower? Chen Mo might be hugely disappointed…

—–

After seeing the production quality of the first episode and getting feedback on it, Chen Mo was quite relieved.

“Alright, let’s go back to work!” Chen Mo said as he went back upstairs.

Su Jinyu was about to ask a question, but for one reason or another never did so.

She was actually quite puzzled. Why was Chen Mo putting so much effort into the animation, but completely shafting the video game? If Chen Mo put the effort and money into producing the video game instead, he’d probably produce something even better, so why was he doing so much?

——

Chen Mo continued working on the second floor. He was focused on planning the numbers and abilities of the various cards, as well as content relating to the level design.

Chen Mo wasn’t bothering to draw the UI and other graphical resources, which was why he outsourced it. As that artwork wasn’t important, he figured he’d throw money at it, and just do some final quality analysis.

Chen Mo now had to spend his time on making sure there weren’t any problems with the card system and numbers.

=============

TL Note: [1] One Hundred Thousand Bad Jokes is a 2014 Chinese animated fantasy comedy film.