Chapter 254 - Father and Daughter
Chapter 254: Father and Daughter
The entire video game industry was dumbfounded at Minecraft’s miraculous number of sales.
It might be the cheapest VR game ever and didn’t have the best profit model, but its increase in sales was horrifying.
So far in China, there were over 1.3 billion mobile users, five hundred million PC users, and a measly one hundred million VR users.
There are one hundred and fifty six million private car owners in China. People that could afford to buy cars should be way higher when taking the purchase restriction policies into account.
In theory, anyone who would afford a car could afford a VR gaming pod as well. But as VR gaming pods are purely for entertainment, there were naturally fewer players who would go out of their way to buy a gaming pod, resulting in the number of around one hundred million gaming pods.
But this was still a huge market.
VR gaming pods are even more common in advanced countries in the west, and the market looked really optimistic too.
So far Minecraft sold three million copies and it shouldn’t be a problem to break a hundred million in a few more months. That would mean that one in ten VR gaming pods have Minecraft installed.
This also suggested that the game was about to be the ‘most installed VR game’.
After Minecraft’s miraculous growth, the gaming industry started looking deeper into its success. There was even expert analysis from the Game Committee, going through Minecraft’s unique points.
“Minecraft is an incredibly unique VR game. It’s ability to allow players to realise their imagination and creativity is its biggest differentiating factor.
“There are many games on the market that take inspiration from fun activities in real life and built their entire world around those features.
“In these types of games, the players will follow the easy to understand rules to work towards a goal and from that get a sense of satisfaction. This was the core of many of these games.
“But these games are relatively shallow as the players can only do so much within the restrictions of the game. They can’t freely make changes and have limited scalability.
“But adding anymore to these games would actually do the opposite and shave off the original point of the game. It may even cause a loss of direction.
“But nothing of sorts happened in Minecraft.
“The game is incredibly rich. Players could play survival, play with others as a team, they could build, or even create various interesting things using redstone.
“Everybody would have their own way of playing the game and they would be able to search for the way of playing the game that would best fulfil them.
“It’s hard to say what the core enjoyment of Minecraft is. I could only tell you that it gives you a fun space, all you had to do was to insert whatever you want to experience into that space and enjoy that experience.
As Minecraft continued to gain popularity, it became the most topical VR game, completely overshadowing Thousand Hells.
-In the experience store.
Chen Mo was laying down on the sofa testing how Minecraft ran on tablets.
It was alright, but obviously not comparable to VR.
During the development process, Chen Mo worked on the PC version, then ported that onto VR. Mobile Minecraft was just something that happened along the way.
But the problem was that compared to VR, the PC and mobile version of Minecraft wasn’t a complete game as VR Minecraft had been modified by CHen Mo, whereas Minecraft on PC and mobile were the same quality as the original Minecraft.
This meant that PC and mobile versions of Minecraft didn’t have online Multiplayer or ‘Chen Mo’s World’, and its graphics weren’t as polished either.
PC was relatively better, but the controls for the mobile version caused quite a bit of problems as the virtual joystick wasn’t the best solution. Clicking to place and holding to dig wasn’t the most intuitive thing either.
Moreover, the mobile version couldn’t support large buildings because of the hardware restrictions of mobile. If the players couldn’t build huge buildings, the most the players could do was to build a little wooden shack in singleplayer or hang around in survival mode, dramatically affecting the entertainment value of the game.
It was natural to release a PC and mobile version from how popular VR Minecraft was, nor was Chen Mo going to pass up this opportunity. However, Chen Mo still needed to do some polishing.
While he was in the middle of his train of thought, a pair walked into the experience store.
They looked like father and daughter. The dad looked quite young in his forties, and the daughter looked around twelve years old.
The daughter was holding her father’s hand, “Papa, is this where Minecraft was made?”
She had a really soft and cute voice, as if from an anime.
The father bent over slightly and patted her on the head, “Yep, you’ll be able to play Minecraft soon.”
Chen Mo was surprised as he’d never seen a child in his experience store before.
Experience stores have the same rules as internet cafes, where children are banned from using the facilities.
Although minors could spend a short amount of time trying out mobile games under adult supervision, it was rare to see someone who would bring their children to an experience store to try out mobile games?
The pair walked to the front desk.
“Hi, can I try out Minecraft here?” asked the father.
Su Jinyu was no longer working at the front desk, and in her place was another girl who recently graduated.
She said embarrassingly, “Sorry, because Minecraft is just a VR game and we only have computers and mobile phones in the experience store thus far, there is no way to try out the game.”
The father was shocked, “Huh? How come we can’t try out your game in your experience store?”
The front desk lady replied, “I’m really sorry, as Minecraft is our first VR game and we can’t fit any VR gaming pods in the experience store. I’m really sorry.”
The dad seemed a bit disappointed, nodding, “Alright, thanks.”
The daughter pouted, “Papa?”
The father held her hand to the door and squatted down, “I’m sorry Nini, they don’t have Minecraft at the experience store. Let’s figure something else out alright?”
The girl’s eyes were getting a bit red as if she was about to cry, but she still nodded, “Alright, let’s do then papa.”
The father pinched Nini’s cheek lightly, heartbroken before standing up and leaving.
“Wait,” Chen Mo stood up, “Are you guys here to play Minecraft?”
The dad was shocked, “Yes, and you are?”
Chen Mo stuck his hand out, “I’m Chen Mo, I’m the designer of Minecraft.”
The dad shook Chen Mo’s hand, exclaiming, “You’re Minecraft’s designer? Great to meet you.”
Chen Mo looked at Nini, “You want to play Minecraft?”