Chapter 16 Making Plans

Having made up his mind, Pei Qian entered the ESRO official resource site and searched for a generic template for card mobile games.

Soon, Pei Qian found one.

This wasn't the same template as *Q Meng San Guo*.

Because *Q Meng San Guo* (Cute Three Kingdoms) was the originator of card mobile game gameplay and currently the most popular card mobile game on the market—a veritable cash cow—the company wouldn't be foolish enough to sell their own game as a template.

However, just because they didn't sell it didn't mean others wouldn't.

Many game companies followed suit, creating card mobile games. They wrote their own code, but borrowed from *Q Meng San Guo* in terms of gameplay.

And because these companies didn't make any money from their games, they reluctantly modified their own games and posted them on the resource site to sell as templates, hoping to recover some of the costs.

The template Pei Qian had found now came from a failed card mobile game imitation.

"A failed work? I like it!"

Pei Qian felt it was a good omen.

He clicked to look at the gameplay system inside.

From the time card mobile games became popular in 2008 until now, *Q Meng San Guo* had already undergone many version upgrades and had added many new gameplay elements.

This template, however, was clearly outdated and only had the most basic elements.

For example, levels, sweeps, arena, etc.

There were no new features at all!

The entire game seemed quite shabby.

Pei Qian was very satisfied with this!

This was the card mobile game template he had been dreaming of. It didn't have any fun features, and it definitely couldn't create any advantages in gameplay!

He looked at the price: 100,000!

"...Why only 100,000?"

Pei Qian was quite dissatisfied with this price; it was too cheap!

If you had priced it at 150,000, I would have bought it without hesitation!

But then he thought again. The driving simulation template was only 20,000. Although the card mobile game template was more complex and included many more complete gameplay systems, selling it for 100,000 wasn't considered cheap.

You could tell from the number of downloads that the number of downloads for this template was far less than the simulation driving game template that Pei Qian had bought before.

This showed that its price was already inflated and it wasn't very practical.

Pei Qian didn't hesitate and placed the order!

He liked goods with inflated prices. They could burn more money and wouldn't trigger system warnings.

After buying this template, he had the basic gameplay. Next, he had to fill it with art resources.

Art resources included UI, combat effects, card illustrations, and a series of other content.

In addition to these expenses, there were also costs for purchasing music and sound effects and renting cloud servers, but these didn't cost much.

The main expense was still in the area of art resources.

Pei Qian considered leaving two or three thousand for music and sound effects, and another ten thousand or so for other expenses. The remaining one hundred sixty or seventy thousand would all be used for art resources.

One hundred sixty or seventy thousand, not a small amount of money, but not a large amount either.

However, Pei Qian hadn't quite figured out what the art resources should look like.

Card games are the most suitable games for reskinning.

You could also understand it this way: for card games, the "skin" is the most important thing.

It was precisely because this skin was so important that Pei Qian had to ensure that it was a flop!

Of course, deliberately making it ugly wouldn't work.

Because the system stipulated that you couldn't purchase goods or services of obviously low quality.

If he only bought art resources worth fifty or sixty thousand after spending one hundred sixty or seventy thousand, he wouldn't pass the system's test.

He had to purchase services of roughly equivalent value, allowing for slight fluctuations, but not too much.

At this time, Pei Qian needed to use his little brain.

How could he buy art resources of good quality and ensure that players wouldn't like them?

It was simple, just have the artists use their superb painting skills to paint in a style that players wouldn't accept, right?

The key was still to come up with an art requirement plan.

Pei Qian wasn't very confident in his abilities in this area. After all, he had the failure experience of *Lonely Desert Road*, which made him question his execution ability.

At this time, Ma Yang's role came into play!

Pei Qian downloaded a generic template for an art resource requirements table from the resource site.

This requirements table detailed the required dimensions of various resources, followed by the need to provide some simple descriptions of these resources.

Resources were roughly divided into two categories: original artwork, which was more expensive and required higher skills from the artists; it had to be painted more meticulously, and the requirements had to be very clear.

The other category was other resources, such as UI, special effects, etc.

Similar resources were available online, and could be used with slight modifications.

But Pei Qian was certainly not satisfied with just modifying them casually. How could he spend the money if he just modified them casually?

Therefore, all art resources were customized!

Pei Qian first listed all the relatively non-critical resources such as system UI and special effects, and then filled in some very simple requirements himself.

For example, it had to be cool!

It had to match the Three Kingdoms style!

It was all this kind of vague statement.

As for what the final product would look like...

Pei Qian didn't care; it could be whatever it wanted!

Then, Pei Qian directly sent the table to Ma Yang.

Ma Yang was already awake at this time.

However, after holding that large book for two minutes, he was already showing signs of falling asleep again.

Seeing that Pei Qian had sent him a form, Ma Yang instantly perked up. He threw the book on the bed, leaned his head down from the upper bunk, and said softly, "Are we starting work?"

Pei Qian nodded: "Fill out the form. Use your imagination and fill it out boldly!"

Ma Yang nodded vigorously: "No problem!"

He was very enthusiastic about work!

Ma Yang looked at it. This was an art resource requirements table, and there was quite a lot for him to fill in, mainly the character original artwork requirement descriptions.

Pei Qian had already determined the game's theme: the Three Kingdoms.

The characters of the Three Kingdoms were just that many. Pei Qian had picked out a total of 50 characters, including 15 rare cards, 25 excellent cards, and 10 common cards.

In terms of price, the price of an original artwork varied greatly, ranging from seven or eight hundred yuan for the low end to four or five thousand yuan for the expensive ones.

You could pull a student from an art academy in a second- or third-tier city and buy it for one hundred yuan per card.

Customizing it with a well-known artist could easily cost seven or eight thousand yuan per card.

Anyway, you get what you pay for.

Pei Qian would never customize with a well-known artist, even though it would allow him to spend more money.

Because the fame of a well-known artist was there, it was very likely to create a promotional effect for the game!

Similarly, buying original artwork for four or five thousand yuan per card could indeed allow him to spend more money, but what if players liked these beautiful original artworks once they were released?!

Again, the most important thing for a card mobile game was the skin. If you made this skin too good-looking, it was possible to make money even if the gameplay was garbage!

Therefore, Pei Qian decided to buy cheaper original artwork!

If he wanted to spend more money, he would just buy more!

50 characters, and then create different states after the characters were promoted and starred up.

This was equivalent to 50 base images, with four variations for each base image, used to show the effect of promotion.

Calculating the price at 3,000 for each base image + four variations, this would be 150,000, just right for Pei Qian's budget.

After all, the first generation of card games didn't need models, saving him an expense.

Of course, the specific quotation would have to be made by the other party. Pei Qian was just making a rough estimate.

Ma Yang was a little confused. These things had already been decided, so what was he mainly responsible for?

He looked carefully at the notes that Pei Qian had written and understood.

His job was to create original, modified versions!

In other words, he was to open his mind and completely subvert these 50 characters, changing them beyond recognition!