Chapter 212 - Lacklustre Diablo Follow Up? (1/2)

Chen Mo releasing Diablo and Don’t Starve one after another caused a decent reaction in the videogame community, although not one as big as the copying craze from mobile card games.

This was expected as the main characteristics of the game were really unique and hard to replicate.

Diablo did allow industry professionals to realise the market gap in satisfying hack and slash games, but how to fill that gap was a very difficult question.

If they followed Diablo and made a third person game with a dark art style, setting aside if they were capable of spending money to reach the quality of Diablo, even if they did, would the players buy a game that was such a blatant Diablo copy?

Therefore, the only way out was to make a similar VR game, which was exactly what Emperor Dynasty Entertainment was doing.

But for the other companies? There was too much risk involved with making VR games. Moreover, many changes had to be made to it, so companies who could take such a big risk were few and far between.

Don’t Starve was also a similar unreplicatable game in the eyes of many video game designers.

Because nobody understood how it managed to sell this many copies.

Story? Art style? Music and audio effects?

Items? Playstyle? Sandbox mode?

One thing’s for sure, this was a relatively successful sandbox game. This was because of its excellent quality and rich playstyle which replicates the physiological needs of humans, which triggers a desire to create in players.

But how could one create a sandbox game similar to Don’t Starve?

Nobody knows.

Sandbox games may seem nice to make, but they are actually incredibly difficult to develop. The successful sandbox games always seem easy to recreate during analysis, just that they didn’t think of it.

Therefore, although the reviews were good for Diablo and Don’t Starve, it didn’t create a copying craze like mobile card games did.

Moreover, as Diablo looked better and better, it also gained more and more haters.

“There are players complaining about how Diablo sucks in the later stages on the official forums again.”

“Yeah, I saw that coming. I’ve tried the game out too, it felt great at the start, but it became incredibly monotonous at the later stages of the game. If it wasn’t for the desire to grind for equipment, I doubt many would continue playing.”

“They’ll get sick of grinding great eventually. The better the gear, the rarer it is. You might not even see one piece of usable equipment the more you play, and that just feels terrible.”

“That only means that Chen Mo isn’t invincible. Sure he could make games that are playing long into the future, this game isn’t one of them.”

It can’t be helped. I think Chen Mo thought of this at the start. It’s like a one time thing that’s packaged really well with incredible cinematics. It feels good when you’re killing mobs too. That’s how they get you to buy the game as they neglect everything after they secure your money.”

“That’s quite normal. It’s a single player game, you need to stop comparing it to the standards of online games.”

“Chen Mo immediately pivoted to developing Don’t Starve right after releasing Diablo. Obviously he doesn’t expect Diablo to make him money in the long term.”