But in this world, smartphones appeared relatively early, so by around 2008, similar card game mechanics had already emerged.

By now, in 2009, card mobile games have become an extremely overused gameplay style.

When card mobile games were first launched, they were indeed a very innovative game mode and stayed popular for quite a long time.

But now, due to the flood of reskinned card mobile games, this gameplay has triggered a backlash among players. The good old days when you could make money just by changing the skin are long gone.

In this world, the pioneer of card mobile games is called ""Q Cute Three Kingdoms,"" and its success boils down to a few key points: cute chibi art style, traditional card gameplay, and so on.

Last year, the Three Kingdoms IP hadn’t yet become oversaturated, and players were generally still receptive to it.

This game, riding the wave of smartphone popularity, created a mobile game miracle in one fell swoop, raking in huge profits and making its industry peers green with envy.

In this world, game editors are well-developed, so many indie game creators can quickly join the competition. As a result, all kinds of reskinned card mobile games have sprung up like mushrooms after the rain, burning through what could have been three to five years of card game popularity in just over a year.

Now, many players instinctively reject and resist card mobile games.

This is exactly what Eric Bennett wants!

In addition, Eric Bennett noticed that ""Q Cute Three Kingdoms"" has a major difference from the card mobile games in his previous life.

That is, the payment model is relatively restrained.

This game uses a buyout model in the mobile game market, selling for 5 yuan. Besides that, all the in-game item prices are quite reasonable. Things like ""spend 2,000 yuan to get a rare card"" simply don’t exist.

The maximum amount you can spend in the game is basically capped at around 1,000 yuan. Beyond that, there’s nowhere to spend your money.

Even so, ""Q Cute Three Kingdoms"" still gets criticized by players for being a money pit every now and then.

Because this world is different from the environment in Eric Bennett’s previous life.

Probably because copyright awareness is very strong, piracy isn’t rampant here, and single-player game developers are doing pretty well.

So, single-player buyout and online game time card models are the main ways to make money, and players both accept and are used to these models.

When it comes to ""Q Cute Three Kingdoms,"" the developers obviously didn’t dare to go overboard, so they just set a 5-yuan buyout price and added a little bit of in-app purchases.

Even so, they still got scolded by players like crazy.

After finishing his market research, Eric Bennett started thinking about how to make the game flop.

The most direct way is to run straight into the gunfire!

If there’s already an extremely successful game on the market that’s the pioneer of this genre, then as long as you copy it completely, you’ll almost certainly fail miserably.

Card mobile games are a red ocean now, so let’s make a card mobile game!

""Q Cute Three Kingdoms"" is popular, right? Then I’ll make a Three Kingdoms-themed game too!

Copy the gameplay, buy a similar card mobile game template from a resource site, spend a hundred thousand or so, no problem.

Of course, you can’t copy the art assets, since that would be copyright infringement.

Eric Bennett never planned to copy the art style anyway, since he’s counting on the art assets to burn through his money. Otherwise, if he just buys a template, how could he possibly burn through 300,000 so easily?

There’s another very important point: the game’s payment model.

""Q Cute Three Kingdoms"" has a very restrained payment model, so should Eric Bennett’s game make players spend as much as possible?

Wrong! Completely wrong!

Eric Bennett doesn’t think so at all.

He knows players’ mentality too well—most of them are all talk and no action.

They complain about games being money pits, about pay-to-win, and say they’ll never play again.

But when something new comes out at a sky-high price, the whales still curse while pulling out their wallets.

If Eric Bennett really sets the spending cap super high, like tens of thousands of yuan, what if a bunch of whales show up?

A single whale’s spending equals that of thousands of regular players. If just a few whales make the game profitable, wouldn’t Eric Bennett be spitting blood in frustration?

So, he has to do the opposite!

To prevent whales from spending, the game’s spending cap must be low enough!

Eric Bennett thought about it. The spending cap in ""Q Cute Three Kingdoms"" is about 1,000 yuan, so I’ll push it down even further—to 500 yuan!

No, 100 yuan!

Still not enough, 30 yuan!

Make it so that even whales have nowhere to spend their money!

Of course, as a card game, there have to be some common cards and some rare cards.

The usual approach is to make rare cards obtainable through spending, to drive revenue.

Eric Bennett rejects this approach, because he doesn’t want to make money—he wants to lose money!

The most expensive item in the game is a permanent membership card, sold for just 30 yuan! After buying it, you get a few extra card draws every day.

Other than that, there’s nowhere to spend your money!

Want to give Tengda your money? No way!

And even if regular players don’t buy the 30-yuan card, they still get card draws—just a few less.

This way, players have almost no reason to spend money!

As for the game’s price, Eric Bennett really wants to set it as free, but on second thought, that might not be a good idea.