Because nowadays, there aren’t many free mobile games—most have a set minimum price of 1 yuan.

If Eric Bennett’s game is free, it might attract a huge wave of players.

What if it becomes popular?

So, Eric Bennett did the opposite and set the buyout price of the game at 10 yuan!

Even more expensive than “Q Cute Three Kingdoms”!

This 10 yuan is an extremely high threshold, meant to drive away 90% of players right from the start.

Think about it: a mobile game that completely copies the card game template, with not a single bit of gameplay innovation, and it’s priced 5 yuan higher than the most popular card game right now—who would be foolish enough to buy it?

Of course, the threshold can’t be too high either.

Because 10 yuan is already enough to deter players; if the price goes any higher, with about the same number of players, Eric Bennett would end up making more money.

Making more money means losing more money—that’s absolutely unacceptable!

So, Eric Bennett set his goal.

First, this is a copycat work with only the most basic card game mechanics.

Any gameplay that other card games don’t have, mine definitely won’t have.

Even if other card games have certain features, mine might not even include them!

In short, it’s all the most overused systems—absolutely no new or creative gameplay for players to see!

Second, this is a game that directly collides with “Q Cute Three Kingdoms”!

Same Three Kingdoms theme.

Same card game genre.

Theirs is the real deal, mine is a knockoff.

Give players no reason to choose this game over “Q Cute Three Kingdoms”!

Finally, this is a game with a pricing strategy that’s dumb to the extreme.

First, use the high 10-yuan threshold to drive away ordinary mobile gamers.

Then, use a 30-yuan recharge cap to block the big spenders, so even if they want to spend more, they can’t!

“I’m a freaking genius!”

“A perfect plan!”

Eric Bennett couldn’t help but admire himself—making a game this bad, could it possibly make money?

No way, absolutely no way!

Chapter 13: Spend Money!

Having made up his mind, Eric Bennett entered the official ESRO resource site to search for a generic card game template.

Very quickly, Eric Bennett found one.

This wasn’t the template from “Q Cute Three Kingdoms.”

Because “Q Cute Three Kingdoms” is the originator of card game mechanics and is currently the hottest card game on the market—a real cash cow—there’s no way that company would be dumb enough to sell their own game as a template.

But just because they don’t sell it doesn’t mean others don’t.

Many game companies jumped on the card game bandwagon, writing their own code but borrowing gameplay ideas from “Q Cute Three Kingdoms.”

And since these companies didn’t make money from their games, they had no choice but to tweak their own games and sell them as templates on the resource site, just to recoup some costs.

The template Eric Bennett found now came from a failed card game knockoff.

“A failed product? I love it!”

Eric Bennett felt this was a good omen.

He clicked in to check out the gameplay systems.

From the card game boom in 2008 until now, “Q Cute Three Kingdoms” has gone through many rounds of updates, with more and more gameplay features added.

But this template was clearly outdated, with only the most basic stuff.

For example: levels, auto-clear, arena, and so on.

No new gameplay at all!

The whole game felt extremely bare-bones.

Eric Bennett was very satisfied with this!

This was exactly the kind of card game template he’d dreamed of—none of the fun features, absolutely no gameplay advantages!

He checked the price: 100,000!

“…Only 100,000?”

Eric Bennett was quite dissatisfied with the price—way too cheap!

If you priced it at 150,000, I’d still buy it without hesitation!

But then he thought about it: the driving simulation template was only 20,000. Although card game templates are more complex and include more complete gameplay systems, 100,000 isn’t exactly cheap.

You can tell from the download numbers—this template’s downloads are way lower than the driving simulation template Eric Bennett bought before.

That means its price is already inflated, and it’s not very practical.

Eric Bennett didn’t hesitate and placed the order!

He just loves these overpriced products—they burn more money and won’t trigger a system warning.

After buying this template, the basic gameplay was all set. Next up was filling it with art assets.

Art assets include UI, battle effects, card illustrations, and a whole series of content.

Other expenses include buying music and sound effects, renting cloud servers, etc., but those don’t cost much.

The main expense is still the art assets.

Eric Bennett considered leaving 20,000–30,000 for music and sound effects, another 10,000-plus for other expenses, and dumping the remaining 160,000–170,000 all into art assets.

160,000–170,000—neither a small nor a huge amount.

But as for what the art assets should actually look like, Eric Bennett still hadn’t decided.

Card games are the most suitable for reskinning.

You could even say, for card games, the “skin” is the most important part.

And precisely because this “skin” is so important, Eric Bennett had to make sure it was done terribly!