Backtracking to the Age of Literature and Art

Liu Cixin has lived a very comfortable life recently. Working in a power plant is not very stressful. In his spare time, he writes novels when he is inspired. If he is not, he plays mahjong with his poker friends.

Because of his great reputation, every now and then, he would receive invitations from certain units, asking him to speak in the past.

To make money, unless he loses at the mahjong table, this guy really has no motivation.

Leaving the reception building, on the way back to the small building, while responding to the guests who greeted him, Yu Dong was also thinking about whether to write "Source Code" as a novel and send it out.

Jimmy had told him about this before. According to Jimmy's idea, the script was written, and writing the novel was just a matter of passing, and it wouldn't take much trouble.

After writing a novel, let’s not talk about how much money the book itself can make, the promotion of the movie is conceivable.

There is a novel of the same name that is bound to beat tens of millions of publicity.

Jimmy is right, it really doesn't take much to write Source Code as a novel.

When he was about to reach the door of the small building, Yu Dong was suddenly hugged by one leg.

"Uncle Dong, play with us."

It's Yu Haiguo and Feng Changdi. These two boys don't know where they got willow stalks and coiled them into two crowns. The crowns are very thick and they used a lot of wicker. The willow leaves on the top have not yet been picked. Look at these two boys like little savages.

"What are you playing?"

Yu Haiguo was holding a small box in his hand. Hearing Yu Dong asking him, he lifted the lid of the small box mysteriously, "Look at it, Uncle Dong."

Yu Dong stretched out his head and looked in at the gap, but he couldn't see anything in the darkness.

"what?"

Yu Haiguo simply lifted the lid up and up again: "Uncle Dong, look again."

Yu Dong could see clearly what it was this time, and couldn't help but take a step back.

"what!"

Inside the box is a dark iron armored general, who is holding the box on the top of his head at the moment.

"Where did you catch this thing?" Yu Dong took another step back.

[-]% of the wild iron armored generals are rolled through shit, the difference is whether it is human or other animals.

Yu Haiguo pointed at Jia Jia: "I saw this iron armored general there. Chang Di and I are going to catch another one and let them fight. Uncle Dong, will it fight?"

"Uh... Uncle Dong doesn't know, why don't you try it first and let me know when you have the results."

"Okay, we'll go find it now."

Yu Haiguo excitedly ran towards the rockery with Feng Changdi, Yu Dong shook his head in the back, he was sighing for the one in the box and the other iron armored generals who were about to be caught by them.

Before long, they will surely be gone.

Everyone always says that children are harmless to humans and animals. In fact, they are more cruel than adults. Yu Dong saw Feng Changdi and the others cut off the head of a beetle and let the beetle eat his lower body.

Yu Dong felt his scalp numb when he saw that scene, but the children had a great time.

This is a common practice for children, who will tear off the wings of dragonflies, remove the limbs of grasshoppers, sprinkle salt on slugs, and break off geckos' tails...

Not only Yu Haiguo and the others, but Yu Dong also did similar things when he was a child, and at that time, he did not feel cruel.

As people grow older and become more socialized, animality becomes obscured.

Yu Dong thinks that the word "covering" is very suitable. He does not think that the animality of human beings will disappear with socialization. They are always in the bones, but they are covered by education, which means that they are It is also possible that it will be released someday.

For example, Kafka's "Metamorphosis", on the surface, talks about the alienation of the protagonist's appearance, but in fact it talks about the alienation of the family's human nature.

But Yu Dong does not think that this is a kind of alienation, but in some special circumstances, the animality hidden under human nature is released. The so-called alienation is nothing but the essence of human beings.

……

Yu Dong stayed upstairs for a while, and when they came down again, Yu Haiguo and Feng Changdi were each holding a thatch in their hands and teasing an iron armored general and a neem beetle in the box.

It's just that General Tiejia and Tianxing Niu each occupy a corner in this temporary Colosseum, and they have no intention of fighting for their lives.

The organizer Yu Haiguo was very dissatisfied with the attitude of the two competitors. He used the thatch in his hand to stab the beetle's butt, "Go on, go on!"

He made a bet with Feng Changdi that if Tianniu defeated the Tiejia General, the candy in Feng Changdi's pocket would be his.

Yu Dong bent down and watched it for a while. He didn't wait for the duel between General Tiejia and Tianxing Tianniu. When he was about to leave, Jimmy suddenly patted him on the shoulder from behind, "What are you doing with the two of them?"

Startled by Jimmy, Yu Dong said angrily, "People are scary, scary to death."

Jimmy couldn't help but pouted, "It's so lively in the garden today that you can be scared, it can only be said that it's your problem."

Yu Haiguo and Feng Changdi were not frightened, but they also heard Jimmy's voice. The two little guys looked up at Jimmy and said with a smile, "Uncle Ji, you are here too."

Jimmy touched the heads of the two little guys, "What are you two doing?"

"The game!" Yu Haiguo said with his fist clenched, "My beetle is fighting with Chang Di's dung beetle."

Hearing this, Yu Dong couldn't help but pouted. When the dung beetle was in Yu Haiguo's hands just now, he called it General Iron Armor. Now it belongs to Feng Changdi, and he has become a dung beetle.

Jimmy took Yu Dong's arm with a smile: "I was about to tell you about the game."

Pulled aside by Jimmy, Yu Dong said strangely, "What did you tell me about the competition? It's too early to talk about the short film competition."

"It has nothing to do with the short film contest, I'm talking about the game contest. Jiang Jie mentioned it to me. He said that our company has made a lot of games and there are rankings, but we haven't held a game contest yet." Having said that, Jimmy sighed. He breathed a sigh of relief, "Jiang Jie told me about the game competition in the spring, but I didn't take it to heart. I suddenly remembered the game competition from Blizzard in the second half of the year."

"Blizzard they held a game competition?"

"Well, it's mainly to build momentum for their battle.net. After this game, battle.net has obviously become more popular. It's a pity, if I listened to Jiang Jie's words earlier and held the game, then we might be able to grab battle.net the limelight."

Speaking of Blizzard, Yu Dong felt a little regretful. In the early days, he didn't know much about the game and missed the best chance to win Blizzard. Now it's not that easy to win Blizzard.

But until now, Yu Dong is still working on Blizzard's idea. After all, after winning Blizzard, he is still very interesting in the future. If nothing else, at least "World of Warcraft" can help the company make a lot of money.

And after buying Blizzard, you can directly develop dota games.

Yu Dong doesn't value the game competition that much... In fact, it's not that he doesn't value it, but he thinks that there is no advantage in competing with the existing games in deep space.

There are quite a lot of explosive games in deep space, "Lianliankan", "Xiao Xiaole", "Escape", "Resident Evil", all of these are sales miracles.

But if it is used for competition, I am afraid that only "Escape" is slightly better, but it can only be said that it is better, and there is nothing to watch.

These games all have a characteristic, that is, they are fine to play by themselves, and it is not much fun to watch others play.

In contrast to Blizzard's games, the competitiveness of a "StarCraft" can absolutely crush deep space games.

Yu Dong said with a smile: "Jimmy, your thinking is actually wrong."

"My thinking is wrong?" Jimmy said with a puzzled face. "What is wrong with my thinking, shouldn't we hold game competitions?"

"No, the idea of ​​holding a game competition is very good, but just thinking about relying on our own games is not right."

Jimmy has [-] hearts and eyes all over his body. Hearing Yu Dong's words, his eyes narrowed and he said with a smile, "You mean, we use other people's games to hold competitions, like..."

"It's like Blizzard's "StarCraft", aren't they holding a competition on Battle.net? We'll hold a worldwide competition." As he spoke, Yu Dong laughed, "I even thought of the name for you. , called the World E-Sports Competition, abbreviated as WCG in English.”

Seeing Yu Dong's smile, Jimmy was a little puzzled, isn't the name very good, why is he smiling so strangely?Does this name have any connotation?
After thinking about it for a long time, Jimmy didn't understand what was wrong with the name, "What are you laughing at?"

Yu Dong twitched the corners of his mouth and said, "Today my daughter is full of moon wine, I can't laugh anymore? Okay, let's continue talking about this game, you can pick a few more popular, competitive and spectator games as If we want to promote our own game as a competition item, we can add "Escape" to it."

Jimmy nodded: "It's really a good idea to add "Escape". Now that video games are getting better and better, such competitions must also develop. Let's seize the opportunity and take the right to host the World Series. In your hands, you can hold the lifeblood of video games.”

"It's not that simple. The lifeblood of video games is to produce good games... By the way, does our company have any hope of intervening in Blizzard's business?"

Jimmy raised his eyebrows and asked, "How far are you talking about intervention?"

"What about a complete acquisition?"

Jimmy shook his head very simply, "It's hard, if it was a year ago, if we had enough money, we could still try it, but now Blizzard is in the hands of Vivanda, and we want to get it from Vivanda. Take Blizzard, unless we can offer a price they can't refuse."

"What is the price that cannot be refused?"

"Maybe... two hundred million dollars, US dollars." Jimmy was actually a little unsure, and he didn't know much about it.

Yu Dong raised his eyebrows, which was not as much as he imagined.

"Can two hundred million be won?"

Seeing Yu Dong's reaction, Jimmy walked around him in surprise, looked at him up and down several times, "Don't tell me, you want to buy it if they want two hundred million dollars. It's been good for two years, but it's obviously unwise to buy them now. Viwanda's acquisition of Havas is actually mainly to enter the video game industry. Havas's Blizzard and Snow Leshan are his goals. Do you think If you want to see, since they are trying to enter the video game industry, of course they can't give up easily."

"If it was more than a year ago, we could have fished in the water and got Blizzard. Pushing forward a few years, Blizzard has not been acquired by Davidson, and we can take them for only a few million dollars."

Yu Dong asked again, "Are you sure that $[-] million can win Blizzard?"

Jimmy squinted at Yu Dong for a while, "Let me ask, it depends on Viwanda's attitude towards Blizzard. In fact, they didn't spend much money on Hawass. If they just want to make a small profit, we It doesn't cost much to take over Blizzard from them, just because they are afraid of lions."

Yu Dong smiled and said, "Hey, if the price is right, buy it. If they open their mouths, they won't buy it. If Blizzard can be taken down, it will be easier to hold the wcg, and then you can play directly with your own game."

Jimmy shook his head and sighed, "We just saved up this little fortune, and it will be cleaned up by you. You yourself said before that you need to keep some money, and when the Internet industry is about to go downhill, we will buy stocks in major companies. , Now that the money is spent, the follow-up plan will not be easy to implement."

"Didn't you predict before that it will take some time for the Internet. It will take time for stocks to fall, and it will take time for them to rise later. We definitely have enough time to raise funds." Yu Dong smiled. He said, "Let me do the math for you. We invested 4000 million US dollars in the movie "The Martian", and I don't count too much. The box office revenue in the later period will reach 6000 times, and we can get back [-] million funds. If The movie is doing well, but can the box office exceed one billion U.S. dollars? We can recover a few hundred million U.S. dollars."

Jimmy nodded. One billion dollars may be difficult, but there should be no problem at the global box office of seven or eight billion. Moreover, the copyright of the film is in their hands, and there will be other income in the future, which is not a small amount.

In addition to "The Martian", there are also films such as "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Booming Heart", "Source Code", etc. In the next two years, the income of Deep Space will not be less.

When Jimmy was reckoning, Yu Dong patted him on the shoulder: "Jiji, if you have any concerns, it's fine, I still have money in my small vault, it should be fine to take out [-] million US dollars, or else If so, let me set up a company myself, and then buy Blizzard, what do you think?"

Jimmy immediately waved his hand: "That's not good. The money in your small vault is still useful. You should use the company's money. What are the risks? I'll take it with you. Who called us good brothers?"