Top of the Great Era

Chapter 2057 The general trend of light mobile games
Shareholders leave.

As the chairman of Changyou's board of directors, Zhou Buqi convened the board meeting for the first time.

New people, new atmosphere.

Zhou Buqi sat in the first place, and Zhang Chaoyang sat in the second place. The meeting had not yet started, and this scene made Zhou Buqi feel warm in his heart, thinking that this is the correct seating arrangement.

The core topics of this board meeting are mainly four.

First, promote the integration of Changyou and Ziweixing International Game Division.

The deal has been confirmed.

However, it still needs to wait for the review of the regulatory authorities in the United States, Europe, and China. After approval, the transaction can be regarded as a formal completion.If it is not approved, the transaction can actually be completed, but it just cannot be a market.

For example, if the United States does not approve, but Europe approves, then Changyou's business cannot be carried out in the United States, but can only be carried out in Europe.

The United States, Europe, and China are basically the three core markets in the world.Japan is also a supermarket, but Japan does not have the right to speak, and its national character is not enough, so it can only follow suit.

That is to say, if the regulatory agencies of the three major powers of the United States, Europe, and China approve the transaction, it will basically be recognized by the whole world.Whoever does not recognize it will be cut off from the world and the people, and will be rejected by the global business circle.

Mergers and acquisitions in the game industry are probably the industry with the least resistance in the IT field, and there are almost no monopoly transactions.So despite the fact that Changyou's acquisition of Ziweixing International's game division has not yet been formally reviewed, everyone knows that it is a certainty.

Even Mattrick, the president of the game division, has officially become the director and CEO of Changyou.

Next, is to promote the resource integration of the two companies.

Second, visit the location of the headquarters at home and abroad.

Changyou’s current account cash flow is nearly 30 billion US dollars, except for super giants such as Microsoft and Sony, only pure game companies, Changyou’s cash flow should be the most!

More money means more confidence!

You can do great things!

First of all, the headquarters at home and abroad must be selected.

Driven by Zhou Buqi, this matter has been going on intensively for the past six months.

On the board of directors, Zhou Buqi solemnly appointed Mr. Zhang Chaoyang, the vice chairman, to take over this mission and do it well!Lao Zhang almost fainted on the spot.I think this bastard is really holding a chicken feather as an arrow.

Third, build a global game distribution and operation system.

This matter cannot be rushed, it needs to be done slowly.

Among the directors of Changyou, there is a man named Kevin Tsujihara, who is an executive of Ziwei Star Global.When Changyou builds this global distribution and operation system, it will definitely draw heavily on the resources of Ziweixing Global's film distribution system.

In this process, Kevin Tsujihara should help and work harder.

Fourth, and most importantly!Changyou's board of directors has been updated, and there is no need to worry too much, and the real global development route can be started!

The core of a game company is games!
Developing an excellent game is the cornerstone of a game company.

Gaming is a startup industry.

Creative exhaustion is a dilemma that all game companies have to face.

How to deal with it?

This is the solution proposed by Ren Yuxin - imitation.

In the past few years, Ren Yuxin has been in charge of Penguin's game business, gradually developing this social company into a game giant.

The strategy relied on is imitation.

Then I was scolded by the whole network, thinking that they have no innovation at all, plagiarize every day, and follow other people's paths so that others have nowhere to go...

Should I scold?

It should be scolded, because this is indeed very criticizing. This is using some gray protections in domestic laws to infringe on the intellectual property rights of other game companies.

Even if the legal test can be passed, the moral test must also be condemned.

However, one thing is wrong, that is, they are not innovative.Plagiarism is true, non-innovation is false.If you can succeed by just copying others as they are, then success will be too easy.

Plagiarism of games developed by others abounds across the country, and it is not obvious which one can do it well.Changyou's own "The Deer and Ding Tale" was created by plagiarizing "Tian Long Ba Bu". Countless resources were invested, and it received rave reviews as soon as it went online.

The penguin game led by Ren Yuxin can stand out and succeed in whatever they can copy. The most important point is that they did not simply copy, but did detailed data research, studying the player's mentality, preferences and market trends. The original game has been optimized and improved.

In particular, there is an iron law of game development that Ren Yuxin has summed up over the years-to lower the threshold of the game at all costs.

The counterfeit game is more fun and easier to play than the original game, which is the fundamental reason why Penguin games are so popular.

What Zhou Buqi has to do is to extract its essence and discard its dross!
Capture the advantages of the essentials and experiences in the imitation process, and avoid the disadvantages of intellectual property infringement.

How to avoid it?

Just buy, buy, buy all the way!

If you want to acquire enough game studios and games with complete property rights in large quantities around the world, and copy yourself, there will be no legal and moral judgment after all.

In this regard, Zhou Buqi has his own opinion: "When selecting game studios around the world to acquire, we should focus on those that are simple to play, easy to learn, and relatively strong in branding. Especially like Baokai Studio. Light game. "Swallowing Fish" has been around for almost ten years. In recent years, it has not been very popular on the PC side, but the era of mobile games has arrived. After the mobile game version was released, it immediately exploded with great vitality How is the market performance of this game?"

There are many foreigners on the board.

So regardless of the fact that this is a domestic board meeting, the language of the meeting is English.

Don Mattrick saw the eyes of the big boss, understood it, and said with a smile: "Excluding the Chinese market, the downloads of the free version in overseas markets are 1.2 million, and the total downloads of the paid version are 5500 million..."

Zhou Buqi waved his hand, "Say income!"

There are too many game data, including total downloads, annual downloads, weekly downloads, total installations, annual installations, survival rate, activity, paid version, free version, etc.

This is a board meeting, not a business meeting, and no one is in the mood to listen to specific data sheets.

Mattrick said simply: "In the first three quarters of this year, advertising revenue in the non-Chinese market reached US$8300 million, paid income was US$3200 million, and the total revenue was US$1 million."

It can be seen that the free version of the game makes more money than the paid version.

The reason why many games launch paid versions is that some players don’t like the game advertisements popping up all the time, so they will buy the paid version; second, some games are not promoted enough, and the advertisers are unwilling to give advertisements, so they can only rely on selling genuine games Earn money.

Zhou Buqi looked at Ren Yuxin, "What about the domestic market?"

Ren Yuxin said: "The domestic version is called "Big Fish Eat Small Fish". It is mainly based on the free version. In the first three quarters, the revenue was 1800 million U.S. dollars, and the revenue of the paid version was less than 200 million U.S. dollars."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "The domestic market has not yet developed and is limited by the stock of smartphones. This is a good thing. This further shows that this is an untapped blank market. With more and more smartphones, the market The potential benefits will be bigger and bigger!"

Zhang Chaoyang said with deep emotion: "Light games are the general direction that must be adhered to. Even the PC side is also the world of social web games. The total revenue of the first three quarters of "Swallowing Fish" reached 1.3 million US dollars. This is the trend."

Especially Wang Fang, he was shocked.

He was the CEO of Changyou before, not a direct descendant of Zhou Buqi, and he had long been excluded from the core of power.Moreover, Baokai Game Studio belongs to the game division of Ziweixing International, and had nothing to do with Changyou before.

So Wang Fang has little understanding of "Swallow Fish".

Hearing this, it was unbelievable. Wang Fang opened his eyes wide and said in horror: "A small mobile game called "Swallowing Fish" has a revenue of 1.3 million US dollars in the first three quarters? "Dragon Babu" It’s only $2.3 million!”

Zhou Buqi glanced at him with a smile, and said calmly: "So to be a company, you must step on the general trend of the times. The current general trend is the mobile Internet and mobile games. There is a game company in China, which is also a listed company called Perfect World. , In the past few years, he has devoted himself to doing overseas business and acquired several companies. One of the investments was very successful, a game company called Runic, and they only spent 840 million U.S. dollars.”

Don Mattrick is indeed a bigwig in the industry, he has heard of it, and said with a smile: ""Torchlight"?"

Zhou Buqi said: "Yes, Runic's main game is "Torchlight". The online game version of Torchlight."

Mattrick shook his head, "The online game version is really a big loss. The adaptation and imitation of games is easy to say, but it is not easy. Let alone imitating other people's games, even if you imitate your own games, the probability of failure Also very high."

Zhou Buqi said: "On the one hand, it is due to the category of the game. This kind of large-scale game has too high a barrier to entry, which is not conducive to popularization. It is also difficult to adapt, and the direction is even more wrong. The current trend is mobile games. "Swallow Eat Fish earned $1.3 million, how much did Angry Birds earn? More than Tian Long Ba Bu. This is the strength of the international route and the light mobile game route.”

Kevin Tsujihara is a Japanese-American and has a lot of experience in this. "All the top game IPs are often light games. The value of Mario and Pokémon is higher than that of "World of Warcraft" and "Dragon Babu". "is still high. "Angry Birds" has already gone out of the circle, and has formed a big brand, and the animation will be produced next."

The benefits of light games are too many.

First of all, the gameplay is simple and the popularity is wider.

Secondly, it is easy to adapt and more likely to succeed.It's not like "Torch Light", the stand-alone version was a big success, and the adaptation of the online game version directly vomited blood.

There is also less investment in light games.

Even if it is a light game, after the adaptation is launched, there are fewer wins and more losses.

If it is a large-scale game such as "Deer and Ding Ji OL" and "Torchlight OL", tens of millions of dollars have been invested in it, and once it fails, it will be a loss.

Light games have low investment, and even if they fail, the impact will be limited.

The last point is that IP is stronger and easier to get out of the circle. Pillows, T-shirts, cups, stationery boxes and other derivatives of games such as "World of Warcraft" and "Dragon Babu" must not be able to sell light game brands such as "Angry Birds" and "Talking Cat". .

Especially "Talking Cat".

In fact, this game has been very popular in recent years. Because of the single gameplay, the popularity will fade after a few years, and it is not considered a mainstream game.

However, the brand has been built up.

The annual game revenue is not much, but the revenue from brand licensing can be hundreds of millions of dollars... For example, licensing the brand to T-shirt manufacturers and letting them produce "Cat Family" T-shirts.

It can even be made into movies and cartoons.

(End of this chapter)