Reboot 2003

Chapter 184 092: Whale Player (Three in One)

What kind of games make the most money?Of course, the most popular games are the most profitable; and to make the game more popular, free games are the undoubted choice.

The permanent free signboard is played, as long as it is a game, people will play it, and people playing it is undoubtedly the basis for online games to make a lot of money.And the market is now at this point. According to the information that Galaxy Software employees chatted with the studio downstairs, Shi Yuzhu has already recruited a bunch of people from Shanda and went to Xiangshan City to develop his "Journey". Unexpectedly, the direct competitor of "Three Kingdoms Online" is it.

"Zhengtu" is undoubtedly a successful commercial game. First of all, its theme is very good. It is an online game with an oriental theme. Later facts have also proved that Chinese players prefer martial arts and immortals more than Western magic. Now that the Korean wave is raging, This theme itself has a certain flow.

However, the world design of Zhengtu was originally an empty shelf. It is true to say that it is down-to-earth, but it cannot be said to be attractive.

In this regard, Gu Wenjie's idea is to find an IP - there are many local IPs that have not yet been developed in the field of online games, ranging from ancient martial arts and popular movies to small online novels and folk cultural creations that have not yet emerged. Haven't used it much yet.

Although Gu Wenjie's idea cannot be said to be the first, but in the online game industry where IP is not yet popular, it is indeed quite forward-looking, and it is at the level of our boss Chen's second-grade composition.

However, to choose an IP, not only depends on the current influence, but also depends on the future influence.

The most popular IP at this stage is Journey to the West. After all, it is too popular to talk about Journey to the West.

The second is Water Margin. Although Water Margin is not necessarily more popular than Three Kingdoms, it seems to be more suitable for making rpg.

But the discussion was still in 2004. If you think about the time when the game was completed and started operation, it would probably have been 2005 to 2006.

Until then, the hottest ip in China...

Martial arts is of course still very popular, but this topic selection should not be viewed only from the entertainment industry, but from the whole society.

Beginning in 2005, until about 2010, there will be a wave of thoughts on reinterpreting classical literature in China.

At that time, when it comes to CCTV People's Day and pop singers, everyone will talk about classic classics, and among the classics, the most watched one is undoubtedly the Three Kingdoms.

Yi Zhongtian can beat other lecturers in hundreds of forums with a few words of thick black. It is of course very important to be able to grasp the preferences of the masses, but the ip of 'Three Kingdoms' has contributed a lot.

In addition, Boss Chen has a sanguo.com domain name in his hand. In short, under his insistence, the theme of this new game is decided to be Three Kingdoms.

Of course, to make a game, the subject matter itself is not important; on the subject of 'game production', ordinary players will probably think that the subject matter is the most important point of excitement. How awesome it is to make a game' is probably the middle school fantasy that every Chinese player will experience.

Because of this user preference, the themes of commercial games are basically determined by decision-makers based on market preferences, and to convey theme decisions to executors requires 'conceptual design'——

Just like some big-budget movies, in addition to deciding the basic style of the film and writing the script before shooting, they also need to design in advance the things that do not exist in reality but need to appear in the game, and even plan several in advance as selling points. Just like the climactic shot of a game and then deciding to shoot it, the game also has to be conceptually designed before production.

In the field of games—especially games that focus on social or gameplay, the plot is not particularly important, and it can be gradually improved later according to the needs of the game.

In contrast, the new things are the rough gameplay, game goals and ui style of the game. Of course, in reality, different production teams have different habits. Even in the big game manufacturers, there is often "just make a xxx on the market" "This kind of conceptual design cannot be said to be very ethical, but it works well anyway.

And Boss Chen's statement is quite simple, that is, "just follow the example of World of Warcraft."

Now if you are making non-casual online games, there is no doubt that you want to be rpg. The UI and system design of World of Warcraft are masters of the same type, and the rough framework of the game can be done according to it.

Of course, you can't copy World of Warcraft completely—although it has been decided to be a multiplayer online game, but this is not Azeroth after all. What is the role of the player?What is the enemy?What is the goal of the game?
Boss Chen couldn't be bothered by this problem, he used a composition class to come up with a very mature text design draft.

That is to say...During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the rich and powerful rebels took pills indiscriminately, causing troubled times, monsters ravaged, and the people were in dire straits. However, there was a group of cultivators from the Tianzhu sect who punished evil and promoted good, and there was also a very beautiful junior sister who followed the protagonist through the troubled times... …

Don't think about it, this is the concept design of "Crouching Dragon" 20 years later. Although the game itself is a bit hard to describe, but to apply the theme of the Three Kingdoms to the theme of fantasy rpg, this is what Guangrong Company, which has been making Three Kingdoms games for more than ten years, gave out of the standard answer.Of course, the concept design itself needs to be constantly changed and improved, it is not static.

However, because the concept of this set of "Dark Three Kingdoms" is indeed very trendy, in the end, except for the setting of the sect of cultivating immortals, which is not yet popular, the rest of the settings have basically remained unchanged, and this set of designs has naturally become The basic concept of "Three Kingdoms Online".

Next up...

The concept design has been done, it's time to find a way to make it into a game.

Although it sounds a bit unreasonable, but for investors, this is almost the whole process of making an online game.

At this time, another sentence will come out, which is to avoid laymen guiding experts. In the early years, the example of Gao Lengmei’s boss who only invested money and ignored the work was praised to the sky, but in fact, the proportion of such bosses who can make projects is still quite low. Yes, an important question is of course similar to other fields, that is, if you vote for Zuckerberg 100 million, how can you ensure that he can make Facebook as big as it used to be?
This first involves management issues. Of course, the Moyou executives are still united, and Gu Wenjie and Qiao Yongping are quite capable. This is not a big problem.

After all, the game is a project with a relatively large technical proportion. In the early days of the industry, it is not good for the boss to point fingers, but the bigger problem is that there are not many Zuckerbergs at all. The boss of the boss finally made a pile of stinky shit. As the technical threshold gets higher and higher, there will be more and more such cases.

Chen Qin has no good solution for this. Although he is more or less an expert, he can't go to supervise the development by himself now, and the future mobile game production is quite different from the current PC end game.

At this time, the most mature way to consider is to find outsourcing.

Outsourcing sounds like a big mistake, but the management requirements are relatively low, and some difficult and technically-heavy projects can be outsourced to third parties, and the tens of millions of investment in this game is burned here——

After a lot of trouble, he contacted a studio called Titan on Treasure Island...not for Titanfall, but for Meteor Butterfly Sword.net. The company's 3D technology is not bad, and there is also a branch in Shencheng. The company's motion capture technology is very mature, because of the rampant piracy of the Meteor Butterfly Sword, it is now the most famous outsourcer in the 3D game industry, with high quality and low price.

In addition, he himself is the director of Kuaikan. Gu Wenjie signed the overseas cooperation list. Buying out online games was originally a sudden death project that had no future at first sight.

Chen Qin fell in love with the other party because the game's developer, ArenaNet, was a group of dream chasers who had just slipped out of the company.

Under Chen Qin's instigation, Gu Wenjie negotiated a contract with the other party, saying that the agency's income share could be more profitable, but the other party had to accept some outsourcing orders and assist in publicity.

The people at ArenaNet didn't have a deep understanding of China's publicity environment, so they agreed without much hesitation.

After finding these two foreign aids, it was already almost the same, but Gu Wenjie was quick-witted, and he also used his brains. First, he was preparing to find a business engine, and he also wanted to find the Unreal III that just came out last year.

This suggestion was rejected by the project team—online games are not very sensitive to the technical progress of the screen details, but have higher requirements for fluency and stability. Moreover, the fees for Unreal Engine are really black, and it is not easy to apply for domestic project support after using it. Very problematic, so this suggestion ended up falling through the cracks.

But then Gu Wenjie went around to recruit soldiers and buy horses, and he really found a treasure for him.

But a few days ago, he and Lei Jun met through digital music, and talked about it privately a few times. He originally wanted to ask Lei Jun. Lei Jun himself started as a game maker, and he has a group of talents who have been making games since the last century. ...

It's a pity that Lei Jun is also working on online games now, and of course he doesn't have time to help him outsource. As compensation, Lei Jun recommended someone to him, but he was the producer of Swordsman Love at the beginning——

Jinshan has developed a bunch of stand-alone games since the 90s. The most successful projects are Anti-Japanese Landmine Warfare and Swordsman Love. The producer of these two series is Li Yunlan. A large group of stand-alone players left, including Li Yunlan.

Li Yunlan brought a group of stand-alone gamers to Xiangshan City to attract investment from a Taiwanese businessman who was willing to invest in a stand-alone game, and made a stand-alone rpg game called "The Legend of Zhao Yun in the Three Kingdoms".

This game is really a coincidence. The protagonist Zhao Yun learned martial arts from a teacher who was suspected of being a fairy since he was a child. He has a brother from the same school and a childhood sweetheart.

Why do you feel a little familiar?

It just so happened that Boss Chen wrote that set of background concepts by himself, and he boasted to others every day that his set of concepts was worth at least 500 million US dollars, and everyone didn’t hurt him face to face, but this Li Yunlan was invited here—it just so happens that Li Yunlan wrote " After the completion of "The Legend of Zhao Yun in the Three Kingdoms" was almost completed, the Taiwanese businessman also switched to online games, only to realize that the investor was just a little slow to respond, and he was not the same as them.

Because it was really unpleasant, after a fight between the two sides, Li Yunlan took the group of Jinshan stand-alone people away, and then went around and tossed around, and then did not make any more successful products.The group that Li Yunlan brought out has gone back to Jinshan to make online games one after another. Li Yunlan herself is still chasing her dream to make educational games. She tried to attract investment from NetEase but failed. She was looking for another home last year.

Gu Wenjie just planned to set up a branch studio in a place with relatively cheap operating costs. This is also a common method of cost control in game development.Although Li Yunlan still doesn't really want to make online games, but because of his family, he doesn't want to leave Xiangshan City, and because of the failure of "Three Kingdoms Zhao Yun Biography", he is really unwilling. Although the game he wants to make this time is an online game, it is also a real-time battle with the theme of Three Kingdoms The rpg was still in his comfort zone, so he directly agreed, recruited a group of experienced veterans, set up a studio in Xiangshan City, and started working on Three Kingdoms Online.

With these outsourcing and human resources, basically the team of "Three Kingdoms Online" is about the same; although it costs a lot of money, for an investor, it is basically the limit of what can be done.

But for Chen Qin, there is the last, but also the most important question.

That is how to make money?
The reason why free online games are so popular is mainly because of the large number of people who play them, and because of the huge advantages in publicity. When others charge, making free online games is a blow to dimensionality reduction, but when others are free, you charge That's pure debuff.And free does not mean that you can't make money, just like Galaxy Software's idea, as long as there are many people, the development and operation and maintenance costs can be shared equally among each user.

So for free-to-play games, the content is of course very important, and the average payment rate is also very important-more players mean more costs, so a small loss for each person on average is a huge loss, and a little money for each person is a huge loss. huge profit.

On this road, the current online game business model is not very mature. Chen Qin encouraged Moyou to make free games before. Of course, he can't just care about life.

First of all... To make money in free games, you must know that online games are a kind of game with social networking as the main selling point, so to make money, of course, you must focus on social networking. Generally speaking, the most ideal business form of social games is free content and social payment.

On this road, the simplest and most extensive charging point is to sell skins, speakers, fashions and other innocuous little things. It is also social enough, as long as players who are a little enthusiastic about the game will almost certainly pay for it.

However, this is obviously not enough... Leaving aside the issue of bad conscience, almost all Chinese players today are price-sensitive users. If they want to go overseas, it may be enough to rely on skins. If they want to operate in China, selling some skins may even cover the cost. It's all strenuous.

So of course we need to design some other charging content. One that can be used immediately is the "stamina value" system. Player competition in online games is the most important intersection point of social interaction and content. Directly selling game items that disrupt the balance will of course destroy Fair, but this system is not fair in the first place - now players will mine all night to earn some money, and find power leveling for leveling, most of this "unfair" profit is earned by the studio and power leveling .

The physical value system perfectly solves this problem. Although it has already appeared, it was not carried forward until dnf. Speaking of which, Gu Wenjie is also negotiating the agency contract of dnf recently. Unfortunately, this company is a subsidiary of nhn. It was in the Hanbok public beta, but Chen Qin remembered that this company should have gone to ncsoft later, so Gu Wenjie is still paying attention, wondering if he can find some opportunity to catch a leak...

Of course, this is a digression. dnf has created a business model that limits daily stamina but sells stamina medicines. It has found a reasonable way to make money for itself while maintaining fairness as much as possible. Now that dnf has just opened its server, the in-game The mall hasn't opened yet, but Chen Qin is a reborn who already knew the answer, so he added it to Three Kingdoms Online in advance.

This model is the basis of everything. In short, even if nothing else works, stamina medicine can guarantee the most basic payment rate.

However, apart from this, of course there must be something else. After all, although physical medicine is actually very social, it is a charging item for the public, which does not conform to the actual revenue sharing rules of online games.

In the future revenue structure of online games, 70% of the market potential comes from 5% of the players. This theory is of course well known to the public, but it is very difficult for merchants to identify the 5%—like In the UGC platform, it is difficult for operators to know which users have creative capabilities, and it is also difficult for online game operators to know in advance which users are rich.

Therefore, people in the industry call this kind of players 'whale players'. To catch this kind of players, you must first have a large enough ocean, and there must be enough small fish and shrimps before whales appear. The core of success is secondly to have specialized whaling tools. It is actually a business model that is ineffective for ordinary players. It will only work when encountering whales and bring a lot of income to the company.

And this kind of tool has actually appeared now-although the term "whale player" was invented by foreigners, the earliest whale hunters were actually domestic manufacturers.Shi Yuzhu's "Zhengtu" is a ready-made example. One knife 999 is a bit of a chicken and eggs, and differentiated social networking has also been proved to be not very useful. If it is really useful, it will be the game gashapon system that will be widely used in the future.

This system is not pioneered by Zhengtu. When Shanda used "Jie Tian Prison" to draw cards in different directions, the public opinion environment was much worse than the current two-dimensional card draw mobile games. At that time, the party newspapers criticized it in the name of opposing online gambling. Over a grand, in fact, is what happened last year.

Chen Qin is not sure if the limelight is over now, and of course there is no need to pay special attention to this issue now.

After all, Moyou has no money left.

Qiao Yongping's worries are of course not unfounded. Now that so much investment has been poured into the game, although the game is not yet perfect, it won't be too long. Recently, his own galaxy software is running a deficit, and Moyou's investment is almost burned out. At present, we are preparing to let the game go online first, and the priority is to develop the official game content-in order to build word-of-mouth, most online games in the future will not open the mall when they first go online, and they will have to wait at least two or three months before talking about it.

As for the charging content... Although these contents are very important, and Chen Qin actually has other plans for the specific value-added service content, but for the time being, there is no need to think about it so much.

Chen Qin went to the mailbox to receive some emails. Sun Xiaomei had already confirmed it. The investment department arranged some pledge financing according to his request. Qiao Yongping also sent a report on today's exhibition. Chen Qin roughly looked through it. The specific situation It was almost the same as what he saw, but apart from that, he sent Chen Qin a demo screen that was not broadcast during the day——

During the day, the promotional video that Chen Qin saw did not have real machine images. It seemed that they were temporarily cut out before going on stage. The internal version sent now does have a lot of real machine pictures. It seems that it is not perfect. You can see some material gaps and test version ui, and it is really inappropriate to display them.

But if you take a closer look, it seems that there are some pretty good things. For example, the screen demonstration shows that the player bumped into a treasure map while fighting monsters. Following the treasure map, he found a big golden treasure chest in a random place. There was a fortune teller in the city, and the player in the demonstration drew the auspicious hexagram, and saw an exclamation mark above the head of an npc next to him, which seemed to activate a hidden mission...

Also strangely interesting.

Although I didn't expect much, the production team seemed to have their own ideas. Chen Qin saw an occupational disease, so he wanted to talk to them on the spot about the scalability of these systems.

But I continued to look through the mailbox and saw the bill for last month's overseas projects sent by Lao Xu, and immediately calmed down again.

Forget it, let's make money first...let's plug the hole.And these people are novices after all, good resources are not put on more important projects, to engage in these fancy little things...

So Chen Qin replied an email, saying that the current plan is a public beta test within three months, and there is no need to continue financing. He also wanted to urge them to give priority to completing the combat system. While writing, someone knocked on the door, Open it and see Xu Lingling.

She came in excitedly with a small box in her arms, and opened it for Chen Qin to see. The box was given to Lou Xuemei by the previous staff.

When I opened it, several small trophies of various shapes were lying on the satin lining——

These are all the awards she won last year for "Where Are You Going, Dad?" The King of Songs, the Chinese Media Awards, and the Music Billboard Awards are all specially established online music awards, but there are also awards such as excellent MVs. Yes, and this matter has actually been reported in the newspapers a long time ago - the mainland media was blowing some time ago, saying that Lina's "Where Are We Going, Dad" defeated Jay Chou's "Qilixiang", Lin Junjie's "Jiangnan" and Zhang Shaohan's "Ou Ruohan". Pull", Feier Orchestra's "Our Love" and SHE's "Persian Cat" lead the domestic fashion trend, which is true.

"Are you happy?" Chen Qin asked her.

"And you, you wrote this song."

"Hey, why don't you care about that." Chen Qin said, "Because of the vacancy in the market, this song became popular again after the Spring Festival, and Mr. Li's MV was better..."

While speaking, I suddenly remembered something, and asked: "So what do you think, with so many trophies, do you like this feeling?"

Xu Lingling shook her head: "I don't seem to feel anything..."

(End of this chapter)