Tokyo: Being coveted by my wife, I just want to play games

Chapter 399 is coming!

Japan's national New Year holiday is only one day, which is New Year's Day on January 1. However, under normal circumstances, whether it is a government agency or a private enterprise, the annual holiday is from December 1 to January 12, which is equivalent to a week-long holiday.

If the 4th happens to fall on a weekend, the holiday will last until the 8th, because January 1th to January 6th is Japan's Coming of Age Day, and local governments will hold various ceremonies to bless young people who have just come of age this year.

从去年的12月29号一直放到今年的1月9号，一共12天假期，而今年的日本，就是如此。不过圣光社的员工都是4号开始就回来工作了。

On the one hand, Dongchuan Che had originally given his employees an early holiday, on Christmas Day, December 12 last year; on the other hand, or the main reason why he asked his employees to return to work on the 25th, was naturally because "World of Warcraft" was going to be launched.
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"How was your New Year, Kimura?"

"Thank you for your concern. Thanks to the company, I was able to go home for the Chinese New Year this year and finally hold my head up high in front of my relatives."

Early in the morning, two office workers in winter down jackets walked into the red building of the Holy Light Society.

Hearing the greeting from his section chief, the younger handsome boy Hiroki Kimura, carrying his briefcase, bowed in return and spoke very excitedly.

Hiroki Kimura was born in a small county and graduated from Yokohama National University. However, according to last year's QS World University Rankings, Yokohama National University ranked just over 800th in the world, which is equivalent to the level of Wuhan University of Technology and Lanzhou University in China last year.

A university of this level is already very impressive, but there is no other way. Although the current staff of the Holy Light Society are all very young, they are basically top students who graduated from super prestigious universities such as the University of Tokyo, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and even Oxford and Cambridge in Europe and the United States.

Therefore, although Hiroki Kimura is a top student, he is not considered outstanding in Tokyo, or in a company of the level of Seikosha.

Although his diploma was not the best, he had made a small-scale 2D game by himself during his college years.

Although the game failed, he had accumulated two or three years of experience in game production. Therefore, after he joined the company in April last year, he was directly transferred to the development team of "Don't Starve" by Fuyukawa Che. As the sales of "Don't Starve" exceeded 30 million copies, although the dividends received by a newcomer like him were not large, a speck of dust in the era is like a mountain for ordinary people!

The same is true.

Don't Starve is a landmark work with sales of over 30 million copies. Even for fresh graduates who are responsible for helping out and learning experience, the dividend ratio is very low. But for a young man who just graduated from college, this dividend of more than one million yen is still very considerable! And more importantly, he is also participating in a big project!

Needless to say, when he returned to his hometown during the Chinese New Year this year, Hiroki Kimura also successfully installed it.

Not only were his relatives and friends surprised and envious, but the little kids from his hometown who were playing Holy Light Club games also looked at him as if he were a big shot.

Especially during the Chinese New Year class reunion, he felt even more proud when he found that the girl whom he liked very much in high school but never pursued and for whom he no longer had much feelings looked at him with complicated eyes!

Returning home in glory!

Hiroki Kimura is extremely excited now and feels more motivated to go to work.

Seeing the excited smile on his apprentice's face, the middle-aged man named Inogashira also smiled and said, "You are lucky to have met such a good leader like the president. If you were in other companies, newcomers like you wouldn't even get dividends, and your names wouldn't even be on the final production list. You can only do hard labor on the project. You should be grateful to the president, understand!"

"Ha Yi! I will never forget the president's kindness!"

The young Hiroki Kimura bowed vigorously, his eyes full of sincere gratitude.

He just graduated from college last April, so many of his classmates are working and interning in other companies. As the saying goes, there is no harm without comparison.

Japan's economy has been sluggish since the bursting of the economic bubble in the 90s. The most direct manifestation of the sluggish economy is the closure of a large number of old companies. At the same time, few people are willing to take the risk of losing money to become "evil capitalists", which ultimately leads to a shortage of jobs.

In addition, Japan has entered a severely aging society in recent years, with the proportion of people over 65 years old reaching 28%, but the retirement age in Japan is 70.
It's very embarrassing. Not only does the sexual desire of the elderly be much lower than that of the young, but their consumption desire is also much lower than that of the young.

How many people over 60 would buy mobile phones costing thousands of dollars or computers costing tens of thousands of dollars?

How many people over the age of 60 often go shopping?
Even when they eat, they have no desire for meat.

This may not sound like a big deal, as the elderly live a frugal life and seem to be quite carefree. But the problem is that without consumption there will be no enterprises, and without enterprises there will be no jobs. In addition, these elderly people over 60 have to enter the workplace and compete with young people for jobs because they have not retired.

at the same time!

Many people say that China's wages are low because there are too many people, but Japan's population density is 2.5 times that of China.
Although it cannot be directly understood that a job that two people compete for in China would require five people to compete for in Japan, but based on the population density alone, the employment competition pressure in Japan is indeed more terrifying than that in China.

The number of enterprises is decreasing, the population is too large and the population is severely aging.

Japan has stacked up a lot of DeBUFFs, and under this background, on the one hand, it has created a large number of so-called "lying flat people" in Japan, and on the other hand, it has also allowed companies to have almost absolute say when facing employees.

If you can do it, do it. If you can’t, get out.

This is not just talk.

Hiroki Kimura has also heard from classmates who work in other companies that many companies treat fresh graduates very badly. Although due to the existence of the Labor Law, most formal companies also provide overtime pay when requiring employees to work overtime, and there are also overtime hours restrictions, but
Which country doesn’t have a Labor Law?
With such a shortage of jobs, employees are forced to work overtime, even with reduced overtime pay, and are asked to conceal information when facing the review of relevant agencies. After all, even if the relevant agencies confiscate the company's money, the money will not reach the employees, and the employees may lose their jobs and offend the entire industry.

It's like you saying to a migrant worker, "You work too hard on the construction site every day. I require you to work only eight hours a day and take two days off a week."

It sounds good, but when migrant workers cannot find jobs if they do not accept the condition of working 30 days a month, such words seem naive and stupid.

Exploitation of employees is common in Japanese workplaces, and this is not the most important thing. The more important thing is.
Not all companies are willing to give new employees the opportunity to shine.

There is a rather counterintuitive logic here, which is that [the company does not give you a matching position and salary simply because your abilities have improved], but rather [the company gives you a matching position and salary because it is worried that after your abilities have improved, you will feel that the treatment is not good enough and want to leave the company].

The same is true.

When Dongchuan Che was producing "Don't Starve", if he had been a little more ruthless, he could have simply not given dividends to these young people who had no confidence to change jobs. He could have even lowered the salaries of these interns on the grounds of "lack of ability" and "little contribution". But Dongchuan Che did not do that!

Dongchuan Che not only gave out dividends, he also added the names of the entire production team, including those recent graduates, except for those employees who were really incompetent or were cheating, all the others were added to the list of producers at the end of the game.

This is a very impressive resume for recent graduates!
Of course, even if they were not on the list of producers, their resumes would have something like "Participated in the production of Don't Starve" written on them. But the project leader of Don't Starve was Toru Fuyukawa! By adding their names to the list of producers, Toru Fuyukawa had recognized their abilities!
Who in the entertainment industry today doesn’t want to have his or her resume linked to Dongchuan Che?

This is the endorsement and certification from the top bosses in the industry!

Not only does he give money, but he also helps pave the way for the future. Who wouldn't want to follow such a leader? !

Although for Toru Fuyukawa, this was just a casual thing, but in the heart of Hiroki Kimura, this was a great blessing from heaven!
There are many people who share the same idea as Hiroki Kimura.

As the master and apprentice were waiting for the elevator in front of the elevator shaft, and as the working time got closer, more and more people came to the company lobby, and the sound of chatting in the lobby became more and more.

Even though it should normally be a holiday today, the male and female employees who came to work all had smiles on their faces, excitedly chatting about the glorious events during the Chinese New Year and what they had gained in the Holy Light Society over the past year!

But it was obvious that apart from some topics praising Dongchuan Che, or bragging about how glorious they were during the Chinese New Year as members of the "Elden Ring"/"Don't Starve"/"FGO" studio, what they talked about the most was "World of Warcraft".

"The game will be launched this afternoon. I wonder if the president can create another miracle this time!"

"Yesterday I heard from Xiaosaki from the World of Warcraft development team that when this game was tested some time ago, the self-media and anchors who tried it all responded very well. However, as an online game, I guess it won't be too popular in the domestic market."

"It's hard to say. The domestic online game market is not actually small, but it relies more on the airwaves. Online games from Europe, America and South Korea are not popular here, but when SATE's "Magic Fantasy" was first launched a few years ago, the number of simultaneous online users in China exceeded 400,000. It's just that their planning and operation were too bad, and in the end all the players ran away."

Two beautiful female white-collar workers from the marketing operations department stood outside the crowd, chattering while waiting for the elevator.

Japan's online game market is not large, but it is not completely nonexistent. It's just that Japan's online games are similar to stand-alone games, and because of their unique style, it is relatively easy to select players.

This is like JRPGs (Japanese role-playing games) such as "Persona", "Yakuza", "Dragon Quest", and "Ys". If you don't have the right taste, you will find these games childish, a little bit second-rate, or even a little boring. But if you like these styles, you will love them to death.

However, these two beautiful female white-collar workers in the marketing operations department did not worry about this aspect.

Even though Japan itself has some online game markets, the bulk of the online game market is still in Europe and the United States. In China and South Korea, they pay more attention to these markets.

"According to the company's investment, World of Warcraft can only be considered a success if there are more than 8 million simultaneous online users on the first day of its launch. This is too difficult."

"For this type of MMO online game, the current global concurrent online user record is 1283 million set by Hunter World seven years ago. At that time, the game had been in operation for three years and had a strong fan base. In addition, the release of the new expansion pack set the record. Now, and most importantly, it was the era of online games, and mobile games had not yet emerged. To be honest, I think it is unreasonable for the president to spend so much money on an MMO online game in this era."

"There's no way to get stuck. Although our company's GOGO platform is becoming more and more popular, the world's most popular MMO online games and the most popular MOBA competitive games are all over OTTO. If we don't have works that can compete, we won't be able to attract players in these two largest game categories in the market. The president is also out of luck, the elevator is coming."

As the elevator reached the first floor, two female office workers from the marketing department also stepped upstairs. Shortly after they entered the elevator, amid the greetings of "Hello, President," "Hello, Vice President," and "Good morning, Managing Director Miyano," Toru Fuyukawa also brought Sayoko and Miyano Mitsuko to the elevator shaft.

There were employees bowing and greeting people all around, but Dongchuan Che did not greet them with a smile today. He just nodded seriously, and then continued to chat in a low voice with Miyano Mitsukoshi.

The same thing I just talked about with the two female white-collar workers from the marketing operation department.

Because "World of Warcraft" is a point-based game, it is actually difficult for this game to bring in too much revenue for the company.

A simpler conversion.

"World of Warcraft" costs 90 yuan a month, which is 1080 yuan a year. At the same time, there is a major version every year. As long as the current version of "World of Warcraft" does not fail, the investment in each subsequent major version will be maintained at 2-3 million US dollars, or even higher.

If we add in the almost continuous promotional costs after the game is released, as well as the company's corporate taxes.

So if he doesn't sell skins or mounts, he needs more than 400 million regular players [on an annual basis] to make a profit.

This number is extremely exaggerated.

You should know that the most popular CS on Steam generally has about one to two million online players.

Of course, World of Warcraft can sell skins as well as mounts, but the number is difficult to estimate.

but
Even if skins and mounts don't sell for much money, as long as it can attract MMO online game players, Dongchuan Che will still make "World of Warcraft".

There is no other reason.

TPS or FPS shooting games such as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and CS, MOBA competitive games such as League of Legends, and MMO online games such as World of Warcraft can be said to be the groups with the largest number of players and the most stable daily active users among all game categories.

The reason why OTTO was able to stand out from a number of game platforms and become the world's largest game platform was mainly because the company developed the most popular MOBA competitive game seven or eight years ago - "Sentinel Scourge", as well as the phenomenal MMO online game of that year - "Hunter World".

These two games have been popular for more than ten years.

The former, Sentinel Scourge, has already completed e-sports and has held twelve world championships, while the latter, Hunter World, is still considered the benchmark of MMO online games. However.
Still the same problem.

There is nothing eternal in this world.

The game itself has a lifespan.

In its previous life, "World of Warcraft" never encountered a truly capable competitor, and "League of Legends" never encountered a new competitor. Even when mobile games were on the rise, "League of Legends" also enjoyed a second spring, but these two games still inevitably declined.

There is no other reason, it's just because games are used to satisfy people's emotions, but to put it bluntly, many people will get bored and lose interest after having sex with the same woman too many times. So how long can a game last?
As time goes by, these two games from OTTO are no longer as popular as they were in the past.

However, having said that, but.
This is just like when girls fall in love in high school, most of them will break up in the end, but it doesn't mean that after the breakup, she will go find the boy who has a crush on her. Maybe another man will come out at this time.

The same is true.

The two games, "Sentinel Scourge" and "Hunter World", will eventually shut down, but this does not mean that Dongchuan Che has a sure win. Only when "World of Warcraft" rises can Dongchuan Che snatch the users of "Hunter World" from OTTO! And all this will be revealed in three hours!
(End of this chapter)