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

Chapter 434 on sale!

【There is no real history in the world】.

Jiang Wen, a famous Chinese director, once said this. In Dongchuan Che's opinion, this sentence is both right and wrong. In his opinion, this sentence should be changed to [Ordinary people cannot see the true and complete history. ]

Just give a simple example.

The most famous figure in the Three Kingdoms is Zhuge Liang. Many people also regard the three visits to the thatched cottage as a very classic plot in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms about respecting wise men and humble oneself. Zhuge Liang's "The Memorial to the Emperor on Leaving the Capital" also contains the words "I am a commoner, tilling the land in Nanyang".

But few people pay attention to the fact that Zhuge Liang's father Zhuge Gui was once the "Taishan County Magistrate". The position of county magistrate during the Three Kingdoms period is equivalent to the deputy mayor in modern society, while the appointment and removal of officials in the Eastern Han Dynasty was implemented through the recommendation system.

In other words, if Zhuge Liang's father Zhuge Gui wanted to become the deputy mayor, there had to be a higher-ranking official to promote Zhuge Gui.

Zhuge Liang's ancestor Zhuge Feng once served as the Inspector of the Imperial Guards.

The Inspector of the Capital Region was one of the highest-ranking local officials in the capital region. His main responsibility was to supervise the officials in the capital and the capital region. He could impeach the Three Dukes and Nine Ministers and even the Crown Prince and the princes, and was directly responsible to the emperor.

If we have to describe it, this position is almost equivalent to the deputy fruit level in modern official positions. And those who know a little about Chinese history should know that in the feudal period of China, especially the Han Dynasty, which had not yet experienced the "Wait until September 8th next year, I will bloom and all other flowers will die" family purge, the high officials were backed by their respective family nobles.

In this context, Liu Bei's three visits to Zhuge Liang's thatched cottage were certainly due to the fact that Zhuge Liang was a genius, but it is hard to say that there was no reason for him to pay homage to Zhuge Liang and take advantage of the power and social network behind Zhuge Liang's family.

In addition to Zhuge Liang, Zhang Fei was actually the same.

Zhang Fei is described in Romance of the Three Kingdoms as "living in Zhuo County for generations, owning a lot of farmland, selling wine and slaughtering pigs." This description, coupled with the later characterization, makes it seem that Zhang Fei is just a wine seller and pig slaughterer, but in fact
When Liu Bei first started his army, he relied on the financial support of Zhang Fei's family. In the initial stage, Zhang Fei directly recruited [300 warriors] for Liu Bei.

300 soldiers, in the entire history, seems to be nothing, but if we switch the perspective and look at the issue of [recruiting 300 soldiers] from the perspective of ordinary people,
Can a butcher recruit 300 soldiers?
A small boss with a fortune of several million can't even afford to hire 300 employees to start a company!
Therefore, the character Zhang Fei is definitely not the butcher described in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but a local tyrant who is more like the landlord class.

This is also why Dongchuan Che feels that [ordinary people cannot see the true and complete history]. On the one hand, this is because many history books are influenced by the subjective thoughts of the compilers.

On the other hand, most ordinary people don’t delve into the ins and outs of certain things. Even if this information is written in relevant history books, you can find it out by just looking it up. But most people still don’t know what the name of Langya Zhuge means. They rarely think about whether a “pig butcher” who can recruit 300 soldiers can still be called a “pig butcher”. Most people still have the romantic heroism concept in “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” in their heads.

Of course, Dongchuan Che has no intention of getting entangled in conspiracy theories and other controversies. He is not a historian, and he does not care what the truth of history is. He also does not care about the personal relationship between the three brothers of Shu Han and the prime minister. In fact, he also hopes that the truth of history is the kind of romantic heroism in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" full of brotherhood and loyalty to the master. But these are not what he cares about most. What he cares about most is
No matter what the historical truth is, at present, the "Three Kingdoms" in the minds of most ordinary Chinese people is the Three Kingdoms in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms".

This phenomenon is because Romance of the Three Kingdoms is one of the four great classics and has been adapted into various TV series, which have a very high popularity rate in China. In other words, this is the effect of taking the initiative in publicity and promotion.

With the initiative in publicity and promotion, history will be a little girl who can be dressed up by anyone. In this era of advanced technology, but everyone is in an information cocoon, with the initiative in publicity and promotion, reality is also a little girl who can be dressed up by anyone.

There are also countless such things happening in the gaming industry. The most typical examples are "Cyberpunk: 2077" and "Dragon's Dogma 2", and even "Red Dead Redemption 2" is the same.

Although the game quality of "Red Dead Redemption 2" is extremely high, the pace of this game is extremely slow and it is not exciting enough to play, so it is not suitable for most players.

To put it more bluntly, for most players, this game is a game that [is fun to play in your imagination, but not that fun when you actually play it]. So why do many players still buy this game when it is on sale?

Perhaps because of the publicity, almost all game promotion videos have to mention [Everyone stand up, Rockstar's masterpiece "Red Dead Redemption 2" has reached an all-time low] and so on, and the comment section is full of praise.

Just like in history, most people will not delve too deeply into the truth of things. As long as the voice of public opinion is loud enough, most people's thinking will be assimilated by the voice of public opinion. The same is true for the release of Hearthstone.

Before Dongchuan Che reached an agreement with Mr. Bao and others, the direction of public opinion was actually very unfavorable to Hearthstone.

Other companies were not fools. They knew that Hearthstone was a forerunner made by Dongchuan Che before the release of the handheld game console, and Dongchuan Che also intended to grab the channel share of mobile games. Therefore, there were a lot of capitals that led the pace at that time. Although Dongchuan Che had a good reputation before, reputation is something...
As long as the negative public opinion is loud enough, it only takes one night to destroy a person's reputation. And the higher you stand, the harder and faster you will fall.

There are too many examples in this regard, the most typical one is Liu Xiang.

Liu Xiang was a national hero, but he became a household name after he withdrew from the 2012 Olympics. You should know that Liu Xiang withdrew from the Olympics because of a ruptured Achilles tendon. What is the Achilles tendon? Move your foot and feel the large tendon behind your ankle. That is the Achilles tendon.

A ruptured Achilles tendon is a devastating blow to any athlete, and may even cause disability. In this case, it is understandable that Liu Xiang withdrew from the competition, but overnight, the national hero became a rat crossing the street that everyone wanted to beat.

Public opinion is so exaggerated. The truth of the matter is not important. What is important is which direction the wind blows.
It can be bought with money.

Before reaching an agreement with Mr. Bao, Dong Chuanche was under great pressure, and the reputation of Hearthstone was mixed. But now it is different. The four groups have a total capital of more than 4 trillion yuan. Even if the other three will definitely not spend a lot of effort to support Hearthstone, a hair falling from a giant can kill an ordinary person.

Needless to say, with the start of the super-large-scale promotion, the number of monthly card reservations for Hearthstone exceeded seven million the night before the game was released.

Yes, monthly card reservation.

The original profit mechanism of Hearthstone is to sell card packs. This mechanism has brought a lot of profits to Blizzard, but Dongchuan Che is not going to sell card packs.

Although selling card packs is definitely more profitable than selling monthly cards, on the one hand, the handheld game console is about to be released, and whether it is "Hearthstone" or "Pokemon", the main function of these two games for the Holy Light Society is to attract traffic to the handheld game console. Therefore, at this stage, Dongchuan Che still has to give players a profit, so that players can play happily and easily.

On the other hand, in Dongchuan Che's opinion, the business model of Hearthstone selling card packs is actually exchanging short-term benefits at the expense of the company's good reputation.

the reason is simple.

Players buy card packs because they have a demand for certain cards, and once players meet this demand, they no longer need to buy card packs. Therefore, under this profit mechanism, Dongchuan Che needs to continuously launch new card groups to maintain players' demand for card packs, thereby using this demand to make money.

This mechanism seems to be fine, but the problem is that as more and more new card packs are released, the game's balance mechanism will become more and more difficult to make. And for a game like Hearthstone where players compete with each other, once the balance explodes, the game will be gone.

This was the case with the previous version of Hearthstone. In order to deal with this situation, the previous version of Hearthstone's production team divided the game into standard mode and wild mode, and came up with a mechanism called "old card retirement."

As each season passes, the decks from the previous season will be [retired]. In other words, the cards that players spent real money to buy last year cannot be used in the standard mode this year, and can only be used in the wild mode, which has completely abandoned balance.

This approach can indeed delay the problem of game balance explosion to a certain extent, but it will make many players feel unhappy. After all, when they first drew cards, no one said that those cards would not be used in the future, and this will greatly dampen the players' desire to spend money to draw cards.

And even so, it's still a dead end.

To put it simply, this is like the ancient feudal dynasties. Every emperor who came to power would say something like "I love your name like my son", but in the end, which feudal emperor did not oppress the people?
There is no way around it, because the main source of income for the feudal emperors and the aristocratic families was not from business or technological innovation, but from collecting taxes from the common people.

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Especially in the feudal system, it was layered. Small officials had to respect big officials, and big officials had to respect the emperor. But where did the money for promotion and rank come from?
The same is true.

The game production team also has business pressure, they have to be responsible to the company's leadership. When the source of income for this game is selling cards, the production team will try every possible way to release new cards at a faster speed, and release new cards that can mobilize players' purchasing emotions!

Driven by this chain of interests, some super-model cards will definitely be made by the production team, and there will be more and more super-model cards, because players will not buy cards that are weaker than the cards they already have.

If the snowball keeps rolling like this, the balance of the game will eventually explode.

Of course, even if Fuyukawa Tetsu releases a monthly card mechanism, the balance of Hearthstone will still explode. But to use the words of Keynes, the father of macroeconomics - "In the long run, we are all dead."

Whether it is a person or a game, they all have a lifespan and will eventually disappear. But Dongchuan Che can delay this process and minimize the impact of the game's death.

To put it simply, he hopes to extend the life of Hearthstone as much as possible. At the same time, if Hearthstone loses its balance one day in the future, he does not want disappointed players to criticize the Society of Light and affect the reputation of the Society of Light. After all, reputation is something that can be easily destroyed, but it can indeed attract many players.

The monthly card mechanism that Dongchuan Che created for Hearthstone plays this role.

Under the monthly card mechanism, players can use all cards at will, and after the [old card retirement mechanism] is released, as long as the players who have spent more than six months of monthly cards in the year when the deck is released, the retired old cards can continue to be used freely in [Wild Mode]. Players who did not spend six months of monthly cards at that time need to buy some relatively cheap [boost packs] if they want to use these cards in [Wild Mode].

In general, the monthly card for Hearthstone costs 70 yuan per month.

It's a very reasonable price. However, Dongchuan Che is not a kind person who would not make money.

Just like "FGO" and "World of Warcraft", he does not plan to make big money from characters, equipment, card packs and other aspects that directly affect the basic experience of players, but he still puts a lot of effort in other aspects, such as selling skins and special effects.

The original version of "Hearthstone" has very few special effects, and card battles are just collisions between cards. The adjustments made by Dongchuan Che are mainly in this aspect.

He enhanced the visual effects of the card battles, and at the same time turned the hero, who was originally an ordinary portrait, into a Q-version 3D character.

To put it simply, he brought some of the money-making methods from "Shovel of War" to "Hearthstone". Players can buy various costumes to dress up their heroes, and some attack effects can also be purchased.

In general, Dongchuan Che is trying his best to explore other ways to make money without changing the basic attributes and balance. And through the data feedback from the company's statistics department, it can be seen that players are very receptive to this mode of operation.

This time, the monthly subscription of Hearthstone exceeded 7 million, and the sales of some [exclusive pre-order skins for the public beta] were also very high. Moreover, Dongchuan Che also made some linkages in it, such as the Q version of Saber, Black Jeanne, and Lani in the old man ring, and he also added them.

Although these linked characters will not directly become heroes, they will appear on the player's interface and have some interesting interactions with the player, such as cheering in the clubhouse, or complaining when the player plays some bad cards, and these [small table pets] can also be seen by the opposing players. It can satisfy the player's little desire to show off and cultivate satisfaction.

To be honest, when Dongchuan Che added this game module, he just did it casually, wanting to add some fun to the players and attract traffic, and he didn't think it would attract too much attention.
It must be said that after four or five years of development, the influence of IPs such as "Fate" and "Old Man Tamaki" has become even greater than before.

When the Q version poster of Black Jeanne appeared on the official website of Holy Light Society, countless Moon fans were excited!
In this increasingly lively atmosphere, time passed quickly, and in the blink of an eye, the release date of Hearthstone arrived.

(End of this chapter)