Tencent Biography 1998-2016: Evolution of Chinese Internet Companies

Chapter 11 Gold Mine: The Birth of "King of Games"
Challenging impossible missions is a lot of fun.

--Walt Disney (Founder of The Disney Company)
Special attention should be paid to facts that do not fit into pre-designed patterns.

—Arnold Toynbee (British historian), Historical Studies

Ren Yuxin

After working as a programmer at Tencent for three and a half years, Ren Yuxin finally heard the word "game" from Ma Huateng again.It was one day in April 2004. Ma Huateng called the value-added development manager Ren Yuxin to the office and asked, "Now there are two business modules, value-added business or game business. Which one do you choose?"

In the past few years, Ren Yuxin has been working in the technology development department headed by Zhang Zhidong.With the development of products such as QQ Show and QQ Membership, he was appointed as the manager of the value-added development department in 2002, and together with Wu Xiaoguang, who was in charge of client technology development, became Zhang Zhidong's right-hand man.

The failure of the "Triumph" game once shook Tencent's determination to continue to develop games. Even Zeng Liqing, who was very confident at first, felt that "the game business is a bit far away from the core relationship chain of QQ."However, Ma Huateng still decided to try again.This time, he plans to form an independent action team.

"According to Tencent's organizational structure at the time, technology development and product operations belonged to two departments, the so-called R line and M line. As Tencent's product line became longer and longer, there was a disconnect between R&D and the market. The characteristic is that there are three changes in one month. Once information is transmitted across departments, the efficiency will naturally drop. The newly established game department must gather all relevant people into a team and try out the business department system.” Therefore, Ma Huateng decided to integrate the general marketing department and the The value-added development department was split and reorganized, and the Internet business department and the game business department were established separately. He found the heads of these two departments, Zou Xiaomin and Ren Yuxin, and communicated with them back to back, and asked them to choose one of the two. Ren Yuxin chose without hesitation. game.

In the memory of Xi Dan, senior vice president in charge of human resources, this is the first time Tencent has organized a team by business module.He invited Zou Xiaomin and Ren Yuxin to the coffee shop next to the Fiyta Building, spread out a list of personnel, and asked them to pick someone.For the first hour or so, no one spoke, just sat there.Later, Zou Xiaomin, who has a straightforward personality, couldn't bear it anymore, and said to Ren Yuxin: "You pick, you pick, pick the one you want first." Ren Yuxin's face was wide open.

The newly formed game department comes from three departments, namely the "Triumph" game team, the chess and card team in the value-added development department, and some operating personnel from the comprehensive marketing department. "Ding Lei called NetEase's game department the Interactive Entertainment Department. I think it's quite appropriate, so I also called it by this name."

When Ren Yuxin led the establishment of the Tencent Interactive Entertainment Division, Lianzhong in Beijing occupied half of the chess and card game market, Shanda in Shanghai was in full swing, and the paying users of "Legend" reached an unprecedented 6000 million, almost equivalent to the population of a medium-sized country. . In May 2004, Chen Tianqiao sent the company to NASDAQ.On the day of listing, the company became the professional online game company with the highest market price in the world, and the young Chen Tianqiao became the new "richest man in China".In Guangzhou, Ding Lei, who had withdrawn from the business of Montnets, quickly invested in the development of "A Chinese Journey to the West". In addition, the ninth city represented the most popular "World of Warcraft" in North America. Shi Yuzhu, who turned from the health care product industry to online games, also developed "Journey".China's online game market is in full swing.

"Before I was in charge of the game business, I was just an amateur of game software. I had no idea how to operate a game. The whole team was made up of improvised. We were placed on the sixth floor of the Fiyta Building and had no idea about the future. I know." When these people sat together for the first time in a meeting, they didn't like each other. Some of them had developed large-scale games and thought they were well-known figures in the rivers and lakes. Some people know simple chess and card games, while others don't know anything about games, but they know what young people in Internet cafes in Northeast China like to play.

As the leader of a combat force, Ren Yuxin made two decisions.

The first is how to structure the Interactive Entertainment Department. "At that time, there was a dispute between the Shanda model and the Netease model. Shanda separated development and operation. One team was dedicated to development and the other was dedicated to operation, while Netease combined the two into one and implemented a project system. The latter's The model was very difficult at the beginning, because the head of the team in charge is often a technical background and knows nothing about operations, but in the long run, it can force out a group of technical directors with operational savvy. I chose the NetEase model.” This model After being fixed, Tencent will set up a special studio with a game as an independent unit in the future. If it succeeds, it will be paid well, and if it fails, it will be dismantled and restructured, forming an internal horse racing mechanism.

The second is the choice of the main battlefield. "Reflecting on the failure of the "Triumph" game, I think that under the circumstances at that time, Tencent did not have the experience of operating large-scale online games, so the most reliable tactic is to start with Yi, and practice while playing. I decided to focus on chess and cards and small casual games. In games, the enemy in front of you is Lianzhong."

Ren Yuxin declared that Tencent's chess and card games will surpass Lianzhong in three years.In fact, however, he only spent less than a year.

Attack on Lianzhong: a pre-publicity competition
Lianzhong was established even half a year earlier than Tencent.Under Bao Yueqiao's management, by the end of 2003, Ourgame had more than 2 million registered users and 1500 million monthly active users, once occupying about 80% of the chess and card game market.Although it has been harassed by websites such as winger in the South, its dominance has never been shaken.

When Tencent released the first public beta version of the game on August 2003, 8, Bao Yueqiao sent someone to play it and make an evaluation. Compared with Lianzhong, there are almost no improvements and innovations in the 13 Stud games. "They are all imitations of ours, so don't be afraid."Indeed, before Ren Yuxin formed the Interactive Entertainment Department, the Tencent game team had only 5 development and operation personnel, and they were in a half-dead state.

The situation began to change quietly after the formation of the new department.

Ren Yuxin first ordered to rewrite the game lobby and increase the game categories, which greatly improved the game's operating experience.At the same time, the aggregation advantage of QQ began to exert its strength, and the function of QQ game was added to the new QQ version. Users do not need to register, and can log in directly by using their QQ number.Ren Yuxin introduced the "Avatar mode" in the QQ show into the game, and Q coins became the most convenient tool for players to purchase services.

A Lianzhong employee recalled a feature that made them most desperate at the time: “Tencent added a display window on QQ to remind your friends what game they were playing, and after clicking it, they would jump directly to the game room, where you could join. QQ has more than 2 million registered accounts, and the randomly generated game players are scary."

The increase in the number of chess and card game users also exceeded Tencent’s expectations. At the beginning, people in the chess and card group agreed to have a meal for every 1 more people. As a result, they had 13 meals in one month, and then everyone stopped. Bring it up.

Many years later, Bao Yueqiao believed that Tencent used the despicable method of "complete imitation" to attract Lianzhong users to Tencent.When he recalled the scene at that time, he said: "Unlike large-scale online games, the rules of chess and card games are fixed, there is no technical threshold, and the players are highly overlapped with QQ users. Tencent is easy to imitate." Some observers have similar impressions: "Lianzhong's Users are dug into the QQ game hall, but they don’t have any discomfort, because no matter from the game rules to the interface, the distribution of functions, or the prompts, the QQ game hall directly copies them. If you are an unfamiliar user, you can’t even tell which one is Lianzhong Game, which one is QQ game."

However, Tencent Games has a slightly different understanding of it.Sun Hongyu was the leader of the early chess and card team. He spent a month independently rewriting the Tencent game lobby. According to his recollection: “We compared and monitored the data of the two users, and found that during the period when Tencent’s users increased sharply, the number of users of Lianzhong There has not been a significant decline, that is to say, most of the people who play Tencent games are QQ users who were pulled in by us, rather than defected from Lianzhong.”

Jian Jing, who founded Ourgame together with Bao Yueqiao, said: "Ourgame's market share was eventually squeezed out by Tencent. In fact, we had a measure, but this measure was not to deal with Tencent, but to deal with the future development of Ourgame, because Ourgame It is impossible to stay in the earliest product form forever, it must go beyond.” In Jian Jing’s view, Lianzhong should not stick to the chess and card market with the lowest technical threshold, but should rush out and enter through independent development, introduction and even joint operation. Large-scale online game market, or create a new game form.Lianzhong has at least two years to carry out such an adventure, "Maybe you will die if you rush out, but at least there is a chance of life, if you stay with the chess and cards, you will die."

Obviously, this is an excellent lesson plan for a business school. In a sense, Lianzhong did not die because of being imitated, but because it did not respond and did not continue to take risks and innovate.

By August 2004, 8, one year after the official operation, the number of simultaneous online users of QQ chess and card games reached 24, and by the end of December, it had exceeded 62 million, which was comparable to Lianzhong.After that, the comparison of the number of users between the two has a more violent contrast. At the end of 12, Bao Yueqiao was forced to resign as chairman of Lianzhong.

In many people's eyes, Tencent's attack on Lianzhong is close to a bloody culling in the sun in the animal world.

The battle between Tencent and Lianzhong started almost simultaneously with the battle between Tencent and MSN.

For other Internet entrepreneurs, the latter battle is a battle in the "real-time communication territory", although they are life and death. They can stand by and watch their success or failure, and even gloat a little, hoping to gain some benefits from it.

However, Tencent's killing of Lianzhong was completely different. Tencent's strong fighting power and Ren Yuxin's team's genius use of traffic and user resources caused shock to the entire Internet industry. Almost everyone began to think about a terrible question--

If one day, Tencent enters my territory with the same tactics, can I resist?

The battle between "Bubble Hall" and "QQ Hall"

This dire question quickly morphed into hard truth.At the same time when chess and card games surpassed Lianzhong, in January 2005, Tencent launched the game "QQ Tang", which ignited a war and legal turmoil between Tencent and Shanda, the game leader at the time.

The imitation object of "QQ Hall" is Shanda's "Bubble Hall".

The prototype of this game is the Korean game "BNB".It is made by imitating the classic red and white machine game "Bomberman". It is a puzzle family leisure online game suitable for young people. The developer is South Korea's NEXON company. "BNB" was put into operation in 2001. In 2002, Shanda purchased the agency right in China and operated it under the name of "BNB" in the following year. By the end of 2004, the highest number of simultaneous online users of "BNB" exceeded 70 million, becoming one of the online games with the largest number of active users in the world at that time.

The low-grade characteristics of the "Bubble Hall" game are very consistent with the QQ users at that time.Ren Yuxin decided to develop similar games in June 2004. He invested all the business power of the Interactive Entertainment Department, and almost all of these people became the main heads of various departments of Tencent Games in the future. "QQ Tang" was tested internally in September 6, and officially promoted in December.

Ren Yuxin does not deny the follow-up strategy of "QQtang" to "BNB". "The difference between the two products, list all the details, compare them one by one, how they do it, how we want to do it, whether there are some improvements and innovations. For example, we think the map of "BNB" The design is very monotonous, so some cool-looking maps were developed. For another example, when the characters in "Bubble Hall" walk on the map, only their hands and feet can move, we added head shaking, so that it looks It's cute. However, after the game was launched, I found that these are some very bad innovations. The map is too fancy, and the user's eyes are dazzled when playing, and the constantly shaking head makes the game not smooth for the user. , The illusion of a stuck machine."

After the first version of "QQ Tang", which I thought had done a lot of innovation, was launched, it encountered cold reception, and the number of simultaneous online users hovered below 10 people for a long time.Ren Yuxin had to organize staff to continue to revise the version. In the next six months, almost all the staff in the Interactive Entertainment Department did not get off work until after [-] pm.

By July, "QQtang" launched a new version of "Kubi Yixia". Its game interface became clean and fresh, and the role of "Kubi" was added, which greatly improved the fun of the game.Since then, the highest number of simultaneous online users of "QQ Tang" has quickly exceeded 7, reaching the level of 3 within 10 months.For more than a year after that, "QQ Tang" maintained the rhythm of monthly revisions, continued to optimize on the basis of listening to users' opinions, and the popularity of the game was finally detonated.

The emergence of "QQ Tang" made Shanda suffer from the enemy. According to Shanda's financial report for the second quarter of 2006: "Its casual game "Bubble Tang" encountered the problem of 'aging' after three years of operation, and the casual game business revenue was higher than that of the previous quarter. down 3 percent."

The implicit Chen Tianqiao did not launch a direct attack on Tencent, he persuaded NEXON, which owns the copyright of BNB, to rush to the front line.

In September 2006, NEXON submitted a letter of indictment to the Beijing No. 9 Intermediate People's Court on the grounds that Tencent was suspected of copyright infringement and unfair competition.In the complaint, NEXON submitted to the court 37 pictures suspected of plagiarism in "QQ Hall". They are all the same or substantially similar to "BNB"; and Tencent named the game after "Tang", which is obviously taking advantage of the influence of "BNB" in the Chinese market, and even uses the same props or substantive similarities in the game. The similar names and graphics are a kind of misleading to game players, making players mistakenly believe that the two games are related."

Based on this, NEXON believed that Tencent's actions constituted copyright infringement and violated the principle of good faith and business ethics stipulated in Article 50 of the "Anti-Unfair Competition Law". Yuan Renminbi.

NEXON's lawsuit against Tencent is the first transnational copyright infringement case in China's online game industry, which has aroused great public attention.The infringement details involved almost cover the development process of the entire industry, and its identification is related to the direction of online game research and development and the definition of intellectual property rights.

Tencent defended its actions in the lawsuit: "QQtang" is an online casual game that is completely planned, written and developed by Tencent independently. There is no copyright infringement issue, and the "plagiarism" accused by the South Korean side has no basis at all. , In addition, Tencent does not have any acts of unfair competition.

The lawsuit went on for 6 months.Guo Kaitian, vice president in charge of legal affairs, said: "When the lawsuit started, we didn't know what the court would decide. But after several rounds of defense, the legal boundaries gradually became clear. Focus on intellectual property and patent protection.”

In March 2007, the Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People's Court made a judgment. The focus of the judgment was two points: first, whether there was any copyright infringement.Through comparison, the court found that some of the 37 pictures submitted by NEXON "belong to common forms of expression, and the plaintiff has no right to claim copyright for them", some "are not similar on the whole", and some "belong to the category of ideas". Therefore, the defendant Tencent did not constitute plagiarism.Second, whether there is any unfair competition.The court held that the word "Tang" is an inherent vocabulary in Chinese, and the plaintiff's use of it in the field of online games as a name does have a certain degree of originality, but it cannot obtain the exclusive right to use the word "Tang" by means of this, and the lawsuit is unfair. Competition matters have no factual or legal basis.

Accordingly, the court dismissed all claims of NEXON.

In the two battles between Lianzhong and "Banbotang", Tencent demonstrated several basic characteristics of its new product development: keep an eye on new hot spots in the market, quickly follow up and optimize, and use its own traffic advantages to achieve overall replacement.

In June 2006, Ma Huateng described this in an interview with "Chinese Entrepreneur" magazine: "I don't innovate blindly. What Microsoft and Google do are what others have done. The smartest way must be to learn the best case, and then go beyond.”

There is a fact that needs to be stated here: in the following years—even until I wrote this book, Tencent was still dubbed the "Plagiarism King" by many people.However, at the legal level, only NEXON has filed a copyright lawsuit on the grounds of Tencent game plagiarism.

QQ pets: the catharsis of maternal love complex
Five months after the launch of "QQ Hall", in June 5, Tencent launched "QQ Pet", which is another light cavalry follow-up and surpass.

Digital pets are a Japanese invention. In 1996, Japanese toy manufacturer BANDAI launched the world's first digital pet product "Digital Chicken", which looks like an egg and has three buttons on it, which can feed the pet, play games with it, and clean its body. Living environment, each "electronic chicken" has age, weight, hunger and mood, its evolution and survival time all depend on the owner's care.

"Electronic chicken" was all the rage, and the Japanese teenagers at that time almost had "one chicken in each hand".After Bandai, the Japanese game manufacturer Nintendo launched the handheld game "Pokemon", which became a classic product of Japanese handheld games.In China, Ninth City and Shanda both launched similar digital pets in 2000, but they did not achieve popular results.

QQ pet was developed by the Internet business system (B2), and the product manager was Wang Haibing (who left Tencent to start Taomi.com in 2007), and was classified into the interactive entertainment business system (B3) one year later.He said: "Our decision to launch QQ pets is based on a very instinctive consideration-the fat penguin itself is an anthropomorphic digital pet, and the design of its evolution has natural user advantages."

QQ pets is not surprising in terms of product concept, but it is quite unique in terms of link conception and operational thinking.

Over the years, the fat penguin has been deeply rooted in people's hearts, and game designers have used their brains to anthropomorphize it, making it more like the user's own child than previous digital pets. QQ pets provides users with a variety of leisure and entertainment experiences such as feeding, learning, part-time jobs, entertainment, marriage, travel, etc. In subsequent product improvements, it will continue to improve in refined cultivation and user interaction experience.

By July 2006, QQ pets had set a record with the highest number of simultaneous online users exceeding 7 million, becoming the world's largest online virtual pet community. In March 100, the cumulative users of QQ pets had reached 2007 million. The Department of Interactive Entertainment drew on the experience of QQ Show and Qzone to launch the "Pink Diamond Noble".Like other "diamonds", the monthly fee for pink diamonds is 3 yuan, and you can enjoy five privileges, including identity display, item discounts, exclusive item purchases, free services, and more.

In the next few years, the service content of Pink Diamond has been continuously enriched. For example, "Q Pet Inn" appeared. Pink Diamond users "can come to Q Pet Inn from 17:24 to [-]:[-] every day, and choose to let Q pet own Q pet baby to host”; opened “Q pet hospital”, pink diamond users can enjoy “green channel service for free medical treatment and free prescription privilege”; and “adventure island travel”, “becoming a pink diamond noble You can immediately have the magical power bestowed by pink diamonds, and you can enjoy the privilege of unlimited participation in the fantasy journey of QQ pet adventure island"; "free marriage", ordinary penguins need to pay for marriage, but pink diamond users are free.

In the eyes of many outside observers, QQ pets are nothing new, but once again proved Tencent's talent in "plagiarism".However, after careful consideration of the entire life cycle of this product, many innovations can still be found, some of which are even difficult for other companies to imitate.

QQ pets and QQ show have a natural continuation in the context, which is a progression from the dress-up mode to the cultivation mode. However, compared with online games in the general sense, QQ pets are more like an experiential activity of online survival.According to statistics, [-]% of QQ users who keep pets are women. What it incites is the maternal love complex deep in the human heart.The connotation of this game can be described as very shallow, but very real and warm.The substitution of this kind of personification and the flexible control of it are the secret weapons that Tencent is best at.The "online life" that Ma Huateng has advocated for many years includes not only interpersonal network communication, information interaction and e-commerce, but also directly refers to the networked emotional catharsis and display. Such subtle demands are often ignored.

In the case of QQ pets, we clearly saw the classic Tencent-style operation: lock in a "real appeal point" and strive to achieve the ultimate in user experience - capture consumer groups from the huge user base - in the formation of a certain After a large number of basic users, advanced paid commercial services are launched—continuous optimization, trying to extend the life cycle of products—to find new appeal points.

This evolution logic is reflected in almost all Tencent products.

Flanking strategy bypassing the main battlefield
After entering 2005, Tencent has achieved a good record in chess and card and small casual games, but for a long time, the game team did not have a clear strategic intention, and almost all of them adopted follow-up imitation and traffic introduction as the main Tactics of strategy.

In this year, the scale of the national online game industry reached 61 billion yuan, an increase of 51% over the previous year. Journey to the West, etc., are all large-scale online games with the theme of "fighting monsters and upgrading". Shanda, Netease, Ninetowns, Guangtong, and Kingsoft rank among the top five online game companies in turn, strangling this battlefield without exception.Among them, Netease, which is mainly based on independent research and development, performed the best. Due to the successful development of "Westward Journey 2" and "Fantasy Westward Journey", its market share soared from 11% to 22%.

Compared with the booming large-scale online game market, the field of casual games that Tencent focuses on is obviously much deserted.According to the estimates of Computerworld.com, in 2004, the scale of domestic leisure online games was 5 million yuan. In 2005, it was about 9 million yuan, accounting for only about 1/7 of the industry scale. .

After the failure of the "Triumph" game, the newly formed Interactive Entertainment Department was determined to wash away its shame. Ren Yuxin concentrated the best technical force and quietly invested in the research and development of a large-scale role-playing game. " as the theme, the simulated object was the most popular "World of Warcraft" at that time.By March 2005, this game named "QQ Fantasy" entered the internal test, and it was officially commercialized on December 3.The game provides 12 denominations of Q coin point cards, and users need to pay 8 yuan per hour of playing.

"We had a very fantastic start." Ren Yuxin recalled that just after the public beta started, "QQ Fantasy" gained 66 users.But the good times didn't last long, and "QQ Fantasy" made a mistake that was exactly the opposite of the 3D version of "Triumph": its game design was too simple, and many players quickly cleared all levels.

What made Tencent even more unprepared was that in December 2005, Chen Tianqiao changed Shanda's three large-scale games "Legend 12", "Dream Kingdom" and "Legend World" to "forever free", and changed its revenue model to "game time". Free, value-added services charge", which makes the same type of "QQ Fantasy" suddenly lose its appeal.Chen Tianqiao, who suffered a dumb loss in the "Bubble Hall" incident, turned around and shot an arrow of revenge at Ma Huateng in the field of large-scale online games.

"QQ Fantasy" "open high and go low" made Tencent encounter another setback in large-scale online game products after a lapse of two years.At this time, there were two directional debates within the Interactive Entertainment Department: first, how to continue to attack the field of large-scale online games and regain the lost honor; second, whether the future of Tencent games should be based on introduction or independent development. host.

Ren Yuxin fell into a dilemma: "At this time, I began to think about the way out of Tencent Games, and wanted to form my own style of play."

After carefully studying the history of single-board computer games and the Korean game market, Ren Yuxin came to a new observation.

In his view, despite the popularity of large-scale online games featuring role-playing (RPG), other game types have not left the market.Among the game users in 2005, there were 1590 million users of large-scale online games and 1790 million users of casual games, that is to say, they still had a large share.In this type of game field, there is a rule of "champion takes all", that is, the type of game that ranks first will occupy the vast majority of user shares. "From the Korean game rankings, we can see that in some fields, only No. 1 is very important, since No.2, basically no one remembers what game it is."

Based on this observation, Ren Yuxin said at a business discussion meeting of the Ministry of Interactive Entertainment that there are currently two topics that everyone is arguing about, one has a slim chance of winning, and the other is a "false proposition".

He put forward a very radical strategic idea: bypassing the main battlefield of large-scale online games with the theme of "fighting monsters and upgrading", focusing on casual competitive games, and must be a genre champion, which he called "the side attack of latecomers" strategy".At the discussion meeting, Ren Yuxin wrote down these categories on the blackboard: gunfight, racing, fighting, flying shooting, music and dance.He said like a field commander: "These are the mountains that Tencent Games wants to capture." Under this strategic intention, independent development and foreign introduction are only options.In Ren Yuxin's view, "It might as well go hand in hand without conflict."

This strategic thinking formed by Ren Yuxin in early 2006 is of decisive significance to Tencent's game business.

The first casual competitive game introduced was "R9beat" developed by the Korean game company Seed2 and distributed by Neowiz. Games for youth.Tencent introduced it at a cost of less than 30 US dollars and named it "QQ Sonic". It was officially launched in July 2006, and the maximum number of simultaneous online users reached 7, which is a barely passable result.

"Cross Fire" and "Dungeon and Fighter"

At the end of 2007, Tencent obtained the Chinese agency rights of two games "Cross Fire" and "Dungeon Fighter" from Neowiz and Neople respectively. It was these two games that allowed Tencent Games to achieve explosive growth.

"Cross Fire" is an online gun game based on the battle between two international mercenary organizations. It was launched in South Korea in May 2007, but it did not have great success, because there were "Sudden Attack" and "Sudden Attack" before. "Special Pressure" is two very popular games of the same type, and Neowiz has offered an agency price of more than US$5 million for "Cross Fire".Tencent executives were very hesitant for a while, but Ren Yuxin believed that the experience of this game is very good, and there is no single gunfight game in the Chinese market that has achieved monopoly success, so it is possible to give it a try.To be on the safe side, he also packaged and introduced another gunfight game at the same time, "I prepared two waves of attacks, if one wave fails, the second wave can follow up."

"Dungeon and Warriors" is a fighting game, the developer Neople has absorbed a large number of classic arcade features in its design. "Everyone who has played a single-board computer is very easy to use, and the experience is more exciting and in-depth. Most importantly, it has very low hardware requirements, basically a computer can satisfy." It was launched in August 2005 Launched in South Korea, it has been dominating the top ten best-selling online games.

The Chinese versions of "Cross Fire" and "Dungeon and Fighter" were launched in public beta in early 2008. The South Korean side and Tencent's expectations for them are "the highest simultaneous online users reach 30".What no one expected was that the number of users showed an astonishing skyrocketing trend. By the end of the year, the highest number of simultaneous online accounts exceeded 220 million and 150 million respectively.Almost at the same time, Tencent's self-developed "QQ Speed" and "QQ Xuanwu" were launched one after another, and the number of users also exceeded one million.

When the product strategy has been verified by the market, Tencent's advantages in user accumulation and operation have been brought into play explosively.

The Ministry of Interactive Entertainment launched a "Game VIP" for game users, also known as "Super Player". Player location, custom super long nickname, custom game blacklist, custom game friends, 24% off items in the lobby mall, etc.

To give an example, in June 2007, Tencent launched a 6D game called "QQ Demon World".The game platform immediately released the following incentive measures:

As long as you are a QQ user and log in to "QQ Demon World" with your QQ number, you will have the opportunity to obtain QQ Blue Diamond membership.

As an ordinary QQ user, log in to "QQ Demon World" with your own QQ number, and when your character level reaches level 45, you will get a free QQ Blue Diamond membership for 30 days.

QQ会员玩家，等级达到15级将获得蓝钻资格30天，等级达到30级将获得蓝钻资格60天，等级达到45级将获得蓝钻资格90天。

These rewards integrate Tencent's diamond service and membership service, providing a very fast and attractive channel for QQ users to enter.With the increase of game projects, Tencent successively launched "Purple Diamond Noble" and "Black Diamond Noble".The former is a privileged service in "QQ Xuan Wu", "QQ Speed", "QQ Hall" and "QQ Sonic".The latter is a privileged service for "Dungeon and Fighter". After opening the black diamond, you can enjoy "flop rewards, experience bonuses and fatigue bonuses".After several years of honing, Tencent has become more and more proficient in stimulating user enthusiasm, and it has become more and more irresistible.

In the history of Tencent, 2008 is regarded as the "first year of games".

Birth of the "King of Terror"
The success of the interactive entertainment business system in online games has exceeded the expectations of the board of directors.

As early as May 2006, when Ma Huateng accepted an exclusive interview with a reporter from Southern Metropolis Daily, he still insisted on the "short-term theory of interactive entertainment". He said: "In our opinion, interactive entertainment may grow within 5 to 2 years, but After the base reaches a certain scale, the growth will definitely slow down, and may even not grow. Therefore, the long-term and stable revenue model should also come from corporate payment and advertising revenue, including search payment and e-commerce.”

However, in the following years, with the launch of games such as "Cross Fire" and "Dungeon and Warriors", the ability of online games to attract money and their contribution to the company's profits far exceeded Ma Huateng's expectations.

In 2008, Shanda’s annual game revenue was 34.23 billion yuan, and it was 9.72 million yuan in the fourth quarter; It is 28.38 million yuan, surpassing Netease and very close to Shanda.Meanwhile, Tencent has close to 8.03 million registered QQ users.Also in this year, Tencent took a stake in Riot Games, a newly established online game development company in the United States, and became the Chinese agent of its product "League of Legends".

In those years when Tencent found its own style of play, Shanda, the leader of online games, lost strategically.Holding nearly [-] billion yuan in cash and ambitious, Chen Tianqiao put forward a new strategy of creating "Internet Disney", successively involved in literature, music, tourism, film and television, video and other fields, trying to use online games as a platform to build a grand entertainment kingdom.This strategy made Shanda fall into the quagmire of multi-headed development, and encountered strong enemies in almost every field, while its first-mover advantage in online games was gradually lost due to distraction.

Unlike instant messaging tools, online game users have very low loyalty and dependence on the platform. Once the game is not fun, they will turn around and leave immediately.In the Internet world, an enterprise that has lost its core products and killer applications is tantamount to a city that has lost its defenses and is waiting to be captured and looted.

Tencent's surpassing of Shanda occurred in the second quarter of 2009. The former's online game revenue reached US$1.816 million, while the latter's was US$1.72 million; NetEase's $1.759 million.By the end of the year, Tencent's market share exceeded 0.625%, and Shanda has never been given a chance to overtake. Among the top 0.685 games with the highest number of users throughout the year, Tencent's "Dungeon and Warriors", "Cross Fire", and "QQ Xuanwu" Impressively occupied the top three, "QQ Speed" ranked seventh.

The "King of Terror" in the Chinese online game world was born. Ren Yuxin commanded a "virtual army" to conquer the city, the stars fell, and the earth rose.

In the following years, the advantages of Tencent Games continued to expand. In the first quarter of 2010, Tencent's game market share reached 25.3%, surpassing a quarter for the first time. It, Shanda and Netease accounted for 1% of the market.By the third quarter, Netease's revenue exceeded Shanda's because it won the agency rights of "World of Warcraft" from The4.

In February 2011, Tencent acquired a majority stake in Riot Games for $2 million.In August of the same year, the Chinese server of "Cross Fire" surpassed 2.31 million concurrent users, setting a new record for the highest number of simultaneous online users in online games. In March 8, "League of Legends" broke another record, with the highest number of simultaneous online users exceeding 300 million, becoming the world's largest online game community.

As of the first quarter of 2013, Tencent’s online game revenue reached US$12.17 billion, followed by NetEase, Shanda, Changyou, Perfect World and Giant with a combined total of US$8.7 million.Among them, Shanda, the former leader, has fallen to fourth place, with a revenue of only US$1.73 million.

Among Tencent's total revenue and profits, the contribution of online games is also prominent.

According to Tencent's 2011 annual report, online games contributed more than half of the company's revenue, reaching 158.21 billion yuan. "Dungeon and Warriors", "Cross Fire", "QQ Xuan Wu", "QQ Speed" and "League of Legends" contributed the main source of profit.At the beginning of 5, when Ma Huateng decided to enter the field of chess and card games, the game team had only 2003 employees. Ten years later, in 4, when I researched and wrote this book, the interactive entertainment department had more than 10 game developers. On the peripheral company, the total number of developers is close to 2013, which is the largest online game development group in the world.

It is precisely because of this that Tencent has become an increasingly difficult company to define.

(End of this chapter)