game trailblazer

Chapter 317 Fierce Competition in Summer Vacation ([-])
China BJ, 49th Floor, Block B, Sigma Apartment, No. 12 Zhichun Road, Haidian District...

Li Riyuan looked at the latest user data on the monitoring computer. The current number of registered users of "King of Kings" has reached 146732, and the number of online users has also reached 9872. Compared with the data of the previous few days, both of them have increased a lot. Especially since the number of people online is only one step away from the [-] mark, he couldn't help showing a satisfied smile on his face.However, when he thought of the sum of money he paid more than a week ago, he felt a little pain. That was hundreds of thousands. "Hooligans", if you don't want to give up first, you can't get anything. The money spent is still very effective. The number of online users who had peaked at the beginning has begun to rise again. The Taiwan server is just a matter of minutes, and his smile is even brighter.

Zhao Yue is in a very good mood now. Since the network bandwidth and the number of servers have been increased, problems such as dropped connections and slow game speeds complained by players have been greatly reduced, and there are fewer opportunities to work overtime for this, and even family life has also changed. become harmonious.For him, this week is almost the happiest time since he entered Tianxia Huacai.Of course, there are still many faults caused by the player's computer performance problems, line problems, etc., but this is what he can solve. Anyway, if you make a "Technical Troubleshooting Standard Question and Answer Process" in advance, you can let the game customer service Eliminate more than 99% of the troubles, and the rest of the day will have enough time to slowly solve them.

As the saying goes, some people are happy and some are worried. Zhang Zhihong feels the same way now. The promotion work in the early stage is still very effective. The price of 19 yuan double CD has successfully attracted the attention of many players. There are quite a few registered users, but he can't care about being happy about these results now, he is now full of troubles that need to be solved.

There are two problems Zhang Zhihong is facing. One is the emergence of competitors. In addition to the "Three Kingdoms on the Internet" that has been delayed, he also heard that an online game developed by mainland China is about to be launched.This news was sent by a friend of his. It is said that the game is called "Legend". Unfortunately, he knew it too late. Apart from a few game screenshots and a simple game introduction, there is not much information.Judging from the screenshots of the "Legend" game, the graphics seem to be better than "King of Kings", but they can't rush this matter, after all, they are just agents, and if they want to modify the game, they have to go through Lei Jue's technology The staff reported back to Taiwan for processing. Fortunately, according to a certain Lei Jue technician stationed in BJ, "King of Kings" is already developing a new expansion pack.

What makes Zhang Zhihong scratch his head even more is that "King of Kings" will start charging according to the plan at the end of next month, but they haven't come up with a suitable charging standard yet.The disc has been dumped at a price of 19 yuan, and many players have been attracted, but the hardest part is now beginning.If you only rely on the 19 yuan CD, Tianxia Huacai might as well act as an agent for stand-alone games. After all, that game doesn’t need to set up any game servers, and it doesn’t need to endure China Telecom’s exploitation of bandwidth. Both of these will cost a lot money's.

In order to get back the money spent on servers and network bandwidth, Li Riyuan has given a death order to the Consumer Software Division in charge of game operations, and must come up with a charging plan within a week.According to Mr. Li, Zhang Zhihong can refer to the charging situation in Taiwan, but the huge difference in the economic situation of the two sides makes this reference meaning not so great. If the charging standard in Taiwan is directly copied, he believes that the current players except Except for a small amount of money that burns a lot of money, the rest will definitely run away and there will be no one left.It must be ensured that the popularity of the game cannot be suppressed too much, so he must be more cautious when considering the charging method.

After several days of deliberation, and after convening department members to discuss together, Zhang Zhihong finally came up with a draft fee.Holding the printed document, he handed it to the general manager Li Riyuan: "Mr. Li, these are two charging plans that our department has initially considered. One is a monthly subscription with a price range of 25 to 35 yuan. It is suitable for those who have a long online time. Players; the other is the time-packed payment, that is, 10-15 yuan can enjoy 60-80 hours of game time, which is more suitable for those players who have relatively little online time..."

Courtyard No. 29, Shangdi East Road, Haidian District, in the office of Zhiguan Electronics BJ Company......

Although the air conditioner has been turned on, the new general manager Feng Huazhu's head is still sweating, and his heart is filled with nothing but helplessness.In fact, he has been working as the general manager for only two months. At that time, his predecessor Zhang Zhihong had just switched to Tianxia Huacai. In a daze, he prepared a press conference to promote "Three Kingdoms on the Internet" created by Zhiguan Electronics.With the excellent theme of "Three Kingdoms", "Three Kingdoms on the Internet" has successfully attracted the attention of many people. According to the plan, the game should be launched in mid-July, but there is another bad news from above, because suddenly The bugs found need to be corrected, and the game will not be delivered as scheduled until early August.

Feng Huazhu didn't understand. Also in mid-July, the game servers in Taiwan and Hong Kong were opened as scheduled. The biggest difference between the mainland version and the Hong Kong and Taiwan version of "Network Three Kingdoms" is the difference between simplified and traditional characters. Logically speaking, the main program should be the same, why there are so many problems when it is changed to the Simplified Chinese version, he is really a little confused.

I originally thought that there should be good news in August, but unexpectedly, the game was postponed once, and this time it was simply pushed to mid-September.This time Feng Huazhu is in a hurry, because he has completed all the preparations that he should do, but the game program cannot be delivered, so the pile of game servers he got back are just decorations, and what's worse, they are not available according to the purchase order. The agreement is almost time to pay.

In order to reduce the operating cost of the game, Feng Huazhu used his contacts to buy a batch of IBM servers on credit. At the beginning, he agreed to use them for free for two months. Now that it is August, the first batch of payment should be paid by the end of the month. , The money is not too much, the key is that the server will not be available until mid-September, which makes him feel very uncomfortable.However, there is one thing that Feng Huazhu is very thankful for. China Telecom's network access fee has not been negotiated. This should have been an angry thing, but now it has become a good thing. If he had Be quick, negotiate the network access early, and if you move the game server to the telecommunications room, is it really a dime now?

The game has been delayed again and again, and now Feng Huazhu has no confidence in Taiwan's work efficiency. He is very worried about whether the so-called promise of "mid-September" will be realized.Originally, if it could be launched in mid-July, it would just be able to compete with "The King of Kings", but now it has been postponed, so I have no choice but to watch other people's performances.

Looking at the latest market research and evaluation report, it mentioned that another game will be unveiled at the end of the month, "Legend" from the studio of the local company Creative Workshop. Although Feng Huazhu doesn't know what "Legend" is like, but Based on the quality of games released by Creative Workshop in the past, he believes that this game will also have strong competitiveness. It's going to be a lot bigger.

Thinking of this, Feng Huazhu sweated even more, he had no choice but to take out a few more tissues and wipe his head hard...

Room 4, Building 202, Area A, Jinhu Garden, Jinbi Road, SZ City, Guangdong Province...

Zhou Tianwei, who had already packed his things, greeted his colleagues in his department, and then dragged his trolley case outside. Today he must rush to Shanghai to see the development of "Very Men and Women" with his own eyes, in order to determine the marketing promotion Whether the plan needs to be adjusted.

"Extraordinary Men and Women" is an outsourced development, and the specific responsible is a game studio in Shanghai called "Lord of the Rings". , "Return of the Rivers and Lakes" is somewhat similar, it is a community-based graphic online game, what players face is no longer the frequent vendettas in Mud, but a warm living atmosphere, and integrates some Internet software functions, in addition to being able to Experience the fun of urban life in the game. Players can even use it as a graphical communication tool to call friends in the game, live together, entertain, make friends, date... In short, it is very different from ordinary games. Big difference.

Running out of the community in a hurry, Zhou Tianwei hailed a taxi and went straight to Bao'an Airport.By the time he arrived at the airport, it was almost ten o'clock in the morning, and it was only three or ten minutes before the flight took off.Throwing the money to the driver, Zhou Tianwei dragged the trolley case and ran to the terminal in a panic, not caring about getting the change. Fortunately, today was lucky, there were not many people going to Shanghai, and the security check was completed in a short time .Sitting on the chair in the terminal, Zhou Tianwei let out a long sigh of relief. If the flight was on time, he would be able to arrive in Shanghai at noon today, and there should be no delay.

Thinking about it, Zhou Tianwei showed a relaxed expression on his face, and then slowly became weird again. He stood up, covered his stomach with one hand, and held the handle of the suitcase with the other, and looked around in the waiting hall. sign, and followed the direction indicated by the arrow on the sign, dragging the trolley case and ran quickly to the bathroom.

While running, Zhou Tianwei held his stomach and thought: "It's probably because I ate something bad in the morning..."

After alternating feelings of pain, horror and joy, and the sound of "crashing" water, Zhou Tianwei walked out of the bathroom very easily, and while wiping his hands with a tissue, he turned his gaze to the nearby wall On the wall clock, "10:29", a chill ran down his spinal cord to his forehead, making him shiver involuntarily.Without thinking about it, Zhou Tianwei dragged his trolley case and started running again...

Seoul, South Korea, 571th Floor, Dongyang Building, 15, Sinsa-dong, Gangnam District...

Kim Jae-yeon, president of GamaSoft, stood by the glass curtain wall of his office, looking at the scenery outside the window.During this period of time, the company’s operation was relatively smooth, and the gold panning trip to China has also yielded good results. Although the real money has not been obtained yet, the game has been negotiated with a local company called “Shortcut Computer” Agency agreement, the "Eternal Star: Time and Space Fantasy" developed last year and the upcoming "Eternal Star: Age of Magic" will be handed over to him for localization and distribution. He believes that with the game quality of "Eternal Star", he will definitely be able to Surprise the players in that land and be sure to get a good result.

Kim Jae-yeon had no choice but to turn his thoughts to China. Now the Korean stand-alone game market is almost dominated by companies under Asia Interactive and a few local game companies. It is not easy for ordinary game companies to get a share of it, but more importantly What's worse is that the market share is not large, and you may try your best to fight for it, but you can't even get your capital back.Forced to have no choice but to set his sights on overseas markets, China, which has a similar culture to South Korea, has naturally become his first choice. In fact, he still can't tell the difference between mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. A friend pointed out that perhaps his first stop would be Taipei.

After negotiating the agent distribution of the game in mainland China, it is a matter of Jin Zaiyan's mind, but what he is thinking about now is another thing that is completely different from the stand-alone game. He is wondering if he should approve it. An online game planning proposal proposed by game director Jin Dayi. GamaSoft has been a stand-alone game development company since its inception. It has never been involved in text-based Mud games. The main reason is that Kim Jae-yeon believes that the game screen is the most important part of the game's expressiveness. How can it be called a game without a screen? Good game, but now he thinks differently.

This matter has to start with the performance of "Paradise". When NCSoft, a subsidiary of Asia Interactive, began charging for "Paradise" in September 1998, the number of online users was only a pitiful 9. It was still a joke in the game circle at that time. , Looking down on NCSoft, there are many people who want to see Asian interactive jokes.By the end of that year, the number of online users of "Paradise" was finally barely maintained at the level of 100, and the revenue brought to Asia Interactive was only a mere 1000 million won (equivalent to about 2 RMB), which is said to be not enough for them to spend on the game server and a fraction of the network bandwidth.

In 1999, as the version of "Paradise" was continuously updated, the number of registered and online users of the game began to rise steadily. By the end of 1999, the number of registered users had exceeded 15, and the number of online users had exceeded 1. The income has also risen to 66 billion won (approximately equivalent to 386 million yuan), which is quite eye-catching.This year, the performance of "Paradise" is even more amazing. Not long ago, the number of online users has reached 5. According to this trend, it is estimated that by the end of the year, it will bring 559 billion won (about 3278 million yuan), which makes people very greedy.

Stimulated by "Paradise", many former stand-alone game companies are planning to invest in the emerging market of online games. Kim Jae-yeon knows at least seven or eight companies, and even friends who introduced him to China. It is said that they intend to transform a nearly completed SRPG stand-alone game into an online game to join in the fun. After all, the money in it seems to be much easier to earn than a one-shot stand-alone game, and it is obvious that players The consumption potential is still very large,

The online game plan proposed by Kingtech is called "RYLOnline". The background of the game is based on the timeline of the colonization of the Kalthana Empire, and describes the confrontation between the old continent and the new continent.According to several game creative sketches provided by Kingtech, the style of the entire game will have a strong medieval Nordic style.Jin Jae-yeon knows that the key to whether a game sells well or not is whether the game is fun or not. Only games that players like to play will have good sales. He believes that online games should be similar.

Kim Jae-yeon has already seen what "Paradise" looks like. If only from the game screen, he thinks it is not as good as "Eternal Star: Age of Magic". He believes that with the technical strength of his company, he can develop a network There shouldn't be any difficulties in the game, the only thing he worries about is the problem of operation.

GamaSoft has engaged in game development and game agency, but it has never done the operation of online games, and Kim Jae-yeon is a little uncertain.But thinking about the situation of other companies, he felt a little more at ease. NCSoft had never done game operations before, and now those companies that plan to devote themselves to online games also have no experience in operation. He felt that the people in his company were no more stupid than others, so there was no reason why they couldn't play games.

Thinking of this, Jin Jae-yeon showed a resolute expression on his face. He has decided to approve Jin Dayi's proposal to set up a project team dedicated to the development of online games.Anyway, it will take a while to develop "RYLOnline". He can just use this gap to poach other people's corners, or cultivate some talents in game operation by himself. When the game development is completed, he can just pick it up and start the game At that time, the money will come in a rush, and Jin Jae-yeon, whose eyes are shining with silver light, shows a smug smile...

(End of this chapter)