game trailblazer

Chapter 50 Black Monday
Perhaps it was too long before he was unappreciated, but Will White didn't hesitate too long after feeling Zhang Lexing's appreciation for his game. He quickly agreed to Zhang Lexing's request and agreed to go to Hong Kong to set up his own game studio, but Will White White still put forward a condition - to return to the United States for three months every year. Of course, Zhang Lexing has no objection to this, "As long as you get on my boat, there will naturally be a way to make you like Dongfang..."

Although the specific details of the investment have not yet been negotiated, Will White was very enthusiastic: "Mr. Zhang, as an investor, would you like to name the studio to be established?"

Zhang Lexing pondered for a while, and said, "Why don't we call it Maxis Studio, and when it grows bigger in the future, the name of the company can also be called Maxis."

……

The happy time is always short, and the party has come to an end.After leaving San Mateo, Zhang Lexing returned to his Blue Dragon Studio (PC game development studio), because there is another good news here.

In the past two years, PC technology has developed rapidly, graphics cards have developed from the earliest CGA to EGA, VGA graphics cards, and the research and development strength of Blue Dragon Studio has gradually transitioned from EGA to VGA, and began to apply VGA display technology to games research.The development team also used the previous research results to develop the racing game "Top Racer" and the adventure decryption game "Crazy Mansion" based on EGA display technology.

Before Zhang Lexing came, he had already heard from the phone that the two games had been completed and would be on sale soon.Zhang Lexing came to Blue Dragon Studio this time mainly to see what the final result looks like, but after a quick look, he found that the greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment. In Zhang Lexing's eyes, the EGA picture is still very simple, especially the focus on the picture effect The racing game is particularly obvious, on the contrary, the adventure game surprised Zhang Lexing.

The plot of "Crazy Mansion" is old-fashioned and simple. It is about the crazy doctor who kidnapped the protagonist's girlfriend for an experiment. In order to save his girlfriend, the protagonist and his friends went to the doctor's building to start a rescue.However, the game itself still has a lot of innovations. First of all, instead of the previous adventure game where only the protagonist walks around alone, players can choose two of the protagonist’s friends to take risks with the protagonist.Then the game is controlled by the mouse. The player first selects the command at the bottom of the screen, and then clicks on the item on the screen to interact with it, and can complete actions such as pushing, pulling, picking up, closing, and opening the item.The more mature EGA display processing technology after "CommanderKeen" has added a smooth screen scrolling effect to this game, which is the first of its kind in adventure games.In order to make the game screen better, the development team also added beautiful hand-painted cutscenes.

And the R&D team is not to be outdone, showing the application of the latest VGA display technology in the game. Although the demonstration screen is not smooth enough, the richer colors or higher resolution screens are far from the previous game screens. do not.In addition to the display technology, the R&D team also demonstrated the sound effects of the game based on the sound card in the experiment. The beautiful melody made Zhang Lexing feel like he was listening to the soundtrack of the game in his previous life.

After visiting the Blue Dragon studio, Zhang Lexing received good news from the investment manager sent out to contact Lucas. Lucas finally let go and agreed with Red River Fund to invest in Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Audio. The specific conditions are as follows: Red River Fund invested 3000 million US dollars and obtained 40.00% of the equity of the two companies.In addition, Lucas also gritted his teeth and passed the additional condition of supporting the newly established computer animation production department of Hong Kong Kunpeng Animation. It seems that he is facing a lot of financial pressure.

In the following days, apart from paying attention to VisualSystem's operating system and key game development projects, Zhang Lexing also began to pay attention to the US stock market and economic developments.

In August, the stock market began to have some turmoil, the stock trading volume increased sharply, and the market volatility increased.

In September, due to the deregulation of the financial market by the U.S. government and the stimulus of tax cuts for stock investment, a huge amount of international hot money poured into the U.S. stock market, and the stock price on the New York Stock Exchange continued to hit new highs.Riding on this trend, VisualSystem completed the final reduction of its stock holdings.

In early October, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 10 points for two consecutive weeks. Since October 400, the US dollar has been continuously sold in the foreign exchange market. In the morning financial program on October 10, Secretary of the Treasury Baker said that the dollar may fall further.All kinds of bad news came one after another, and a dark cloud filled the minds of people who had been optimistic about the US economy.

At 10:19 a.m. on an ordinary Monday morning, October 9, after the opening bell rang as usual, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 10 points as soon as the screens began to show.Zhang Lexing, who arrived in New York two days in advance, was sitting in his suite at the Hilton Hotel in the center of Manhattan, quietly watching the stock market information dancing on the TV.David Graham, who was in charge of this operation beside him, paced slowly, looking at the curves and numbers jumping on the screens of several microcomputers lined up in the room from time to time, and occasionally asked the waiting staff on the phone. The assistant next to him gives different operating instructions.

At the same time, a surge of selling orders rushed to the trading channel, and the index dropped 104 points in less than an hour after the market opened.During this period, the number of futures trading and stock selling orders pouring into the stock market was very large, which seriously slowed down the calculation and matching process of the trading system. As a result, after more than an hour after the opening of the market, there were still 11 index stocks that failed to display the transaction price. The Dow Jones index on the Internet can no longer truly reflect the actual price of the market.Most of the people who had originally held a wait-and-see attitude also began to panic, and there was only one voice left in their hearts, "We must find a way to sell all the stocks in our hands."Panicked people flocked to the nearest phone, desperately dialing familiar numbers, trying to contact their stock brokers. Following the trading system, the NYSE's phone system was also on the verge of collapse.

The New York Stock Exchange has a total of 200 microcomputers used to process stock transactions. It once brought fast trading speed to the New York Stock Exchange, but today it finally couldn't stand it anymore.When the stock trading data swarmed into the computer, the 200 microcomputers had no time to process it, and the processing speed of the information system lagged far behind.Less than an hour after the market opened, the computer was already 20 minutes faster than the actual transaction speed.By noon, the lag time had expanded to 75 minutes, a large number of stock transactions were not executed, and the computer system was almost paralyzed.And those stockbrokers who were standing in front of the terminal, elegantly answering the phone and pressing the keyboard, most of them turned into iron-blooded fighters, dragging their throats, holding paper and pens, trying to use the most primitive method to save themselves and their clients. loss.

Before the opening of the market in the afternoon, there was a rumor that the exchange was closed. Traders worried that their stocks would become invalid were forced to sell their stocks crazily. It didn't take long for the computer system to lag behind the actual transaction speed by a full 100 minutes.Even after discovering something was wrong, the officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission came forward to clarify, but the people who had fallen into madness simply turned a deaf ear to it, and the general trend of falling under the huge inertia could no longer be reversed.After a brief uptick, the index continued its downward three-thousand-foot movement.

By the time the market closed at 16:508.32, the Dow Jones Index had fallen by 22.6 points, or as much as 1929%, creating a record for a one-day drop in history, even much higher than the previous 10% drop on October 28, 12.8. Other indexes dragging down the stock market also plummeted, and more than $5000 billion in paper wealth was wiped out in one day.

On this day, it was inconvenient for VisualSystem to make a sale, but Zhang Lexing, through Graham's secret operation, used the short position established in advance to reap a lot of profits in this huge downward market.After the U.S. stock market closed, Graham did not sit idle. Instead, he used the phone to remotely control some traders who were stationed overseas, and continued the feast of harvesting in the stock markets of other countries.Going around the world, Zhang Lexing’s secret fund of more than 8 million U.S. dollars has rapidly expanded by more than ten times with the help of Graham. After deducting dividends and the natural loss of fund reverse operations, Zhang Lexing’s trip has gained almost the same amount. A whopping $68 billion.

The next day, it was time for VisualSystem to make a move. The company spokesman, Ballmer, announced on the morning financial program with confidence that VisualSystem would repurchase the shares held by Microsoft and other listed companies, and More quality investments will be made in the near future.At the same time, more than 600 listed companies have also publicly announced that they will repurchase their own stocks from the open market, and more importantly, the speech from the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who reiterated that he will ensure the liquidity of the financial system.Subsequently, major commercial banks in the United States lowered interest rates one after another.With so many good news, after the market opened on October 10, the stock index began to rise gradually.

Of course, VisualSystem’s hoarding of more than US$30 billion in cash is not just for stock repurchases. This time, the main targets are companies with great potential for future stock price rises (such as BBY), and blue chip stocks with huge declines (such as General Motors, Coca-Cola, etc.) etc.), small companies with patents with promising development prospects, through these goals can increase patent technology reserves for VisualSystem, and can also obtain relatively large medium and long-term investment returns. The control of the listed company also left a lot of cash for VisualSystem, which greatly enhanced the company's strength.

Afterwards, many experts were a little confused about the sudden plunge, because there was no major financial news that could cause a surge in sales at that time, only the decline of the US dollar in the foreign exchange market and the expectation of the decline of the US dollar did not have such a big effect.In the end, the experts unanimously identified the computer trading system as the culprit for the plunge, because on October 10, there was a capacity problem when dealing with 16 billion US dollars of pension funds, which led to the suspension of the trading system. The real reason behind the plunge is no longer interesting to know.In order to avoid similar incidents in the future, the New York Stock Exchange requires SIAC, which provides the computer system, to upgrade the processor, memory, disk capacity and switches in the system as soon as possible, and adjust the control and processing software so that it can deal with the increasing number of cases in a timely manner. More transaction data.Thanks to everyone's efforts, investors' confidence began to gradually recover.

(End of this chapter)