Video Game Empire

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Since the 1960s, with the take-off of Hong Kong's economy, the lives of Hong Kong people have begun to improve, and the demand for culture and sports has begun to increase. Whether it is Hong Kong movies or Hong Kong football, it has entered a rapid upward trend in the 1960s. 【First Release】

In the 1960s, Shaw Brothers was the only one in Hong Kong movies. In the 1970s, there was a rivalry between Golden Harvest and Shaw Brothers. With Mr. Lei Jue Kun, the owner of KMB, he established the third cinema chain in Hong Kong, the Golden Princess Theatre. After the line, the trend of a hundred flowers blooming has begun to emerge.

Hong Kong football also entered its heyday from the 1960s. In the early days, the "Namba War" between KMB and Nanhua could attract fans to queue up all night to buy tickets. After that, luxury and powerful brigade such as Xingdao, Yuyuan, Zhijie and Donghua emerged successively. In the past two years, every time the Seiko and Bulova disputes between the Huang brothers have attracted tens of thousands of fans to the scene to cheer.

It can be said that this era is the most prosperous era of Hong Kong football, and when Li Xuan of later generations is watching the football, the Hong Kong team has already been reduced to a bullying fish belly, which is even worse than the "Chinese pig team".

But Hong Kong football is not without worries behind the fire and flowers. The harm of politics and politics to football is a problem that cannot be ignored. Due to its special status, Hong Kong has always been an important battlefield in the fierce confrontation between the two sides in the Taiwan Strait. Hong Kong's newspapers include Ta Kung Pao, Wen Wei Po, and Hong Kong Commercial Daily, which have a distinct leftist stance, as well as Industrial and Commercial Daily and Hong Kong Times, which are known as the mouthpieces of the Kuomintang-Party. Countless battles.

This battle between left and right is no less in sports. The recognized left-wing teams in the First Division are Dongsheng, Yuyuan and Haifeng, and the right-wing teams are Dongfang, Zhijie and Guanghua. Every time they meet, they are jokingly called "Kuo-Communist war" by Hong Kong fans. However, with Huang Chuanshan's investment in the formation of the Seiko team, millions of Hong Kong dollars were spent to poach people. The pattern of the League One began to change.

, Seiko recruited the former Dutch head coach as the new head coach at a high salary, and dug up Nanganing and Lenny Gahoff, who played in the Argentina World Cup finals in 1978 and 2018, to charge and finally successfully won the championship.

It is impossible for a left-wing team to have such a large-scale investment, so some newspapers began to criticize this kind of power built with money. Mr. Fok Yingdong, as the only authoritative figure in the sports world who has served as the "Vice Chairman of the AFC" in Hong Kong, can be said to have a definitive influence on Hong Kong football.

Under the persuasion of some people, he also believes that the gap between the rich and the poor among the teams in the first division is too large, and that in the long run, the entire league may lose its competitiveness. His apprehension is not without reason, but he is prepared to take a one-size-fits-all approach. It is absolutely not appropriate to directly prohibit all teams from introducing foreign aid.

After all, Hong Kong's population is limited, so it is impossible for so many excellent local players to emerge. If all foreign aid is blocked out, it will only reduce the viewing experience of the league, and eventually make fans lose their interest in watching the game.

Although Li Xuan, a pseudo-fan didn't know much about Hong Kong football in the 1980s, he was quite interested in listening to the two bosses and a recently-retired FA president talking about these industry secrets.

But Li Xuan never let go of buying the team, Xu Jiankui persuaded him a few words and saw that he would not answer, so he could only give up. He said he would run for the next chairman of the South China Athletic Association. If the election is successful, we must revive the glory of the Nanhua football team, and have a good pk with Huo Da Gongzi's Royal Forest Army.

"Xiao Lisheng, I'm inviting you to come today. Did you think about something for your consultation?" Huang Chuanbao said suddenly.

Li Xuan nodded to him and said with a smile, "Da Huangsheng, what's the matter?"

"My brother and I, and Mr. Xu, want to jointly build a game company. We are going to produce the very popular arcade machines that your Dongfang Company sells, so I took the liberty to ask you if this industry is good for you?" Huang Chuanbao said with a smile on his face.

Li Xuan turned to look at Xu Jiankui. Xu Jiankui grinned at him: "We are jealous when we see you making a lot of money! But I think I have to say hello to you before starting a company, so that you won't blame my old friend for robbing you in the future! "

Li Xuan couldn't help smiling and said: "You look too high on Dongfang Electronics. Last year, the total output value of the US arcade market alone was as high as 3 billion US dollars. Our Dongfang Electronics accounted for less than 10% of the market share. Grab food!"

Of course, what Li Xuan did not point out is that on the surface, the share of Dongfang Electronics is not high, but this is mainly because Dongfang only launched "Tank Wars", "Hong Kong Cube" and "Pac-Man" last year. Arcade machine.

Other competitors, such as Sega, released more than a hundred new consoles in 1980. Although the sales volume of each game is far less than that of Dongfang Electronics, the accumulated market share is much higher than that of Dongfang Electronics.

However, the research and development of new games is expensive, and most of the more than 100 new games released by Sega have not been recognized by the market. Even if some of them are still selling well, they are far from comparable to the three arcade machines of Dongfang Electronics. Excluding research and development costs, the actual profit of Sega is not as much as that of Dongfang Electronics.

After Dongfang Electronics became famous, new game companies have sprung up in Hong Kong. Many of them are like the three followers who have no concept of the game industry, and Li Xuan is not optimistic about them.

"Da Huangsheng, Jiankui and I are friends. Since you are going to enter the arcade industry with him, I must first clarify the risks!" Li Xuan looked around at the three of them before saying seriously, "Many People only see the huge profits of the arcade industry from the success of Dongfang Electronics, but ignore the cruelty of competition in this industry. This is a winner-take-all industry, and most of the profits are swallowed by only a few companies!

In the US, the cost of developing a new arcade game is about $50-$1 million! For example, Sega, the main competitor of Dongfang Electronics, released 127 new arcade machines last year, with a total R&D investment of no less than 80 million US dollars. And the vast majority of these new game consoles sold less than a thousand units.

East just today. Our company launched a newest arcade game, Mario Bros., at a dealer conference at the Mandarin Oriental. In order to keep improving the production of this game, we have set up a research and development team of more than 20 people. It took nearly a year, and the total cost including the purchase of various R&D equipment was as high as 6 million Hong Kong dollars! "

The three of them couldn't help but sigh. When they looked at each other, they could read shock in each other's eyes.

Li Xuan smiled again and said: "Of course, it doesn't mean that every game has such a large investment. But if you want to build a decent company, you must invest 1 million yuan. Of which 500,000 is used for For the purchase of equipment, 300,000 is used for the company's operating expenses, and the remaining 200,000 is used for the cost input of later product production.

In this way, you can probably set up a game development team of 10 people, which can run for half a year. If it can develop a successful arcade game within half a year, the company may be able to survive, otherwise it is almost a situation where the funds are exhausted and forced to close down! "

"Lisheng, I was taken aback by you just now. The research and development of a game costs 6 million, which is too scary! The three of us only planned to invest 500,000 each, with a total equity of 1.5 million Hong Kong dollars." Xu Jiankui asked with a smile, "How is your company's new game? Has it been a big success?"

Li Xuan smiled without saying a word, but sighed slightly in his heart. They clearly didn't hear their risk alerts. Making arcade machines is by no means as easy as everyone thinks. At least these newly established game companies in Hong Kong have not been able to come up with any game that can make Li Xuan take a second look.

Xu Jiankui is not bad. Li Xuan has had a lot of communication with him recently, before the acquisition of Jiahua Bank. The other party also deliberately linked him with Lin Xinyi. Although the loss of 500,000 investment will not have a great impact on Xu Jiankui, as a friend Li Xuan is still willing to say a few more words.

So Li Xuan asked again: "Have your game developers recruited?"

There is a shortage of talent in the game industry in Hong Kong, and the core backbone of Dongfang Games is almost entirely cultivated by itself. When the company was first established, it was almost entirely supported by Li Xuan's golden fingers.

He poured out some of the game development common sense he knew. Then, through the two games of "Hong Kong Cube" and "Tank Wars", which are not too difficult to develop, they can practice their skills for everyone, so that the current batch of R&D backbones of Dongfang Games can accumulate some experience.

But after developing Mario, a more difficult scrolling game, the R&D team still encountered huge problems. Until "Mario" was successfully developed. Li Xuan has the confidence to say that Dongfang Games has become a big company with real independent development capabilities.

"Find a few graduates from the University of Hong Kong and two came back from Japan. Worked as a game developer!" Huang Chuanshan explained.

In order to stabilize the military spirit of the backbone personnel, Dongfang Games, in the newly introduced regulations, allows members of the game project team to succeed after the launch of the new game. Receive a certain income dividend.

For example, according to the company's internal rating of the potential of "Mario Brothers", an agreement was made with the project team that if the sales volume this year exceeded 100,000 units, the project team could receive 0.5% of the sales profit as an internal dividend. Then, the allocation ratio is determined according to each member's participation in the discussion meeting and the contribution record in the research and development process.

Therefore, after the pre-sale results of "Mario Brothers" came out, the entire arcade business department cheered, because the pre-sale year of 62,500 units is almost certain that the sales volume this year will exceed 100,000 units. People can at least share the profit share of 500,000 US dollars. With such high returns, fools are willing to switch to other companies.

Li Xuan thought for a while, and then said, "Well, in a few days, you will call those developers to Dongfang Game Company, and I will ask them to test their level!"

The three games "Tank Wars", "Hong Kong Cube" and "Pac-Man" launched by Dongfang Games last year, while earning a lot of dollars, also raised the threshold for entering the arcade industry in disguise. In the summer of 1979, when Li Xuan first set his sights on the arcade industry, the popular shooting games such as "Space Invaders" and "Little Bee" were popular on the market.

However, after the launch of Dongfang Games' "Tank Wars", players' aesthetic vision has rapidly improved, and they can no longer look down on a slightly rough game such as "Space Invaders". The "Space Invaders" that originally swept the whole world has almost disappeared in 1981.

And soon after the release of Oriental Games' "Mario Brothers", the aesthetic taste of players will be further improved, forcing other companies to catch up with the pace of Oriental Electronics and produce games with almost beautiful pictures~www.readwn.com~ And this It's never good news for companies new to the industry.

There was a hint of joy on the faces of the three of them. Xu Jiankui naturally knew that Li Xuan was willing to say this because of his own face.

"Thank you in advance!" Xu Jiankui said happily.

"Friends should help each other, why thank you!"

"I'll treat you tonight, Rich Jin, you won't go home if you don't get drunk!"

After Xu Jiankui finished talking about business, he immediately stopped walking. As soon as the three of them had eaten and drank, he suggested to have some fun. Li Xuan originally wanted to shirk, but he was forced into a corner by his few words, so he had to go to a nightclub to play together. (The novel "Rebirth of the Electronic Empire" will have more fresh content on the official WeChat platform, and there will also be a 100% lucky draw gift for everyone! Open WeChat now, click the "+" sign on the upper right to "Add a friend", and search for the public Number "" and pay attention, hurry up!) (To be continued..)

ps: I'm sorry, the update is a little late today, and I still owe three chapters to add more monthly tickets.

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