Chapter 263 Stealing food and grabbing parking spaces
Anyone who has experienced that era knows how popular Internet food stealing was back then.
At its peak, the food-stealing game had hundreds of millions of activities every day, beating any game in the world.
At that time, many middle-aged and elderly people went online every day, not to find people to chat with, not to watch news and listen to music, but to steal food.
If you have not experienced it personally, it may be difficult to understand why such a simple game has become a phenomenal hit.
For example, now, even if Zhang Wei explains to Wang Xing what stealing food is, it still doesn't make sense because people in this era don't understand the meaning of social games at all. It's better to take out the product later and let the school network try it, and Wang Xing will naturally understand.
Zhang Wei plans to hand over the game of stealing vegetables to Weiguang Technology for development. Weiguang Technology is already familiar with developing web games. It is easy to create a small game of stealing vegetables.
Putting aside the matter of stealing food, Zhang Wei immediately made his third request: "Brother, my third request is that I hope to add a system friend recommendation function.
Existing friends on the school network are all found through the search function. You need to know the name of your friend to search for him or her, and then you can add each other as a friend.
If our system can set a rule to recommend friends to users, will it lower the threshold for adding friends and increase the interaction between users?
This rule can be the same class, the same grade, the same department or the same school. It goes without saying that they are in the same class, they must be acquaintances, and they should be friends with each other. They are in the same grade and department, and they may know each other. Generally, they will agree to the friend request when they see it.
You can also use the number of mutual friends as a rule. For example, two people are not friends, but they have multiple friends in common, then we can recommend each other to them. Mutual friends are the bridge between two people, and they may even know each other. ”
“This is a good idea. In this way, the user’s circle of friends will expand. "Wang Xing nodded in agreement.
Zhang Wei then said: "Especially for some newly registered users and users with a relatively small number of friends, we need to increase the intensity of friend recommendations and let them add more friends. Friends, participate in more interactions so that they can be online more often. As for social platforms, in addition to the number of users, they also have to compete for active users. ”
“Okay, I’ve written it down, and I’ll have someone study this feature right away.” "Wang Xing agreed.
"In addition, I hope you can develop a function of unilateral attention."
"Unilateral attention? What does it specifically refer to?" Wang Xing asked.
“You don’t need to apply as a friend. As long as you follow the other party, you can go directly to the other party’s homepage and see the content posted by the other party.” Zhang Wei replied.
"Similar to a blog? Can strangers directly read other people's logs?" Wang Xing frowned slightly, obviously not optimistic about this idea.
“This function is not available for the time being, but it will definitely be useful in the future. Let’s develop the function first so that we are prepared!” Zhang Wei replied.
"Okay, I'll let the development department do it!" Although Wang Xing was reluctant, he still agreed.
After all, the person in front of me is the father who donated one million euros. The father’s request must still be met!
......
Zhang Wei came to Weiguang Technology, and Yao Xiaoguang excitedly called Zhang Wei to a computer.
“We have just updated the new version of DOTA map. This time there are no new heroes, new items, and no new features. We mainly made some data and balance changes to make the game more balanced. Better.
In addition, the initial version of DOTA2's game engine has just been completed. Please take a look at it first. Although this version is still very crude and there are still many details that need to be enhanced, I am still quite satisfied. "
Yao Xiaoguang said, entering a game simulation trial screen and letting Zhang Wei give it a try.
"Is the screen a little dark? In terms of brightness, can it be higher? "Zhang Wei asked.
"This game engine is imitated by us in Warcraft 3. Blizzard's game engine is generally dark, so in terms of brightness, we also imitated Blizzard's settings. It's a little darker.
And I plan to make the skills released by the character brighter, so that when the skills are released, they will be more conspicuous and more beautiful, which just creates a sense of contrast. "Yao Xiaoguang explained.
"Well, you are an expert in this area, I listen to you!"
Zhang Wei feels that when it comes to designing the details of the game, it is better to listen to the father of King of Glory in front of him, he is the expert.
Yao Xiaoguang puffed up his chest: "Don't worry, the final product will definitely be much better than now."
"You estimate that the DOTA2 game engine will cost more How long?" Zhang Wei then asked.
“Give me another half year, and I will try to complete it.” Yao Xiaoguang said this, but his tone was not very confident.
"Is the R&D fund still enough?"
"Don't worry, the money will definitely be enough. You don't even plan to ask for this year's dividends. Is this money still enough?"
"I gave up dividends for the development of the company, but the dividends from employee shares cannot be less. We have worked hard for a year, so we can't treat others badly. Try to distribute the money before New Year's Day, The employees have already received their money, and they also have hope in their hearts.”
Zhang Wei paused, and then said: “One more thing, this year’s WCG World Finals is about to start again, and DOTA is a performance event. , have you negotiated with the organizer?”
“I get angry when I talk about this. This year it is held in Monza, Italy. Italy really treats itself as a dish. The lion opens his mouth and wants to One million euros in sponsorship! This is 10 million yuan. It is impossible to continue negotiating with such an asking price.”
"This is normal. After all, this is Monza, which is only a dozen kilometers away from Milan. They usually host competitions like Formula One, or various luxury goods exhibitions, F1 and luxury goods. Those are wealthy people. Don’t you have to ask for a toy?”
Zhang Wei smiled nonchalantly, and then said: “Forget it, it has saved us one million euros. With this million. Euros, let’s build a server directly in Europe and hold a European server competition with a bonus of 100,000 euros. A group of Europeans will participate.”
“I’m just a little angry at these Italians. "It's so disrespectful to just show off your face," Yao Xiaoguang said still angrily.
"They won't be able to play for too long, only three to five years." Zhang Wei said nonchalantly.
The subprime mortgage crisis is coming soon. When the United States engages in quantitative easing, it transfers debt to the whole world in a disguised form, which directly triggers the European debt crisis. Italy, as one of the "Five European Pig Countries", can Many of them followed me.
Yao Xiaoguang then gave Zhang Wei the financial statements of "Three Kingdoms".
"The momentum of "Three Kingdoms" is very good. Our player activity has not dropped significantly because of the end of summer vacation. The current activity of the game is still in a stable and rising state." Ms. Yao introduced. .
In the past, there were no restrictions on minors accessing the Internet. Summer is the peak season for online games. Compared with winter vacation, when you have to visit relatives and friends and don’t have as much time to play games, you can have more freedom during summer vacation. .
My parents are not at home at work during the day, and the children can go to the Internet cafe or surf the Internet at home. Anyway, they are always having fun!
Many games will also launch special summer vacation activities, and the rewards will be much richer than usual, targeting the student group. There is also a special new area for summer vacation, which is always full when it opens, but as soon as the summer vacation is over and the children start school, they immediately change into ghost costumes.
At that time, if you were in a new area where you were playing games during the summer, you might be playing dungeons and completing quests with all the kids. The game coins your master usually gave you might be the New Year's money that the kids had worked so hard to save.
If you are in the same city, you can get several summer homework writing jobs in the game.
But as soon as the summer vacation ends, game activity will immediately drop significantly. August 31st and September 1st will be two completely different games.
On August 31st, there were still a lot of people in the game, and the student group seized on the craziness of the last day of the holiday. But on September 1st, the server went silent instantly, and your friend list was all gray.
However, this is not the case with "Three Kingdoms". This is originally a game aimed at office workers. Although some student players will be added during the summer vacation, the core group is still white-collar workers.
Therefore, the end of the summer vacation has little impact on the activity of "Three Kingdoms". On the contrary, it is weekends and legal holidays. When the student party has time to surf the Internet, office workers do not have to go to work or fish, so many people will not be online.
It can be said that "Three Kingdoms" has opened up a new track for online games, and that is the fishing game at work.
And in a short period of time, there will be no competitors on this track.
The game settings of "Three Kingdoms" are quite complicated. If other game companies want to plagiarize, they will also have to spend a lot of design investment. Just the high investment can stop many plagiarists. Outside the door.
Many high-quality games are difficult to copy because the investment is too high.
If you just copy it and don’t invest money, you can’t achieve the quality of the original game. The quality of your game is not as good as the original version, and the gameplay settings are the same as the original version. Players must play the original version, why play a copycat!
So you can see copycat versions of "Legend" everywhere to make money, but copycat versions of "World of Warcraft" rarely survive.
Because copycat Legends does not require a large investment, while copycat World of Warcraft requires huge investment.
If the money is not in place, the copycat version of World of Warcraft will be just a mess, with no players to play it. And if you have enough money, you can make your own game engine and develop games independently. Who would copy World of Warcraft?
At that time, most of the companies that produced online games in China were small companies trying to make quick money. These small companies did not have the strength to create copycat game masterpieces. For games that are more complex and have longer development cycles, the capital flow of small companies cannot support them.
So in the field of large-scale strategy web games, Weiguang Technology will have no competitors in a short period of time.
After putting down the financial report of "Three Kingdoms", Zhang Wei then asked: "As I mentioned to you last time, at what stage are we preparing to develop the next web game project."
< br>"After what you said last time, I put it on the agenda. I also held several meetings with the heads of several departments, and everyone submitted letters of intent. I collected several good suggestions, but the specific project has not been determined yet. Type.
The main reason is that the revenue of "Three Kingdoms" is pretty good. I think the popularity of this game should last for at least a year, so there is no need to start a new project so quickly. I think Focus on the operation of "Three Kingdoms"! ”
"Yes, new projects can be postponed a little, and more market research should be done. In addition, I have a suggestion. Our themes can not only be limited to traditional historical stories like the Three Kingdoms, but can also be extended to other fields, such as Online novels, Japanese comics, etc."
"Does this require copyright?" Yao Xiaoguang asked.
"Of course you need the copyright, spend money to buy it! What else should we keep the money for?" Zhang Wei chuckled, and then said: "Especially the three comics of Naruto, Bleach and One Piece, in The domestic game copyright must be obtained by me!”
The three comics of Sea of Death are originally the biggest IPs in the comic industry, and there are many characters, and the comics are similar to the settings of combat power levels. Set, very suitable for drawing cards. If you don't use this as a game, it would be in vain.
Zhang Wei continued; "As for the game copyright of online novels, there is no rush yet. The market for online novels will need to be cultivated for another two years."
Although there were many masterpieces by famous online novels in 2006, there had not yet been a big phenomenon-level IP. To adapt an Internet novel into a game, it would have to be a big-phenomenon IP to make sense.
After talking about these miscellaneous things, Zhang Wei finally started to talk about the main topic.
“Brother Xiaoyao, I came here this time to discuss something with you. I just came from the school network and chatted with Mr. Wang of the school network for a while about the development of social platforms. I came up with the idea of making a social game," Zhang Wei said.
“Social games?” Yao Xiaoguang heard this game type for the first time, and he said; “Online games inherently have social attributes, and it can be said that social interaction is a part of online games.
Without social attributes, online games will become stand-alone games. It can be said that social interaction and online games are inseparable. What do you mean by social games? Are they games that focus on making friends and chatting?
"If you focus on making friends and chatting, those professional social platforms, such as dating websites, are definitely better than games. There is no need to develop a dedicated game!" Zhang Wei said.
"That's right. If you go to a dating website, you might be able to date a girl or something!" Yao Xiaoguang nodded in agreement.
“Brother Xiaoyao, you do have a life!”
“Get out of here, don’t treat me badly! I don’t do that kind of thing!”
“Then you are just a flower. Money solves it?" Zhang Wei continued to tease.
"It's illegal to spend money to solve the problem! You'll be fined two thousand and detained for fifteen days!"
"You even know this, you really have a life..."
"Let's get down to business!" Yao Xiaoguang snorted coldly.
“Okay, let’s get down to business!” Zhang Wei stopped talking and continued; “Social games are not games developed for making friends and chatting, but to enhance social interaction between people. , and the game developed. To put it simply, it is to increase interaction and communication between people you know.”
Yao Xiaoguang nodded: “I probably understand what you mean, but according to your idea, Players of this kind of game must know each other. Isn’t this a relatively high threshold? How much effort must be put into promoting it so that people who know each other can play the same game?”
"So the promotion medium for social games must be a social platform, and it can only be a social platform. People who use social platforms have many friends themselves, so it is easier for friends to interact through games." Zhang Wei replied.
“Promote games through social platforms? This is a good idea.”
“Brother Xiaoyao, you still don’t understand. Our purpose is not to let social platforms promote games, but It’s using games to promote social platforms!”
Hearing this, Yao Xiaoguang stared at Zhang Wei for a while and then asked: “Zhang Wei, you don’t have a fever, are you? Platform? How many players does the game have? How many users does the social platform have?
An online game can have two million registrations, which is already close to the limit. Even Blizzard’s World of Warcraft has less than one monthly active user. Ten million, that’s the entire earth!
But what about social platforms? There are tens of millions of registrations, such as MSN and QQ, with hundreds of millions of people registered and tens of millions of daily active users. How can online games compare? Dozens of online games combined are not as good as one social platform! "
"Well, how should I explain this to you..." Zhang Wei frowned.
There is really no way to explain the power of stealing food, even if it is reviewed afterwards. I still can’t explain why such a simple social game is so popular!
Or maybe there are so many factors that lead to the sudden popularity of social games, so many that I could write an article of tens of thousands of words. The paper couldn't be explained in a few sentences.
After Zhang Wei thought for a while, since he couldn't explain it clearly, he just passed the blame to the school Internet cafe!
So Zhang Wei said directly: "Just think of Xiaonei.com as our client. He now has needs and wants us to develop a social game. If business comes to us, I'll ask you if you want to accept it!"
"Morning That’s it!” Yao Xiaoguang breathed a sigh of relief and continued: “Tell me, what kind of social game do you want to make?”
“Let’s make two first, one is called Happy Farm, and the other is called Happy Farm. Called to grab a parking space.”
Yao Xiaoguang took out a paper and pen and started recording.
Zhang Wei continued; "In the game Happy Farm, users have to play a farmer, open up land on their own farm, and grow various vegetables and fruits."
"Is it a business simulation game?" Yao Xiaoguang asked.
“It can be considered a business simulation game, but the core gameplay of this game is to go to a friend’s farm and steal the friend’s ripe fruits, which is called stealing vegetables.” Zhang Wei continued.
"What? Stealing food?" Yao Xiaoguang had a baffled expression, not understanding what Zhang Wei was talking about.
Zhang Wei continued: "The biggest feature of social games is of course interaction. This interaction can be helping each other or stumbling between each other. Mutual support is to water the vegetables planted by friends. , killing insects, weeding, and interfering with each other by putting some pests on your friends’ vegetables and stealing some fruits. "
"That must be the way to do it. What a stumbling block!" Yao Xiaoguang replied without hesitation.
"That's right. For example, if I go to your field and steal two cucumbers, then you will have two less cucumbers. Then you are not allowed to steal them back? You steal mine, I steal his, and he steals yours. Between friends, There will be interaction soon!”
“Understood, what next?” Yao Xiaoguang asked.
"No more!" Zhang Wei replied straightforwardly.
"That's it? What kind of game is this? Is the gameplay too simple? Only kindergarten children can play this thing, right? Will anyone play this kind of game?"
"Of course it can't be that simple. Ah. We can set the level of the farm. Only when the level reaches certain types of vegetables can we set up chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and other props. We can also set up some beautiful decorations for the farm, and we can also raise a watchdog. Doesn’t the gameplay become much richer in this way? ”
"I didn't feel rich, it was still boring." Yao Xiaoguang shook his head honestly.
As the father of King of Glory, Yao Xiaoguang has all kinds of game masterpieces in his mind. In his opinion, Xiaoxiaole is only played by preschoolers.
Stealing food? It's a stupid game!
Zhang Wei sighed helplessly: "Forget it, if you are bored, don't be bored. Let's talk about grabbing the parking space! This game is still very good, easy to get started and full of fun."
Then Zhang Wei introduced how to grab a parking space.
Yao Xiaoguang's expression was even more confused than before.
After being silent for more than half a minute, Yao Xiaoguang finally couldn't help but ask: "You call this a game? Is it still fun? How can it be fun!"
"Isn't it fun? Wouldn't it be fun to grab your friend's parking space and put a sticker on his car? "
"How interesting is it? I said, Zhang Wei, you were not kidding me about updating the DOTA map before? Where have all your fantastic ideas gone? The card-drawing design of Three Kingdoms and the entire game system of Three Kingdoms were all thought up by you. With your understanding of online games, how could you do that? Come up with such a retarded game!" Yao Xiaoguang said in shock.
"Retarded game? Don't say that. It's just that the gameplay is relatively simple and easy to get started." Zhang Wei paused and then explained; "What we want to do now is a social game, which requires simple gameplay. , easy to use, no need to use your brain, it can be completed with a few clicks of the mouse. The focus is on social interaction, not games.”
Yao Xiaoguang was silent for a few seconds and sighed helplessly: "I really don't understand you! OK, since you want it, I'll have people make these two games. Anyway, it's quite simple and it won't take much time. ."
Zhang Wei smiled slightly and said nothing more.
Facts speak louder than words. After a while, stealing food and grabbing parking spaces will start to show off. Zhang Wei does not need to explain, Yao Xiaoguang will be convinced.
(End of this chapter)