Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In 2003, Shi Yuzhu was indulging in the grand legendary world of online games. His game ID calls receiving gifts only receives brain platinum, only 30 levels. Late one night, after losing the Nth competition, Shi Yuzhu found the account with the highest game level in the area, and the owner of the account was a Wenzhou boss. Shi Yuzhu immediately told the manager of the Wenzhou branch to go to the Internet bar and paid 3000 yuan to buy the account.

Despite having a level 70 account, Shi Yuzhu is still a vegetable chicken in the game. He is anxious to find Shanda boss Chen Tianqiao directly. Chen Tianqiao instructs him: "equipment is more important." Shi Yuzhu, who is not short of money, immediately spent 10,000 yuan on a set of top equipment and enjoyed a handful of RMB players.

A year later, Shi Yuzhu chartered a cruise ship in Shanghai for a private party to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Giant. At the reception, Shi Yuzhu revealed to the executives that he was ready to enter the online game industry. At that time, the giant had abundant cash flow, and Shi Yuzhu was ready to take out 200 million yuan to try the water. What he lacks is not money, but people. After knowing that Shi Yuzhu was going to do online games, his good friend Chen Tianqiao also asked Big Brother Duan Yongji to say: the road to research and development is more pitfalls.

Chen Tianqiao is well-intentioned. Although Shanda earned a lot of money by acting for the legends of South Korean companies, he always had a sense of crisis, so Shanda began to secretly develop legendary online games in 2002. Turning from agency to self-research, Chen Tianqiao took a lot of detours and paid a lot of tuition fees. I naturally hope that my good friend Shi Yuzhu can be cautious again. But Chen Tianqiao did not expect that the first step for Shi Yuzhu to enter the online game is to poach all the grand development team.

It is said that Chen Tianqiao was bitter about this and complained privately many times that it was a big mistake he made to lead the wolf into the house.

In April 2006, the journey of Giant Network began to be tested.

At that time, some people ranked these newly rich families who got rich on the Internet. Ding Lei was followed by Chen Tianqiao, followed by Ma Huateng, Ma Huateng, and finally Shi Yuzhu. Probably feeling that he was too far behind, Shi Yuzhu protested, "I don't have a problem with the first few of them in this row. Can I wait until the end of this year to decide my seat?"

Shi Yuzhu loved the sky and the earth, but he once served Chen Tianqiao, for a very simple reason. Chen Tianqiao was once the leader in the field of online games in China. Chen Shi and Chen Shi are both senior players, and even their resumes are quite the same. Shi Yuzhu graduated from Zhejiang University maths Department, Chen Tianqiao graduated from Fudan Economics Department. After graduating, Shi Yuzhu was assigned to Anhui Bureau of Statistics, and Chen Tianqiao went to Shanghai Lujiazui Group.

At first, Chen Tianqiao was in charge of showing group data videos in Lujiazui Group, and his work was free, so he ran to the president's office as soon as he was free. At that time, it was 1994, and most people did not know what the Internet was, so the president of Lujiazui Group could surf the Internet 24 hours a day. Through the Internet, Chen Tianqiao soon became infatuated with playing online games. It is said that his highest record for playing games is seven days and seven nights without sleeping.

Although he loved games, Chen Tianqiao did not delay his work and was soon promoted to secretary to the chairman of the group. But Chen Tianqiaozhi is not here. After a year of job-hopping from Lujiazui Group to a securities company, Chen Tianqiao decisively resigned in 1999, took 500000 earned by stock speculation, recruited 20 employees, and founded Shanda. What Shanda did at first was a virtual community, called Paradise returning to the Valley, where players could farm and keep pets, a bit like QQ Farm later. Soon paradise returned to the valley with more than 1 million registered users, and Chen Tianqiao got a $3 million venture capital from China.com.

With this venture capital, Shanda bought the copyright of the black cat sheriff, set up a cartoon magazine, jointly held a national cartoon competition with CCTV, and got a list of animation advertisements for Audi, Piaorou and other brands, earning more than NT $100,000 a month. The good times did not last long, the millennium Internet bubble came, and in 2001, Chen Tianqiao decided to cut down the animation business with a large investment and a long payback period and focus on online games.

Entertainment is always the instinctive need of human beings. online games simulate interpersonal communication in the real world and help people achieve needs that cannot be met in reality. as long as you have fun on the Internet, users are willing to pay.

Just then a Korean company called ActozSOFT came to Shanghai to find a Chinese agent for its online game legend. Through the matchmaking of the Shanghai Animation Association, Shanda paid the other party a $300000 entry fee and a 27% cut, and won the legendary right to operate in China. The investor who wanted to do animation decided to withdraw, and Chen Tianqiao took the opportunity to take back the leadership of Shanda.

Whether a game can be successful or not depends on the two-month testing period that has just been launched. Chen Tianqiao first took the contract with ActozSOFT to Dell and Chao, and told them that we were going to run Korean games and apply for a trial machine for two months. as soon as the server manufacturer read the English contract, they thought Chen Tianqiao was a potential big customer and agreed.

Then Chen Tianqiao took the list of servers and found China Telecom. "Tide and Dell all provide me with servers, and we need a lot of bandwidth to operate the game." Telecom immediately understood and gave a free bandwidth trial during the test period. Relying on this empty glove white wolf, Shanda successfully survived the two-month game test period.

After solving the bandwidth problem, Chen Tianqiao noticed that most players played LAN games in Internet cafes at that time, and the owners of Internet cafes had no money to earn except to earn some machine time. Chen Tianqiao chose Chengdu as a breakthrough in promotion, found the Tianfu hotline that controls all Internet cafes in Chengdu, and negotiated with each other. "if you use Internet games instead of LAN games, everyone will get more income if you sell point cards on your behalf."

A year later, the income of the Tianfu hotline doubled, and Shanda began to copy the Chengdu model and get in touch with local Internet bar associations. at its peak, more than half of the thousands of Internet cafes in Wuhan were playing legends. So far, Shanda has established a sales system with Internet cafes as the center, Internet cafes around the country as the vertical line, distributors and distributors as the horizontal line.

After the sales system was established, as the number of online users soared and players continued to report various problems, Chen Tianqiao decisively spent 5 million yuan to build a large-scale call center, which can answer an average of 3000 phone calls a day. Players' questions are submitted to answers in no more than 24 hours. At that time, a reporter specially made a grand customer service call at 01:00 in the morning, and successfully connected to the manual service after less than 2 minutes of automatic voice service prompt.

In addition to online customer service, Shanda also spent 1 million yuan to rent a 500-square-meter customer reception area to serve users who came to their homes to retrieve their account passwords. In Chen Tianqiao's view, these door-to-door users have the highest loyalty and should provide the best service to these users. For those who can not provide any information, unable to find the password and emotional users, Shanda also has a special negotiation room. You know, in order to prevent emotional users from interfering with the normal operation of the company, South Korean online game operators mostly refuse users to visit.

Chen Tianqiao believes that the key to the success of online games lies in service. How high is Shanda's service level? until 2007, after Shi Yuzhu joined the online game industry, Shanda's customer service center was still the winner of the "Best call Center in China" award, which was also the fourth year in a row that Shanda's customer service center won the award. So there was a slogan for Shanda at that time, "be a grand VIP, and be an online visitor."

Just one year after the legendary listing, Shanda accounted for 60% of the total scale of more than 900 million yuan in China's online game market in 2002. By 2003, legendary had more than 650000 people online, meaning at least 700000 paying users. Chen Tianqiao became China's richest man with a fortune of $8.8 billion in 2004, when he was 31 years old.

In that year, Chen Tianqiao changed his MSN signature into this sentence: looking back on the past ten years, who will do so? The arrogant Chen Tianqiao did not know that at this moment, the rich and powerful Shi Yuzhu was preparing to climb the mountain, followed by a Shanghai native Zhu Jun.

2in 2001, when Shanda began to act as a legendary agent, Chen Tianqiao laid down a rule internally: whoever suggested Shanda self-research should be fired. The reason is that Chen Tianqiao believes that at that time, the development capability of domestic game companies could not be compared with that of South Korea, and independent development could only be a dead end. Only a year later, Chen Tianqiao decided that Shanda must adhere to the road of independent research and development.

The grand turn has something to do with the Koreans.

In the legendary operation process, because the technology is Korean, Shanda wants to modify the game bug, must turn to South Koreans for help, and Koreans often do not cooperate, resulting in inefficient players complaining. In 2002, due to poor supervision by South Korea, the legendary source code was leaked on a large scale, and players could download pirated games freely, causing tens of millions of losses to Shanda every month.

This made Chen Tianqiao realize the importance of independent research and development. At the end of 2002, Shanda secretly set up an R & D center to develop the legendary world of online games. Chen Tianqiao, who was born in the economics department, made an account.

"the rate of return of self-research and development of the online game industry is 3.8 times that of the agent operation, so China's online game industry must reject the hollowing out of the industry and gradually embark on the road of independent research and development. 1 million dollars can develop very good games, but if you want to continue to represent Korean games, 1 million is only a fraction."

In July 2003, the legendary world of grand self-research was tested. During the public test, Chen Tianqiao went to the R & D department to visit the staff, and an employee shouted, "We have finally turned over to be the master", which attracted the full applause of all the people present. This sentence speaks for Chen Tianqiao. At the same time, he said in an interview:

The road is ours, but the car is rented and it doesn't feel good to drive. "Why can the Chinese win in the end? because they know the market, where there are gullies and where there are dangerous slopes. be able to find problems, then stalemate, and finally counterattack."

Chen Tianqiao's counterattack is a legendary world.

Legendary World, which invested 5 million yuan, reportedly got its money back on the first day of listing. At that time, Shanda decided to launch a 3D version of legendary World at the end of the year. Chen Tianqiao also showed the 3D version of legendary World demo to Fok Ying Tung's son, who was then the head of the Hong Kong Culture Bureau. "he praised it from upstairs to downstairs, saying that he had never seen such a wonderful 3D game in Hollywood."

In 2004, Shanda launched the heroic era of self-research online games, when Shi Yuzhu also became a loyal player of the heroic era. With a keen sense of smell, he soon realized that the industry of online games was full of milk and honey. Shi Yuzhu is going to get a piece of the pie.

It is said that in order to learn lessons at that time, Shi Yuzhu specially went to Shanda for a visit and research, and Chen Tianqiao also made contact between Shi Yuzhu and the Shanda game team. Almost when Shi Yuzhu walked on the front foot, Chen Tianqiao received the news that the Hero Age project team almost resigned collectively. At that time, a reporter interviewed a person in the industry, and the other side said, "Today, the core of the journey is still the age of heroes."

Although Shi Yuzhu poached the wall unkindly, according to Shanda's former employees, due to the serious differences between Shanda's management and the R & D team of the heroic era in terms of game concept and mode planning, the R & D team had planned to leave. Just then Shi Yuzhu appeared, the two sides talked, holding hands successfully.

But who is Chen Tianqiao?

At that time, because South Korean ActozSOFT was dissatisfied with the low score given by Shanda, it signed the agency of Legend 3 to Guangtong, a subsidiary of Citic. Guangtong was originally a grand server supplier, and the two sides cooperated well. After Guangtong signed the news officer of Legend 3, Shanda withdrew the game data that was originally placed in the entire four districts of Guangtong IDC and more than 300 servers overnight, and refused to pay the IDC fee for that month on the grounds of "possible loss of player information."

Not only that, at that time, legendary 3 held a dealer conference in Shandong, and many prefecture-level channel merchants successively received a phone call from Qingdao Liyang, legendary Shandong general agent: Shanda just informed us that local channel merchants should not be legendary and legendary 3. If you have to do so, cancel your legendary agency. Many years later, 360 followed Tencent's example, forcing users to choose one of the two. It can only be said that there is nothing new under the sun.

Chen Tianqiao, who could not afford to lose, quickly launched a counterattack against Shi Yuzhu. At that time, Shi Yuzhu thought that with the legendary pearl jade in front, it must be too late to play a game charged by a point card, so he came up with a model of "permanently free, making money by props", "so that poor students and billionaires are all equal in front of the card. This is wrong and does not conform to the marketing law." Shi Yuzhu decided to attract poor students for free, make the game bigger, and then earn money from the rich.

Shi Yuzhu wants to be good, but he doesn't have a pig teammate. Once the deputy director of Giant Network met with the vice president of Shanda and accidentally revealed the information that the journey should be permanent and free. As a result, on November 15, 2005, the journey began internal testing, and on the 28th Shanda announced that Legend 2 was permanently free to players from that day.

Then again, Legend 2 had already passed a period of rapid growth, and its contribution to Shanda's income dropped sharply from 100% in 2002 to less than 30%, so some analysts thought at that time:

"at this time, decisively changing a product that is going downhill to giving away for free, on the one hand, it can curb the rising momentum of new games launched by Nine cities, NetEase, QQ, etc., effectively block competitors, but also give a slap on the capital that is preparing to enter the online game industry, raising the entry threshold for the online game industry. On the other hand, you can also try other value-added service charging models, why not do it?"

This "capital that is preparing to enter the online game industry" refers to Shi Yuzhu, a "competitor", the most important of which is the ninth city. At that time, the most popular online game on the market was World of Warcraft represented by the ninth city. The fat piece of World of Warcraft was gnawed down by Zhu Jun from Chen Tianqiao's mouth.

In the industry of online games, Chen Tianqiao can be said to be Zhu Jun's teacher. After dropping out of Shanghai Jiaotong University, Zhu Jun first joined the East China Company of Shanghai material Resources Bureau, and later moved to Shanghai Shengda Group. "this is a very background import and export company. Zhu completed his earliest accumulation by contracting to import seven units." In 1994, Zhu Jun, who could afford to drive a jaguar, went to the United States to look for opportunities. Five years later, in the year when Chen Tianqiao founded Shanda, Zhu Jun returned home to invest in a website called Gamenow.

Like Chen Tianqiao's Paradise return Valley, Gamenow is a virtual online community with leisure and entertainment content such as fishing, online marriage, answering questions and so on. This is Zhu Jun's first contact with the game industry, but did not make any money. By 2002, seeing that Chen Tianqiao had made a lot of money by acting legendary, Zhu Jun also bought the agency right of Korean online game miracle. Miracles became popular when it went public in China, with more than 300000 people online at the same time.

In 2003, Zhu Jun ranked 66. 5% on the Forbes China Rich list with miraculous revenue. And the person who ranks 99th is Ma Huateng. A year later, Chen Tianqiao ranked first on the Forbes China Rich list, and Zhu Jun ranked 57th.

It's hard to say that Zhu Jun has never been greedy for the throne of China's richest man. In 2005, Zhu Jun moved the headquarters of the ninth city from Citic Pacific on Nanjing West Road to Bibo Road, next door to Shanda. "this place is very good. I know it took Chen Tianqiao a whole year to choose this address, considering various factors and making a final decision through a board resolution. So, I'm sure I'm right."

Just the year before, Chen Tianqiao gave advice to companies and individuals interested in the game industry in an interview: "if you have hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can operate, and don't focus on South Korea, Japan, the United States, and China." The background of this sentence is that Shanda gave up the competition for the Chinese agency of World of Warcraft in the final offer stage.

And World of Warcraft, as a new game under the Blizzard Company of the United States, is about to break the dominant pattern of South Korean online games in China, and will also bring more variables to Chen Tianqiao's competition with Zhu Jun and even Shi Yuzhu.

In 2003, it was once a mystery who would win the Chinese agency of World of Warcraft. Ogilvy Electronics, Optical Communications, Shanda, the Ninth City, and even Sohu and Intel were expected to get this popular cake. Among them, Ogilvy Electronics is the general agent of Blizzard in China, and the two sides have been cooperating for six years. Shanda was the leader of domestic online games at that time, and he also received an investment of US $40 million from Softbank Corp. Asia.

Although Shanda has turned to self-research, due to the great success of Blizzard's World of Warcraft series in China, Shanda still does not want to miss the potential popular style of World of Warcraft. One detail can be seen that Chen Tianqiao attaches great importance to the agency dispute. He once told his subordinates, "Don't say anything about Warcraft, the company hasn't said yet."

Compared with the first two competitors, Nine cities have no money, some have only four words: it is imperative to win. At the scene of the negotiation, Zhu Jun asked every employee in Nine cities to put on a T-shirt and write the number 500000 on it. The highest number of simultaneous online users was astronomical in 2003. "in fact, people in Blizzard didn't believe this figure at all." later, we really did it in less than a year. "

Huang Lingdong, now vice president of Tencent Games and head of League of Legends China, was the vice president of the ninth city at that time. He said in an interview that Boss Zhu was very popular among game developers in South Korea and the United States. Zhu Jun has been in the United States, is fluent in English and knows international rules better than Chen Tianqiao.

Compared with Zhu Jun's personal ability, the main reason why Nine cities can beat Shanda may be that Shanda can not fully gain Blizzard's trust. After the legendary source code was leaked at that time, Shanda believed that South Korea should be responsible for this, asked to reduce the percentage after the contract was renewed, and apologized to Shanda. In order to sanction South Korea, Shanda also unilaterally stopped payment sharing on the grounds that technical support was not in place.

The problem is that Koreans are not vegetarians. They propose that if Shanda wants to renew the contract, the score will be raised to 30%. As for apology, it is impossible.

Chen Tianqiao, who could not swallow this breath, once went to the Singapore International Court of Justice for arbitration and said, "We should reason with the Koreans and make it clear who is right and who is wrong." Not only that, the first legendary world of online games developed by Shanda was considered by South Korea to be suspected of plagiarizing Legend 2 and Legend 3, and the two sides also brought the lawsuit to the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate people's Court.

Although Shanda finally shook hands with South Korea and renewed the legendary contract while turning to self-research, based on the controversy of Shanda's past, it is hard to say that Blizzard will not prefer the softer-looking Nine cities. Chen Tianqiao, who was born in the economics department, also calculated that "the agency fee of several million US dollars for this game is worth it, but it is not right to 10 million US dollars." According to Chen Tianqiao, Shanda chose to give up competition at the final bidding stage.

In April 2004, the official of Nine cities announced that he had won the agency of World of Warcraft with an authorization fee of US $3 million. According to the agreement, nine cities will have to spend another $6.8 million on certain marketing activities before the game is officially charged; after that, nine cities will also pay developers a 22% share of sales and a four-year tax, totaling about $51.3 million.

Winning Warcraft is a big bet of Zhu Jun. According to the employees of Nine cities who left at that time, "Nine cities have invested a lot of manpower and financial resources for the sake of Warcraft, and for this reason, they once appeared to live frugally within the company."

Chen Tianqiao once used an analogy for Shanda to give up World of Warcraft:

"it's like you have a good tie, and then you have to buy a new shirt and spend all your money in the end. We know when to brake and say, 'Sorry, we don't want it'. And users have such high expectations for a game, which is not a good thing. If the expectation is too high, there will be disappointment. If you make him feel bad and come back again, it will be a very sad day. Slow games are the best. "

That's what he said, but in the face of nine cities, which got the agency of World of Warcraft, Chen Tianqiao also said that the momentum of nine cities is very much like that of three years ago. As competitors, they still have a long way to go. Zhu Jun tit-for-tat to this, Shanda should think about three years later, believe that three years later Shanda think of us, will admit that we are the first in the market.

In June 2005, World of Warcraft was put into operation, and the sniper war against the nine cities officially began.

At that time, Shanda sternly told the provincial and municipal agents: no distribution of World of Warcraft, can not be an agent to the nine cities, otherwise its agency will be cancelled. A reporter asked Chen Tianqiao to verify whether this information was true. Chen Tianqiao's answer was very clever. "Shanda's list of agents and detailed contact information have long been published on the company's home page, and anyone who wants to use it can contact them directly. Of course, Nine cities is no exception."

It looks like a denial, but it doesn't get to the bottom of the problem.

On the channel side, Shanda adopted a strategy of carrots and sticks. While giving a stern warning, Shanda launched a "Internet cafe Dream Fund" with a total budget of 500 million yuan, as a cash reward to Internet bar owners. Through the application, each Internet bar owner can get a free account containing 10000 yuan worth of Dreamland recharge points, and all the proceeds from the account sales will be owned by the Internet bar owners. Such a policy has to make the original channel merchants of Shanda more loyal to the games launched by Shanda, thus squeezing the sales space of the nine cities.

In addition to cracking down on nine cities at the channel end, Shanda also launched a self-research network to compete with World of Warcraft in Dreamland.

"Sheng vigorously promotes Dreamland to consider at least two aspects, one is that he really wants to launch a good product, and the other more important reason is that he wants to adopt Tianji horse racing strategy to interfere with Warcraft and divert users through new games. The focus is to protect the number of legendary users. How many effective users it will really bring is secondary, mainly depends on how much it interferes with Warcraft."

The competition between Nine cities and Shanda even extends to the partners. At that time, Nine cities announced the establishment of a strategic partnership with Coca-Cola. According to the agreement, Coca-Cola will build hundreds of World of Warcraft-themed Internet cafes and provide special Coke packaging machines in tens of thousands of Internet cafes across the country that have business ties with Nine cities. Users are allowed to add World of Warcraft characters to their cola bottles. At the same time, Coca-Cola also invited SHE as its spokesperson.

Two months later, Shanda announced a strategic partnership with Coca-Cola competitor Pepsi. At that time, CCTV-1 and major national television stations began to broadcast simultaneously Pepsi commercials starring Louis Koo and F4. Pepsi brought goods for the grand game in this advertising film, with the slogan "Pepsi Blue Storm, Breakthrough the Dream Nation".

It seems that the two sides of the war are 50-50, and Shanda is even slightly better. But the facts soon made Chen Tianqiao have to admit that "Shanda made a strategic mistake."

In the first week of the World of Warcraft public test, while the number of online players reached 500000, Zhu Jun made this once unbelievable number of Blizzard a reality. In contrast to Warcraft's popularity is the legendary decline. "after one month on the market, Warcraft's market share has exceeded 10%, while Legend's market share is currently less than 10%."

The popularity of Warcraft was quickly reflected in the company's financial affairs. In 2005, the net income of nine cities in the third quarter was 184.8 million yuan, an increase of 232% over the second quarter, of which the net income related to Warcraft reached 180.6 million yuan. Shanda's revenue from online games, its main business, was 438.1 million yuan in the third quarter, down 6.1% from the previous quarter.

One advances by leaps and bounds, the other gradually declines. Interestingly, in 2004, when nine cities won Warcraft, Chen Tianqiao commented that the profits of the first three quarters of nine cities were not as good as 1/10 of the profits of Shanda's first quarter. In August of the same year, Chen Tianqiao, who was once keen on using MSN to communicate with the outside world, never logged in again.

Many years later, in the face of World of Warcraft's logo, Chen Tianqiao will remember the distant afternoon when he became the richest man and revised his MSN signature to "look back on the past ten years." At that moment, Shi Yuzhu was preparing for a grand debut.

4 Chen Tianqiao of the Economics Department likes to do accounts. Under Chen Tianqiao's calculation, instead of acting for Korean games and giving Koreans a huge share, it is better to do research and development. "Chinese software developers are so cute that they work day and night. Chinese artists are so excellent that you have no idea what they do."

In hindsight, Chen Tianqiao made the right choice, but under the attack of World of Warcraft, the legendary world seemed vulnerable. As the previous online game was 2D, in order to facilitate playing 3D Warcraft, Internet cafes all over the country upgraded their computer configurations at that time. "if you hear that you can't play Warcraft without upgrading, some customers will not enter the door."

From this point of view, the grand defeat lies not so much in giving up World of Warcraft as in self-development that is not enough to compete with Blizzard. And like Shanda, the giant who chose to develop on his own took a different path under the guidance of Shi Yuzhu.

Shi Yuzhu of the mathematics department likes to do research. During the years when he worked in the rural sampling team of Anhui Bureau of Statistics, Shi Yuzhu learned a lot of the latest sampling methods from abroad. At the beginning of the journey, Shi Yuzhu once said that his goal is to make a "2D closed game", "anyway, either close our door or close other people's door, so that others will never dare to do 2D games again."

To this end, Shi Yuzhu has conducted in-depth exchanges with 2000 players, and designed with the needs of players as the driving force. In previous online games, players had to play strange if they wanted to upgrade, and the process was boring and tiring, and players complained one after another. In the journey, players do not have to be in a hurry, press a button, the computer automatically hit, and even players offline, their game characters are upgraded every minute, and it is free to upgrade.

In contrast to free upgrades are expensive materials.

"imagine under what circumstances a large number of rich bosses in China will spend a lot of money if they play games, and then design games with this goal." under such a design idea, the journey is free to all players. but if you want to beat other players in the competition, you have to buy materials and then use materials to build equipment. Shi Yuzhu set the material grade to Grade 9, and it is estimated that the price of a set of Grade 9 equipment will be as high as one million yuan.

The reason why players are willing to spend money on equipment is also inseparable from Shi Yuzhu's meticulous design.

There is a game of ten thousand players on the journey, and players can sneak into other countries to invade other players. This will be punished in games such as miracles and legends, but during the journey, players can be rewarded and may get official positions through this behavior. It is matched by the "National War Competition" project, which is similar to betting on horses, in which the gamblers themselves are on the side of the game, and because they can control the outcome or defeat, they redouble their efforts and constantly increase their equipment investment.

As a result, 3% of high-end players provide 70% of the journey's income, that is, 30,000 active players spend tens of millions of yuan on the journey every month. On the other hand, in order to attract more non-RMB players, the journey provides them with a lot of leisure play. Such as intellectual questions, darts, collection, planting, cycling, bathing, running mazes, organizing teams and gangs.

It is not difficult to understand that Shi Yuzhu has the courage to say, "the journey is the most fun of all the games, and no player says it is not fun." what Shi Yuzhu did not say is that the journey is fun, but it costs money. In the words of the player, "this game almost teaches you to spend money hand in hand."

In April 2006, during the public trial of the journey, the industry was not optimistic about Shi Yuzhu's attempt. Wang Le, a veteran game critic, thought that the journey would not be successful. "Shi Yuzhu entered the game, first by advertising, and secondly by attracting media hype. His way is also the same as brain platinum."

By November 2006, Wang Le admitted that there were 150000 people online at the same time, "already making a lot of money." Wang Le made a mistake in his prediction, but he was right about one thing. Shi Yuzhu was indeed doing his journey in the same way as platinum in the brain.

Brain platinum can be hot, is relying on the giant's strong ground promotion advantages, especially the understanding and depth of third-and fourth-tier cities. One detail shows how much effort the giant has made in this regard: Lu Yonghua, vice president of the giant, once lamented in an interview, "if you go deep into a county in the mainland, you will find that posters before 1956 are still posted on the wall." At that time, Shi Yuzhu decided that we would change the channel of online games with the strategy of doing brain platinum.

The strategy of brain platinum is to surround the city in rural areas, and Shi Yuzhu also found in his communication with players that online games are the same as health products, the biggest market is below, not above, and there are much more players in rural areas than in county towns combined. To this end, Shi Yuzhu has set up 1800 offices in small and medium-sized cities across the country.

"in the Internet cafes in these small and medium-sized cities, our two families compete to put up posters. You build mine, and I'll build yours. If our poster is covered by our opponent, our people are sure to find it within 24 hours, and the other party probably won't look at it for a week. For example, the poster is covered by each other, and our people quickly come up with a brilliant idea, that is, to make the poster bigger than the opponent, and write the journey on the side, so that the other party can't cover it all. This is the difference in executive power. "

In addition to putting up posters for publicity, Shi Yuzhu also used charter flights to seize the rural market. "We sometimes charter 50,000 Internet cafes across the country on weekends for players to play." On the day of the package, these Internet cafes can only provide a game for players to play. For many small Internet cafes with less than half of the seats, the deal is sure to break even, while giants can squeeze their rivals' market share in this way.

In the follow-up game operation, Shi Yuzhu, who is well versed in human nature, has also gone further than Chen Tianqiao and Zhu Jun.

The operation strategy of the journey is to encourage competition and promote consumption through competition. for this reason, the service areas of the journey merge very frequently. "originally, the operation of a country is very normal, and the original environment and order are broken, and conflicts of interest arise." the city is mainly rearranged, the king wants to re-compete for the throne, and the main account and the large account have to compete for the ranking again. " In order to win in the rankings, players have to recharge money for equipment.

There is also a "referral system" in which you bring in a new player, and the system will pay you for each promotion. The nature of such a "number" is similar to that of WeChat merchants, because it is driven by interests and affects the interpersonal chain around them, so more and more people play.

I have to say that pinduoduo's cut was thoroughly played by Shi Yuzhu as early as more than a decade ago.

Later, the journey shouted the slogan that it was not fun to lose money. Any player on the journey, as long as they play to level 70, delete their number and quit because they think the game is not fun. By submitting their own game materials to the customer service of the journey, they will get a "compensation" of 15 yuan. It sounds like players have made money, but the problem is that people who can practice the number to level 70 will probably spend much more than 15 yuan. It can only be said that Shi Yuzhu won again.

By 2006, the company's sales reached 626 million yuan, making it the third Chinese online game with more than 1 million people online at the same time. The first two games are World of Warcraft and Fantasy Journey to the West. A year later, Chen Tianqiao met with Shi Yuzhu, and Chen Tianqiao, who had always been vindictive, said:

"to tell you the truth, I have a problem with poaching people from Shanda at first. Later, as soon as I saw that the journey had done so well, I couldn't have a problem with you. I said to the people in the company, can these people stay in Shanda and make a game with such a high number of people online? no. Since it can't be done, it's right for them to go."

5 Let's take the time back to 2006. just before the public test of the journey, senior player Shi Yuzhu commented on several online game giants at that time one by one: "NetEase is very scary, but it is not the same category as us; I am not afraid of grandeur. Its focus is not on the game; the fatal wound of World of Warcraft is in culture, and it is on this scale that it cannot go up; I surpassed all Kingsoft games in one game."

Shi Yuzhu said that Shanda's focus is not on games, because as early as July 2005, with the listing of World of Warcraft, Chen Tianqiao announced that from now on, the legendary market investment will decrease year by year. In the future, the company's main direction will be digital home entertainment development plan. At the end of 2005, Shanda simply announced that the legends of the company and the legendary world and dream country of self-research were forever free.

Chen Tianqiao gradually withdrew from the online game industry, which had something to do with the theory of "electronic heroin" at that time, and also related to his inner positioning. A senior executive of Shanda once said in an interview that Chen Tianqiao "never thought that his fate was only online games, and more wanted the whole society to recognize his value." At that time, the boss of an online game company was destined to bear the heavy pressure of public opinion, even if he was the richest man in China.

It is not that Chen Tianqiao has not tried his best to this.

In 2004, Chen Tianqiao said in an interview, "the year before last, some competitors told the tax authorities about grand tax evasion and tax officials checked the accounts door-to-door, and they were surprised to find that our tax payment was 80 million that year, so they took the initiative to apply for us." in about a week or so, he approved the title of national Class A tax-paying enterprise. "

Chen Tianqiao added, "some people say that if Shanda is public-spirited, how come you never donate money to Project Hope or something? you may not believe it. We donated money to fund an endangered puppet troupe in Fujian, and now we have won a lot of international awards. Shanda also paid money to send a senior department manager to Laos to teach English."

It sounds persuasive, but for angry parents and oriented officials, it's not enough.

According to a global entrepreneur report, Chen Tianqiao once chatted with a friend who said, 'you are still very lucky. Shanda has basically encountered no setbacks. On hearing this, Chen Tianqiao began to complain, "which of the disasters that an enterprise may encounter has not been encountered before?"

Chen Tianqiao, who is sensitive to risk, has long said that one of Shanda's biggest pressures comes from policy risk.

In 2005, the General Administration of Press and publication formulated the country's first "online game anti-addiction system" development standard, according to relevant sources, the driving force behind is Shanda. Some of Shanda's games are free, which is also partly related to this. "the competent department has asked Chen Tianqiao to take the lead in this regard, and Chen has indicated that he will cater to the requirements of the ministries and commissions."

Chen Tianqiao had no way, and the naming and criticism of the state media seemed like yesterday, so he envied NetEase's Ding Lei. "60% of his income now comes from games, but he hasn't been attacked at all." Chen Tianqiao envied Ding Lei, while Shi Yuzhu envied Jack Ma.

"We all run enterprises, we all make products, we all serve people. I work in the entertainment industry, and I let people entertain in it. You set up an Alipay, which provides convenience to people, but in fact it makes no difference. but in my impression, he made a contribution to society, but I am not."

Shanda promoted the establishment of the country's first "online game anti-addiction system" development standard, players accumulate online game time within 3 hours for "healthy" game time, more than 5 hours of players' income will be reduced to 0. Shi Yuzhu strictly or even excessively abided by this rule, in order to prevent players from being overly addicted to the game, the fatigue setting was added during the journey. Once the player plays for too long in a day, the experience gain and item acquisition will become less and eventually become zero.

When entering the journey game, the beginning will emphasize that minors are not allowed to enter. If minors are found in the game, they will all be kicked off the line. " We often conduct sample surveys in games, and even check Internet cafes. More than 99% of our users are adults, and only less than 1% are minors. Although we are not satisfied, we are very good compared with our peers, in which 50% of minors play online games and 60% of them play online games. I feel comfortable sleeping myself. "

Shi Yuzhu may be able to do everything he can to meet regulatory requirements, but he is also unable to stop the public.

During the journey, after the game character reaches level 50, players are allowed to make money through some tasks. "running darts" is one of them, but they need to pay money as a deposit. once robbed, the deposit will be confiscated by the system, but the robbers can get a financial reward. This design is considered as "great problems in terms of game balance, social morality, and even law", and even further extended, "because everything is linked to money, it is easy to give rise to a large number of social problems."

In 2008, Zhu Jun accepted an exclusive interview with Southern people Weekly, saying that to be a company, it is necessary to combine Marxism with China's national conditions. What are the national conditions of China? Chen Tianqiao, Shi Yuzhu and Zhu Jun, who have experienced great winds and waves in the online game industry, should have a bad answer, and the destinies of the three companies are the same.

In 2009, after the contract with nine cities expired, Blizzard turned to sign the agency of World of Warcraft to NetEase, and the nine cities gradually declined; after 2005, the transformation of Shanda to a digital home entertainment development plan was not successful. Chen Tianqiao now focuses on brain science; at the height of his journey in 2007, Shi Yuzhu said that star endorsements would lead to the loss of "potential users who hate the star", so the journey would never invite a spokesman. Not long ago at the journey carnival, Shi Yuzhu invited Tengel to sing the theme song of "Journey to the National War", whose title is the chief emotional officer of Giant Group's Golden Sauce Wine.

Shi Yuzhu single-handedly opened the Pandora's box to pay for props, and then NetEase and Tencent ran all the way in this direction, profoundly changing the face of China's online gaming industry and leaving the giant in place.

It can only be said that times change, as Zhu Jun said at that time, "the Internet is unpredictable, and it is always the best arena for newcomers to come up and overthrow their predecessors. Jiangshan generation of talented people, each led the way for two or three years." Whether as the president of Nine cities, or as the boss of Shanghai Shenhua, Zhu Jun, who has experienced wage arrears, should now have more feelings about his own words. It is difficult for a gambler to leave the table with a smile forever.

As for Chen Tianqiao, at his best in 2004, Chen Tianqiao said, "We need to bury ourselves in it. We need to bear all the risks that may arise in the growth history of an emerging industry, perhaps because of our negligence or forced by the situation." we say too little to the outside world, but how many people understand the difficulties of an enterprise's growth? I walked thousands of miles in my dream and woke up in bed. Our road is fumbled out in the dark, to be an enterprise is not a romantic dream. "

After walking thousands of miles in my dream, I still woke up in bed. This sentence was once the feeling of Chen Tianqiao. In the future, it may also be the feelings of Ding Lei, Ma Huateng, or even Jack Ma, who was once envied by Chen Tianqiao and Ma Yun, who was envied by Shi Yuzhu. Now we also have to face the pressure brought by policy risks and public opinion. Under that ceiling, everyone is fair, which has nothing to do with public relations ability, or rather, it has little to do with it.

However, a sentence from an old friend Shi Yuzhu should give Chen Tianqiao some comfort. Shi Yuzhu, who is familiar with Fan Wenlan's General History of China, told reporters many years ago, "my position in this generation can be seen in the future, because the historical materials are all there."

Reference:

① 's Nine stories about Shi Yuzhu

Https://www.donews.com/net/201304/1465780.shtm

② Shi Yuzhu: my position in this generation can be seen in the future.

Http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2008-07-19/08582337843.shtml

Chen Tianqiao, the trapped Beast of ③

Https://www.douban.com/group/topic/1134555/?_i=4282819z7s-3MW

The grand legend of ④ Chen Tianqiao

Http://zqb.cyol.com/content/2004-06/21/content_891865.htm

⑤ grand Baodao butcher "Warcraft" Nine cities attack and Defense stir up the War

Http://finance.sina.com.cn/g/20050715/2119206612.shtml

⑥ Southern people Weekly Zhu Jun: one person's Nuggets Game

Http://news.17173.com/content/2008-03-14/20080314140032186_all.shtml

⑦ reveals the way to make money: whose money is Shi Yuzhu making?

Http://people.techweb.com.cn/2007-08-30/249335.shtml

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: slow release (ID:manfangsd), author: Wen Biniang, Editor: Dahan

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