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

Not long ago, Jian San went on a hot search with NetEase.

The cause is that the appearance of Jian 3, "Chun Shan Man", is suspected to have copied the "evening sunshine and misty rain" of NetEase's game. In response to this dream, the official said that our Ministry of Justice has intervened in the investigation and firmly safeguarded its legitimate rights and interests. Jian San responded that our legal affairs were also following up, and experts initially said that the overall similarity between the appearance and the plagiarized appearance was low. Whether it constitutes an infringement depends on the result of the court decision, which is not a matter of opinion.

If Jian San's response is polite here, then the next content appears to be full of gunpowder. "many players propose that competitors' NPC can learn from their peers, and some players report that their school uniforms and anniversary processes are suspected of using swords for reference, and we reserve the right to further blame." It means that if we plagiarize this account, we will calculate it slowly.

In fact, Jian San belongs to the Jinshan game and NetEase game to calculate a lot of accounts, not just plagiarism. Lei Jun and Ding Lei, the former leaders of both sides, also have a lot of stories to tell. Putting these books together with the story is a long way for NetEase to play the game for 20 years.

In the summer of 2003, the money in Jinshan's account plus bank loans left 80 million. Lei Jun decided to lead the transformation of Jinshan, transferred 150 people to do online games, the result is sword net 1. Before the public test of Jianwang 1, Lei Jun mobilized everyone in the company to play games and pass level 30. He starts with himself and opens the game every day at work. In order to sword net 1, Lei Jun also had to find someone and ask for help. "I was originally a very arrogant person, but it was really hard for me to bow to some people at this time."

After the sword net 1 was made, Lei Jun invited Ding Lei to the Jinshan Zhuhai R & D headquarters to "guide the work". He originally intended to ask him to give a trick for the sword net. Unexpectedly, Ding Lei did not like Jinshan to enter the online game after giving Lei Jun a "lesson". Everyone was upset when he heard too much about "disobedient advice", and "communication" finally became a "debate". Ding Lei finally claimed that he would not succeed if he dared to gamble for 1 million yuan, while Lei Jun said angrily: "1 million yuan is too unreliable, so let's bet 100000 yuan to see what happens at the end of the year!"

Ding Lei did not like Jinshan for a reason at that time.

In 2000, Guangzhou Tianxia launched China's first large-scale online game, the world, which attracted the attention of Zhou Zhuolin, the person in charge of Guangzhou NetEase, and then Ding Lei went to Guangzhou Tianxia for a visit. Because Ding Lei always wanted to do online games, he directly acquired Guangzhou Tianxia. After being acquired, the world's team originally planned to develop World 2, but because A Chinese Odyssey was very popular at that time, he changed direction and became A Chinese Odyssey. At the end of 2001, NetEase launched the first self-research online game A Chinese Odyssey, but also invited Zhou Xingchi contemporary speaker.

NetEase has high hopes for A Chinese Odyssey, because Ding Lei and Zhou Xingchi held a press conference for A Chinese Odyssey in front of Tianhe computer City in Guangzhou, just a few hours after Ding Lei received notice from Nasdaq to resume NetEase's listing. Prior to this, NetEase was suspended from trading on Nasdaq because he failed to submit his annual report in time, resulting in a net loss of 230 million yuan for the whole year and a bleak future.

After resuming the listing, Ding Lei confidently predicted that NetEase would take the lead to be flat and bid farewell to losses in 2001. According to NetEase employees, Ding Lei hopes that the success of the game can bring a turnaround for NetEase, and A Chinese Odyssey is NetEase's most important trump card. Sun Dedi, acting CEO of NetEase, once said, "NetEase will convert the user resources accumulated for many years into valuable customer resources and expand revenue channels. A Chinese Odyssey is launched based on this strategy."

In the process of A Chinese Odyssey's research and development, Ding Lei flew to Guangzhou every weekend to "personally participate", and he came up with many details. For example, A Chinese Odyssey has a meteorological function, according to the geographical environment of the players, try to be the same as the real environment, there are winter, summer, day and night. After the game was released, according to Ding Lei, the response was good in various places, "some places have been sold out." According to the 2002 NetEase financial report, the company made a profit of 16.3 million yuan, and online games accounted for more than 25% of NetEase's total income. "even sleeping in bed can make money," Ding Lei said. "

In addition to money, A Chinese Odyssey has also accumulated rich experience and lessons for NetEase's game development team, and laid a solid foundation for A Chinese Odyssey, the two games behind NetEase, to follow Fantasy Journey to the West.

▲ photo source: fantasy Journey to the West Weibo in 2002, NetEase rewrote the client, revised and streamlined the planning plan based on A Chinese Odyssey's art, and launched A Chinese Odyssey 2. Compared with A Chinese Odyssey 1, A Chinese Odyssey 2 is far ahead in terms of word-of-mouth and sales, which can be called the first popular style of NetEase games. In 2003, NetEase made a net profit of US $39 million from the online game business, a 20-fold increase over the US $2 million profit for the whole of 2002. Sun Dedi, acting CEO of NetEase, said that the growth of NetEase's online game revenue mainly came from the income growth of A Chinese Odyssey 2, which already had 1.6 million paying users in December 2003.

It was in that year that Ding Lei became the richest man on the Forbes China Rich list. It is not difficult to understand why Ding Lei has the courage not to like Lei Jun's sword net 1 and dares to pay 1 million to bet that sword net 1 will not succeed.

Lei Jun made a bet not only with Ding Lei, but also with Dong Mingzhu. In 2013, at the 14th China Economic person of the year Awards ceremony hosted by CCTV Financial Channel, Lei Jun said Xiaomi would surpass Gree in turnover within five years. If it exceeds, Lei Jun hopes Dong Mingzhu can give himself one yuan. Lei Jun was cautious and Dong Mingzhu was radical, saying that if Xiaomi exceeded Gree's turnover, she would pay Leijun 1 billion yuan.

Five years later, Gree had total revenue of 198.12 billion yuan and Xiaomi 174.9 billion yuan. Dong Mingzhu won the bet. But ten years ago in 2003, Lei Jun beat Ding Lei in a bet.

After the two sides made a gambling agreement at that time, Lei Jun often talked about the bet at the internal meeting of Jinshan, imploring employees to "stand up for Jinshan". At that time, Jinshan had three major business groups, and Lei Jun personally took charge of the general manager of the digital entertainment business group. Just like Ding Lei flew to Guangzhou every week to participate in the research and development of A Chinese Odyssey, Lei Jun also stayed in Zhuhai every day to "supervise the war." if I win the bet, I will reward the armed forces with 100000 yuan out of my own pocket. "

According to media reports, Jinshan spent 40 million on the development of Jianwang 1, including 20 million for research and development, 10 million for marketing, and 10 million for marketing. In addition, the technical directors of Kingsoft WPS, Jinshan poison bully, Jinshan Ciba and other products have also been transferred to Xishan Ju Game Studio, which is responsible for the development of sword net 1. At that time, Jiangmin, a competitor of Jinshan drug bully, declared in an article that Jinshan's recent strategy focused on online games, which was an excellent opportunity for Jiangmin to rise up.

Therefore, whether it is for the sake of Lei Jun's face or Jinshan's life or death, sword net 1 is only allowed to succeed, not to fail. Fortunately, before the public test of Jianwang 1, the national sales agency of the game sold 40 million, setting a new record for the domestic online game industry. Lei Jun said at that time, Jinshan's internal goal for Jianwang 1 is to "pass 50, 000 people online at the same time, and 100000 people are considered successful."

On September 20, 2003, sword net 1 was officially tested. Just five days later, sword net 1 had more than 50, 000 online users and 600000 registered users at the same time. An interesting detail is that due to the good quality of the game, there were operators in Taiwan who wanted to represent Jianwang 1, Lei Jun's deputy and vice president of Jinshan Digital Entertainment Business Group, Wang Feng said in an interview.

"Taiwan companies chose Jinshan because we have a common game cultural foundation, and Taiwan players and mainland players have a similar understanding of Jin Yong's martial arts novels, which can be seen from Taiwan's influence on the mainland in the early stand-alone RPG market. Taiwan operators did not choose A Chinese Odyssey because Zhou Xingchi's Wulitou culture may not be acceptable in Taiwan."

Watching the sword net 1 harvest real money in the online game market, Ding Lei made a decision: a lot of money to poach the wall. The object he dug was Zhao Qing, the main programmer of Jianwang 1. According to the party concerned, Ding Lei also went to the airport to meet him. Along with Zhao Qing's move to NetEase, there is also the creative crew of Jianwang 1. According to media reports, "more than a dozen people in the office are empty."

Before the poaching incident, Lei Jun had a good relationship with Ding Lei, who knew each other as early as 1996, when Ding Lei was an engineer in Ningbo Telecom Bureau. When NetEase was founded, Ding Lei was also guided by the veteran Lei Jun, from how to lead the team to how to do it in the business department. Lei Jun gave Ding a lot of advice.

According to reports, in the early years, Ding Lei told Lei Jun: I will not poach your people. Many years later, in 2009, Ding Lei attended the annual meeting of China's game industry, at which Shanda gave speeches to the executives of the two giant game companies, with the theme of "recruiting talents". As a result, it was Ding Lei's turn to speak.

"I am quite disappointed with the speeches made by individual entrepreneur representatives and regard such an important annual game meeting as a channel for attracting wealth and treasures. I want to tell other colleagues clearly or implicitly what companies you can jump to if you are not well paid. From here, we can see that the limitations of Chinese entrepreneurs are a common phenomenon."

Ding Lei's criticism is of course reasonable. When Shi Yuzhu's giant wanted to transform from brain platinum to become an online game, he dug up the entire game research and development team of Shanda, which led to a journey. It is said that the game core of the journey came from the grand era of game heroes, which led to Chen Tianqiao's bitter thoughts for many years. But Ding Lei may have forgotten that he gave Shi Yuzhu a sample as early as 2003. So there is nothing wrong with Ding Lei's conclusion, and the limitations of Chinese entrepreneurs are indeed a common phenomenon.

3 Ding Lei digging the corner has a great influence on Jinshan. At that time, the sword net 3 project team had just completed the preliminary planning and rehearsal, and had not yet started research and development, and Zhao Qing took the team to change jobs to NetEase and spent two and a half years doing online games like Datang hero, which was exactly the same as the original idea of sword net 3.

Creativity ran away with people. Jinshan's sword net 3 development team has only 4 newcomers left, and the entry time is less than a year. A year later, Guo Weiwei, who just graduated from St. John's University in the United States, joined the Jinshan game, and several people made sword net 3 together. At that time, the most popular online game on the market was World of Warcraft, and sword net 3 had no chance of winning. Zou Tao, CEO of Xishanju, decided to promote Guo Weiwei to be the master planner and let him take the lead in redeveloping sword net 3.

When the sword net 3 was redone, at a luncheon at the Xiamen Game Annual meeting at the end of 2005, Ding Lei taught the secrets of NetEase's game to the industry, "games should be skillful in making money." In Ding Lei's view, the development of new versions of the game, the investment is too large, the income may not have a high return. The development of a set of character avata clothes, as long as an art, a program for two days, but can earn thousands of times the money. Ding Lei concluded

"online games are trying every means to stimulate players to consume, especially female players. NetEase's game is the most expensive, but the number of people who play it is the most."

At that time, Ding Lei used to illustrate NetEase's example of making money, in addition to A Chinese Odyssey, there was also a dream of a journey to the West. Before the launch of Fantasy Journey to the West, Shanda took the top spot in the domestic online game industry by virtue of acting South Korean online game legend. In 2002, when A Chinese Odyssey 2 was listed, Shanda's income accounted for 60% of the total scale of more than 900 million yuan in China's online game market.

It is hard for NetEase not to be jealous of this. In the general draft of that year, NetEase said that A Chinese Odyssey 2 was the first national original online game developed and operated by Chinese people, and also cue their counterparts. "after South Korean online games such as' Legend 'and' Paradise', China's first online game players can finally play games developed and operated by the Chinese themselves." Seeing that Shanda made a lot of money by acting for South Korean online games, in 2002, NetEase won the agency rights of Korean online game elves in mainland and Hong Kong with an agency fee of 1 million US dollars, which is also the first 3D RPG game introduced in China.

However, six days after the elf public test, there was a fire in the Blue Speed Internet cafe that shocked the whole country, and the domestic online game industry suffered a huge blow. Coupled with the rampant plug-in, the elf was suspended after only two years of operation. Although the elves failed, they lost everything. In December 2003, on the basis of A Chinese Odyssey's plan, NetEase changed all his art resources and launched a Dream Journey to the West.

If A Chinese Odyssey 2 is a popular style, then Fantasy Journey to the West is Wang Fang. In March 2005, Fantasy Journey to the West surpassed the grand legend for the first time to become the most popular multiplayer online game. Together with A Chinese Odyssey 2, it accounted for more than 20% of the domestic game market. To this end, Ding Lei also held a victory party in Beijing. The headline at that time was: NetEase's Dream Journey to the West presses the grand legend Ding Lei to celebrate his victory in Beijing. NetEase earned 1.3795 billion yuan in online games that year, and Fantasy Journey to the West was written into the financial report, with a record of more than 1 million online users.

What is the concept of this 1 million? Until 2006, Shi Yuzhu's journey sales reached 626 million yuan, making it the third Chinese online game in the world with more than 1 million people online, and the first two are World of Warcraft and Dream Journey to the West.

In fact, in 2004, after the launch of Fantasy Journey to the West, NetEase also represented another Korean 3D online game, Feifei. Feifei was developed by South Korea's "godfather of games" Nan in-hwan, but NetEase also failed to succeed after acting as an agent. Two consecutive agency failures, coupled with the success of the self-developed game Dream Journey to the West, let Ding Lei say that NetEase games should adhere to the "three noes" policy: no free, no agent, no export.

Just as Ding Lei criticized other game companies for poaching people without talking about martial arts, Ding Lei, who once said that NetEase did not act as an agent, represented Blizzard's World of Warcraft many years later, of course, this is another story. (click to read: 20 years of Blizzard and Chinese players.) Don't talk too much and don't do too much. When Ding Lei taught his peers the secret of making money in Xiamen, he must not have thought that Lei Jun's "revenge" was on his way.

In 2006, Xu Bo, the chief planner of Fantasy Journey to the West, moved from NetEase to Jinshan. Less than two months later, six core members of the Dream Journey to the West changed to Jinshan one after another. Interestingly, this Xu Bo is the protagonist who later became famous as "polygamy" and had 50 children on Weibo.

4 at that time, Xu Bo was not a boiled elbow, but a great hero in NetEase's game. NetEase's first-quarter financial report in 2006 showed that its game business had revenue of 450.6 million yuan, contributing nearly 90 per cent of its revenue, all of which came from several Q-version games, of which Fantasy Journey to the West accounted for more than half of the total income.

Zhao Qing moved to NetEase from Jinshan and made NetEase's first 2.5D instant combat game Datang Hero in 2006 with the idea of sword net 3, but according to media reports, the result was "far lower than Ding Lei's expectations." more firmly NetEase took the road of the Q version of the game "; Xu Bo left NetEase, set up Duoyi with the 10 million investment given by Lei Jun, and made the dream world of the same Q version of the game.

Just before and after the listing of Dream World, Jinshan also launched two other Q version games: lie Shuihu, Spring and Autumn Q Zhuan. Jinshan agent's lying Shuihu once had a strong impact on NetEase, strengthened Lei Jun's determination to enter the Q version of the market, and even claimed to take half of NetEase's market. Then Jinshan concentrated all its resources on the Spring and Autumn Q self-research, with 219 engineers participating in the project. Zou Tao, vice president of technical background, supervised the war in Chengdu for three months in a row.

Lei Jun himself regards it as an online game work of Jinshan in 2007. "if we don't do a good game, we won't release it. It's not interesting for Chunqiu Q not to enter the top three in a market. If the product meets expectations, Jinshan will use unprecedented strength to promote it." Also in the same year, NetEase launched A Chinese Odyssey 3.

It seems that NetEase is going to fight Jinshan against the top of the Forbidden City, but Ding Lei and Lei Jun may not have thought that A Chinese Odyssey 3 or the Spring and Autumn Q pass all hit the street. During the internal test, the maximum number of A Chinese Odyssey 3 simultaneous online users reached 200000, and after the official operation, the number of online users dropped to less than 50,000; while the number of online users during the Spring and Autumn Q-pass public test period exceeded 100000, but Jinshan's 2008 financial report showed that the significant growth in online game revenue mainly came from the Jianxiaqingyuan series, including the success of Swordsman World and Swordsman World.

In August 2009, sword net 3 was put on the line. Up to now, Jian 3 is still the main product of Jinshan game. And NetEase also won the agency of World of Warcraft from Nine cities in the same year. In 2010, after acting for World of Warcraft, NetEase's game income increased by 47%, contributing nearly 90% of NetEase's annual income with a score of 4.9 billion. World of Warcraft and Fantasy Journey to the West accounted for the majority of NetEase's game income at that time.

Although Warcraft has brought a lot of real money and silver to NetEase, the end of Nine cities is vivid in my mind, which has sounded the alarm for NetEase. Nine cities, which rely too much on Warcraft, had total revenue of $3.94 million in the third quarter of 2009, down 91.14% from the previous month and 93.79% from the same period last year, thus falling out of the top 10 of the online gaming industry.

NetEase, who did not want to repeat the same mistake, accelerated his pace of self-research and shifted his research focus to mobile games. At the end of last year, Blizzard announced that its contract with NetEase would not be renewed at the end of last year. NetEase launched "Blizzard Green Tea" in his own restaurant after getting a strange "ex-wife"-after Ding Lei got the agency of Warcraft in 2009, Ding Lei said that cooperation with Blizzard was "like getting married". Today, Blizzard games account for only 6% of NetEase's revenue, which is why NetEase can be so tough.

NetEase's first-quarter financial results released last month showed that its games and related value-added services had revenue of 20.1 billion yuan in the first quarter, accounting for 80% of the total revenue, and gross profit increased compared with the same period last year. Of this total, the net income of online games was 18.6 billion yuan, and that of mobile games was 13.45 billion yuan, an increase of 16.3% over the same period last year. From 2001 Ding Lei hopes that the success of the game will bring a turnaround for NetEase to 2023 the game business accounts for 80% of NetEase's total revenue, the importance of games to NetEase is self-evident.

Supporting the continued growth of the online mobile game performance is the hot egg party during the Spring Festival. Today, the number of daily active users of the egg party has broken through the 30 million mark, making it the game with the highest number of daily active users in NetEase's history. But the problem is that NetEase now has only one egg party. As the analysis points out, NetEase is not good at long-term operating games, from Onmyoji, against the current cold, the fifth personality to eternal robbery, Diablo: immortal, NetEase's "popular style" games in recent years, the "shelf life" is not very long.

That's why Ding Lei said at NetEase's earnings call last year that we will invest more research and development and management in the future to do a good job in the long-term service of the egg party. The long term here, I think, is at least 10 years. Looking back at the history of NetEase's games, apart from Fantasy Journey to the West, it is difficult to say that there is a second game that will last forever ten years later.

From this point of view, NetEase needs to learn from Jinshan.

On August 16, 2021, Jian 3 released a limited red hair picture for its 12th anniversary. Moonlight Blade players next door to Tencent suspected of plagiarizing their own female ponytail hair. a day later, Jian 3 released a screenshot of the new school Loli's body. it was also questioned by players in the stand-alone game Gu Jian Qitan about the elements of the new school released by Gu Jian Qitan in July. After being scolded for plagiarism twice in a row, Jian 3 responded that this was a provocation. "competitors remember to turn off their positions when they sow discord."

And the player who sows discord in the three mouths of Jian locates "NetEase (Hangzhou) Network Co., Ltd.". After being scolded for sowing discord, the official blog of NetEase's game responded: my friend, play the game well. Solve your players' demands well, don't always use me as a shield for self-directed and self-acting.

Not long ago, Wechat posted an article entitled "what have we learned from the violent death of Qingyu years of mobile games", which not only mocked Qingyu years of mobile games, but also AOE Jinshan's "Swordsman World 3". Senior executives of Shengqu Games, a mobile game developer, responded on moments that Qingyu is still a product with a monthly flow of more than 100 million, and we reserve the right to pursue false remarks by law. In the end, the authorities quietly deleted the tweet against the current.

After this, on the day of the start of the cold hand swim against the current, its Weibo account was banned because "the amount of advertising placed on Sina is suspected of not meeting Sina's requirements". After the cold end swim against the current banned its words on Weibo to complain for the mobile game, it also went on the hot search. Whether it is Wechat or Weibo, stir-frying or anti-speculation, gradually out of date against the cold, all need to re-heat.

Interestingly, NetEase's products have changed one crop after another, and the opposite is still the same formula, the same taste, the same sword net 3. It is hard to say whether this is the success of Jinshan or the failure of NetEase. Just like when Lei Jun Ding Lei dug each other, Ding Lei failed to copy Jian 3, and Lei Jun failed to copy Fantasy Journey to the West, what they longed for was exactly what each other had.

Reference:

1. Beijing Modern Business Daily? Jinshan poaching NetEase game talents secretly develop a new Q version of the game.

two。 Economic Observer: Lei Jun returns

3. Daily Economic News: NetEase's Dream Journey to the West presses grand legend Ding Lei to celebrate in Beijing

4. Hedgehog commune? three years of sword net, three deaths and another life.

5. Beijing Entertainment News? Jinshan poached several core teams of NetEase's game, how did Ding Lei deal with the aftermath?

6. NetEase Science and Technology report, "36 plans of the Internet" Preface: there are no heroes.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: slow play (ID:manfangsd)

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