my return 2002

Chapter 342 Buy It At All Costs
In fact, not only Penguin, but even Wang Tao did not expect that [Cross Fire]'s internal test results would be so good. On the first day, the number of simultaneous online users exceeded 60, and the online time of players was too high. The online time has surpassed many MMO games.

"Boss, when do you think this meal will be arranged?"

"Yes, boss, we are all waiting."

Faced with the booing from his employees, Wang Tao laughed and scolded: "Look at how promising you are, you have lost your salary for a month, and you only miss my meal."

"That's different. Although it's a pity that the bonus of one month's salary is gone, we prefer to see the game sell well."

Shen Lang slapped his hands to attract everyone's attention: "That's good, if you can persuade Mr. Wang to treat us to a good meal, the bonus will be paid, how about it?"

In an instant, Wang Tao was surrounded, and everyone booed.

Wang Tao looked at Shen Lang with a bitter face: "Boss Shen, you killed eight hundred enemies and lost one thousand."

"I don't care, anyway, I just made a fortune." Shen Lang shrugged.

Wang Tao wanted to cry without tears and asked his assistant to book a restaurant, and everyone returned to their posts.

After returning to the office, Shen Lang smiled and patted Wang Tao's shoulder: "Okay, don't put on a sour face, I don't know your income, at most it's more than one month's salary, and the year-end bonus will be issued soon Well, what’s the point of this little money.”

Wang Tao is one of the early veterans who joined Inspur Technology, and he was also the first batch of executives who received option rewards. His current income is casually several million a year, and he was definitely considered a high-paying class in 08.

Wang Tao stopped pretending when he heard the words, and smiled: "Mr. Shen, you are amazing. I never thought that Crossing the Line of Fire would be so popular."

Shen Lang scolded with a smile: "Stop flattering, you still have to pay attention, the quality of [King of Battlefield] is there, if the hardware configuration can keep up, it is not completely impossible to stand up, you have to prepare during the internal test, hurry up The public beta has attracted all the players, and when the players get used to it, there will be no trouble for Penguin."

Even games have learning costs. After players get used to a game, they will generally not play the same type of game again unless the game has a disruptive and innovative gameplay.

[King of Battlefield] Although it is excellent, it has not deviated from the traditional gameplay of FPS games. In the past ten years when CrossFire became popular, only the later PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds can really threaten the status of CrossFire in the mainland.

On the second day of the internal test, Penguin still did not give up. On the one hand, it increased the server capacity, and at the same time reduced the number of players online in the server at the same time, in order to allow players to obtain a better gaming experience.

On the one hand, Penguin has also stepped up its publicity efforts. Advertisements on QQ, Penguin.com, QQ Log and other self-owned channels are being promoted for free.

This trick has indeed played a role. The server situation has improved, and some players with excellent computer configurations have gained a better game experience. At least they will not be stuck when encountering enemies as before.

But this only retains a very small number of players, and the vast majority of players are discouraged from this game because of the optimization problems of Unreal Engine 3.Some continued to go back to play CS, while others went to play Crossfire.

This made Xiao Ma and Zhang Zhidong very uncomfortable. The project [King of Battlefield] cost more than 1000 million US dollars in agency fees alone, and tens of millions of dollars were spent on subsequent local optimization. More than 2000 million yuan, which is not counting the internal diversion costs, means that Penguin has lost hundreds of millions of yuan on this project.

And the key is that according to the current momentum of [King of the Battlefield], it is already very difficult to catch fire, and it seems unnecessary to continue investing.

After investing so much money, it is natural to minimize losses as much as possible. As for recovering the cost, it is definitely impossible. The number of players who are currently online at the same time is less than 20. It is unknown how many players will be willing to spend when the public beta is released .

Therefore, the game [King of Battlefield] was quickly listed as an abandoned child by Xiao Ma, and the game operation department has begun to study how to make players spend as much money as possible before the closed beta is over. .

Another failure in the game field did not discourage Xiao Ma, on the contrary, he strengthened his determination to further develop the game field. At the beginning, Xiao Ma's idea was to poach people from Mountain Dew.

But after getting in touch with headhunters, Xiao Ma discovered to his dismay that it is not easy to recruit people from Inspur Technology, or in other words, the price to pay is a bit too high.

The reason is also very simple. Shen Lang established a house purchase fund at Inspur Technology very early on. Employees who have been in the company for two years can apply for an interest-free loan to buy a house. sum of money.

Brother Ma wanted to poach people who were experienced veterans of Mountain Dew. If they hired newcomers who had been employed for less than two years, they would not be of much use.

But it's not all bad news. With the advent of the financial tsunami caused by the subprime mortgage crisis, many game companies began to tighten their belts, and many game companies also began to lay off employees. Xiao Ma took the opportunity to recruit a group of experienced game developers. It complements a part of penguin's self-research ability.

Of course, the self-research took too long, and the long-distance water could not quench the near-thirst, so Xiao Ma started to prepare for the agency again.

A game developed by the Korean game giant NCsoft [Aion] has entered the line of sight of Xiao Ma. This game has entered the testing stage in Korea. According to various reports, the game is of high quality, and many Korean players have already shouted. The slogan of surpassing [World of Warcraft] came out.

This made Brother Xiao Ma very excited. Of course, his goal is not to surpass [World of Warcraft], but to be different from [Zhu Xian].

So, Xiao Ma once again asked Zhang Zhidong to lead the team to South Korea.

"Take a few technical masters to study the configuration requirements of this game."

Little Ma has been scared by the [King of the Battlefield] after eating a pit and gaining wisdom.

After Zhang Zhidong left, Brother Xiaoma was not idle either. One game would definitely not be enough for Penguin Games to rise, so Brother Xiaoma turned his attention to the European and American game markets.

Not to mention, there really is a game that has just been closed beta that caught his attention. Brother Xiao Ma is full of joy and wants to send someone to the United States to get the game agency.

The internal test data of this game is simply not too beautiful. At first, Xiao Ma thought it was the game manufacturer’s bragging. After all, the European and American online game markets have always been dominated by stand-alone games. There is no online game except World of Warcraft. The game has such a dominant performance.

However, after multiple verifications, the data did not lie. This game has indeed caused a sensation in the United States, and even game manufacturers in many European countries want to represent this game.

When he saw that this game was only developed by a small studio that had just been established for two years, Xiao Ma's DNA was moved, and a strong voice kept echoing in his mind.

"Buy it, buy it at any cost."

In order to acquire this studio, Brother Xiao Ma entrusted a very famous investment bank in the United States to do due diligence. At the same time, Brother Xiao Ma also conducted research on related types of game markets in China. Just as he was thinking about introducing this game to China , Then when there was a massacre, the person in charge of the investment bank called him.

The person in charge asked Brother Ma in a very strange tone: "Are you sure you want to acquire this game studio?"

Brother Xiao Ma thought that the other party's asking price was too high, so he patted his chest and said, "Of course, as long as the price is not too outrageous, there is no problem."

"Okay, then you may need to talk to Mr. Shen."

As soon as Xiao Ma heard the word "Shen", his heart skipped a beat, wouldn't it?It can't be such a coincidence, can it?

"Could it be Mr. Shen you're talking about?"

"That's right, it's Mr. Shen from Inspur Technology. Yangdao Studio is controlled by his offshore company in the Cayman Islands. This is what we just found out, so we asked you if you want to proceed to the next step."

Still keep on knitting!Brother Xiao Ma scolded his mother in his heart, and told the other party with a gloomy face that he canceled the plan.

Fortunately, this matter has not reached the substantive stage, it just lost some money, otherwise he would have no place to put his face.

Brother Xiao Ma was so depressed, he finally fell in love with a game with the potential to explode, but it turned out that the behind-the-scenes boss of the game studio was actually Shen Lang.

And through follow-up investigations, Brother Ma also discovered that Shen Lang had already begun to deploy globally, and Star International and Star Games had achieved good results in the North American market.

"This kid really has a lot of ambition!" Brother Ma scratched his head. It's not that he has never thought about going overseas, but the domestic competition with Inspur Group has become fierce, and he can't spare energy and funds at all.

Unexpectedly, Shen Lang started to deploy overseas markets as early as three years ago. At that time, he still had an advantage over Shen Lang.

Brother Xiao Ma couldn't help feeling a little regretful, why didn't he think of going to sea earlier, otherwise the mainland market would be frustrated, and overseas markets could make up for it.

With a long sigh, Xiao Ma still forced himself to get rid of these messy thoughts from his mind, and it was useless to regret, now he has lost the capital to go to sea, and he can only compete with Shen Lang in the mainland market.

Brother Xiao Ma immediately gathered the executives of the game department for a meeting. The content of the meeting was to study the game League of Legends. Before thinking about acting as an agent for League of Legends, the market research he did came in handy at this time.

"Everyone has also seen that the DOTA maps based on the Warcraft platform currently on the market not only have battle platforms such as VS and Haofang, but also have derived independent clients such as Qifan Three Kingdoms, which shows that this type of game has a very large audience. So, can we also make a similar game?" Brother Xiao Ma looked at the executives of the game department with piercing eyes.

The executives naturally knew that Brother Xiaoma wanted them to make a similar product, and they could hear from Brother Xiaoma's tone that he had high hopes for this game.

Therefore, they all want to compete for this resource.

In the end, Xiao Ma handed over this important task to Linlang Tianshang Studio. As the earliest studio established by Penguin Games, Linlang Tianshang made QQtang before. Marco's trust.

After the meeting ended, Brother Xiaoma directly left Yao Xiaoguang on Linlangtian.

"Xiaoguang, you have seen the current situation of the company. If the game business does not improve, it will affect the development of the entire group. This time, I will entrust you with the burden, and you must carry it!" Brother Ma Said earnestly.

Yao Xiaoguang patted his chest and promised: "Mr. Ma, don't worry, I will not embarrass you."

Brother Xiao Ma nodded in satisfaction: "By the way, how is the QQ speed car developed by your studio? When will it go online?"

"It is expected to be launched in the next year."

"Well, that's good." Little Ma told the situation of the League of Legends again.

"I predict that League of Legends will be introduced into China by the end of next year at the latest. We don't have much time left!"

Yao Xiaoguang was dumbfounded when he heard it. They have already finished their games, and you are only telling me now, and you want to release them before others?Isn't this a joke?
Brother Xiaoma patted Yao Xiaoguang on the shoulder: "Xiaoguang, I know this is difficult, but it must be done, you should think of a way."

Yao Xiaoguang almost gave up the pick, could this code be changed by any means?But who makes someone the boss? After thinking for a long time, Yao Xiaoguang only thought of one way.

"If there is a similar game that can be acquired and optimized for improvement, it should be completed in a year."

Brother Xiao Ma's eyes lit up: "This is a good way."

Therefore, Yao Xiaoguang began to look for domestic manufacturers of related games. If he really couldn't do it, he could only ask Xiao Ma to buy Qifan.

But it really allowed him to find a manufacturer that was making MOBA games, and this was his old acquaintance - Yu Xiaoliang.

Yu Xiaoliang was also one of the earliest employees of Penguin Games. He participated in the research and development of QQ Hall and QQ Fantasy. However, Yu Xiaoliang was not satisfied with being a master planner at Penguin. He left Penguin last year and founded Hangzhou Dianhun.

The game produced by Yu Xiaoliang is called "Dream Three Kingdoms".

Yao Xiaoguang told Brother Xiao Ma about the situation, and Brother Xiao Ma was pleasantly surprised and depressed at the same time. The pleasant surprise is that if you get [Dream Three Kingdoms] in your bag, it is equivalent to standing on the same starting line with the League of Legends. The depressed one is, After Yu Xiaoliang went out as an employee of Penguin Games, he immediately started a business and made a product, which shows that his mind was useless at work.

But no matter how depressed Ma was, he could only grit his teeth and let Yao Xiaoguang contact Yu Xiaoliang.

At the beginning, Yu Xiaoliang heard that Brother Xiao Ma wanted to buy his company, but he refused in his heart. He just came out of Penguin and finally started his own business.

But Brother Xiao Ma gave too much, not only bought his company at a high price, but also left him 30% of the shares, and for a small company like him, funding is also a problem. With the support of Penguin's funds and traffic, the company development will be much faster.

So they hit it off immediately, and Brother Xiao Ma even prepared a very grand welcome party for Yu Xiaoliang to welcome him back to the penguin's embrace.

(End of this chapter)