They’re all reborn, what’s wrong with being a little more almighty?

Chapter 255: Rushing on the Road to Death

Yao Xiaoguang was once again staring at the financial statements and laughing. The money-making ability of web games even made Yao Xiaoguang think that he should just make web games instead of developing DOTA2 projects.

Fortunately, surpassing Blizzard has always been his ideal. If it were someone with a weaker will, he might have really given up the DOTA2 project and concentrated on making web games.

The gameplay of "Hot Blooded Three Kingdoms" is much richer than the previous "Three Kingdoms Generals", and it is not so easy to imitate.

Of course, there are more places where you can spend gold to upgrade, from internal affairs to generals to equipment, all of which can be strengthened with gold. Add a little bit of chance to play, and it's easy for players to get deeply involved.

Moreover, the main feature of this web game is to allow office workers to slack off while at work, which filled a gap at the time.

If it were today, there would be many ways to slack off at work. After all, it is the era of smart phones. Secretly opening the phone, playing a few rounds of Landlord, or watching a few short videos on TikTok are all good ways to slack off at work.

Moreover, many mobile games are originally designed for entertainment and leisure, and you can play them while you are going to the toilet or peeing.

But in 2006, there were no smart phones. If your phone could play Snake or Tetris, it was considered a high-end phone. But these simple games were not enough to quench the thirst of players who were used to computer games.

"Hot Blooded Three Kingdoms" just fills this part of the market, providing office workers with a way to have fun.

This part of the market is still very large, even larger than the student group. There are tens of thousands of so-called workers, who doesn't want to be a slacker?
Moreover, those who could work in an office, have a computer and connect to the Internet at that time would definitely have a high salary and they would have money to top up. This game positioning also directly made "Hot Blooded Three Kingdoms" a battlefield for RMB players.

The so-called zero-payment players do not exist in this game. If players do not recharge, they cannot even complete many basic tasks. They will be bullied by other players when they go online, and the gaming experience will be extremely poor.

On the contrary, as long as you recharge, various tasks will be easy to complete. After completing the tasks, you will also get various items and treasure chests as rewards, and the gaming experience will instantly rise to several levels.

What's more, Weiguang Technology also hired a large group of shills.

In the previous "Three Kingdoms Heroes", Weiguang Technology also hired game agents, but the task of these agents was only to defeat the players in the game. The players were unwilling to fail and would recharge. This took advantage of the players' competitive mentality and was considered the most basic agent.

In "Hot Blooded Three Kingdoms", even the shills have evolved. The shills who defeated the players back then have become the presidents of various guilds. They call you "brother" one by one and want to take you to the front line. Do you want to follow them?

Don't follow? Are you still a brother? So many brothers are coming, how can you not come? Will you feel comfortable going? Will your conscience not be condemned?

Follow? With your generals and attributes, won't you be a drag on your brothers? Will you feel comfortable going there? Won't your conscience be condemned?
So hurry up and get the gold!
This is considered a relatively high-level scam, which links the gameplay with collective honor and induces players to recharge.

After all, humans are social animals. When faced with collective actions, they are prone to blindly follow others even if the actions are unreasonable.

Moreover, in addition to entertainment, the most important attribute of online games is sociality, which is also the biggest difference between online games and stand-alone games.

Team activities between players, whether it is playing dungeons or group PK, is actually a way to combine entertainment and sociality. It can meet basic human emotional needs, which is also what makes online games attractive.

If the two characteristics of entertainment and sociality are lost, playing online games will become a very boring and tedious thing.

If you don't believe it, you can try those games that require players to move bricks and earn gold. If your purpose of playing the game is to make money, then you will calculate the income for every minute you play the game, every task you do, and every copy you download, and try to maximize the income as much as possible.

At this time, you will not feel any sense of accomplishment after defeating a powerful BOSS or passing a difficult dungeon. Instead, you will focus on whether you have obtained a valuable item.

Many game bots take advantage of players' demand for social gaming to encourage them to make top-ups.

The vast majority of game players are ordinary people in daily life, and their social interactions are also ordinary. At least, ordinary people cannot feel a sense of superiority in social interactions.

But in the game, even if you are an ordinary person, as long as you reach the level of gold, you can get a social experience with a sense of superiority.

No one knows whether you are a big man or a 200-pound girl across the Internet, but as long as your character wears awesome equipment and has explosive output, other players in the game will think you are an awesome guy. You can enjoy the envy and compliments of others.

These are things that ordinary people cannot get in their daily lives.

If you do something heroic, you will be reported in the newspaper for one day at most. Even if someone comes to express their condolences, they are just trying to take advantage of your popularity. Who will remember you the next day?

But if you rank first in the game, all the players on the server can see it every day, all the time. Isn't this a great sense of satisfaction?

And all this can be done by just recharging. In contrast, if you go to do something righteous, you might get beaten up!
For game companies, in order to make money, they have already studied the psychology of game players very thoroughly. What you see are various game playing methods, but behind them are psychological games.

There are many scammers in online games. This is nothing new in later generations. Even many experienced players can tell who the scammers are in the game at a glance.

But in 2006, gamers had never seen such tricks! They thought the guild leader who led them to fight guild wars was a good brother, and that those who posted equipment pictures in QQ groups were all rich and powerful. Who would have thought that these people were all shills?

As the saying goes, if I stick my neck out for my brothers, they will bite me!

……

United States, Amazon Publishing, Evans stared at the latest week's sales data and a satisfied smile appeared on his face.

The second part of "The Thirst Games" was released at the beginning of summer vacation. With the help of fans, it rushed to Amazon's sales list on the same day and topped the sales list in the second week.

Now that more than a month has passed, the second part of "The Hunger and Games" is still firmly sitting at the top of Amazon's sales list, and it is steadily rising, and the sales of the first part have also increased a lot.

Moreover, in that year, there was no competition from the Harry Potter series. In the top market of youth books, the second part of "The Thirst Games" was almost the only one, far ahead of other works.

The popularity of "The Thirst Games" series remains unabated and is even on the rise. Evans is of course very proud of this.

Just then, the subordinate walked in with a package in his hand.

"Director, I just received a transnational express from China. It says that you should open it in person. The sender is Zhang Wei. I think he might be the author of The Thirst Game!"

"Yes, it's him. We've contacted each other on the phone before. He said he would send me a manuscript and hoped that we would publish it." Thomas nodded.

"Didn't the second part of The Thirst Games just come out? Why have you finished the third part so quickly?" the subordinate asked.

"It should not be The Thirst Game, but another work. When we communicated on the phone, he said it was a science fiction work that had been published in China. He planned to publish an English version through us, and it was said that it had already been translated." Thomas explained.

"It's not the Thirst Games series. His previous book, The Big Short, didn't sell as well as the Thirst Games series."

"Yeah, it's not as good as The Thirst Games, but it's still okay. Although it's not a bestseller, the first printing was basically sold out. Now it's printing the second round. Although the number is only a few thousand copies, it's still a small profit."

"I heard that the book The Big Short sold very well in New York. It was sold out at one point, and finally books were transferred from other cities. But except for New York, sales in other places are average. It seems that there is no interest in this book."

“Yeah, I find it strange too. Generally speaking, New York is a weathervane for the cultural industry. Once something related to culture becomes popular in New York, it will soon become popular throughout the United States.

But this book "The Big Short" is an exception. It is selling well only in New York, but there is no movement in other places. In some states, the sales can even be described as dismal. This is the first time I have encountered such a situation in all my years in publishing.

But New York has a large population and a large market. New York alone is enough for a writer to have a comfortable life. "Thomas said, took out a pair of scissors, cut open the package in his hand, and continued:
"Let me see what this young writer's new work is about. I don't expect it to be the second "The Thirst Games", but I just hope it won't be as disappointing as "The Big Short"!" Taking out the manuscript in the package, Thomas first glanced at the title.

"The three body problem. Three bodies? What problem could there be?"

……

At the same time, in the building at 270 Park Avenue in New York, several people in suits were gathering in a high-end conference room.

Although the temperature outside is over 18 degrees, the air conditioning here is only degrees. The cool breeze blows in, and you won't feel hot even if you are wearing formal clothes. You may even need a cup of hot coffee to warm your body.

This is the headquarters of JPMorgan Chase Bank. In this conference room are all JPMorgan Chase executives and Wall Street elites.

An old man in the lead said: "What you have in your hands is our JPMorgan Chase's financial report from last month. You should have seen it. The data is very impressive, a significant increase compared to the same period last year!

I think everyone knows that July is not a peak season for our industry. This kind of growth has never happened before. It is abnormal. Please share your opinions! "

"I have read last month's financial report myself, and I found that the revenue growth mainly came from the large amount of credit default swaps we sold. This brought us nearly $5 billion in revenue," one of them said.

"It's not just last month. The month before last, we also sold more than 3 billion US dollars in credit default swap products. Adding those sold in the previous few months, we have currently sold a total of 10 billion of such products." Someone else spoke up.

"It's more than 10 billion. Don't forget that the statistics for this month have not been reported yet. As far as I know, there are still many investors who bought credit default swaps this month."

"Ten billion dollars is a huge sum of money even on Wall Street. Who are the buyers?" someone asked.

"They are all Wall Street investors, including funds, trusts, and even investment banks. I heard that some small investment banks would buy products from us and then resell them."

"It seems that there is a big market for our products! What kind of credit default swaps are they?"

"Real estate! To be precise, it's real estate-related debt-backed securities, which are all products of investment banks and contain mortgage-backed bonds." Someone answered immediately.

"So, are these investors betting that mortgage-backed bonds backed by real estate will default on a large scale? These people must be crazy! The U.S. real estate market is trending so well, and as far as I know, the Federal Reserve will not raise interest rates in the short term, so at least in the next few years, the real estate market will continue to prosper."

"Yes, betting on real estate debt default, isn't that just giving us money?" someone agreed immediately.

Some sober people also asked: "It would be fine if only one or two people made such a bet, but don't you think it's strange that so many people made the same choice? This is Wall Street. Those who can survive here are not fools."

"You also said it, this is Wall Street, and there is never a shortage of gamblers on Wall Street! I think this is just another big bet by a group of gamblers!" someone immediately retorted.

"Even if it's a gambler's big bet, there should be a basis for the bet, right? The question is what is the basis for these gamblers? What exactly is the incentive that makes them bet 10 billion US dollars!"

"Don't forget, we sold 10 billion. What about other investment banks? Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, how much did they sell? The real number must be much more than 10 billion."

"Yes, such a large investment must have a basis, right? At least there needs to be a reason to convince the investors."

This question immediately caused silence in the meeting room.

"Sir, maybe I know why they invested." A voice sounded, and everyone looked in the direction of the voice. The person who spoke was the assistant who was responsible for pouring coffee for everyone in the conference room.

Anyone who can pour coffee in this occasion is not an ordinary person. At the very least, he must be a top student who graduated from a top-tier business school and have many years of work experience.

The old man in the lead nodded slightly at him, then said, "Then tell me, what is the reason for their investment?"

"Sir, one of my classmates happens to be working in one of the trusts. According to him, a book has been popular on Wall Street recently. The book says that the real estate market is about to collapse, and real estate-related bonds will default on a large scale. If you short sell now, you can make a lot of money!"

"What book? Which economist wrote it?" someone asked immediately.

"It's not an economics book, it's a novel," the assistant replied.

"Novel?" Everyone had strange expressions on their faces.

"You mean, those investors decided to short the housing market based on what they read in a novel? Are you kidding me?"

"That classmate of yours must have a grudge against you, right? How could you tell such a lie? And you actually believed it?"

A stream of sarcastic glances instantly came from all directions.

The assistant quickly explained: "At first, I didn't believe it either, but then I bought a copy and found that what was written in the novel seemed to make sense."

"Really? What's the name of the novel? I'll buy a copy later." One of them said with a smile, but his tone was full of ridicule. It was obvious that he did not intend to buy the book, but just wanted to mock the assistant in front of him.

The assistant seemed not to have heard him, and he answered honestly, "The novel seems to be called The Big Short, and the author is a best-selling author. He previously wrote a book called The Thirst Game, which sold very well and can be bought in almost all bookstores in the United States."

"Is "The Thirst Games" also a novel?" someone else asked.

"Yes sir, it is a young adult novel that my daughter loves to read."

"Your daughter? How old is she?"

"Ten years old."

“Ten years old?” The man couldn’t help laughing. “I thought he was an economist, but he turned out to be a fairy tale writer! Andersen told us that the US real estate market was going to collapse, and Wall Street actually believed it? Hahahaha…”

The others also started laughing. Isn't ten years old the right age to read fairy tales?

Then this author is a fairy tale writer like Andersen!

A fairy tale author predicted that the US real estate market was going to collapse and wrote a book about it. And did investors on Wall Street really believe it? They followed the content of the book and spent tens of billions of dollars to short the real estate market?

Even if you are a fairy tale author, you would not dare to write a fairy tale like this!
After being ridiculed by a group of bigwigs, the assistant dared not say anything more. He cautiously stepped aside and lowered his head as if reviewing himself.

While others continued to discuss financial reports.

"Everyone, since everyone is optimistic about the real estate market, then these credit default swap contracts are equivalent to giving us money. I suggest that we launch a few more products of this type. I believe that our financial report this year will be very good!"

"I agree. There is money to be made. There is no reason for us not to make money. If we stop now, it will only benefit Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. If we miss such a good opportunity to make money, the whole Wall Street will laugh at our stupidity."

Soon, everyone reached a consensus. Since so many people were willing to bet on a real estate crash, they might as well make the bet bigger. JPMorgan Chase, the banker, could also make a fortune!
As a result, JPMorgan Chase started a rapid growth mode on its way to death.

(End of this chapter)