You call this entrepreneurship?

Chapter 425

Qin Shaoyan was full of confidence. Fan Xiaoqian didn't say anything. She subconsciously tightened the bamboo board in her hand and fell into thought.

"Warring States OL" has been tested for a week. Although there are many bugs, they are all minor problems. This is the first time that the server has crashed like today.

"I will observe for another half a month and then give you an answer." Fan Xiaoqian replied cautiously, "If we find two more serious server crashes, I don't think we need to discuss the issue of March or April."

Qin Shaoyan nodded, agreeing with Teacher Fan's statement.

If this happens on average every week, we'd have to consider whether the "Warring States OL" project is necessary.

Fan Xiaoqian went back to her seat holding the bamboo board. The words "6th day without major server failures" written on the whiteboard behind her seat had been crossed out.

Qin Shaoyan smiled without saying anything, turned around and found Zhang Pingyi.

"Master Zhang, I see that Teacher Fan is under a lot of pressure. He has lost his temper several times today." Qin Shaoyan said, "Please help me persuade him. He is always so nervous."

"He is the lead programmer and the person in charge of the entire project. How can he not be under a lot of pressure?" Zhang Pingyi sighed, "I feel the pressure myself."

"You don't have any pressure at all. You are a billionaire. What kind of pressure do you have?" Qin Shaoyan said unhappily.

"You can't say that." Zhang Pingyi retorted, "The campus network is our hard work. We built it in the Internet cafe."

"Seeing it grow step by step and then being listed on the Nasdaq is a sense of accomplishment!"

"That's called Maslow's hierarchy of needs."

"You know a lot." Qin Shaoyan teased, "You are the vice president of the campus network. Don't always stay in the operation and maintenance side to study the backend. When you have nothing to do, go around in front of everyone and cheer them up."

"You're the boss here, what am I supposed to do?" Zhang Pingyi waved his hand impatiently, "I'm busy, don't bother me."

"I still have to go to the interview." Qin Shaoyan said seriously, "Teacher Fan has already deducted all their year-end bonuses. If you don't show up, the employees will have to take out loans to go to work tomorrow."

Zhang Pingyi was shocked. "Oh my goodness, Teacher Fan can be cruel and ruthless sometimes."

"I'll leave this to you." Qin Shaoyan smiled, patted Zhang Pingyi's shoulder, turned around and left.

At this time, a group of reporters led by Sohu and Sina were already waiting in the conference room.

As soon as Qin Shaoyan entered the conference room, the reporters who could no longer hold back their microphones pointed at his face. He was so panicked that he almost turned around and ran away.

Fortunately, he reacted quickly and took the lead to protect the art director Hong Fei in front of him.

Hong Fei has also seen big scenes. He attended the first ChinaJoy and E3 exhibitions with President Qin.

Having seen many crowded scenes and having had experience in dealing with them, before the reporter could get close, two strong original artists on the left and right rushed out together to stop the crowd.

"Quiet, quiet, everyone please keep order!"

The noisy meeting room finally calmed down and made way for Qin Shaoyan.

Qin Shaoyan sat back in the main seat and, with a look of professional danger on his face, he pointed to a Sohu editor to ask a question.

"Mr. Qin, as a groundbreaking free online game, the launch of the test of Warring States Online has aroused enthusiastic response from the market and attracted great attention from the gaming industry." The Sohu editor asked with a smile, "Can you give us a brief introduction to the test of Warring States Online?"

Qin Shaoyan happily answered according to the words he had prepared in advance: "As soon as "Warring States OL" was released, it attracted the attention of a large number of players. The number of players who have registered for pre-order has exceeded 200,000."

"On the day of the internal test, nearly 30,000 players flooded into the server to experience the game. These players were very enthusiastic, and many of them stayed online for a whole week."

"So far, we have issued 35,000 invitation codes, all of which have been activated, and the character creation rate has reached 100%."

"The second-day retention rate of Warring States Online reached 99.8%, and the seven-day retention rate reached 95.7%. It can be said that the test results far exceeded our expectations."

“Next, we will continue to optimize the gameplay design and improve engine efficiency, so that players can play more happily and conveniently with a smoother feel.”

Sohu editor continued to ask: "We still have many questions to ask about this internal test. What are the considerations behind the sudden skipping of the closed test phase and the direct announcement of the internal test?"

Qin Shaoyan said slowly: "The Warring States Online project was launched as early as 2004. The R&D personnel involved in this project are all the backbones who have participated in Plants vs. Zombies, Counter-Strike: Modern Warfare, Sword and Fairy Tale, and Sword and Fairy World. They have rich R&D experience and world-class technical level."

"With such a high-level world-class R&D team, the R&D cycle has been greatly shortened. We have also introduced advanced test management processes to quickly detect technical bugs and resolve them quickly."

“After an overall evaluation, we unanimously agreed that Warring States OL has met the requirements for internal testing, so we skipped the closed beta stage.”

"We will adjust the subsequent plans based on the test data. If everything goes well, we will officially start the public beta in March 06."

The Sohu editor asked curiously, "Boss Qin, as far as I know, the development of an online game takes at least two to three years, but the development time of "Warring States OL" was less than two years. Is there any secret?"

Qin Shaoyan smiled slightly, "The exact number should be 17 months."

"First of all, we have a highly efficient R&D team. For example, the art director of Warring States Online is Mr. Hong Fei, the lead artist of Plants vs. Zombies and Counter-Strike: Modern Warfare."

"Secondly, we have a complete set of scientific and advanced R&D project management processes, which greatly improves R&D efficiency."

"Of course, the most important thing is that the entire online game framework design was built by me alone. As early as the beginning of the project, I had already considered the underlying logic of the entire game. All the gameplay designs are based on this underlying logic design, which reduces the R&D costs."

"The biggest challenge for games is the trade-offs, modifications, and balances in design. Many developers do not consider the positioning and target users of their games clearly when starting a project. When designing, they are inevitably greedy and want everything, which leads to inappropriate gameplay. In the subsequent development process, it is also difficult to understand what users really like and need, which goes against the market direction."

“Therefore, an excellent producer should have first-class qualities, clear and rigorous logic, a complete plan and understanding of the game framework construction, and a quick response and keen perception of the market and users.”

"As we all know, it is very difficult to successfully develop a game project. About 70% of the projects fail in the development stage. Having an excellent producer and an efficient and high-level development team is the key to the success of a project."

The Sohu editor was a little speechless, thinking that Mr. Qin was being a little too ostentatious in boasting about himself.

But thinking about her interview mission today and the travel expenses and writing fees, she could only smile professionally and agreed, "I heard that Mr. Qin is recognized as the number one game producer in China in the international gaming industry. I believe that with Mr. Qin's design ability, "Warring States OL" will bring everyone a better and higher-quality gaming experience." "Mr. Qin, I have another question. You just mentioned two unfamiliar terms, next-day retention and seven-day retention. What do they mean?"

Qin Shaoyan said slowly: "This is a data survey method I use based on changes in the online game market."

"In the past, we often saw an important data for measuring online games, which is the number of online players. The revenue of the game is judged by the number of online players."

"Because online players have to pay to continue playing, but the situation of free online games is different."

“Of course, we can’t judge it based solely on the number of online players, because not every online player will pay.”

“It is difficult to estimate the proportion of paying players in the entire player group, but it is foreseeable that the more online players there are, the larger the base of paying players will be.”

"The more players enter our game, the better it is for us. Free games can certainly attract players more easily, but there is also an easily overlooked problem, which is that players of free online games are more likely to churn than paid online games."

"Of course, there are also player churn in paid online games, but the proportion is quite small within a certain period of time. After all, the players have already paid, and the more they spend in the game, the less likely they are to churn."

"Free online games are different. Players don't have to pay, and the investment cost is very small, so they can come and go freely. As more and more online games appear on the market, players have more choices."

"We have observed that the more time a player spends in the game, the less likely he or she will churn in a short period of time. So we set a time node, such as seven days, and players who log in to the game for more than seven days will become loyal users of the game."

"We can use retention data to determine whether there is a problem with the overall design of the game. The higher the retention rate, the more successful the design. On the contrary, it means that there is a problem with the game design and it needs to be redesigned."

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"How to retain players has become our biggest concern."

“I’ve thought about this for a long time. The best way to retain players is to make the game more fun. This concept is quite broad, so I won’t discuss it in detail.”

“Here I call on my colleagues in the gaming industry to pay more attention to the game design itself and how to better retain players, so as to increase the ARPU value of the game.”

Sohu editor was puzzled, "What is ARPU value?"

"ARPU is the average revenue per user, a value calculated by dividing total revenue by the number of users," Qin Shaoyan said casually. "Paid players of free online games are only a part of the entire player group. We should not only consider the overall revenue of online games, but also how to improve the paid consumption experience of players. The higher the ARPU, the more successful the game is."

"After all, the design ideas and logic of free online games and paid online games are different."

"The operators of online games that charge for time only need to consider how to keep players, while the operators of free online games have to consider more."

The editor from Sina next to him couldn't hold back any longer and interrupted to ask, "Boss Qin, I have a question."

Qin Shaoyan glanced at her and nodded slightly, "Please speak."

"You mentioned earlier that you had already considered the game design when you started the Warring States Online project. So you decided in 2004 that this online game would be a free game?" Sina's editor continued, "As we all know, time-based paid online games are still the mainstream in the market. For example, NetEase's Fantasy Westward Journey and Shanda's Legend of Mir both firmly occupy a huge share of the entire online game market."

"How did you come up with the idea of ​​making a free online game?"

Qin Shaoyan replied calmly, "The game market is like this. One type of game cannot dominate the market. The mainstream of the market is to let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend."

"Since there are online games that charge time, there is a natural need for free online games. I just want to fill this gap in the market."

"Do you think "Warring States OL" will be successful?" Sina editor continued to ask.

"Of course." Qin Shaoyan replied firmly.

The Sina editor kept asking, "How do you know for sure that you will succeed?"

"Because this is the game I designed." Qin Shaoyan answered confidently.

The Sina editor was speechless for a moment and asked, "What if it fails?"

"That must mean the free online game market is not doing well." Qin Shaoyan said expressionlessly.

……

Qin Shaoyan’s interview soon appeared on the portal website’s news, and his colleagues in the entire domestic gaming industry saw the report about him that day.

Everyone was speechless and felt complicated about Qin Shaoyan's self-boasting.

After all, his record is too dazzling. In this line of work, it's all about data. If you succeed, everything you say is right.

And Qin Shaoyan really has something, and everyone who is an expert will understand it at a glance.

The ARPU value is easy to understand and is indeed worth thinking about, but the issue of retention rate is a bit confusing.

In fact, next-day retention and seven-day retention became popular in the era of web games. You can play by opening the web page, and you will lose users when you close the web page, which tests the retention rate of the game.

In this day and age, players have to work hard for half a day to download a client with a network speed of more than 100 KB, which in itself is a considerable investment cost.

The ability to actively download the game client to play online games is itself a screening threshold. As long as the game is not too bad, player loss will not be serious.

While others were still pondering the issue of retention rate, Shi Yuzhu was the first to understand it.

Why Qin Shaoyan pays attention to the retention rate? Of course, it has a lot to do with his own ground promotion.

The campus network’s promotion has enabled Internet cafes in the lower-tier markets to install the “Warring States OL” client in advance. Players in Internet cafes can simply open the client and register an account if they want to play.

This makes it easier to attract new users, which naturally reduces the user's investment cost and increases the chance of player churn.

If "Zhengtu" also wants to follow the same Internet cafe route as "Warring States OL", it also needs to consider this issue.

Of course, what makes Shi Yuzhu even more nervous is that "Warring States OL" will be directly launched in March, which will put them one step ahead of others.

(End of this chapter)