Since we are both reborn, of course I would choose the rich woman!

Chapter 276 Game Developers Need to Know How to Play Games (6k views, please subscribe)

Will the penguins lose? They definitely will.

However, Wang Xiaoyong couldn't say it so bluntly. He should be the one to say it, and then it would be best if President Teng or President Ren said something humble like, "There is no one in the world who is invincible," and Wang Xiaoyong would then follow up with a little flattery, thus smoothing things over.

Wang Xiaoyong may have said something that seemed a bit "idiotic," but his words were full of worldly wisdom and understanding.

These words made Zeng Lun, who was standing next to President Ren, glance at him. Then, after a moment's thought, he understood and sighed inwardly, "Indeed, the person who can succeed Yao Qiguang is not so simple."

He has enough to learn from just the way he communicates with his superiors.

If the leader is truly wise and capable, the other party will naturally recognize it as flattery and then smile and steer the conversation back on track. If not, the other party will likely appreciate the flattery, while telling the truth will actually lower their impression of the leader.

Then Zeng Lun heard President Ren chuckle and say, "Alright, alright, President Teng is here to listen to everyone's suggestions, so let's skip the formalities for now."

Wang Xiaoyong then chuckled and said, "How can this be considered politeness? I genuinely believe that Shangnan doesn't have many tricks left to play. Our technical strength, financial reserves, and talent pool completely overwhelm Shangnan's. We are absolutely certain of winning; it's just a matter of time."

"The only way I can think of to break the deadlock for Shangnan is to take the game overseas. By increasing the number of users overseas, we can close the gap between the two sides in terms of social user accumulation."

Upon hearing this, Mr. Teng nodded: "What you said is indeed correct. Overseas is indeed a way out for Shangnan Guang'an."

The reason why many of Tencent's products have been successful in China is due to the empowerment of its massive and formidable social network.

I used to have QQ.

Now we have WeChat.

Even so, many of Tencent's products have failed to succeed, such as Tencent Weibo, Tencent WeChat Official Accounts which are currently receiving heavy investment, and short video apps that Tencent has invested in.

Even with the support of Tencent's social ecosystem and the significant investment in these products, including WeChat's own "Video Accounts," Tencent has failed to make a significant impact in the short video market.

So even Tencent CEO Teng doesn't believe that Tencent will be invincible.

Seeing that the atmosphere had opened up, Chen Yu then offered a guess: "In addition to investing a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources in the MOBA mobile game project, we have also allocated some resources to the game pre-research that Shangnan Guang'an previously announced."

"Although this is a precautionary measure, I wonder if it's another conspiracy by Shangnan Guang'an? They're using a feint to catch us off guard."

Upon hearing this, President Ren sighed and said, "What you said is not impossible, but even if Lü Yao does it, there's nothing we can do."

Who knows why that young Mr. Lü from Shangnan has so many strange and unusual ideas in his head? Yet, these ideas always seem to find solid and enthusiastic validation in the market. To some extent, in the eyes of these veteran businessmen, Mr. Lü has the ability to turn lead into gold.

A genius's ideas are always one step ahead of the world, and it is remarkable enough for a person to come up with one such idea in a certain period of time. It is even remarkable to be able to imitate it and create a wildly popular product. Taobao, Tencent, and Weibo are all such products.

But what about Mr. Nan Xiaolu?

He's a total "idea king".

Mr. Ren said, "Human inspiration is limited. Even if it's Mr. Lü, he can't just recklessly spill out his inspiration like this, can he?"

Could he be the god of inspiration in ancient Greece?
President Ren didn't rule out any possibility: "Of course, President Lü from Shangnan is no ordinary person. It wouldn't be surprising if he really had some brilliant ideas, so I suggest..."

Then, President Ren looked at President Ren Teng and said, "Could we allocate some of our existing resources to prepare for unforeseen circumstances?"

Upon hearing what President Ren said, Chen Yu cursed inwardly, "Old fox." What difference was there between saying this and not saying anything at all?
of course.

If he were Mr. Ren, he would say the same thing.

Now, it's Teng Zong who's in charge on the front lines. He certainly doesn't have the authority to make the final decisions, but he still has to provide options. As for how to choose, that's Teng Zong's business.

After listening to what Mr. Ren said, Mr. Teng fell into deep thought.

Tencent's current Interactive Entertainment Group has only four game studios. The existing games and game projects under development are distributed in the smaller studios under these four studios. In order to expedite the development of a competitor to Guangan's "Honor of Kings", Tencent has already mobilized a large number of people since its arrival on the front line.

The four studios of the Interactive Entertainment Group are already severely understaffed. Even with continued high-salary recruitment, it will be difficult to quickly establish a strong workforce.

Penguins are indeed rich, but in terms of human resources... they don't have much spare capacity left.

After all, controlling human resource costs is a very important task for large companies. No matter how rich they are, their talent pool is limited, not to mention that the number of talents in the gaming industry that can catch the eye of Tencent's human resources is already very small.

So after thinking it over, President Teng made a decision: "Let's deal with whatever comes our way. From a personal point of view, I don't really believe that Mr. Lü has so many brilliant ideas. Let's take a gamble. Anyway, it won't hurt if we lose."

Mr. Teng still speaks politely.

Mr. Ren then said, "Then let's proceed with the game launch event scheduled for Singles' Day as planned, and see how Shangnan Guang'an reacts?"

It was still a tentative inquiry.

President Teng nodded and said, "Let's proceed according to the original plan."

……

On November 6th, all channels under Tencent that could release information were releasing news that Tencent's meticulously crafted MOBA mobile game was about to be launched. Exquisite posters, exquisite hero character artwork, and beautiful game trailer animations were almost overwhelming all Tencent users.

Even those who aren't Tencent users learned about this news through various unofficial channels.

This was followed by Tencent's almost extravagant promotional activities, with a dazzling array of pre-launch events that made every game enthusiast who saw them feel like they would be missing out if they didn't play.

What kind of game gives you a free skin after playing three matches?

Sign in for seven consecutive days to receive a legendary skin.

Events like rewarding players with limited-edition beta skins for reaching higher ranks have made Lü Yao, who's seen these events, want to try creating an account himself.

Meanwhile, Tencent also announced that it will hold a press conference during this year's Double Eleven shopping festival, where there will be great gifts to be given away.

Needless to say.

This move by Tencent will definitely attract many players to their games. If Tencent really has a change of heart this time, it might actually attract a significant number of mobile players.

Especially since the time Penguin chose is so close to winter break.

After two months of operation and testing to detect game bugs, when students across the country go on holiday, hundreds of millions of students will flood into Tencent's MOBA mobile game using their parents' phones, with college students and high school students being the main force.

These two groups are also the main player groups of Guang'an's "Honor of Kings".

No problem, Lü Yao is also prepared to welcome your penguin attack.

Soon, Singles' Day will arrive.

Tencent's game launch event was held as scheduled. The event was hosted by Mr. Ren, the big boss of the Interactive Entertainment Group. At the event, Mr. Ren gave a detailed introduction to their new MOBA game, "Hero Moment," and introduced the game's origin background and hero features.

And the so-called heroic characteristics...

Many of these features are based on the mechanics of heroes from the PC game *League of Legends*, with some showing an astonishing level of fidelity. While the backstories, hero designs, and other aspects differ from *League of Legends*, Ren Zhengfei's (Ren Zhengfei's) subtle hints to the audience both at the event and online were subtly indicative of these changes.

Want to experience the authentic League of Legends mobile game?

Then download our game!

of course.

To make things easier for mobile gamers, Tencent's newly developed game has adopted many settings adapted to PC games, such as the same minion spawn time as Guangan's "Honor of Kings", and an even more aggressive equipment purchase method than Guangan's "Honor of Kings".

No need to return to town, no need for pets to transport items; equipment can be purchased directly online, greatly accelerating the game's pace.

This is actually fine for mobile game players, and even a positive improvement. The reason why Lü Yao didn't do this in the first place is because this kind of quick and easy gameplay is flawed in terms of longevity.

There's not much room for maneuver left for players.

This is not only a drawback of mobile games; the game "League of Legends" will also have this drawback in the future. As the game continues to operate, the designers of these companies will start to try to force players to play the game according to their wishes by changing the rules.

This is what the gaming industry often refers to as "teaching players how to play games".

Overwatch, Apex Legends, and League of Legends all suffered from this problem. Later, these games died out. In addition to the inaction of the operators, the bad habit of game designers not playing the game and making random changes also accounted for a lot of the reasons.

Thinking back to my past life's Honor of Kings... was this game fun? Well, it was just so-so.

Even the heroes you control at the end of the game only have an understanding of the map resources, a limited number of equipment items, and a limited number of controls... Of course, it would be too much to ask about controls on such a small screen in a mobile game.

That's why Lü Yao adopted the Dota pet transport equipment mechanism to enrich the gameplay.

This gives both junglers something to do. In Guang'an's "Honor of Kings," although the equipment transported by pets won't be destroyed or dropped, junglers can use skills and other methods to kill the pets, forcing them to re-transport the equipment and thus disrupting lane activities.

The Penguin's "Hero Moment" has now removed this mechanism, which did indeed give many players a lot of fun in the early game.

However, the lack of content in the game itself will quickly make players get bored.

The Honor of Kings that Lü Yao experienced while studying abroad was like this. However, when Honor of Kings was first in Yao Qiguang's hands, all sorts of interesting heroes emerged one after another. There were as many as seven updates a month, with three new heroes added. The hero pool increased by more than a dozen heroes in half a year, which made players dizzy. They couldn't even keep up with the new heroes, let alone discuss the lack of exploration of the game's mechanics.

With the support of Tencent's social system and the poor performance of competing products, "Honor of Kings" generated so much revenue when Lü Yao was studying abroad.

Even so, when Lü Yao was studying abroad, "Honor of Kings" had already begun to weaken in the later stages and could no longer exert its power, so it could only rely on the ELO mechanism to forcibly increase the "difficulty" of the game.

Then "Honor of Kings" encountered "Brother Lei," this little genius.

Meng Tian's "chicken claw" build completely stunned the incompetent planning team of Honor of Kings, and he also admitted for the first time in an interview the existence of the ELO mechanism, AI opponents, and shadow matches.

Later on, the pesticide design team even came up with such an abstract concept as "parallel world" matches...

The parallel world that countless physics geniuses couldn't figure out was somehow created by those bastards in the game's planning team.

This is the drawback of a lack of gameplay mechanics.

Go look at League of Legends. This game has been popular for over a decade, and even ten years later, it is still the king of PC games. Even though it has become a launcher for Teamfight Tactics, the beasts and Tang-type characters in the Rift are still struggling in the quagmire of MMR, which is similar to ELO.

Why?

The same map, the same heroes, and even equipment that is only updated once every few years, and often the updates are all outdated... all of this shows that the operation of this game is terrible, but there are still so many die-hard fans sticking with this game.

Because the earliest designers of League of Legends laid an excellent foundation for the game, this technology, even after the brilliance of the Mythic Era and MMR Era, is still enough to keep it at the top of the PC game charts.

Even when your understanding of the game and your mastery of heroes are good enough, you can actually disregard the MMR mechanism.

That's the charm of League of Legends.

After watching Tencent's game launch event at the company, Lü Yao had a general idea of ​​what kind of game it was. Given the lack of gameplay and mechanics, they would definitely try to make up for it in other ways.

Either it's a massive, satisfying update, or it's the ELO mechanism that manipulates players' win rates, thereby triggering their gambling mentality.

But regardless of which one...

All of this is beneficial to Guang'an Network Games Company.

If it's a massive, comprehensive update, then Tencent will inevitably have to invest more of its resources. In that case, Lü Yao can focus on the PC game and directly steal the game's base.

If it's the ELO mechanism that's causing the trouble, then Lü Yao will use the ELO mechanism to relentlessly criticize Tencent.

In short.

The advantage is mine.

At the end of the Tencent Games press conference, Mr. Ren announced the game's download and a final giveaway: simply forward the announcement on WeChat and invite three friends to register for the game using a referral code, and all the heroes in the game will be given away for free!
After announcing this final event, Mr. Ren said with a touch of excitement, "This is absolutely an unprecedented event, and we hope everyone can have more fun in our meticulously crafted games."

After finishing his speech, Mr. Ren bowed to the audience both on-site and behind the camera, concluding the grand game launch event hosted by Tencent.

Thanks to the penguin's vigorous promotion and the unprecedented scale of the event, many players are eager to try their luck.

One of the characteristics of humans is "the love of getting a bargain." With the thought that "it's free anyway, might as well give it a try," many college students will try to get freebies, such as a newly launched account with all heroes, a lot of free skins, and even limited edition ones...

Wouldn't it be amazing to get these?
Even though Lü Yao and Tencent are now competitors, he has to admit that Tencent's current momentum is indeed formidable.

Because Tencent had done a good job in the pre-launch publicity, after the press conference, various reports praising Tencent's "Hero Moment" came out, and at the same time, some streamers who had spent money on Tencent's in-game purchases started to promote and sell the game.

Especially those currently popular streamers under the banner of "League of Legends".

Although League of Legends streamers weren't as popular as they were in the following two years at the end of 2015, there were already several very popular and mainstream League of Legends streamers at that time.

For example, Liu Mou, Ruofeng, Xiaozhi, Saonan and other League streamers.

Driven by the money spent on in-game purchases, these streamers have also started to exert their efforts, using "Hero Moments" and "League of Legends" as marketing points.

The influence of streamers did indeed attract a significant number of players to the game "Hero Moment". Coupled with the overwhelmingly positive reviews online, the number of registered players for "Hero Moment" exceeded 50 million within just a few hours of its release.

The most critical issue is that this growth rate hasn't slowed down much.

This will likely break the record for the number of mobile game players in the near future, becoming a milestone in the domestic market.

Tencent's all-out effort has shown other domestic game developers the true strength of the industry leader. The social system's support for virtual games is simply terrifying, especially now that MOBA games dominate the market.

Driven by the popularity of League of Legends, those who do not have computer equipment or do not have the time to play a game for half an hour or even an hour will become loyal fans of the game.

Even with Guangan's "Honor of Kings" already established, how long can Guangan's "Honor of Kings" last as the social model of one person leading another to spread?
The day after the press conference, Tencent's stock price rose sharply.

Meanwhile, the game, which was personally supervised by CEO Teng, has outstanding performance in terms of optimization, visual presentation, and special effects.

Given Tencent's leading position in the domestic gaming industry, many media professionals and reviewers have spontaneously begun to sing its praises, saying that Tencent has finally had a change of heart and started to seriously make games.

Although this game was squeezed out by the "catfish" of Shangnan Guang'an, and although this game was almost made by attaching itself to "League of Legends", the fact that Tencent is willing to do things seriously deserves their praise. Some small media people even fawned over Tencent, saying that Tencent has the demeanor of an industry leader.

There were also negative voices.

Shangnan Guang'an has accumulated a lot of loyal fans during this period. Guang'an's conscientious operation and generous activities have made many players have a deeper and deeper filter for Guang'an. Among Guang'an's fans, there are many victims of Penguin in the past.

After seeing the praise for the penguin spread to almost every corner of the internet, many fans, including those who are more rational and objective online, felt indignant.

So he started dissing penguins online.

"Don't you know what kind of company Tencent is? They're paying streamers to hype things up, and you actually believe them?"

"They will give you a better gaming experience, higher quality games, and more conscientious events, not because they are truly conscientious, but because there are competitors coming."

"I'm making this a promise: you'll all be disgusted by Penguin sooner or later. I don't know much about games, but I do know Penguin."

However, without the support of online trolls and marketing accounts, and without a large investment in public opinion promotion, these negative voices can only be drowned out by the overwhelming positive comments on Tencent.

Logically, Lü Yao should have led his online army to fight this battle of public opinion at this time, but the entire Shangnan Guang'an was quiet and made no move. Faced with the attack and encirclement by Tencent, Shangnan Guang'an remained eerily silent.

However, judging from Shangnan Guang'an's behavior since its emergence, it is not a company that will settle things peacefully.

Is he plotting something bad again?
Actually not.

Ever since Tencent released the game for download that day, Lü Yao downloaded it and also asked a few of his game-loving colleagues to invite them to download it as well, thus getting all the heroes in "Hero Moment" for free.

Currently, there aren't many heroes in "Hero Moment," only thirty-seven in total, with about six or seven heroes per lane. Even for general roles, there are only about ten heroes per lane.

Guangan's "Honor of Kings" has now updated to include more than sixty heroes, and the gameplay styles and different hero styles have also become more diverse.

While the game is more fun, the complex gameplay also means that the learning curve is getting steeper.

of course.

Lü Yao didn't think this was a bad thing.

He believes that a good game is one that allows players to learn, and that this is the best way to keep players engaged. When players have a thorough and sophisticated understanding of the game, developing new gameplay styles can actually help retain them.

As long as it's not an unorthodox gameplay that affects the game's balance, Guang'an allows all kinds of gameplay to exist.

He's not like the designers of League of Legends, trying to teach players how to play the game, or even coming up with bizarre things like lane detection mechanisms...

A perfectly good MOBA game has been turned into something resembling a supernatural tale with some strange rules, making it even easier for bad teammates to gank their own allies...

Who could withstand that?
Based on the principle that you must understand your opponent if you want to compete with them, Lü Yao transformed into a game enthusiast and began frantically climbing the ranks in Tencent's MOBA mobile game "Hero Moment," searching for strategies and testing gameplay.

He always kept in mind one lesson:
"You can only better fight against something if you understand it."

"Therefore, game developers must know how to play games, just as drivers must know how to drive and bakers must know how to bake bread."

(End of this chapter)