Age of Legends

Chapter 270 Ice and Fire

That said, Yang Jing might actually be Zhang Chen's biggest takeaway from making games. Because the most important thing about a game is its gameplay, which is the foundation of the game. A pillar supported only by a foundation may be strong, but it will always lack the possibility of upward development. Upward development may be packaging, narrative, or an outer garment that can further guide people to explore the core of the game. These are all about aesthetics.

A game with only gameplay is unlikely to become a great game; its influence often lies solely in the gameplay itself. However, a game packaged with exceptional aesthetics can have its influence permeate broader cultural, artistic, and even social spheres, truly becoming the ninth art.

Zhang Chen has the experience of his past life, which allows him to learn from and refine many games with excellent gameplay. However, if he wants to create a truly successful game of his own, the work of packaging the game and conveying its meaning is very important.

Only he understood how rare Yang Jing's ability to express such exceptional artistic talent was. She was comparable to Takeshi Nagano, Koei's in-house illustrator.

In 95, Takeshi Nagano, a graduate of the oil painting department of the College of Art at Nihon University, was selected by Koei Tecmo to be in charge of the illustration design for Romance of the Three Kingdoms 5. As soon as his work was released, he took over the reins from Noriyoshi Irai, a leading figure in the Japanese illustration industry, and was recognized by players as the work that was closest to the original image of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, thus influencing countless players.

It can be said that the 86 CCTV television series "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" defined the realistic image of the characters from the Three Kingdoms period. Meanwhile, Koei Tecmo's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" game series, especially starting with the fifth installment overseen by Takeshi Nagano, revolutionized the game and virtual anime representation of the Three Kingdoms culture, becoming Koei Tecmo's signature title.

Since then, every cover of Koei's Three Kingdoms series has sparked a collecting frenzy, with the original covers repeatedly fetching millions of yen at auction. Countless related prints and stamps have also been published based on this influence.

Countless other games have followed suit and imitated it, and Koei Tecmo is well aware of its power, so it has repeatedly wielded the copyright stick to sue countless imitators.

In Zhang Chen's eyes now, Yang Jing is essentially his Nagano Takeshi.

At least for now, this Three Kingdoms-themed war strategy web game, while ensuring basic gameplay, is most attractive to players primarily due to its background illustrations and original artwork. Yang Jing's management has given Zhang Chen the potential to directly compete with Romance of the Three Kingdoms in character design.

Of course, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is deeply ingrained in people's minds and is not so easily shaken. But what about other projects in the future, and the other worlds that emerge from the world of Wanxiang Jianghu? In addition to gameplay and aesthetic style, the game needs the participation of a designer like Yang Jing.

Zhang Chen was somewhat looking forward to seeing how many explosive creative ideas and works would emerge from the future of the world of martial arts.
Jing Qinming rented an office building next to the computer mall, making it convenient to recruit people from the nearby university town and to get help from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China when he couldn't handle a problem. Besides, the living conditions here are quite good, the surrounding business districts are well-established, and it's located within the established First Ring Road. In fact, it also takes into account that the three of them are close to home when they go to work.

Jing Qinming's programming team is progressing quite quickly. They originally planned to complete the system command framework in two weeks, the map engine in two weeks, and the asynchronous combat system in another two weeks. Now, it's only the end of January, and they're already working on the asynchronous combat system. After the asynchronous combat system is tested, data storage, communication optimization, and stress testing will follow. This will likely be completed by the start of the new semester. Combined with the art team's progress, the game should be ready for initial release around the second half of the year.

This is still a possibility.

Compared to the smooth progress of the Wanxiang Jianghu team, things are generally going well on the QQ side, but problems have still arisen.

The reason was that after the launch of QQ groups, the server pressure increased day by day. In 2001, the entire QQ team was considering making money through open source. Zhang Chen proposed to launch a membership program, the Avatar program, introduce Q coins, and cooperate with China Telecom on a series of open source programs. Then, Pony Ma suddenly had another idea and implemented another strategy, which was to charge for membership registration.

This was a personal decision made by Pony Ma after Zhang Chen launched the Avatar and Q Coin plans. Pony Ma's thinking was very clear: "Now we have hundreds of thousands of new members every day, and we have also launched the Q Coin payment channel. So we will charge a registration fee for new members. Two Q Coins for each new registered member. I don't think that's excessive. With our growth rate, this alone can generate hundreds of thousands or even millions of new revenue per month!"

When this idea was first proposed, everyone agreed with it. Now everyone is trying to find ways to charge fees. Pony Ma launched QQ membership fees, Zhang Chen proposed Avatar, and Q coins were used to convert users into paying customers. These were all times when morale was high. Pony Ma's new membership fee can be said to be a refreshing idea.

However, Zhang Chen expressed his opposition in the senior management group: "I don't think this is a good plan. The rapid growth of members is precisely because of its free feature. Although the current high number of new members has put pressure on the server, I think we can limit the number of new accounts or implement real-name registration to limit access. But charging new users, I think, will shake our foundation."

Zhang Chen's words were a bit too much, and no one responded in the internal senior management group for a long time.

Wang Bowen then conveniently stepped in to smooth things over, saying, "We can think about it more, but I think Zhang Chen's opinion is worth considering, after all, many of his ideas make sense!"

As one of the major shareholders, Wang Bowen usually does not express his opinion, but when he does, it is inevitably to support Zhang Chen.

Pony Ma's decision was thwarted, which made the atmosphere somewhat awkward. Zhang Chen's statement carried significant weight. While QQ's rapid growth is undoubtedly due to its user-friendly social networking nature, Zhang Chen's assistance played a crucial role in several instances where QQ managed to avert crises, thus contributing to its current high growth rate.

But no one understood why Zhang Chen opposed this decision.

Pony Ma finally made the decision: "Even without charging for membership registration, we still need to limit the number of new users. Many people simply register multiple accounts; some don't even chat anymore, they just frantically register accounts every day, selecting the best ones to sell. We need to crack down on this. Real-name registration is difficult to implement right now, so it's better to limit new membership registration through a paid system. I actually think this is a great method; it will increase our revenue, and we can also provide deeper profit-sharing with voice information services and telecommunications companies. This is crucial for building a paid channel. Let's decide on this!"

This was the first time that Pony Ma had pushed through a decision despite Zhang Chen's opposition. However, privately, Pony Ma still called Zhang Chen to discuss it: "I really think this idea is great, so let's give it a try. It's not that I'm ignoring your opinion..."

Zhang Chen said, "It's okay, you can give it a try, but I reserve my opinion."

Little Ma personally called to persuade Zhang Chen to change his mind, but he didn't expect Zhang Chen to be so stubborn. This was something Little Ma didn't realize. Of course, he also nodded and agreed on the phone. I don't know if he thought at the time that this founder shareholder might be difficult to deal with, and that one day they might not be able to stay together.
By the time Zhang Chen finished his final exams, QQ had only been charging new members for a month.

The user backlash was strong over the past month.

First, on some well-known domestic BBS forums, there was a chorus of complaints from day one. QQ groups were also filled with insults; in Zhang Chen's class group, on the second day after everyone learned about the fee, someone left a message saying, "Eat shit! Who came up with this idea! New users have to pay!"

"Yeah, you have to call them and they'll give you the number over the phone. Each new number costs two yuan in phone fees. I tried to register yesterday, and when I picked up the phone, my mom scolded me!"

"Damn, two yuan a account! That's expensive! If I had applied for more than twenty accounts before, wouldn't I have made a fortune!"

"do you remember?"

"Holy crap... I just remembered, I only remembered seven or eight numbers at most, and some I didn't like, so I just threw them away on the spot. Now I've lost out big time! Ugh, why is it charged?! Other similar software doesn't charge!"

This wave of noise has been constant.

On the day Zhang Chen finished his final exams, Wang Shuowei sent him a message that evening: "Go online! This post has gone viral, it's been pinned to the top of every forum, and it even made the headlines on major portal websites today!"

Zhang Chen clicked on the link, which led to an article titled "Penguin QQ, you've gone too far!"

Seeing the above, Zhang Chen knew that the entire Tencent headquarters in Shenzhen was probably on edge today. At least right now, the internal senior management group was completely silent.

The accelerated pace of paid services on Tencent's platform, such as QQ membership, Avatar, and pets, can be considered as enhancing value-added services without affecting basic functions. However, the fact that new registered users are also being charged is infuriating.

The author of the article called on everyone to boycott QQ's charging policy, which was well-reasoned and highly persuasive: "If there is another online instant messaging software that can compete with QQ, the fact that Tencent launched this registration method that users do not welcome is suicidal."

"This could push Tencent further down the path of charging fees. In the future, you might have to pay a usage fee just to log in to QQ, or even pay to send a message. If no one can stop Tencent, this is not impossible. Monopoly can breed a company's desire to endlessly extract profits from users!"

Zhang Chen knew the most fatal problem with this post: it labeled Tencent's current high-speed growth, which was unique to Tencent, as being moving towards the red line of monopoly.

Monopolistic practices can only occur in industries vital to the nation's survival and can only be controlled by the state. If private capital were to embark on a monopolistic path, it would have too many vulnerabilities to exploit.

This article is truly devastating, and its widespread reposting and trending status reflect the general dissatisfaction among users in society today.

It points directly to the current Penguin headquarters.

Zhang Chen closed the webpage.

While the world of martial arts and chivalry is progressing smoothly and developing well, QQ is being grilled by public opinion, experiencing both extremes.

It's a bit mentally taxing.

Zhang Chen, who had just finished his final exams, just wanted to get a good night's sleep.

(End of this chapter)