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Chapter 493 0483 [The Fist Makes a Mistake, You Ke Gets a Free Meal]

When Chen Guiliang arrived, advertisements for "Oracle Era" had already appeared in Europe.

Eurogamer.net, Europe's most influential comprehensive gaming website, has advertising costs that are significantly lower than those of gaming websites in China.

The monthly fee for their homepage top banner ads ranges from £1 to £2.5. The exact price depends on the duration of the campaign, with holiday ads costing even more.

The same advertisement costs at least three times more on 17173!
Chen Guiliang was used to the pace of the Chinese market, and when he saw the European prices, he felt they were too cheap, so he asked the marketing department here to increase the advertising budget.

Therefore, Youke (European headquarters) sponsored Eurogamer.net with a special feature called "The Future of MOBA Games" on the website. While seemingly an objective evaluation of MOBA games, it was actually a promotional article for "Oracle Era".

With this combination of measures, the total package price for the month was only £3.8.

Next up was the long-established gaming magazine, PC Gamer UK, for which they purchased a year's worth of single-page color advertising, plus a cover feature (including online access to the magazine). The total price was £22.

The promotional plan that Chen Guiliang personally revised was not limited to just one website and one magazine.

He placed banner ads on the homepages of four gaming websites and sponsored four gaming features. He also bought one-page color ads (annual subscriptions) in six gaming magazines and one cover of each of those magazines (some of which won't be on the cover until the next issue or the issue after that)!

Sean Bauer was amazed by this outrageously extravagant advertising method, but also wondered, "Boss, is this how you advertise games in China?"

Chen Guiliang said, "European game media offers are too cheap."

Sean Bauer: "..."

There are two reasons why it's cheaper: firstly, the European game market is less competitive, and secondly, the return on investment for advertising is not as high as in China.

Sean Bauer was accountable for performance and profits, which is why he followed the normal procedure. But Chen Guiliang wasn't concerned with profit margins; his priority was a rapid and effective entry into the European market, aiming to crush League of Legends as soon as possible!

As long as we can beat League of Legends, it's worth spending any amount of money on advertising now.

In Europe, there are only a handful of authoritative gaming websites and magazines that can be considered influential, and most veteran gamers are their users.

Veteran gamers in Europe suddenly found themselves surrounded by advertisements for OE (Oracle Era) overnight.

"Where did OE come from? It looks like a copy of LOL."

"Didn't you read the feature article in PC Gamer UK? When League of Legends was first in development, GS (GameX) wanted to invest in Riot Games, but after being rejected, they decided to develop OE on their own. At that time, League of Legends hadn't been released yet, so GS didn't know anything about it."

"Both of these games are derived from Dota, and there is no plagiarism between them."

"GS seems to be the developer of NFA (Neon Genesis Evolved), which I really like. This company is quite capable."

"Don't you know that Plants vs. Zombies (PVZ) is also a GS game?"

"WTF? PVZ was developed by GS?"

“PVZ??????”

"..."

The PC version of Plants vs. Zombies has already been released in Europe and America. The basic version is free to download, but only a few dozen levels are available; subsequent content requires payment.

Thanks to this "free" strategy, Plants vs. Zombies quickly spread in Europe and America, and both GamerSky and its European and American distributors made a fortune.

Last year, Plants vs. Zombies launched a mobile version, which was also free for the basic version, with subsequent levels requiring a purchase fee.

To this day, Plants vs. Zombies (free trial version) consistently ranks in the top three on major mobile game download charts in Europe and America. The paid version also manages to break into the top five, even reaching number one for a month and ranking second for two consecutive months!
European gamers may not have heard of "Future Age," but they are very familiar with "Plants vs. Zombies."

Is Youke the developer of Plants vs. Zombies?

Soon, the second wave of promotional campaigns arrived, this time giving a grand introduction to GS (Game Science)!

……

Totalbiscuit, whose real name is John Byrne, ran a personal fan radio station for World of Warcraft in his spare time from 2005 to 2010.

In 2010, he was laid off from a financial consulting firm and began working full-time as a YouTube streamer. In addition to game content such as Warcraft and Starcraft, he also does various game reviews.

This guy has a huge influence in the Western gaming industry!

His fans clicked on the latest YouTube video and saw Totalbiscuit sitting in front of his computer, beaming at the camera, saying, "I'm so happy to tell you all that I've landed a sponsorship. The sponsorship fee is quite high, but I can't reveal the exact amount. And the sponsor is really interesting; this company wants me to review their game products and allows me to be mercilessly sarcastic... Of course, I won't hold back!"

"Out of respect for the sponsor, let me first introduce the company."

"This company is called GameScience, or GS for short. Its founder, Chen, comes from a very poor rural family in China. His biggest dream when he was in middle school was to eat meat every day... Oh, a very realistic dream. Forgive me for laughing. I'm not discriminating against poor people, but I suspect that the manuscript they gave me was fabricated."

Totalbiscuit held the press release in front of the camera: "Look, this is the press release they gave me. I'm just reading it..."

"In 2004, Chen, just 18 years old, entered one of China's best universities. Upon enrolling, he used his royalties to start two companies… Wait, this guy is actually a writer? Okay, the other sheet has his details…" "This guy published a historical novel, with total sales… Oh my god… over 2000 million copies sold???? Oh bro, if I were you, I'd continue being a writer, not start any companies…"

"Let's continue... Okay, I take back what I just said. Of the two companies he founded, one is already publicly listed in the US with a market value of tens of billions of dollars. The other is the company that gave me the sponsorship fee, Game Science, GS!"

"What games has GS released? *NFA* (Nearest Fantasy)? We've already reviewed that game; it's consistently ranked third in peak concurrent users in Europe. *PVZ*? Wattfa! I just had my brains eaten by zombies a few days ago, and it's also a GS game?"

"Guys, I landed a big order! This company seems pretty amazing!"

"Minecraft? Has anyone played this game? It seems European players can already download it. Let's review it today. I'm going to download and install it now."

"Okay, let's get into the game... Haha, it's terrible pixel art, but why do I feel like laughing? It feels like I'm back in my childhood, this pixelated graphics are so nostalgic..."

"We were born in a forest... This cube under my feet is... dirt? But what should I do? I think I've dug the dirt out?"

"We can chop down trees, we've got wood... This is the crafting menu..."

"Aaaaaah, what is this thing... Wattfa... It killed me!"

In the latter half of the video, Totalbiscuit is playing Minecraft. The game footage has been edited, removing a lot of boring content and only retaining various funny and thrilling gameplay moments.

Finally, Totalbiscuit said at the end of the video: "Okay, guys, that's it for today's video. I thought this sponsorship fee would be easy to earn, but this episode didn't even finish one of GS's games. As a new player, my experience playing Minecraft so far has been pretty good. It's rough, but also a lot of fun..."

"One last plug: GS's *OE* is now available. It's a MOBA game..."

This video from Totalbiscuit has, as always, garnered an extremely high number of views.

Moreover, the audience response was quite positive.

"Congratulations, brother, on getting another advertising sponsorship."

"GS has always been a great company when it comes to games. Besides PVZ, there's also Anipop. My mom plays these two games on her phone every day."

"Anipop is also a game under GS? My damn brother is always stealing my phone to play it!"

"Haha, this is hilarious, Minecraft looks really fun."

"..."

Totalbiscuit's video significantly increased downloads of Minecraft and made his fans remember the Chinese company, Youke.

Many players discovered that they had actually played or heard of Youke's games before!

In fact, apart from "Oracle Era" which was just started testing, all of the game products that Youke sells to Europe and America are distributed by local manufacturers.

Chen Guiliang had no intention of taking back the agency rights; he would simply wait for the contract to expire naturally.

"How many registered players are there for OE?" Chen Guiliang asked the day before he left Ireland.

"We have accumulated 10.6 registered users, with a peak concurrent user count exceeding 3 yesterday. Over 8000 people participated in the survey; 44.3% of players came from communities like Dota, 26.8% from general gaming websites, 8.1% from recommendations by game streamers, 6.6% from gaming magazines, 5.2% from other social media, and the remainder from invitations from real-life friends. Going forward, hardware manufacturers and telecom operators' promotions may also attract more players..."

Chen Guiliang is not satisfied with the current data. He spent so much money on promotion and marketing, but in a week he only attracted 10 players to register.

However, the peak concurrent player count is decent, approaching one-third of the total registered users. This indicates that "Oracle Era" has a high player retention rate, and many players spend a significant amount of time online each day.

Once a positive reputation is established and the player experience remains good, the company can then enter a period of healthy development.

Some European players have already compared *Oracle Era* and *League of Legends*, concluding that *Oracle Era* has more attractive characters, a more mature ranking system, more varied and engaging gameplay, fewer buggy heroes, and more stable servers…

With comparisons, League of Legends players can be attracted.

On the third day after Chen Guiliang flew back to China, he received a call from Youke's European headquarters: "Boss, our OE player base has exploded! LOL players are coming to play our game in a retaliatory rush!"

"What's going on?" Chen Guiliang asked in surprise.

"At the end of February this year, Riot Games officially announced that the European server would be divided into Western Europe and Northern/Eastern Europe, and notified players that their accounts would be migrated. In March, players were asked to choose the target server they wanted to migrate to within a certain period of time."

"During the account migration process, a large number of bugs occurred. For example, game ranks were reset, players lost their game assets, friend lists were cleared, and some players' accounts were even stuck in the migration state, unable to log in to any server for a long time."

"Player complaints overwhelmed the League of Legends customer service in March and April. Riot Games only started fixing the bugs in April, but it wasn't fully resolved by June."

"Just then, our OE increased its promotional efforts and accumulated a certain reputation. This news spread in the LOL community, and a large number of LOL players, in order to get revenge on Riot, called on their friends to come and play our OE."

Chen Guiliang was amused by this news.

Often, all you need to do is make your product well and wait for your competitors to make mistakes.

(End of this chapter)