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Chapter 504 0494 [North America Can't Be Left Behind]

In the business negotiation area of ​​the ChinaJoy exhibition, Youke sold several more web games and mobile games.

However, large-scale games have not been discussed yet.

Chen Guiliang also attended an investment and financing promotion event, a new activity introduced this year. It aims to facilitate financing for small factories and investment for large factories.

In addition, there are the China Game Business Conference, the China Game Developers Conference, the China Game Outsourcing Conference, and so on.

In particular, the game developer conference invited the producers of games such as Diablo and Lineage to give speeches.

"You've invested again this year?" Chen Guiliang asked Tao Chenggang at the cocktail party.

Tao Chenggang nodded: "We've invested in two mobile game studios, both run by young people full of dreams. If they succeed, great! If they fail, we'll just consider it as joining in the fun with these young people."

Chen Guiliang said, "Mobile games do have potential, and the market size will continue to grow in the future."

Tao Chenggang laughed and said, "Everyone can see that, but whether you can make money depends on your skills and luck. Sometimes, luck plays a big part."

The two had barely exchanged a few words when someone came over to try and get close to them.

Chen Guiliang raised his glass with a broad smile, his attitude sincere and warm to everyone, giving people a feeling of being bathed in a spring breeze. He learned this trick from Li Yanhong.

After a while, Ding Sanshi came over.

Instead of talking about games, Ding Lei asked about phones: "Will HarmonyOS release new products this year?"

Chen Guiliang said, "We need to release an upgraded version of Tian Shu."

“I thought it was the second model in the Seven Stars series,” Ding Sanshi said with a smile, pulling out a Tian Shu phone. “I switched to your phone. I used to use an iPhone 4, and I even paid a $99 annual fee for Apple’s cloud storage service. But the user experience was terrible, it was too slow.”

Chen Guiliang laughed and said, "Apple's servers are in the United States, and Chinese users need to transmit data over long distances to access them. How can the speed not be slow? Network latency and packet loss are serious problems."

The upgraded version of HarmonyOS TianShu will definitely be launched earlier this year than the Apple 4S.

Because Steve Jobs was seriously ill and about to step down as president, many things at Apple were delayed.

Chen Guiliang and Ding Sanshi chatted over drinks, talking about everything from mobile phones to mobile games, and then from mobile games to the application of cloud technology in games.

NetEase is now getting into this too. Although it seems like they entered the market relatively late, they have already accumulated relevant technical expertise.

……

The day after the cocktail party, the CJ exhibition came to an end.

The offline semi-finals of the "Oracle Era" National City Championship were held at this time.

Since it started last autumn, this competition has almost become a farce in the Chinese e-sports industry.

Because the prize money is too high!

Given the current market conditions, a prize of 3 yuan for the champion is reasonable, while 5 yuan would be considered a high amount.

Chen Guiliang set it directly to 200 million.

Many esports clubs have become embroiled in disputes over participation in competitions. As a result, a large number of professional players have joined internet cafe teams as individuals, and even CS and CF players have come to participate in the competitions.

The initial competition format also had problems. Since it was a city-wide competition, the original plan was to divide the competition areas according to cities. However, it was only during the registration phase that it was discovered that there were too many teams registering from Beijing and Shanghai, so the competition format had to be temporarily adjusted to remove regional restrictions.

The teams that have now entered the semifinals have 80% of their players who have played professionally before, all vying for the 200 million yuan prize.

Farce aside, the publicity effect was phenomenal.

All esports players in China, regardless of what game they play, are paying attention to this. Numerous internet cafes and gamers are also following this development.

Especially during the round of 16 (online competition) a few days ago, the number of viewers on the A-site live streaming platform exploded.

……

The 5000-seat audience at the semi-finals were almost full.

Chen Guiliang did not go to the scene, but instead watched the live broadcast while lying in his hotel room.

He will only appear during the finals and personally present the award to the champion.

The competition hadn't officially started yet, but the three hosts were already chatting. They were Dong Can, Xiao Cang, and Dai Shi.

Dong Can originally wanted to participate in the competition, but ultimately gave up because this almost caused the EHOME club to fall apart.

Xiaocang was previously a professional Warcraft player and commentator, and also served as a torchbearer for the 08 Olympic Games in Xingcheng as an e-sports player.

Xiaocang had been playing League of Legends (North American server) for a long time, so when League of Legends and Oracle were launched at the same time last year, she didn't think much about it and went to make LOL tutorial videos.

Beautiful women are a scarce resource in the e-sports industry.

Tencent reacted quickly, promptly signing Xiaocang as the brand manager for League of Legends.

As a result, Oracle Era became increasingly popular, while League of Legends had too many shortcomings to compete with. When Youke extended an olive branch and promised to pay her breach of contract penalty, Xiaocang switched jobs without hesitation.

She is now not only the brand manager of "Oracle Era", but also a streamer and content creator on ACFun, and has served as a commentator for the City Championship for two consecutive months.

"It was my first time commentating on an offline OE tournament, and the atmosphere was incredibly lively. To be honest, I was a little nervous," Xiaocang said with a smile, patting his chest.

Dong Can said, "You look beautiful today."

Ogura said, "You guys are handsome too."

Dai Shi touched his hair and joked, "I think I don't need to wash my hair anymore. You Ke specially hired a stylist to do our hairstyles. Don't I look really cool?"

The live stream chat was filled with comments, mostly things like "Xiaocang is so pretty," "Xiaocang is so beautiful," and "Xiaocang, I love you." At this point in the esports industry, not only did the players not care about their image, but even the commentators were very casual.

Chen Guiliang directly hired a professional styling team to design looks for the three commentators and even rented three sets of clothes for them.

The appearance and class are instantly elevated.

Xiaocang, in particular, amazed the viewers in the live stream today.

The three commentators chatted for a few minutes, then began reading out the advertising sponsors and introducing the two teams that were about to appear.

When introducing the team members in detail, the commentators were trying not to laugh, because most of them were familiar faces in the esports circle, yet they went to internet cafe teams to pretend to be amateur players.

Chen Guiliang watched the live stream while waiting for international emails.

Acquiring Mgame is no longer possible. Although the company suffered huge losses last year, it has been laying off employees and cutting projects this year, clearly trying to survive by cutting costs and increasing revenue.

Moreover, Mgame has just announced the development of "Yulgang 2".

The cell phone rings.

"Boss, the email has been sent."

"Ok."

Chen Guiliang opened the email, which contained a series of information on South Korean game industry talents.

Kim Jun-hee, former Deputy Director of Operations for MapleStory, has been absent from the company for two months and is currently seeking employment.

Lee Ji-hoon, a mid-level manager at the Korea eSports Association, has extensive experience in operating professional StarCraft leagues. He hasn't left the company, but has been marginalized.

Shen Dongxu, former Deputy Director of Marketing at Mgame, was laid off a month ago.

Park Sang-min...

This information was collected by professional organizations, and the people Chen Guiliang sent over did some filtering before sending it over.

There were even messages from the team.

For example, Actoz Soft, the developer of "Legends", is shifting its strategic focus to distribution and mobile games, and has laid off 90 R&D staff in one go.

In the past two years, the trends in the game markets of China and South Korea seem to be similar.

Traditional MMOs have stagnated, while social games, web games, and mobile games have developed rapidly. Game companies that cling to traditional models are declining, and everyone is striving to find a way to transform.

Chen Guiliang carefully reviewed the document twice, highlighting several individuals and writing down his comments. He then forwarded the email to Qu Guohao, instructing him to send a team to conduct an in-person inspection. He also wanted to finalize the matter of opening a subsidiary in South Korea.

Starting a game company in South Korea is much easier than in Japan.

Japan requires all sorts of qualifications, making it incredibly rigid and inflexible.

The Japanese esports market is also difficult to operate, and there is even a cap on esports prize money (which is very low). Exceeding the cap is illegal.

After sending the email, Chen Guiliang continued watching the live broadcast of the match. The first game was already over, and the second game was in its 9th minute.

"Both sides simultaneously activated teleportation in the bottom lane; the Guangzhou Zeus Internet Cafe team is in danger..."

"Should we tower dive? Let's tower dive right now, before our teammates even teleport down..."

Chen Guiliang turned off the live stream and stopped watching.

The technique is too crude.

Although Chen Guiliang was terrible at it, he had exceptionally high standards.

Even though most of the players on both sides in this battle are from professional esports teams, "Oracle Era" has only been online for a year, and various gameplay elements are still being explored. Especially the details, even the placement of wards is not very sophisticated.

Chen Guiliang switched from the official live stream and quickly found acquaintances in other live streams.

While munching on sunflower seeds, MISS watched the game with the audience and chatted idly.
"Why didn't I commentate on Oracle Era? I had to prepare for the WCG. In two days, I'll be commentating on StarCraft II, Warcraft III, and Dota 2 at the WCG China Finals. Then I'll be invited by a Korean TV station to commentate on the LG StarCraft II Invitational Tournament at the Water Cube, and I'll also be playing in an exhibition match..."

"Can Oracle Era be included in WCG? I heard that Youke is in contact with them, and it should be able to get in next year. This game is currently only available in China and Europe..."

Chen Guiliang turned off the live stream and took out his laptop to check the documents.

We must also enter the US market as soon as possible; we can't wait for League of Legends to mature.

At this time, League of Legends was not only experiencing problems in Europe, but also in its home base of North America, where chaos was rampant.

The main problems include: unstable servers and prolonged maintenance, preventing many players from playing the game normally. Recently, the servers were hacked, resulting in the theft of user information. Frequent version updates, with frequent changes to hero skills, talents, and summoner spells. Furthermore, cheating is frequently reported…

That's right, it's a cheat code.

There are even cheats that can modify hero attributes!

Yoko has just built its European headquarters, is opening subsidiaries in Japan and South Korea, and is now expanding into North America. They're running out of staff.

Although the overseas subsidiaries mainly employ local staff, some people still need to be sent from China.

Damn, things are developing a bit too fast; who knows where problems might arise.

The problem was that Fist expanded too quickly, causing trouble in Europe, which allowed Chen Guiliang to seize the opportunity and replace them in one fell swoop.

The person in charge of Youke America must be carefully selected to avoid making any basic mistakes.

Chen Guiliang plans to personally travel to the United States in a while to meet with the talents being recruited by headhunting firms.

(End of this chapter)