my return 2002

Chapter 281 is the most expensive one for free.

Unsurprisingly, Wang Xiaochuan overturned his car, but instead of becoming angry, Wang Xiaochuan scratched his hair.

"It seems that this voice library is not perfect."

Shen Lang was afraid that Wang Xiaochuan would dig into the horns again, so he hurriedly said: "We just need to compress user A's voice into a format similar to MP3 and send it to user B. There is no need to fully analyze their conversation content and convert the voice The function of writing can be added later, otherwise the amount of work will be too large.”

Wang Xiaochuan was full of disappointment, but Yu Liang heaved a sigh of relief. If so, his pressure would be much less.

Shen Lang reminded Yu Liang: "As for how to compress voice into MP3 or even smaller formats, you can talk to Zhou Shengjun. 360 video should have some technical accumulation in this area."

After Yu Liang went out happily, Shen Lang left Wang Xiaochuan behind.

"How's the smart AI project doing recently?"

Wang Xiaochuan shook his head helplessly: "There is still a long way to go. Intelligent AI needs to constantly update iterative algorithms, and the requirements for the database are also very high. Even with the data collected by 360 ecology, it is far from enough."

Shen Lang understood the reason why he couldn't eat hot tofu in a hurry, so he patted Wang Xiaochuan on the shoulder: "There is no rush for this. We have already started earlier than other companies, and we have enough time to explore."

In 2006, the world's artificial intelligence was still in the exploratory stage. It was not until 2011 that Watson's artificial intelligence program participated in the American quiz show, defeated two human champions, and won a prize of 100 million US dollars. Artificial intelligence gradually started. received the attention of the whole society.

After hesitating for a while, Wang Xiaochuan said to Shen Lang with some embarrassment: "Mr. Shen, can you approve some more funds for me?"

Shen Lang bared his teeth for a while: "You guys used up this year's budget so quickly?"

Wang Xiaochuan's Intelligence Research Institute was established two years ago, and Shen Lang allocated funds to him according to an annual budget of [-] million yuan, all of which came from his personal account. If it weren't for his good income in the stock market, it would be a bit overwhelming. live.

"Isn't this why we recruited a few returnee mathematicians from abroad last year, and their research projects are relatively expensive." Wang Xiaochuan also knew that the research institute was spending a lot of money, but he hadn't produced any results yet, so he had to take advantage of this time to do voice work. The recognition system came asking for money.

Seeing him like this, Shen Lang gave him an annoyed look: "Okay, as long as the money is spent where it should be spent, it won't be considered a loss. How about it, I will approve another 5000 million for you next month, but this You should save some money, this is the last budget for this year."

"Then next year?"

"I'll grant you 1.5 million next year."

"Hey, Boss Shen is mighty."

"Fuck off."

On July 7th, the Ministry of Information issued a notice announcing the permanent closure of all voice chat rooms. Parents naturally applauded as soon as the news came out, but it caused dissatisfaction among many young people.

Especially for some gamers, some gamers have found like-minded friends through the voice chat room, and even found the other half, and a game like World of Warcraft that requires a lot of teamwork, without the voice chat room, many dungeons would not exist at all. Many players found that without someone to command, they couldn't even beat some of the not-so-difficult dungeons before.

The Duowan game community was captured by players in an instant, and angry players kept posting to express their dissatisfaction and indignation, as if playing more games was the culprit.

Helpless, the group of gamers is a vulnerable group no matter what time it is, they have little say in society, and they are helpless in the face of game companies, let alone the majority of parents and the information department?
There are very few news reports on the demands of game players on the Internet, and few media are willing to speak out for the player group. In the eyes of the majority of parents, games are a representative of playfulness. It is best not to have games in this world.

What's more interesting is that after the voice chat room was forced to shut down, the number of simultaneous online users of World of Warcraft directly dropped by [-], which was the first drop since World of Warcraft entered the mainland market.

Zhu Jun also specially called Shen Lang to complain about this.

Shen Lang's heart moved: "We are making a built-in voice system, if you are interested, you can come and chat."

Without saying a word, Zhu Jun appeared in Shen Lang's office in less than 10 minutes.

The two families are separated by a building, and Zhu Jun often comes to drink tea with Shen Lang, and when he comes, he is not polite, and takes out a can of the best tea from the cabinet by himself, and then starts to make tea by himself.

Shen Lang rolled his eyes straight away, and said distressedly: "You don't need to put so much tea in a cup of tea, and you won't be afraid of insomnia after drinking it."

"Tch, it's just to drink some tea from you. As for being so stingy, I'll bring you a pot of good tea next time." Zhu Jun curled his lips and said contemptuously.

"By the way, what about the built-in voice system you just mentioned?"

Shen Lang sat in front of Zhu Jun: "It's actually very simple, that is, the simple function of the voice chat room is embedded in the game, so that players can communicate internally by forming teams or gangs, but there are more restrictions, not as free as the voice chat room .”

Zhu Jun's eyes brightened: "This method is good. It can avoid supervision and meet the needs of players. How is it going? Take me to see it."

As he was speaking, he was about to pull Shen Lang out, but Shen Lang pulled him back and said angrily: "It's not that fast, at least it won't be launched until the end of the month after passing the test, and don't be too happy, Blizzard may not agree to it." You plug into other programs."

Zhu Jun also calmed down after hearing this. Since the official public beta test of World of Warcraft last year, Ninetowns and Blizzard have gone through a honeymoon period.

But soon, Blizzard's arrogant attitude was fully exposed. Ninetowns has no right to make any changes in the game content. Even if there are some bugs, Ninetowns can only notify Blizzard first, and then Blizzard will evaluate it and finally decide whether to proceed. Revise.

In front of Blizzard, Ninetowns had no right to speak at all, which caused Zhu Jun to have disputes with the Blizzard team more than once, but because Ninetowns invested too much in World of Warcraft, they could only choose to compromise in the end. In the movie, Blizzard also saw the Ninetowns' dependence on World of Warcraft, and acted even more recklessly.

"Hey, let me talk to Blizzard first." Zhu Jun sighed, and then looked at Shen Lang enviously.

"It's still hello, several games are independently developed, so you don't need to look at other people's faces."

Shen Lang shrugged: "I told you a long time ago that the initiative to be an agent is always in the hands of others, you won't listen."

Zhu Jun said helplessly: "Do you think that everyone is as lucky as you? The two self-developed games are very popular. Ninetowns also has a self-developed game, okay? Except for tens of millions of losses, there is no gain at all. No."

"What's tens of millions? [Zhu Xian] I just invested 1.5 million. In fact, making games is the same as doing research. Not only success is the reward, but also the experience accumulated from failure is also the reward." Shen Lang retorted.

"Well, I'm not like your company, which is your own. You can decide everything yourself." Zhu Jun said enviously. As if being put on invisible shackles, no matter what you do, the first thing to consider is the impact on the company's stock price.

Shen Lang also knew that Zhu Jun was involuntary, so he stopped persuading him.

After Zhu Jun went back, he went to Blizzard's domestic team, but they just said something perfunctory.

"We know and will report to headquarters."

Then Zhu Jun was sent away. Zhu Jun was very depressed, but he could only helplessly wait for news from Blizzard.

In late July, the built-in voice system has been added to two games, Jianyu Jianghu and Ghost Chuideng, for internal testing.

Players of these two games were pleasantly surprised to find that they can also conduct voice chat directly in the game, which is more convenient than the previous voice chat room.

Although there were some bugs in the closed beta stage, such as players being unable to enter the chat team, or others not being able to hear what they said, the players still showed plenty of patience.

After a week-long internal beta, the players of Jianyu Jianghu and Ghost Blowing Lantern ushered in the official version of the built-in voice. vulgar income.

This situation has also awakened many game companies, how can they still do this?Netease followed closely by adding voice chat functions in Fantasy Westward Journey and Westward Journey 2.

However, not all companies have such strong research and development capabilities as Mountain Dew Entertainment and NetEase. Many game companies are just game agents and have no way of independent research and development. However, built-in voices have gradually become the standard configuration of games. Will be despised by players.

At this time, Shen Lang expressed very generously that he could provide built-in voice services for a large number of game manufacturers, and it was free.

Of course, Shen Lang will definitely not do a loss-making business. The reason why he provides free built-in voice services to these game manufacturers is mainly to collect enough audio samples to expand Wang Xiaochuan's voice recognition database.

Since Shen Lang had provided real-name verification services for many game manufacturers before, these game manufacturers did not suspect that Shen Lang had any ulterior motives.

Inevitably, some people think that Shen Lang is a big fool, and that the built-in voice system that he has worked so hard to develop is completely prodigal behavior for others to use for free.

Obviously these people still don't understand the truth that free is the most expensive.

Zhu Jun, who was the first to learn about the built-in voice, waited for a long time without receiving a reply from Blizzard. Even after many games had enabled the built-in voice function, World of Warcraft still remained silent.

Players began to leave messages on the official World of Warcraft website and the Warcraft zone where they played more games, scolding Ninetowns for their inaction, and criticizing Zhu Jun for being smashed in his head by football.

Zhu Jun was also aggrieved by this, but he couldn't tell the players clearly, so he had to negotiate with Blizzard again. However, Blizzard's attitude was still not very positive. They even expressed their incomprehension about the prohibition of voice chat rooms in the mainland, thinking that Zhu Jun should Go negotiate with higher-ups instead of adding extra features to World of Warcraft.

Zhu Jun was so angry that he was about to vomit blood, but there was nothing he could do.

The players here don't care about that much, they only know that Blizzard is represented by Ninetowns, and they keep putting pressure on Ninetowns to make Zhu Jun's head full.

On the other hand, Penguin was affected by the QQ voice shutdown and gradually dissipated, and the daily data of users began to return to normal, which also made Xiao Ma heave a sigh of relief.

However, the biggest problem facing Xiao Ma at present is insufficient revenue. Although Penguin has revenue from various value-added services such as membership, QQ show, and QQ space, the huge user base of QQ also brings huge bandwidth and server costs. , and QQ's game business has not developed.

This made Brother Xiao Ma very upset, and began to send people to South Korea frequently to represent some games to increase revenue. Unfortunately, at this time, Penguin can only be regarded as a small shrimp in the game industry, and they have no successful games. Operating experience, some games with better quality can't get them at all.

For example, the games of the three major Korean game giants are basically handed over to big companies such as Shanda and Ninetowns, and Penguin looks down on some games with poor quality.

Until by chance, Brother Xiaoma discovered a game company in Pengcheng, and released a game called "Huaxia OL". Brother Xiaoma immediately made a decision to acquire the parent company of "Huaxia OL". , and changed the name of "Huaxia OL" to "QQ Huaxia" for operation.

Needless to say, the quality of "Huaxia OL" itself is not bad, coupled with the large-scale promotion of QQ, it quickly achieved good results, and the number of online users at one time was as high as 20.

At the same time, Shanda’s [Dungeon and Warrior] was more interesting. At first, it gained a lot of attention due to the lawsuit with [Ghost Blowing Lantern]. Unfortunately, it was quickly voted by players because of the quality of the game. .

Although Xu Min has been working hard to modify [Dungeon and Fighter], there is a common problem with Korean games, that is, there are almost no protection measures for the protection of the source code.

Soon, various bad offline cheats appeared on the national server [Dungeon and Warriors]. Shanda actually cracked down on cheats very severely, and quickly banned a large number of player accounts.

However, this did not solve the problem, and soon more problems of [Dungeon and Warriors] were exposed, and there was even an incident where players could directly modify the attributes of game characters through the BUG of the client source code, which undoubtedly crushed the camel The last straw.

Players left one after another, and at the same time, the online game fell from the highest 20 to less than [-]. Naturally, Shanda gave up on this game, and prepared to do the last wave of search before the server was shut down, adding a large number of paid items. Xu Min expressed fierce protest against this, but his arms still couldn't twist his thighs.

I can only watch [Dungeon and Warriors] quickly decline.

On August 8st, Zhulang Technology made a high-profile announcement that YY Space was officially launched, and announced the program development kit.

The news immediately caused a sensation in the mainland Internet circles.

(End of this chapter)