Rebirth of the Internet: Starting from Games

Chapter 166 Arriving late at Xishan Residence

After previously publishing an article summarizing Century Interactive Entertainment’s press conference, Volkswagen Software seemed to have opened up the two channels of Ren and Du and did not follow the trend.

Instead, they took a different approach and analyzed and summarized any new actions of Century Interactive Entertainment, such as Legend 3, and the blind box recharge card and in-game card drawing mechanism of Three Kingdoms OL.

After the article was published, the market feedback was surprisingly good, especially with calls from major portals wanting to purchase the article's license.

If these innovative models of Century Interactive Entertainment are regarded as teaching materials, then Xu Wenhan is a well-deserved outstanding teacher for popular software, and even more specifically.

Ding Lei of NetEase, Chen Tianqiao of Shanda and other leading online game manufacturers have become outstanding student representatives of this session.

Integrate the knowledge points taught by the teacher and apply what you have learned.

Of course, there is also a potential poor student in this class who wants to counterattack, such as Lei Jun, who was the CEO of Kingsoft Software at the time.

Founded in 1988, Kingsoft Software Co., Ltd. is China's leading provider of application software products and services.

It has independently developed a series of well-known products such as WPS Office and Kingsoft PowerWord for individual users and enterprise users.

This also includes "Swordsman Love" produced by Xishanju Game Studio.

In 1994, the three swordsmen Xishan Ju Qiuxin, Li Lanyun, and Luo Xiaoyin gathered together to create the PC stand-alone game "Swordsman Love", which was completed by a seven-person development team in less than a year based on the immature "Dugu Nine Swords". come out.

In March 1997, "Swordsman Love" was launched in six major cities at the same time, priced at 3 yuan. At that time, Kingsoft's market expectation for the game was 6 copies, but it ended up selling 128 copies. This was still insufficient, and the supply was once cut off. Otherwise, the sales volume would have been higher, and Jinshan eventually earned more than 1 million yuan.

Various game media gave nearly full marks. In the same year, "Swordsman Love" won the "Best Domestic RPG Game Award" and "Best Music Award" from Popular Software, ranking first in the mainland game list.At the same time, "Swordsman Love" was voted as the "Most Popular Computer CD" by readers of "Multimedia World".

"Swordsman Love" made Xishanju famous in one battle.

Strike while the iron is hot, and at the end of 1997, the production of "Swordsman Love II" was put on the agenda.

In June 2000, after nearly three years of production, "Swordsman Love II" was officially released.

In July of the following year, Xishanju launched the first spin-off of the Swordsman series, "Legend of Moon Shadow"

At the turn of the millennium, the game market experienced a sudden change and entered the era of online games. Some people even jokingly called this year the "first year of online games."

The unexpected success of "The King of Kings" shocked Jinshan executives. This was also a crucial year for Xishanju. Chairman Qiu Bojun gave an order and Xishanju began to transform into the online game "Swordsman Love Online Edition" was put on the agenda.

In 2002, Kingsoft announced that due to the impact on the development progress of "JX Online Edition", it would abandon "JX Online 3" which was still under development and focus on developing the online version. This news also marked the path for the stand-alone version of the "JX Online" series. A full stop.

In fact, there is another important reason for Kingsoft to transform into online games, and that is that Lei Jun, the CEO of Kingsoft, wants Kingsoft to go public.

The good performance of Kingsoft Internet Security and WPS in the market is accompanied by huge R&D investment, which makes Kingsoft’s capital flow very tight. Only listing financing is Kingsoft’s only way out. Lei Jun knows this very well, and only By being listed on the market, Kingsoft can develop rapidly and meet the interests of most people.

As a result, after Kingsoft converted into a joint-stock company at the end of 2000, the possibility of listing increased greatly.At this time, the domestic Shenzhen stock market had plans to launch a GEM, and Kingsoft also planned to list there, but the GEM was ultimately not launched.So I was ready to switch to the A-share market, but the company's net assets failed to meet the standards and the application was not approved.

The two listings failed, and Kingsoft could only ALL IN the online game industry. This was the "magic weapon" Lei Jun found that could make Kingsoft go public.This year, after persuading Qiu Bojun, Lei Jun resolutely sold Joyo.com to Amazon, which had just entered the domestic e-commerce market, regardless of the objections of others, and invested all the initial US$2000 million into the online game business.

Shifting from the stand-alone market to online games requires a lot of costs. However, with the preparations made in the past two years, Lei Jun, who is now very wealthy, has begun to make frequent moves. He is renting office buildings, buying equipment, and doing research and development on engines. Working overtime every day to speed up the development progress of "Swordsman Love Online Edition", and even personally supervising the formation, made the technical team below miserable. It was embarrassing to leave work at 10pm, and they even only had one day off a month.

Under Lei Jun's extreme high pressure, the research and development progress has been significantly improved. It can be said that one month is more efficient than the previous three months.

In mid-August 2003, the development of "Swordsman Love Online Version" was completed and entered the internal testing stage. Lei Jun thought that the overall situation was settled, and focused on Kingsoft Internet Security and WPS. Only a month later, he discovered that his hometown in Xishanju had been raided. .

In the first half month, only a few people resigned. Lei Jun didn't react and thought it was a normal resignation and transfer. It is true that Xishanju's overtime culture is a bit harsh, and it is normal for him to be intolerable.

As a result, more than 20 people resigned one after another in the next half month, and then they realized something was wrong.

But it was too late, Xishanju was about to be dug up into a solitary home by those bloodthirsty headhunters.

After getting to know the people below, headhunters have basically contacted people from Xishanju, and the salary is basically double.

Nearly half of them choose to stay for their dreams and love, while the rest choose to focus on money.

Ask these employees to contact those colleagues who changed jobs, and found that most of them will go to Century Interactive Entertainment.

Lei Jun was so angry that he almost vomited blood, Ma De, Chen Hao, who disrupted the market and drove up prices, but no matter how hard he scolded, Chen Hao would not lose a hair.

He also blamed himself, after all, his eagerness for success was also part of the reason.

He had no choice but to transfer elite troops from other departments to Xishanju for blood transfusion. Lei Jun felt that his energy was limited, so he no longer served as the head of Xishanju studio concurrently. Instead, he appointed 28-year-old Zou Tao to Xishanju to be responsible for game work. room’s research and development work.

At the same time, they made amends and re-negotiated the salary of all employees in Xinxishanju, with an average increase of 50%. At the same time, they announced that weekends would be resumed, and overtime work could not exceed 10 pm, in an attempt to stabilize military morale.

This reminded him of a sentence in the movie "Big Shot" he had seen before: What is the most expensive thing in the 21st century?Talent!

It was originally planned to be a one-month internal testing phase, but it has been continuously tested for nearly two months. It has been tested on a small scale. Except for some players who pay attention to Swordsman Love, not many people pay attention to it. It is very niche, and the game The quality is poor, bugs abound, and Xishanju’s solution efficiency is low. Fortunately, these players are more tolerant and help Jianwang grow together.

Due to problems with team personnel and game quality, the duration of the internal beta of "Swordsman Love Online Version" has been delayed again and again. After Xishanju was temporarily stabilized in early September, the efficiency was improved. The internal beta did not end until September 9, causing the game to The press conference and public beta date have also been postponed accordingly.

Perhaps it was the press conferences of several friend companies some time ago that gave him some insights, or perhaps it was due to the awakening of his own talent. Lei Jun was suddenly inspired, and countless fantastic ideas about the press conference came to his mind.

When he had an epiphany, he had to do something different if he wanted to do it.

For this reason, the internal testing has not yet ended. In early September, Lei Jun decisively invested a large amount of money and manpower and material resources to prepare and pave the way for offline sales, channels, and activities in advance.

When all preparations were completed, Lei Jun gave orders to the managers responsible for event planning: Tomorrow, post hero posts widely!
He wanted to take a road that the previous classmates had never walked before at the online game new product launch conference.

(End of this chapter)