Revisiting Future Path

041 Seed Download Artifact

In the online game market in China, the total sales in 2000 were 38 million yuan, the total sales in 2001 were 4.5 billion yuan, and the total sales in 2002 were nine to one billion yuan. The annual sales of all online games, including "Legend", are not as good as the one-month sales of "Onmyoji" in 2016.

Now is the start-up period of online games.

As recently as 2001, NetEase and other game makers were still selling online games as stand-alone games. Manufacturers take it for granted, programmers and planners take it for granted. We work hard to write code and charge players some fees in advance. Is it hard to understand?

It turns out that it is difficult to understand.

In 2002, when online payment was immature, players had to worry about where to buy activation codes even if they wanted to play your game. The behavior of client charging is equivalent to pushing players desperately.

Therefore, after "Legend" detonated the market, the client charging model was quickly eliminated. Dahuaxi Journey Online Ⅱ launched in August 2002 by NetEase.com, and no longer hesitates how much the client should price. The client defeats the client charges for free, which is a victory for breaking the mindset.

Wei Dongsheng talked eloquently: "What is the purpose of the client for free? It is to reduce the player threshold and expand the player base. Abolishing the card time charge is to further reduce the player threshold and further expand the player base, and then screen out those who are willing to pay 10,000 for the game High-spending players with yuan or even one million yuan. In my eyes, Shanda is nothing, and Shanda is not so powerful. "Legend" is not as unsurpassable as you think. The goal of "Ten Kingdoms" has never been lingering. Struggling to survive is not a small profit. Our goal is very clear. To be the first in the country, we will directly strangle "Legend" and pull down Shanda."

Wei Dongsheng put forward the concept of free online games.

First of all, there is no need to cherish yourself.

Wei Dongsheng is very clear that confidentiality of information is purely a luxury. Continue to give examples of Shanda and Netease. Chen Danian, the younger brother of Chen Tianqiao, the head of Shanda Internet, dropped out of school and became acquainted with many netizens. Wu Yunyang, who participated in the NetEase Westward Journey project, was one of them. Shanda Networks converted to online games, Chen Danian immediately informed Wu Yunyang; Shanda Networks represented "Legend", and Chen Danian immediately informed Wu Yunyang. Because the launch time of "Western Journey" and "Legend" are very close, Chen Danian triumphantly reported to Wu Yunyang how many people online "Legend" has reached, and asked the operating data of "Western Journey".

In 2002, the online game circle was very small.

For example, Lan Xiaoquan, who currently works at Spring and Autumn Software, was able to hop from Yingxiang to NetEase before. During this period, he must have familiar friends leading the needle. During Lan Xiaoquan’s exchanges with friends, Wei Dongsheng’s momentum and Wei Dongsheng’s concept of free online games will surely spread to other game manufacturers quickly. This kind of radiation does not depend on personal will.

Secondly, Wei Dongsheng is not afraid of revealing the general trend of the future, and then is plagiarized by other manufacturers of the concept of free online games.

Why do you say this way?

Because free online games are not free.

Longitudinal comparison, who first proposed the free online game model? It's definitely not "Journey". Shi Yuzhu certainly carried forward the free online game model, but he was not the pioneer of the free online game model. "Giant Merchant" practiced the free online game mode before "Zhengtu" and before "Blood Jianghu". However, how many people know the title of "Giant Merchant" and what happened to "Giant Merchant"? In a horizontal comparison, the free online game model has become popular after "Zhengtu". Whether computer client online games or mobile online games, which manufacturer can kill the market simply by relying on the word free?

The operation of free online games is not easier than operating time-based online games.

Hearing Wei Dongsheng's rhetoric, dozens of employees showed all kinds of unclear smiles.

No matter how young Wei Dongsheng was, he was also the boss. No employee stupidly refuted Wei Dongsheng face to face. However, not refuting and believing are two different things. All the employees present, including programmers such as Lan Xiaoquan, Lu Binqi and Hu Shifei recommended by Jing Minqiang, and Chang Mingxia, who was personally excavated by Wei Dongsheng, regarded Wei Dongsheng’s rhetoric as a not funny joke. . The employees murmured in their hearts: "Don't say that "Legend" is a freak that dominates 70% of the national market. If "The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" can match the 30,000 people online of "Western Journey II", a miracle will be born.

Wei Dongsheng did not force employees to accept their confidence.

Wei Dongsheng's goal has actually been achieved.

The purpose of Wei Dongsheng’s speech was not to convince these employees, but to make them understand Wei Dongsheng’s determination and the reasons behind his determination. Interpreting the free game mode is subverting the mindset, proving that Wei Dongsheng has ideas and trying to open up a new path; the grand declaration of war proves that Wei Dongsheng’s self-confidence and aggressiveness are less than the determination of Huang He to give up.

Resigning to find another way is more practical than persuading Wei Dongsheng to disperse him.

Employees don't believe in "The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms", but they can leave the impression of Wei Dongsheng in their hearts: "Little boss, very aggressive."

But this is not enough.

It takes a long time for a game to develop. Sometimes it's not that the program code is difficult to type, but that many settings need to be logically tight.

For example, the current popularity of "Miracle MU" is second only to "Legend", its plug-in can unscrupulously increase the attack power of skills several times. The reason is not that there is a problem with the combat logic of "Miracle MU", but the problem with the skill frequency supervision. The so-called increase of attack power by several times, to put it simply, it is actually to increase the frequency of skill release. A skill attack by a player is equivalent to data processing. Ten skill attacks. How to avoid such a problem? The answer is very simple, that is, later players are used to setting "skill cooling" in the game. With the skill cooling limit, there is no need to be afraid of increasing the skill frequency modification.

The computer intelligent life orange algae has a limited length and cannot perfectly solve these logical chain setting problems by itself. Therefore, "The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" needs continuous internal testing to find out the plug-in loopholes caused by logic flaws and modify them in time, etc., which will take a long time to slowly complete.

The fastest estimate is that in March and April next year, "The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" will be available for public beta.

If Wei Dongsheng hadn't done anything in March and April, all the rhetoric today would definitely be regarded as jokes. The operating department was bearish on "Ten Kingdoms Spring and Autumn" and then Wei Dongsheng, and then felt that the two companies Chunqiu Network and Chunqiu Software were hopeless, without the enthusiasm to work hard, and slowly fell into a vicious circle, or struggled with wages, or went so far. With the decline in efficiency, the public beta of "The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" will inevitably continue to be postponed, which eventually attracted Jing Minqiang's questions.

This is a vicious circle of failure, bankruptcy and disintegration.

Especially for Wei Dongsheng at such an age, it is difficult to persuade this group of employees to believe in him in a difficult situation and create the future with him.

How to win the trust of others?

Wei Dongsheng can only do things, make a career, and make a successful career, so that everyone who doubts will shut up.

Therefore, in addition to the main business of "The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms", which is responsible for making money, Wei Dongsheng has also prepared a side business that will be effective and quickly gain fame.

In other words, the Internet environment in 2002 simply divided Internet services into four parts.

The first piece is the search business, where high-quality players such as Yahoo, Google, 3721, Baidu are fighting fiercely in this field. To invest in this industry, you first need to support various software and hardware facilities, and the rate of capital consumption is immeasurable; secondly, it is difficult to get results quickly, and it is by no means a good choice for short, flat and fast projects.

Wei Dongsheng gave up decisively.

The second part is the portal website. Netease, Sohu, and Sina have already formed, and it is harder to hit the search field.

Stop talking, give up.

The third piece is instant messaging. Tencent is a killer product in this field. Give it up.

The fourth piece is the download tool. There is no strong rival in China for the time being. The current leader in this field, FlashGet, is already outdated.

More importantly, downloading technology is now brewing a cross-era technological change. BitTorrent, the bitstream protocol, will soon be born, rapidly changing the download culture of netizens, and seed files have become popular since then. At this moment, FlashGet, as the leader of download tools in China, did not notice the footsteps of P2P (point-to-point) and P2SP (point-to-server and point) in time. It is simply the most delicious prey.

Wei Dongsheng chose a sideline at that time, committed to making the bitstream protocol available in advance, and committed to filling users' hard drives with seed files in advance.

The development of the download tool is less difficult, and it is not necessary to solve the logic flaws and vulnerabilities as early as possible as in "The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms".

During the production of "The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms", Wei Dongsheng completed the compilation of the download tool client with the assistance of computer intelligent life cyanobacteria and computer intelligent life orange algae. Wei Dongsheng was too lazy to think about the name, but directly based on the impression of endless seed files in the past life, and named this download tool "seed download artifact".

On the second day of the speech, Wei Dongsheng opened a new project in Chunqiu Software and transferred several employees to be responsible for the promotion and operation of the "seed download artifact". In order to quickly promote the seed download artifact, Wei Dongsheng directly purchases promotional advertisements from various websites. For example, Baidu's bidding rankings. At this time, Baidu has launched a bidding ranking business model, and regardless of whether it is evil or not, the promotion effect is beyond doubt. Wei Dongsheng purchases Baidu bidding rankings and promotion advertisements on other websites. At the same time, his own private service publishing website also loads rogue advertisements, doing his best to promote seed download artifacts by normal commercial means.

Thanks to the promotion of advertisements everywhere, the seed download artifact welcomed more than 8,000 users on the day it went online.

P2P technology is originally Apple's level of crushing of Nokia. The seed download artifact made by Wei Dongsheng has a technical content that far exceeds the current bitstream protocol that will completely detonate the download field. The competition between the torrent artifact and FlashGet is like taking Apple’s iPhone7_Plus and Nokia’s Nokia7650 directly. It is not the same heavyweight product of the same era.

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