Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 231 Avengers Assemble!

December in Chicago is bitterly cold.

The temperature of 28 degrees Fahrenheit made Ethan wrap his coat tightly and roll up his scarf.

He jogged with his hands in his pockets, then dived into the warm air-conditioned carriage.

Evelyn rolled her eyes and laughed at the groundhog-like behavior. Although she also felt that the world was so cold at the moment, she did not embarrass herself like Ethan. After nodding to the McDonald's staff who came to see her off, she sat in the back seat like a lady.

With the hum of the engine, the group left McDonald's headquarters. Looking at the suddenly moving steel jungle, Evelin asked with amusement, "Are you so cold?"

Ethan, who was rubbing his hands, nodded quickly.

"Yeah~ Compared to California, this place is like an icy cave!"

In his previous life, Ethan lived in New York. Although the winter temperature there was almost the same as in Chicago, being afraid of the cold had never been related to a person's physical fitness.

If you stay in your comfort zone for too long, you will naturally have a stress response when you leave it.

California is such a place. Even if the Bay Area is cold, it won't drop below zero. A sweater can handle it. But Chicago? Ethan felt a little cold in his leather shoes.

"Okay..." Evelyn didn't bother to pay attention to Ethan's pretentiousness and changed the subject, "So... the solution you told me yesterday was to write a bad check to McDonald's?"

"Oh - this idea is really -"

"Great!"

Evelin gave Ethan a thumbs up with a happy look on her face.

In fact, when Ethan said that he could balance their cooperation with McDonald's, Evelyn was indeed full of curiosity. The girl wanted to know how Ethan could convince McDonald's to cooperate with them when "Alien" and "Starfield" were not suitable for children.

The initial communication between the two also made her very satisfied. In her opinion, it was indeed a good idea to include "Snake" and "Pac-Man" in Happy Meals, because she felt from beginning to end that the green snake and the yellow beans were cuter than other game characters designed by Ethan, and were very suitable for children to buy and collect.

But when she heard the chairman of McDonald's say that the popularity of these two images in America might be uncertain, she suddenly felt unhappy.

There’s nothing I can do about it, that’s just my mother’s mentality.

When Evelin spent a lot of time and energy to make them by hand, and they caused a huge response in society, someone dared to say that they were not good? Are you blind? Or are you evil-minded?

If Evelyn hadn't been in charge of business, she would have definitely spoken out in rebuttal and used the actual sales volume and the world's welcome to slap the face of McDonald's chairman.

But when she was holding her anger, she heard Ethan say that he would make a separate game for those little guys like Pac-Man and Snake, and the provocation that spoke with facts made her feel very comfortable.

'You think the popularity of these two games in America is uncertain?'

'Oh - sorry - they are the next products of my company!'

"Do you think you have good taste, or do you want to say that our choice is bad?"

'uh-huh?'

Although these are empty promises, isn't it more exciting to use future products to make current decisions? Because once McDonald's expresses cooperation, it means that they actively admit that their previous judgment was wrong; if they do not cooperate, then with the blessing of time, when the future results appear, one of them will be nailed to the pillar of shame.

Evelyn felt that they would not lose since they had been winning for four years.

Then in this case...

Chairman of McDonald's?
Just wait for the shareholders to criticize you!
Thinking of this, Evelin straightened her nose and was extremely happy.

And how could Ethan not understand what this guy meant?
But as for my sister's description of a 'blank check'...

He still had something to say, "Do you think I wrote a bad check to McDonald's?"

“Isn’t it?” Evelyn asked back, “When our company hasn’t even started a project on what you said, aren’t all your promises empty checks?”

The next second, Evelin felt something was wrong again.

"and many more!"

She stared at Ethan with wide eyes, "You haven't thought of the game a long time ago, have you?"

She raised her left hand and pointed at herself, "You're hiding this from me?"

"Oh Ethan - how could you -"

She raised her fist and tried to convince the man with reason.

Ethan shook his head quickly after hearing these startling words, "No, No, No..."

"Calm down, calm down, calm down..."

"I was just bragging!"

"I haven't even started thinking about games yet!"

"real!"

When Ethan opened his eyes wide and showed his sincerity to his sister, Evelin withdrew her hand that wanted to hammer him and frowned, “Then isn’t this still a blank check?”

"..." This is a good question. Ethan patted the back of the driver's seat and said, "Let's not go to the airport first. Let's take a walk around Chicago."

"You can drive however you want, as long as you don't go to South City."

Evelin was somewhat confused by the incoherent words.

But when the driver obeyed the order, turned the steering wheel lightly, and took them around the Midwestern city of America, the skyscrapers that had been standing since the 1880s were covered everywhere with images of the yellow figure wearing a bow tie and high heels.

Although Ms. Pac-Man is a decent character, at this point she has acquired the characteristics of a ghost.

Appearing in the streets and alleys like a ghost.

Although Ms. Pac-Man was wrapped in a shawl and wearing white sleeves, like a noble lady, as if she was going to attend a banquet, as she opened her arms, an invisible flag was also waved by her.

She seemed to be celebrating success, but also more like declaring occupation.

And in every corner of the arcade, many people are interpreting madness in the severe cold.

Sometimes the raised arms seem to be able to bring out the shouts.

The occasional rotation seems more like a replacement after a failure.

When a group of people gather together in twos and threes, what is the use of the situation to pressure others? What is the use of the situation to promote? What is the use of the situation to sell goods? There is no such thing!
"So—Evelyn—you still think I'm writing a bad check?"

Looking at the crowds in the streets and alleys, capturing those recognizable female figures at a glance, Ethan leaned against the car and said with a smile: "Games, movies, music... these things related to creation cannot be sold simply by promotion. Even if they are sold, they cannot easily receive good reviews."

"We can attract merchants to buy goods by exaggerating the competition, and we can also attract people to learn about the game by promoting the competition. But if they are not really interested, they will not be able to get happiness from the game. Only when they really want to play and think the game is interesting..."

"They will be excited by the smallest gains."

Ethan stared at the world outside the window with emotion.

Evelin, who was leaning against the car window, raised the corner of her mouth.

Perhaps because she felt uncomfortable looking out from a distance, after passing an intersection, she pulled back and nudged Ethan with her elbow, saying, "Shall we go down and take a walk?"

"..." Ethan didn't want to go down. "It's cold." He shook his head decisively, pointed at his face, and said, "I was on TV just half a month ago. You want me to walk directly onto the street now?"

"Oh—if I were recognized I'd be in real trouble."

"Then let's go to the cinema!" Evelyn gave a solution. "Hasn't our game been sold to North American theaters? And Disney and Warner's games are also sold there? Don't you want to know whose games are more popular there?"

While talking, the girl took out a mask from her handbag and handed it to Ethan. Then she reached out to untie her ponytail and stuffed the hair tie into Ethan's hand.

"Put on the mask and tie your hair up, I guarantee no one will recognize you!"

Ethan couldn't find any fault with the clean and neat movements.

And to be honest, he really wanted to see the results of his battle, so he decisively tied his long hair behind his head, covered his cheeks with a black mask, and jumped out of the car with Evelin.

After they got into the largest movie theater on East Illinois Street...

A stagnant heat wave made them squint their eyes instinctively, and the scene of people squeezing each other to death perfectly presented the buzzing of ten thousand bees gathered together.

"Go right! Go right! Go right! Go right quickly! The ghost is coming up!"

"Attention! Attention! Attention! You've eaten a lot of beans! The crazy ghost is about to appear! We have to choose a good position to escape first!"

"Oh - look! The dancing shoes! The dancing shoes are out! Quick, quick, quick! Let's grab them! We must not let the little ghost eat them! That would be such a waste!"

The sudden roar made Ethan's eyelids twitch, and the critical hit from his eardrums reminded him of the scene of playing games in an Internet cafe in his previous life - the Internet fee was very expensive in that era, and many children only had one hour of Internet access with their pocket money, so after spending all their savings and still not having enough fun, they would reluctantly give up their computers and stand behind others to watch them play games.

When watching "Red Alert", as long as someone can bring out the Apache, the children will cheer.

When watching "VR SWAT", if someone completes the game in one go, it will definitely cause a scream.

When watching "The Legend of Sword and Fairy"...

Cough cough cough...

This game is actually not suitable to be played in Internet cafes because it is easy to attract a lot of bad people.

The bad guys will find ways to spoil the story for you, telling you how good Zhao Linger is. When you fall in love with Zhao Linger, they will tell you about her final ending, and then...

Players who have not experienced the baptism of the Internet have lost their morale and the light in their eyes.

Zhao Linger is dead, so what's the point of playing? Give me your money back!
The happiness of childhood is real happiness, and the carefree feeling is really wonderful.

While Ethan was reminiscing about the past, he looked around and saw everything clearly.

There were twelve arcade machines in the cinema where he was, nine of which were Ms. Pac-Man. Among the remaining three, one was Warner's Superman, one was Disney's McDuck's Journey to the Vault, and the last one was Star Wars.

As for the distribution of players, the arcade machines of Ms. Pac-Man were crowded with people, with a 50/50 ratio of men to women. If this ratio were placed in later generations, it would be absolutely correct. However, there were only a few people in front of the arcade machines of Mr. McDuck and Superman.

As for Star Wars?
The lonely figure is the last stubbornness——

"May the Force be with me!"

Ethan shook his head at the shouting like a middle school student. He was very satisfied with this result. After a simple walk around, he found that Evelin had bought a dozen tickets. He took them and looked at them. Wow——

"You want to watch Superman?" He was very surprised.

Because "Superman" is a Warner movie!

What's the difference between my sister's behavior and that of capitalizing on my enemies?

“What are you thinking about?” Evelin hit him angrily.

"If there's a crowd outside the theater and it's quiet inside, then you can laugh at Steve Ross loudly the next time you call him?"

"You can also tell him that you donated a movie ticket to Superman."

"Let him not thank you."

"Damn! Is it that cruel?"

Ethan thought about it according to his sister's thoughts, then tightened his mouth and tried not to laugh out loud.

Although Evelyn's behavior was not very harmful, it was extremely insulting.

Steve Ross, a petty man, would definitely get so angry that he would smash things.

"can."

"great!"

While Ethan and his sister were strolling happily in Chicago after finishing their work, there was a gloomy atmosphere in the conference room of Warner Communications branch in the Rockefeller Building in New York.

Steve Ross, chairman of Warner Communications, sat in the main seat.

Going down, they are Kirk Kerkorian, chairman of MGM;

Cornelis van der Krucht, CEO of Philips North America;
Ron Miller, the actual controller of Walt Disney;
Jack Tramiel, owner of Komodor;

Willard Rockwell Jr., son of Rockwell's founder and current chairman of the company.

After waiting for the staff to leave the scene, Steve Ross, who was sitting in the main seat, rested his elbows on the table, crossed his hands and said with a smile: "I am very glad that you have accepted my invitation to come to New York to get together at this awkward time before Christmas. I know that many of you have only heard of each other's names and have never met before today, but it doesn't matter, right? Because being here means that everyone has the same goal. We all want-"

"revenge."

Steve Ross's words were very straightforward, but the old foxes at the scene did not make any substantive comments. They just looked at Steve Ross calmly.

This situation made Steve Ross smile even more. He nodded slightly and said, "Okay, since everyone has given me face, I will first tell you about the damage Ethan Jones has done to our Warner Communications."

"As you all know, Warner Communications and Ethan Jones held a new product launch conference on the same day. We received a lot of potential orders at the conference that day. However, after he introduced his product to the world through a live broadcast, the sales of our games shrank instantly."

"So far, the Superman game has sold 6,300 units, which is a huge gap from our expected 30,000 units. At the same time, because we prepared 20,000 units in advance, our current direct loss is more than 13 million."

"In addition to games, our Superman movie has also been a huge hit."

"When countless consumers went to the cinema just to play Ms. Pac-Man, our movie only grossed $5.46 million in its first week, a huge gap from the expected $8 million."

"According to the current results, even with the blessing of Christmas, the box office of Superman will not be too good. Let alone our goal of winning the annual championship, I think it will be difficult to even be in the top ten."

"This situation will cause us losses of more than 50 million US dollars."

"Plus Ethan Jones' previous attack on our home console project."

"So far, we at Warner Communications have lost 100 million in this war."

Steve Ross still smiled, but his eyes were filled with coldness.

And when he stood up on his own initiative and handed Warner Communications' reports to everyone for them to circulate, the guys who saw the numbers in the reports gained a little bit of popularity.

"So...who's next?" Steve Ross asked with a smile.

MGM's boss Kirk Kerkorian took over the conversation and said, "Although MGM and Ethan Jones only had one direct contact, which was this summer's Tom and Jerry, that contact did not cost us too much money. In other words, from a business perspective, MGM's expansion in the field of electronic games is still successful."

"But this does not mean that we at MGM have won."

"Because our MGM acquisition of Columbia Pictures was ruined by Ethan Jones."

"According to the information I have learned, our country's Department of Justice will reject our acquisition of Columbia Pictures, and the person who made the biggest intervention is Barbara Babcock, a former Stanford Law School professor and a classmate of Ethan Jones's sister Evelyn Johnson."

"Their actions are a counterattack against our collaboration with Warner."

"If the acquisition fails, MGM will lose at least $20 million in cash and lose the opportunity to return to the North American and overseas film distribution industry."

This situation made everyone present frown slightly.

No one expressed their opinion on the matter.

And Steve Ross didn't care. After nodding slightly to his friend, he turned his attention to the next person, Cornelis van der Krucht, CEO of Philips North America.

This guy didn't hesitate and spoke directly, saying: "I think everyone sitting here should know what the current situation of our Philips is like."

“We have patents for video games, but we have not made any profit from them to date.”

"We made the excellent Apollo home console, but the project cost us $30 million because we only sold 200,000 of the 1 million units we prepared."

"We have a partnership with MCA, Universal Pictures' parent company, to develop optical disc technology, but I understand that Ethan Jones is also working on it and has invested millions in it."

"I don't know how their development is going, but I know..."

"He will definitely do something to us Philips again."

"And now, we, Philips, have formed a gaming alliance with MGM, Disney, and Paramount..."

"He has also destroyed it completely."

"These are facts, information that everyone can check. As for how much money Philips has lost? We can't actually calculate this. We only know..."

"If Ethan Jones continues to make trouble like this, Philips may go bankrupt."

To an outsider, the words of Cornelis van der Krucht, CEO of Philips North America, might seem exaggerated, but to those present, they felt honest.

Because under Ethan Jones' attack, many of the companies present might go bankrupt and change hands.

Ron Miller, the actual controller of Walt Disney, said: "Like Philips, we don't know how much loss we have made at Disney. We only know that if this continues, Ethan Jones may become the new owner of our Walt Disney Group."

"Under the joint attack of Ethan Jones and Roy Disney, the stock price of our Disney Group has fallen by 17 percent. The sales of new games are mostly achieved through internal consumption."

Jack Tramiel, the boss of Komodor, said: "In the chip dispute case, Komodor's direct loss was 6502 million US dollars. At the same time, under the short selling of Goldman Sachs, we paid a price in the stock price to acquire ."

"Citibank and the Ford Foundation on the company's board of directors have already expressed their dissatisfaction. If we are unable to gain a clear advantage in the personal computer industry in the coming year, they may abandon us and clear out their positions..."

Willard Rockwell Jr., the son of Rockwell's founder and chairman of the company, was perhaps the most innocent. After listening to the other five people, he said, "We just want to make computers."

“Then he was slapped in the face by Ethan Jones.”

"Our acquisition of Allen Bradley cost us nearly $100 million."

"But that's not why I'm here today."

"I came here today because we at Rockwell are very concerned that if we continue in the computer business, Ethan Jones will do to us what he did to MGM."

"Because, as far as we know, Ethan Jones' sister Evelyn Johnson's teacher is in the Ministry of Defense? Now he is a senior advisor? And he is in charge of a top-secret project?"

"What we at Rockwell eat are defense orders. If the consultants in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are not satisfied with us, then let alone making computers, we may have problems with the company's operations. Because companies like Boeing, Lockheed, Companies like Thor and Martin hope that we will die soon."

"Puchi——" These words made Steve Ross, who was sitting in the main seat, laugh.

Although he knew that laughing at this moment was a bit impolite, he didn't care.

After attracting everyone's attention, he first cast an apologetic look at Rockwell's chairman, and then said: "So... have we reached a consensus now?"

"Consensus on cooperation?" he added.

This question was unanimously agreed by everyone present.

As they nodded, Steve Ross also put away his smile, knocked on the table, and said: "Okay, then I declare that the first meeting of the Avengers officially begins."

"The topic we are going to discuss today is——"

"How to dismember Ethan Jones!"

(Volume 2: I came, I saw, I conquered)
(End of this chapter)