Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 541 Demonic Light Blade PK Tournament!

In late October, Magic Light Technology's operations staff posted a message on its official Weibo account: "Recently, our company has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Zhiyun Group to jointly promote the development of the virtual industry!"

To the uninformed, this might lead one to believe that Magic Light Technology has reached some strategic agreement with Zhiyun Group in the high-tech field of the virtual industry chain.

However, those in the industry, and even some ordinary people who follow virtual games, know that Magic Light Technology is just a virtual game company!
As for any strategic cooperation, that's pure nonsense!

But if you ask the media operations staff at Magic Light Technology why they say that, they will tell you frankly that this is indeed a strategic partnership... at least for our company!
Therefore, calling it a strategic cooperation is perfectly accurate!

This prompted many netizens to joke: "Yesterday, I went to the business hall and signed a strategic cooperation agreement with a large telecommunications group and opened a new SIM card. For me personally, this is definitely one of the most important strategic cooperations in my life!"

"I just opened a salary account and also reached a strategic agreement with a major bank!"

"I just looked at my list of strategic partners, and they are all top-tier companies, including banks, telecommunications companies, and Zhiyun Group. Even when I go out, I have a strategic partnership with the subway group!"

Magic Light Technology is making jokes, saying that the strategic cooperation they're talking about is taking over the first virtual game competition of the virtual industry project under Zhiyun Group.

For Zhiyun Group, this is just one of many activities to continue exploring, supporting virtual content providers, and expanding the influence of the virtual world. However, for small and medium-sized Internet companies like Magic Light Technology, it is undoubtedly an important strategic cooperation.

If done well, it could take their game 'Magic Blade' to the next level!

"In the past three months, there has been an increasing number of new virtual games launched. The four major internet companies in China have all launched new virtual games in the past three months. In addition, many second-tier game companies in China have also launched their virtual games!"

"In just three months, twelve new virtual reality games have been launched in the Chinese market alone. Although most of them are small- to medium-sized productions and are of mediocre quality, there are still a few virtual reality games that deserve our attention!"

"Especially the new game 'Da Hua Fantasy' launched by the pig farm game company a week ago. This virtual game based on the Journey to the West is of relatively high quality, has an excellent economic system, and also has a huge IP influence, which has attracted a lot of players' nostalgia. On the first day of its launch, the number of concurrent online players reached more than 2,000, and the recharge revenue was very strong!"

"In the Asian region, our Magic Blade has also been impacted by virtual games from large overseas companies. Google and Microsoft's games have already captured a significant market share!"

"Our operations in Europe and the Americas were not very successful. The traditional Eastern martial arts theme failed to resonate with the culture of European and American players. At the same time, it is undeniable that our game still lags behind the works of major companies in terms of graphics, music, and physics simulation. This has caused some setbacks for our Magic Blade in the European and American markets!"

"It's difficult to compare with Yihai Technology's 'Kingdom Summit' because its combination of Chinese and Western cultures, along with its first-mover advantage, allows it to dominate the global market!"

"At the pinnacle of Yihai Technology's empire, the world's largest number of concurrent online users is approaching 80,000, while we are still stuck at 30,000. And our competitors are gradually catching up, so the pressure is immense!"

"This PK tournament will play a huge role in promoting our game. After all, Zhiyun Group will also be involved, providing us with ample traffic support. In particular, they are preparing to conduct virtual live broadcasts in 'Zhiyun Virtual World.' Our game footage will appear directly on the street arena within Zhiyun Virtual World, allowing players on all virtual devices, and even non-virtual game players, to see our game PK tournament!"

"This will be of great benefit to us in attracting existing virtual game players and potential future virtual game players!"

"This event is not to be taken lightly; we must do our best!!"

Magic Light Technology has treated this PK competition as their most important strategic task in the near future... so it's not an exaggeration for them to call it a strategic cooperation; for them, it truly is a strategic-level cooperation!

The main reason is that in recent months, other game companies have also put tremendous pressure on Magic Light Technology.

Over the past three months, the launch of the second-generation entry-level virtual machine and the significant increase in production capacity by Zhiyun Group, which has increased the monthly production capacity of virtual machines to more than 50,000 units, have led to a growing global stock of virtual machines.

With the increase in virtual devices, the number of concurrent online users of virtual games has gradually increased.

However, the current virtual game market is still quite chaotic and highly competitive.

Yihai Technology's "Kingdom of the Pinnacle" leverages its first-mover advantage, top-notch technology, and cleverly blends Chinese and Western cultural elements in its game content, ensuring that it won't be inconvenient for Eastern players or troubling for Western players... all while being backed by Yihai Technology Group's massive global marketing capabilities.

Ultimately, Kingdom of Kings, a game that leans towards a cartoon style and is not strictly suitable for showcasing virtual technology, became a global phenomenon, achieving a peak concurrent user count of 80,000.

Then there's Doomsday Summit, a game that received critical acclaim but failed commercially... Almost every virtual gamer has tried it and been amazed by it, but very few virtual gamers play it for an extended period. Now, Yihai Technology's Doomsday War project team is forced to make significant changes to the game's content and modes: they can't let players find it so tiring!

Magic Blade is a game about love, hate, and revenge in the martial arts world. It features immersive character design and is presented through PvP battles. It has strong characteristics of Eastern culture, so it is quite popular in China and Asia, but has received a lukewarm response in Europe and the Americas.

Next up are the large-scale virtual reality games released by Google and Microsoft, which have been quite successful in Europe and the Americas, and also have a certain market share in Asia.

Then came a number of virtual games released by other game companies both at home and abroad. However, none of them have been large-scale yet. Some of the better ones have a few thousand online players, while others have a few thousand or even a few hundred.

More have completely cooled down!

Despite the uniquely high spending power of virtual game users, not all virtual games can make money.

However... as long as the game is of high quality and the marketing is excellent, and it can attract several thousand online players, then the game can thrive.

After all, today's virtual gamers are high-net-worth individuals who are willing to spend money on virtual games.

It's normal for virtual game players to spend several thousand yuan a month now, some spend tens of thousands, and many even spend hundreds of thousands.

These are people who have plenty of money playing virtual games. They've sold virtual devices worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, so they don't care about the cost of in-game purchases!
Therefore, even if the number of online players in a virtual game is relatively small, a thousand online players can still generate around ten million in monthly revenue!

But the investment costs for virtual games are high these days!

For example, when making virtual games, you always need virtual equipment for development and testing. Small businesses rent virtual equipment, while large businesses directly purchase it, but this is a relatively expensive cost.

For some game development companies, if they create a dozen or so virtual games for various development and testing, the cost can easily reach tens of millions.

And that's actually a small part; the big part is the salary cost of technical talent, which is extremely expensive!

As an emerging industry, the virtual industry already has a shortage of professionals, and the learning process is extremely difficult. This has led to a severe shortage of professionals in the talent market, with salaries often reaching hundreds of thousands or even millions of yuan.

The development cost for even a simple, small to medium-sized virtual game is tens of millions of yuan. If you want to make the virtual game of higher quality and with more content, the cost will be even higher, basically starting at several hundred million yuan.

Yihai Technology is currently developing a top-tier fantasy-themed virtual game called "Fanren" with a research and development budget exceeding two billion yuan.

This is still domestic development. Domestic development has much lower labor costs. Apart from the core technical team's salaries being similar to those abroad, the salaries of many other ordinary positions are at the normal level in China. This means that it can save a lot of money compared to foreign development teams.

Google and Microsoft, among other overseas companies with higher labor costs, have even higher development costs. A single large-scale virtual game project can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, and a top-tier large-scale virtual game could cost seven or eight hundred million dollars.

The development cost of virtual games is much higher than that of traditional online games, and also much more expensive than previous AAA games; it's very expensive!
Besides development costs, virtual games also have operating costs... This part is actually quite expensive because these virtual games are developed on the Zhiyun Virtual Reality Engine provided by Zhiyun Group, and virtual games developed using this engine need to run on high-performance computing servers.

Although these computing servers differ from those used for training and running artificial intelligence, their hardware is highly consistent, with both using APO series graphics cards and WZ service CPUs as their core components.

But APO graphics cards are expensive!

Whether a company purchases servers to build its own computing center to run games, or seeks out Zhiyun Cloud Computing Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Zhiyun Group, or rents computing power from other companies, the choice is open to all businesses.

These all cost money, and they're not cheap!
Finally, there's the marketing cost... This can vary greatly. If you're ambitious and have a lot of money, you can advertise all over the world. If you're less ambitious and don't have much money, you can advertise less.

However, the marketing and distribution costs for large-scale virtual games are very high these days. Yihai Technology's Kingdom of the Peak is able to achieve global success, which is inseparable from their worldwide advertising efforts.

Even small businesses like Magic Blade invest heavily in marketing.

It's very simple... Now you are the owner of a game company. A virtual game player's monthly spending can reach several thousand or even tens of thousands of yuan. So how much are you willing to spend to attract this game player?
If spending 10,000 yuan on advertising and marketing can bring in a virtual game player, these virtual game companies will not hesitate to spend that money!
Of course, spending money on advertising to attract players doesn't guarantee that players will come in. In fact, most virtual game companies' advertising efforts are ineffective and go unanswered.
Playing role-playing games requires an atmosphere; it's more fun when there are many players... There's a general tendency to follow the crowd; if others are playing, you'll start playing too.

Therefore, top-tier games have an increasing number of players, while mid-tier virtual games have very few players and cannot succeed no matter how much money is spent.

The combined costs of development, operation, and marketing have resulted in relatively high costs in the current virtual game market.

If there are too few people online, then you will lose everything.

However, if it succeeds, it can turn the company around overnight, and the company can expand rapidly.

Magic Light Technology is a typical example... At the beginning of this year, they were just a small company with more than 200 employees, making a living by relying on a few unknown mobile games.

Now, the company has several hundred employees and is heading towards a scale of a thousand.

Annual revenue is expected to reach several billion.

This propelled Magic Light Technology into the ranks of China's internet companies, a meteoric rise indeed. Now, Magic Light Technology continues to cultivate its cash cow, Magic Light Demon Blade, striving to increase the number of its game users along with the growing stock of virtual devices.

In addition to continuing technological research and development to improve the poor graphics and physics simulation quality of the game as soon as possible, we will also create more game content.

We're also preparing to hold a competition with Zhiyun Group.

It has to be said that the game "Magic Blade" has seized the initiative and has unique advantages in this wave!

Because the esports events that Zhiyun Group is preparing to organize must first ensure their entertainment value... so the initial consideration is to focus on competitive games.

The shoot-'em-up is obviously a post-apocalyptic war, but to be honest, the game's live-streaming entertainment value is not very good... It pursues realism too much, so there's not much to watch. Players can just walk around and get killed by bullets that come from nowhere, or simply be covered by artillery fire that comes from nowhere.

Putting aside whether the game experience is good or not, the visual appeal is terrible... Nobody wants to watch a character run a long distance and then die for no reason.

Kingdom of Kings does have a PvP (player versus player) system, but as a cartoon-style game focused on exploration and social interaction, its PvP system isn't very effective... Many players in this game just fly around traveling and casually fighting monsters, so PvP isn't exciting enough.

Moreover, the cartoon visuals don't look realistic or impressive enough!

There are a lot of female players, the game mechanics are relatively easy and harmonious, the scenery is beautiful, and the social mechanisms are also well done.

Other games simply have too few players and therefore lack influence.

Then all that's left is the Demon Blade... at least in the Chinese region, the Demon Blade has become the best choice!

Regardless of how poor the game content is or how bad the physics simulation is, their PvP mechanism is very well done, and the special effects during combat are very gorgeous.

Feng Hualong, a popular virtual game streamer, really enjoys streaming various PvP battles in the game "Magic Blade"!

Therefore, Magic Blade became the first game in China to host a 'virtual world game live streaming tournament'. If it does well and receives a good response, Zhiyun Group's virtual project department will also expand to the Asian, European, and American regions, and try to launch similar tournaments for other virtual games.

The competitive events of Magic Blade are quite unique. In addition to being broadcast live on the regular Internet, the PK battles are also projected into the Zhiyun Virtual World space, allowing all virtual users to watch.

In general, it's somewhat similar to a tournament held in the Zhiyun virtual world!
This also requires solving a lot of technical problems, such as how to project the visuals from the virtual game into the Zhiyun Virtual World. This is something that Magic Light Technology alone cannot handle; it requires the assistance of engineers from the Zhiyun Group to solve the problem...

Interestingly, when engineers from the virtual software project team under the Zhiyun Group came to Moguang Technology to provide assistance, they were greatly shocked by the low level of their technical architecture, algorithms, and physical simulation capabilities.

It's even hard to understand how the engineers at Magic Light Technology could maintain the normal operation of such a virtual game without crashing with such a low-level algorithm framework: This is abnormal. Logically speaking, with such a garbage underlying algorithm framework, the game should have crashed long ago!

However, the engineers at Magic Light Technology actually managed to get the game running, and it could even support tens of thousands of people online at the same time. They also said that they could continue to expand the capacity without any problems!
It's really a ghost!
And the engineers from Zhiyun Group couldn't understand how you achieved such gorgeous PvP scenes with such poor physics simulation technology.
I knew your physics simulation wasn't great, but judging from your PvP gameplay, the simulation is actually pretty good...

The engineers at Magic Light Technology were embarrassed when they heard this... and finally told the truth: most of our PK fighting scenes are actually just dynamic textures... not true physical simulation.

However, while the physics simulation engineers at Magic Light Technology were quite embarrassed, the virtual engineers at Zhiyun Group were greatly shocked!
Wow, they even managed to optimize it to this level using dynamic textures! The optimization is pretty impressive!
Other game companies, including Zhiyun Group, put a lot of effort into physical simulation when developing their own virtual worlds, striving to achieve the most realistic physical simulation feedback.

However, to everyone's surprise, Magic Light Technology used dynamic textures in conjunction with physical simulation to achieve a visually impressive physical simulation effect.

This guy is a real talent!

No wonder the small team was able to develop a game like Magic Blade and make the PvP combat scenes so good; they really have a knack for it!

Indeed, we must not underestimate the talents of the world!

However, since the virtual software engineers from Zhiyun Group came, the virtual engineers from Moguang Technology also seized the opportunity to ask questions and even learn from others. Fang Junli, the boss, even secretly contacted a few of the key technical personnel!
Of course, don't even think about poaching him. He's a virtual engineer at Zhiyun Group, with a very high social status and income. You can't poach him.

However, it's still possible to get them to handle some side jobs privately... In fact, many virtual engineers in Zhiyun Group have had this kind of experience!

Many virtual game development companies seek help from virtual software engineers at Zhiyun Group.

As long as it doesn't go too far, doesn't involve illegal activities, and doesn't use company equipment or code, the executives at Zhiyun Group turn a blind eye.

After all, Zhiyun Group itself doesn't develop virtual games; the works of other virtual game development companies will ultimately have to run on Zhiyun Group's virtual devices.

In fact, Fang Junli had previously approached some virtual engineers at Zhiyun Group to take on freelance work, but he couldn't reach any high-level, technically skilled core personnel.

Now that we've made contact with these high-level Zhiyun virtual software engineers, it would be great to get them to help us with some freelance work.

Therefore, a small number of key technical personnel among the virtual software engineers sent by Zhiyun Group to assist in the development of virtual competitions went to work as usual during the day.

After getting off work and returning to the hotel, I started working on the underlying architecture of the Magic Light Blade, especially the technical architecture for physical simulation.

Of course, Fang Junli also paid a hefty price for this!
If you want these senior virtual engineers from Zhiyun Group to do freelance work for you, the price won't be low, otherwise they won't even bother with you!

The technical skills of the senior virtual software engineers at Zhiyun Group are also exceptional. With only five or six people, they managed to create a new physical simulation framework for Fang Junli in just one week.

After a simple test, its level surpasses the original physical simulation framework of the Magic Light Demon Blade by a huge margin.

After seeing it, Fang Junli smiled at everyone he met... Although it cost a lot, it was worth it. Just the physical simulation framework alone would probably take his group of half-baked virtual engineers a year to write.

This gave him a new understanding of the high level of talent within the Zhiyun Group.

As expected of a world-class multinational corporation, the technical staff here are far more skilled than outside technical talents, capable of producing cutting-edge products such as top-tier artificial intelligence, virtual equipment, and the Zhiyun Virtual World.

They have to be strong, because all the engineers at Zhiyun Group are graduates of top universities. They were selected from among thousands before joining the company, and after joining, they are given research opportunities, which greatly enhances their learning and research capabilities.

Their skill level far exceeds that of technical personnel in external companies.

The development of many of Zhiyun Group's cutting-edge technologies is based on the combination of top talent and a robust research system!

And now, by sheer chance, this small company, Magic Light Technology, has managed to snag some top talent from the Zhiyun Group... This level of talent is so impressive that even Fang Junli is drooling.

Unfortunately, we can't dig it up!

Top talents aren't stupid; they won't abandon a stable, high-paying job at Zhiyun Group just for a so-called high salary in the short term.

People work hard for over ten or twenty years, fighting their way up from childhood to study at top universities, and then eliminating a lot of competitors to get a job at Zhiyun Group. How could they be poached by an ordinary company with a so-called high salary?

Besides salary, this is also closely related to social status, job stability, and future development.

Every year, Zhiyun recruits top talents from its campuses!
Because the salaries at Zhuyun Group are among the highest in China, they are extremely high!
Moreover, it is stable enough that Zhiyun will not lay off employees easily. The company is large and has enough projects. As long as you do not cause any problems, Zhiyun will not lay off employees. There is no such thing as layoffs at age 35.

Zhiyun Group is a world-class platform. As long as you are good enough, you can gradually climb up the ranks and influence the whole world. In the administrative management line, not to mention the level of senior vice president of Zhiyun Group, even the level of group vice president, executive president, and executive vice president has a huge influence.

The decisions made will directly affect the development of an industry.

If we take the technology route, the products we create will be available globally and will change people's lives.

If you reach the top level, you can even enjoy 24-hour security... to prevent you from being assassinated by hostile overseas companies.

Needless to say, its social status is unparalleled. It provides employment for top domestic talents. Other internet and high-tech companies are generally referred to as "big companies," but Zhiyun is in a class of its own and is mentioned separately.

Once you join Zhiyun Group, if you are unmarried, a group of so-called relatives and friends will rush to introduce you to potential partners, and these potential partners will all be rich, beautiful, and successful women.

Unmarried engineers and administrative staff at Zhiyun are top-tier, highly sought-after individuals in the dating market!

Even on some women's community platforms, I can barely meet people's wishes!

It's extremely difficult to recruit such top talent!
However, Fang Junli did not give up and actually asked several people indirectly, but unfortunately, no one agreed to his request. The best one only said he would think about it.

Fang Junli wasn't disappointed. He couldn't poach them now, but he could keep in touch and find them to do some side jobs in the future.

What if one day these top talents get unhappy at Zhiyun Group and want a change of scenery? Then the opportunity will come!
(End of this chapter)