Restart life

Chapter 200, Section 0197: [Master Chen stood on the edge of the podium like a lackey]

The Chinese online game market was very volatile at the end of 2005.

World of Warcraft is the ultimate boss, looking down on everything.

On November 16th, "Zhengtu" announced its closed beta test, reaching 30,000 concurrent players within three hours. Because it was still in closed beta and game features were not yet fully developed, only three servers were open, each capable of accommodating 30,000 players.

On November 25th, Fantasy Westward Journey held an event to stimulate players and announced that the number of online players that day reached 1 million!
On November 25th, Perfect World launched its open beta, and all three servers were full. Two more servers were urgently added, but they were full again within an hour.

On November 26th, QQ Fantasy concluded its six-month closed beta test and began its open beta phase with open registration. Within just one day, the number of concurrent online players exceeded 100,000. It is projected to reach 660,000 concurrent online players within a month.

On November 27th, "The Reign of the Emperor," which had been in closed beta for a month and a half and was being promoted in internet cafes in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, announced the opening of one new server each for China Telecom, China Unicom, and dual-line connections. The number of online players exceeded 100,000 the following evening.

On November 28th, Shanda, which had originally only made the new server of "Legend" free, suddenly announced that all servers of "Legend" would be permanently free.

On November 29, JX Online announced that it would not be free and would be updated in two weeks.

They're either going to launch an event, update the version, or announce it's free... It's incredibly competitive!

Game companies that reacted more slowly saw their online games affected to varying degrees, with the number of active players in "Yulgang" plummeting.

The November rankings from 17173 have been released, witnessing the dramatic changes in China's online gaming industry.

The top 10 games, ranked from highest to lowest, are: World of Warcraft, Fantasy Westward Journey, Legend of Mir, QQ Fantasy, Westward Journey Online II, The Legend of Mir 2, Perfect World, JX2, Three Kingdoms Kill, and MapleStory.

Even Audition Online has fallen out of the top ten.

Because "Zhengtu" is a half-finished product, it dares not open too many servers, and its online reputation is poor, so it did not even make it into the top 20 this time.

Shi Yuzhu has stopped advertising and is now focused on development, aiming to finish "Zhengtu" as soon as possible.

Or rather, Shi Yuzhu was targeted by a joint attack from both established and emerging game companies!
Who told him to be so high-profile before? He started spending money on promotion in August, and by November, the product was still only half-finished during the internal testing phase.

……

12 month 1 day.

Beijing, Century Golden Resources Hotel.

Chen Guiliang and Ao Yanzhen arrived at the restaurant early in the morning in a company car provided by ByteDance.

Guo Feng didn't come; he doesn't like these kinds of events.

However, Chen Guiliang had to give face to the organizers, because the selection of "China's Top 100 Websites" was very important to ByteDance.

It is more than just a name.

For example, Baidu went public on NASDAQ this year. After the news reached China, other websites that offered paid advertising found it incredibly difficult to attract advertisers. Merchants only trusted Baidu!
If Renren.com can be selected as one of the "Top 100 Websites", it will be much easier to attract advertising, and the price per ad can also be increased accordingly.

Perhaps it was when Chen Guiliang secured funding that he created gimmicks like walking the red carpet and having an autograph wall. More and more events followed suit, and this internet gala also featured a long red carpet.

Chen Guiliang went out and bought a suit.

There was nothing we could do; it was the organizer's requirement.

Dozens of media reporters squatted on the red carpet and around the autograph wall, waiting to take photos of the internet tycoons.

The organizers were clearly inexperienced, failing to arrange unified transportation. Some people checked into the hotel yesterday, while others arrived by car on the day of the event. There was no set order for walking the red carpet; whoever arrived simply walked it.

Occasionally, there would be a few minutes of awkward silence, with no one on the red carpet.

"People from ByteDance have arrived!"

"Who is that woman? Chen Guiliang's girlfriend?"

"Ao Yanzhen, COO of ByteDance."

"These internet upstarts are getting younger and younger."

"We're on the red carpet! Let's take some photos!"

"..."

Chen Guiliang walked slowly down the red carpet, occasionally pausing for a second or two to allow photographers on both sides to take pictures.

Ao Yanchen was dressed quite smartly in a women's suit.

It's just a bit cold.

In early December in Beijing, the two were only wearing suits, their coats left in the car.

As he walked, Chen Guiliang quickened his pace, hurrying to the hotel to enjoy the warmth.

The autograph wall was set up indoors, and Chen Guiliang and Ao Yanzhen quickly signed their names and then posed for several photos with reporters.

They were then led to the rest area.

There are quite a few big names here: Wang Yan, Ding Sanshi, Zhang Chaoyang, Li Yanhong, Chen Tianqiao, Da Ma, Xiao Ma, Lei Jun, Liang Jianzhang...

Chen Guiliang and Ao Yanzhen had just sat down when a young man came over and handed out business cards.

"Hello, I am Chen Changjie, Marketing and Operations Director of Ladder Digital Online School." The young man's accent was strange, a Taiwanese accent with a hint of Beijing dialect.

Chen Guiliang also took out his business card and shook hands with him: "Hello, I am Chen Guiliang."

Chen Changjie started in online education and later became the vice president of NetDragon. NetDragon is the company behind the game "Eudemons Online." "I've long admired Mr. Chen," Chen Changjie said. "Although I'm from Taiwan, I've lived in Beijing for five years. Mr. Chen owns Xiaonei.com, while I work in online education. I believe our two companies can complement each other."

"I hope we can cooperate," Chen Guiliang replied casually.

After chatting for a few more minutes, Chen Changjie said goodbye and left to hand out business cards to other people.

Ao Yanzhen pointed to the table not far away: "That's a Korean, our biggest competitor right now."

"Saiwo.com?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Ao Yanchen nodded: "He is Kim Hee-yong, the head of Cyworld China."

In 2001, in addition to Sohu Alumni Directory, there was also Youlian Alumni Directory.

Unable to sustain its simple campus social networking business, Youlian.com shifted its focus to online communities, even developing products like chat rooms, and later adding video and audio features.

Just as Chen Guiliang secured venture capital funding, South Korea's Cyworld acquired Youlian.com and spent the last few months optimizing and redesigning it. They abandoned the much-anticipated name "Youlian.com" and replaced it with "Cyworld."

Cyworld even launched a microblogging-like service that sends text messages to users. However, instead of users posting updates to each other, the website sends text messages to users' mobile phones.

Leveraging its strong financial resources (ranked first in South Korea for wireless value-added revenue, with 1300 million registered users in South Korea) and the influence of the Korean Wave, Cyworld (China) has surpassed 100 million users!
"Mr. Chen, hello, I'm Cao Ming from Jiutian Music Network." Another young man came over.

Chen Guiliang shook hands and said, "Hello."

Cao Ming got straight to the point: "Fenbei.com infringed on 'The Wind Rises,' and I plan to sue them next year, along with several other songs."

"We will fully support you," Chen Guiliang stated.

Chen Guiliang packaged and handed over the wireless value-added services of "The Wind Rises," including ringback tones, to 9Tian Music Network for operation.

However, Fenbei.com created a rearranged version of "The Wind Rises" and openly launched its ringtone business, completely disregarding the new regulations that had been in effect for six months.

In fact, 9Tian Music Network is also being sued.

They used to be involved in piracy, but switched to legitimate music in 2003, purchasing large quantities of song copyrights from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. However, there were some songs that the copyright holders were unwilling to sell, and 9Tian Music Network didn't remove them.

Feng Chujun, who genuinely wanted to create legitimate music, has seen his company go bankrupt and has returned to the Institute for Economic System Reform as a researcher.

Cao Ming said, "President Chen's girlfriend's new song is pretty good. It has a Chinese style with opera-like vocals, and its downloads have increased rapidly in the past few days, ranking 9th on the online new song download chart."

"Thank you for your care, Mr. Cao," Chen Guiliang said.

Cao Ming laughed and said, "I just arranged a better recommendation spot. How much the downloads increase depends on the quality of the song."

As the two were talking, another person came over handing out business cards.

Seeing that Chen Guiliang was busy, he went to talk to Ao Yanzhen.

It was almost time, and the staff guided everyone to the venue.

First, the supervisor gave a speech, followed by speeches from the heads of the organizers and sponsors. Fortunately, there wasn't much unnecessary talk, and only the supervisor's speech lasted more than 10 minutes.

Then the awards ceremony began: "The following comprehensive platforms were awarded the 2005 Top 100 Chinese Commercial Websites: NetEase, MSN China, Tom.com, Phoenix.com, Hexun.com, Internet Starry Sky, People's Daily Online, Sohu.com, Tencent.com, Tiantian Online, Sina.com, and CCTV International."

Chen Guiliang smiled, but in his heart he was thinking: How is the order of this list arranged? How strange.

Does paying money guarantee a higher queue?
Twelve CEOs, including Ding Lei, Pony Ma, and Zhang Chaoyang, took to the stage one after another. They then stood in a row, much like elementary school students receiving awards.

It wasn't until the third batch of award recipients that Chen Guiliang was called to the stage.

"The top 100 entertainment websites include: E-TV, Kuro, The9, Haofang, Kongzhong, Mop, Saiwo, Shanda Entertainment... Tianya Community, Xiaonei, and Zhangshuo Lingtong."

Chen Tianqiao stood in the center, next to Zhu Jun from The9 and Zhou Yunfan from Kongzhong.com.

Chen Guiliang stood second to last on the far left, next to the CEO of Tianya Forum. Both of them looked like lowly underlings.

Kim Hee-young, that Korean guy on Saiwo.com, is quite interesting. He quietly moved to the middle position, which made the CEO of Haofang Battle frown.

This top 100 website ranking clearly has a "slicing up the pie" feel to it.

Kaixin001 has far more users than Cyworld, but Cyworld made the list while Kaixin001 didn't. The reason is simple: Renren already occupied a spot.

Jack Ma was in the fourth group to receive the award, while Alibaba was classified as an "industry-specific" website.

Following this were websites belonging to China Mobile, China Unicom, Lenovo, Haier, Kingsoft, IBM, HP, Dell, Microsoft, Rising, and others, all categorized as "enterprise" websites. This puzzled Chen Guiliang; why was Rising Antivirus website grouped with China Mobile and Lenovo?
After the awards for the top 100 websites were given out, it was time to select 50 websites for special attention.

Not only is it on the Kaixin.com chart, but it's also on Tudou.com. And there's Xunlei, hao123, and others.

Chen Guiliang did not go up again; Ao Yanchen accepted the award on behalf of Kaixin.com.

Next came speeches from internet giants, which continued until lunchtime. It wasn't until the afternoon that Chen Guiliang finally had the opportunity to speak on stage.

As Chen Guiliang walked onto the stage, Ding Sanshi leaned over to Chen Tianqiao and said, "This is the person who invested in 'The Emperor's Reign,' otherwise Bailian Technology wouldn't have had the subsequent development funds."

Chen Tianqiao smiled but didn't say anything.

He was actually very depressed during this period.

After "Legend" became free-to-play, its popularity rebounded, but its revenue plummeted by half and then again. When the financial report is released, it will definitely affect Shanda's stock price.

(End of this chapter)