Restart life

Chapter 250, Section 0247: [Is Youke Going to Develop Three Games Simultaneously?]

Chen Guiliang walked around the various booths and found that there were quite a few games developed or distributed by major companies this year.

Those games haven't even been released yet, but they've already come to the ChinaJoy electronics show to promote them.

There are also foreign companies that come here to sell games, such as Dungeon Fighter Online!
"Our 'DNF' has already ranked among the top three in terms of player numbers in Korean internet cafes, and the ranking continues to rise. More and more Korean players are choosing 'DNF' because of our unique features..." A Korean man, accompanied by a translator, explained to the Chinese manufacturers and reporters.

When promoting a game, of course you only say the good things, not the bad.

The first three months of the open beta launch of "DNF" in South Korea were nothing short of a game operation disaster. The Korean servers crashed when the number of concurrent online players exceeded 10.

After finally getting the servers sorted out, the game was plagued by rampant cheats that allowed players to instantly kill the entire screen or become invincible. Player churn reached as high as 40%.

A while ago, 12 cheat accounts were banned in one go!

The misfortunes that Tencent encountered in the early days of distributing "DNF" were merely a replay of the disaster that "DNF" suffered in South Korea.

The representatives from 9City Games were the first to come into contact with "DNF".

They went to the negotiation room provided by the exhibition organizers to talk privately.

"We at The9 are quite interested in 'DNF'. What price would you be willing to offer for the distribution rights?"

"A $50 licensing fee, a guaranteed $80 commission, and a 35% commission for agents..."

"Thank you, we still need to evaluate this game."

The Nine City representative only had a brief meeting, asked about the price, and left. Whether or not to become an agent still requires a company meeting and vote.

Following that, more than ten Chinese agents, including Guangtong, Shanda, Tencent, and 9you.com, went to inquire about it.

This gave the developers of "DNF" the illusion that Chinese game companies were very optimistic about the game, as if they would die if they didn't distribute it.

So, just a few days later, when Nine City negotiated with the South Korean side again, the South Korean side suddenly made exorbitant demands.

The licensing fee has increased from $50 to $200 million.

The guaranteed share of profits each year has increased from $80 to $200 million.

Even more absurdly, they also created a $500 million source code deposit. This was supposedly to prevent the Chinese distributor from leaking the source code, and the money would only be refunded upon the contract's expiration.

Simply insane!

When Zhu Jun, the CEO of The9, received the phone report, he was stunned by the Korean side's response. He then cursed, "A $5 million deposit is enough to sign a World of Warcraft expansion! Call them back, don't go to talk anymore."

Therefore, The9 was the first to withdraw.

NetEase is the second company to withdraw.

Meanwhile, the other Chinese manufacturers continued negotiations with the South Koreans. They said they didn't mind the sudden price increases, as they had seen many instances of South Koreans backing out.

Everyone knows what kind of people Koreans are!
It's nothing more than asking for an exorbitant price and then negotiating the final price.

The reason why The9 and NetEase are too lazy to talk anymore is because they own World of Warcraft and Fantasy Westward Journey. There's no need to put up with the Koreans' nonsense.

Chen Guiliang also went to ask.

When Chen Guiliang sent someone to make contact for the second time, the South Korean side's shameless demand to raise prices made him laugh in anger.

Since the emergence of online games in mainland China, I've never seen anything like a source code deposit. And a whopping $500 million!
You have to admire the imagination of Koreans.

When Chen Guiliang and Tao Chenggang discussed this matter, Tao Chenggang was amused: "Is this fucking insane? $500 million tied up there for years, it's like providing the Koreans with an interest-free loan. Even World of Warcraft isn't that unreasonable, who gave the Koreans the courage to make such a request?"

Chen Guiliang said with a smile, "The Korean side also requested that a 15-person Korean team be sent to the agent's company. The annual salary and travel expenses are 300 million yuan, which needs to be paid by the Chinese agent."

"Hahaha!" Tao Chenggang laughed loudly upon hearing this.

Even Tencent wouldn't agree to such a bizarre request.

That's why Tencent dragged things out with the Koreans for over a year. Only after other distributors withdrew did the Korean side finally relent.

……

Let's go back to the day of the exhibition.

Chen Guiliang strolled back to his own booth and found that there was a line of people playing games in front of the booth.

A Flash game: "Beat Up Kids".

The first version of this thing was released overseas as early as 2003, and the official version was launched in 2005.

Chen Guiliang did not directly translate and copy the original, but retained its core appeal and remade it from scratch.

In this way, there will be no copyright disputes.

They were too lazy to do it themselves and outsourced it directly, with outsourcing fees amounting to only 3.5 yuan.

If you only want to make a rough version, 5000 yuan should be enough.

Chen Guiliang never intended to make money from "Crazy Beating Up Kids"; he simply wanted to gain some popularity by listing it on the Youke Interactive Game Platform.

They even added a line at the beginning of the game: "Thanks and tribute to Dad 'n Me" (the original international version).

"Mr. Chen, this game is really fun!" a reporter from 17173 said while playing the game.

Chen Guiliang said, "It's actually more suitable for adults to play. With the pressure of work and life, this little game can relieve stress. I'm just afraid that some people will nitpick and say that I'm promoting violence and teaching children bad things."

The reporter laughed and said, "This could really be a bad influence on kids!"

This guy grabbed a child from the roadside and threw him onto the main road where he got hit by a car.

"Beating Up Kids" is nothing complicated; it's just about walking down the street and beating up anyone you see.

It's incredibly stress-relieving, releasing the destructive urges deep within us. The reporter played for a few minutes, then got up to let the others in line go, and ran over to interview Chen Guiliang.

Reporter: First of all, congratulations Mr. Chen, both "Three Kingdoms Kill" and "The World of Power" have achieved remarkable results.

Chen Guiliang: Thank you.

Reporter: What are your plans for the future? May I ask that?

Chen Guiliang: We're focused on making "Three Kingdoms Kill," Youpay, and Youke Interactive Games successful. Youke Interactive Games already has 600 million registered users. Our various mini-games are very popular, and our card and board games are starting to generate profits. As for the Youpay payment system, besides Youke itself using it, Xiaonei.com, HaiNei.com, and "Quan Yu Tian Xia" are also using it. In addition, two other small game companies have also chosen to cooperate with Youpay.

Reporter: Do you have any plans to develop or distribute new games? DNF is very popular today, and I heard that more than ten companies have approached us.

Chen Guiliang: I also contacted the developers of "DNF". But I promised last year that I would not distribute Korean games.

Reporter: Mr. Chen, you keep your word. I admire you.

Chen Guiliang: I've bought the game adaptation rights to "My Own Swordsman". The project has already been approved. Furthermore, Ning Caishen, the screenwriter of "My Own Swordsman", will be one of the planners for the game of the same name.

Reporter: This is big news! "My Own Swordsman" has been a hit since the beginning of the year, and it's still being broadcast on local TV stations. Online downloads and viewership are also very high. When will the game of the same name be released?

Chen Guiliang: It's hard to say. I strive for perfection in game development, so it might take me a year and a half to two years.

Reporter: That's incredibly meticulous. Very few domestically developed games take more than a year to complete. If the development cycle exceeds one year, the final product is bound to be a masterpiece.

Chen Guiliang: Actually, Youke has another game in development, which has been in production for almost a year. They are also simultaneously developing their own game engine, so the development progress is relatively slow.

Reporter: Mr. Chen, you're really patient. Other companies would have already launched their games into open beta after nearly a year of development. You haven't even started promoting them, and you haven't revealed any information.

Chen Guiliang: Hasn't this already started the publicity?
Reporter: What's the name of the game?
Chen Guiliang: *Future Era*. The game's background is a future cataclysmic event that has caused human civilization to regress to the Middle Ages. Modern technology has vanished, leaving only simple guns and cannons to be manufactured. Simultaneously, spiritual energy has revived, giving rise to cultivators and magicians.

Reporter: That sounds interesting.

Chen Guiliang: The novel of the same name is already being serialized on Qidian.com. The author is Shuxia Yehou, who wrote "The Search for the Gods". He is also the text planner for this game.

Reporter: Mr. Chen is very ambitious; the company's second game even developed its own engine.

Chen Guiliang: There are no usable commercial engines on the market.

Reporter: What? Is there some new and exciting game content?

Chen Guiliang: It's confidential. Actually, Youke is also about to develop a single-player mini-game.

Reporter: You're already working on "Future Era," and you've also started a project for "Wulin Gaiden." You're also making a single-player game? Three new games at the same time!

Chen Guiliang: Yes. It's a single-player game called "Plants vs. Zombies".

Reporter: Single-player games aren't profitable anymore, are they? Most of the studios or companies that used to make single-player games have now switched to online games.

Chen Guiliang: Someone has to do the standalone game.

The reporter was deeply impressed. He felt he had made a huge profit from this interview, managing to extract so much information from Chen Guiliang in one go.

Chen Guiliang was actually quite helpless.

Due to technological limitations, Plants vs. Zombies could be made into a Flash game, but then there would be no way to save the game. You would have to start from the first level every time.

It could be made into a web game, but the webpage would crash very easily while playing it.

They had no choice but to abandon the web version, just like with "Three Kingdoms Kill," and directly turn it into a client-based single-player game.

With pirated single-player games rampant, Chen Guiliang was too lazy to sell physical installers.

Then you can download and play the first few levels for free on the Youke Interactive Game Platform. If you want to continue playing, you can get a key for 5 yuan.

It's estimated that a cracked version will appear online soon.

It's hard to say whether we can even break even.

In another year or two, when pirated versions are everywhere, the legitimate version will be directly reduced to 1 yuan. At the same time, new levels and items will be added to maintain the sense of superiority for legitimate users.

The real money-making opportunity for Plants vs. Zombies came when it was adapted into a browser game. The real big money-making opportunity, however, came with the mobile game era.

Making it a standalone client now is simply a way to secure the IP address in advance!

Anyway, the development cost isn't high.

The following day, 17173's special report on the ChinaJoy electronics show released its first batch of news articles.

News about Game Science stands out in these headlines.

The title is: "GameSpot Enters Aggressive Development Mode, Announces Simultaneous Development of Three New Games"

"When interviewed yesterday, a reporter learned from Chen Guiliang, the founder of Youke, that one of their games, 'Future Era,' is very mysterious. It has been in development for nearly a year and they are also developing their own game engine. One of the planners is Shuxia Yehou, a popular online novelist and author of 'The Search for Gods,' whose novel of the same name is already being serialized on Qidian.com."

"The second game is 'My Own Swordsman,' with the original screenwriter of the TV series serving as the script planner..."

"The third one will even be developed as a standalone game..."

The news caused a sensation in the industry.

It was a huge sensation; even major domestic game companies have been paying close attention to Chen Guiliang.

Because "Three Kingdoms Kill" and "The Emperor's Reign" were so successful.

GamerSky is currently developing three new games simultaneously, one of which is even a single-player game, which has attracted the attention of major game companies.

Especially "My Own Swordsman", which can make money just from this IP.

In the words of a Computerworld reporter, the industry was crying wolf!
(End of this chapter)