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Chapter 295 0292 [The South Koreans Want to Smear "Future Era"]

Tencent's top management received the news after the Spring Festival.

Pony Ma (Ma Huateng, CEO of Tencent) attaches great importance to distributing "DNF" and personally oversees the project from time to time. He has now urgently convened a meeting of the game business group.

Last year, Tencent repurchased its own shares and reorganized its internal operations.

While restructuring departments, a large number of fresh faces were brought in, and Pony Ma's control over the company reached a new level.

Most of the game department heads present at the meeting were promoted or recruited last year, and some even officially joined during the Spring Festival this year.

Ren Yuxin, president of the gaming business, is a veteran of Tencent.

The vice president is Ma Xiaotie, who only joined this month. He was still at Guangtong last year, and he was the one who introduced Legend 3.

There was also a foreigner who was the vice president of the game, mainly responsible for the construction of the technology platform.

Yao Xiaoguang, who later created "Honor of Kings," also joined Tencent last August, responsible for developing his own games by "imitating" popular casual games. Tencent spent a year and a half trying to recruit him.

Of course, the person truly responsible for independent research and development is Wang Bo. He created QQ Games Hall and led the development of QQ Fantasy.

"QQ Fantasy's peak concurrent player count last year was over 60, but it dropped to 23 before the Spring Festival. Even with events during the Spring Festival, the peak concurrent player count only recovered to 31. I'm not saying there are problems with the game content, but the operation definitely has many issues..."

Ma Xiaotie, who had only been in office for a few days, started attacking the previous operations team.

Some of the older employees wore sneers, but in their hearts they were thinking: You almost ruined Guangtong, and now you dare to spout nonsense after jumping ship? Even if the operation of QQ Fantasy is terrible, can it be worse than the terrible operation of Legend 3?
Someone who was doing terribly in their previous job was poached with a high salary and parachuted in as the vice president of gaming. You can imagine how many people were resentful.

Actually, Ma Xiaotie was also aggrieved. It's true that he brought "Legend 3" to China. But the game became a huge hit even before it was released, and before long he had a chance to take over, someone else came along to reap the benefits. How "Legend 3" was operated was completely beyond his control.

The group held a meeting and discussed a whole host of issues.

Finally, Ren Yuxin, the game's president, stood up and projected two videos onto the screen: "This is a gameplay video of the Korean game 'DNF,' and this is a gameplay video of Youke's 'Future Era.' As you can see, although the storylines and graphics of the two games are completely different, their core gameplay is surprisingly similar. Even some of the classes are similar..."

Ren Yuxin continued, "I spent 10,000 yuan to buy a beta test account from a beta tester and played 'Future Era' for two whole days. I've also played 'DNF' myself. To be honest, whether it's the game's world view, storyline, graphics, or balance, 'Future Era' is a level above 'DNF'."

After a long silence, Pony Ma finally spoke up: "So, you're saying there's no need for DNF to be licensed?"

Ren Yuxin shook his head: "There's absolutely no need. But there's still a sliver of hope, which is to finalize the agency agreement immediately and complete the technical handover as quickly as possible. We should strive to launch 'DNF' within four months. After all, 'Future Era' has only completed the beginner village part, and currently only a thousand players are participating in the closed beta."

Yao Xiaoguang asked, "Did 'Future Era' really spend one year and eight months just to finish the beginner village?"

Ren Yuxin laughed and said, "How could that be? Judging from the time when the person in charge of the 'Future Era' project left, this game has been in development for at most one year and one month. Even if you poach the person, they can't start working immediately. They still have to build a development team. I estimate that the actual development time is less than a year."

"Even if we only have a year, it's already outrageous to only create a beginner village," Yao Xiaoguang said.

Why did Tencent spend a year and a half recruiting Yao Xiaoguang? Because he was the developer of China's first 3D MMORPG, "Miracle".

Ren Yuxin continued, "There are two difficulties in operating DNF before the launch of Future Era. First, negotiations and technical handover are difficult to complete quickly. Second, even if we succeed, the game quality will not be as good, and there is a high possibility of losses."

Little Ma knows him well: "Tell me your real thoughts."

Ren Yuxin said, "When Future Era was first launched, Chen Guiliang probably hadn't seen DNF. But the two games are so similar in their core gameplay, I guess that Future Era must have borrowed ideas from DNF during its development. If Youke can develop its own games, why can't we? Side-scrolling fighting online games can be made into a completely new game genre, just like MMOs."

"Isn't it too late to start developing our own technology now?" Ma Xiaotie asked.

Ren Yuxin smiled and said, "All types of online games have their own order of development. There's no question of early or late; it all comes down to the quality of the game and whether the operational strategy is excellent."

After careful consideration, Pony Ma began to appoint his generals: "Yao Xiaoguang is in charge of developing this type of game. He has experience in developing large-scale games and has achieved success in doing so."

Upon receiving the order, Yao Xiaoguang suggested, "Both 'DNF' and 'Future Era' are 2D, so we can develop the new game into a 3D version. This would be innovative and bring players a completely new experience. In addition, the game world and storyline of 'Future Era' are amazing, and I hope to recruit the best literary planners. It would be even better if we could directly adapt a popular novel."

“The novel ‘Ghost Blows Out the Light’ is quite popular,” someone suggested.

Little Ma asked, "Judging from the title, is it a horror novel?"

The person replied, "It can be understood as a Chinese version of 'Indiana Jones,' but it contains a lot of Chinese feng shui, history, and tomb raiding elements. This book is serialized on Qidian.com."

Ren Yuxin shook his head: "Qidian.com was acquired by Shanda a long time ago, so they would never sell the game adaptation rights."

It's definitely not for sale.

When Chen Guiliang sent people to buy the copyright, Qidian only sold the physical publishing rights and film/television adaptation rights. Qidian absolutely refused to sell the game rights for *Ghost Blows Out the Light*.

Little Ma said, "Then we'll write our own game storyline."

Yao Xiaoguang added, "If I take over this project, I hope I won't be pressured to rush the work."

Someone joked, "Are you planning to build the newbie village in a year and eight months?"

"It certainly won't be that slow. But to make a high-quality 3D game, one year is definitely not enough; it will take at least one and a half to two years," Yao Xiaoguang said.

That's how it was settled. Tencent changed its original plan to distribute "DNF" to develop its own side-scrolling 3D fighting online game.

After the meeting, Brother Ma took out his phone and found that Chen Guiliang's number was not saved in his contacts.

He had his assistant contact Chen Guiliang's secretary, and finally got through to Chen Guiliang on the phone: "Do you still need the five-digit QQ number?"

"Sure," Chen Guiliang said. Little Ma casually asked, "When will 'Future Era' be open for registration?"

"Summer vacation." Chen Guiliang didn't hide it, because this news was about to be announced.

Little Ma stopped there and didn't say anything more.

Fortunately, "Future Era" is being tested now; otherwise, once Tencent secures the endorsement deal for "DNF," it would be a huge disaster for them.

In reality, Chen Guiliang couldn't afford to wait any longer.

By the time Tencent finalized the distribution agreement for "DNF," it was already December 2007. For a Korean developer to negotiate a game distribution agreement for a year and a half is quite outrageous; even "World of Warcraft" didn't take that long.

……

Compared to Ma's composure, Chen Tianqiao has been overwhelmed with problems over the past year.

Although he made it onto the Forbes China Rich List last year, Forbes reported that Chen Tianqiao's assets were only 33 billion yuan.

Because Shanda's stock price plummeted by 70% last year!

The stock price decline was caused by the shift of games like "Legend of Mir" to free-to-play. This transition from paid to free-to-play games led to a sharp drop in Shanda's revenue in a short period, causing investors to panic and sell their shares.

Although Shanda quickly made up for its losses, news then broke that Shanda Box had failed.

Shanda Box's business concept is very advanced, but too advanced. It would be more appropriate to wait ten years before implementing it.

Almost all of the company's senior executives opposed the development of Shanda Box.

But Chen Tianqiao was overconfident and believed he was right. He even enjoyed being opposed by everyone, giving off a vibe of "I am the only one who is sober in a world of drunks."

In February of last year, Shanda Box pre-orders reached 180,000 units.

The data was pretty good, but then Chen Tianqiao pulled another stunt: he only accepts full payment orders.

I don't know where his confidence comes from.

At the end of last year, in order to replenish its working capital, Shanda even sold a large number of Sina shares. Even so, Shanda remains Sina's largest shareholder.

Li Yu, Vice President of Shanda Games, said, "The matter of distributing 'DNF' can stop now. The game quality is much worse than 'Future Era,' and the Korean side is stubbornly refusing to budge. Who knows when this negotiation will take."

“I think the company should focus on self-developed products and supplement it with agency products in the future,” Zhang Xiangdong suggested.

He is also the vice president of the game division, but also the head of Shanda's self-developed games.

“I agree,” Chen Xiaodi immediately expressed his support.

Chen Xiaodi, as the second largest shareholder of Shanda, also made it onto the Forbes China Rich List last year.

Chen Xiaodi continued, "Korean games are just so-so. Can't Chinese people make good games? Game Science is just a small company, but they can still make 'Future Era.' We can do it too. I led the acquisition of Qidian.com, where there are many novels that can be adapted into games."

That year, Shanda did indeed heavily promote its strategy, stating that it would focus on developing its own products in the future.

However, their approach was not to develop games in-house. Instead, they acquired a large number of small and medium-sized game companies, especially those that had already achieved some success.

They acquired it, and then ruined it all...

“I’ll think about it some more,” Chen Tianqiao said, not immediately agreeing, but then ordering, “Terminate the negotiations with the Korean side regarding the distribution of DNF.”

Several Chinese companies, including Shanda and Tencent, have terminated their negotiations with South Korean developer Neople.

Neople founder Xu Min slammed his fist on the table in anger.

The man wore black round-framed glasses, had shoulder-length hair, and looked somewhat like an artist.

The South Korean side's repeated reneging on its promises and demanding exorbitant prices during negotiations were personally instructed by Xu Min. He had carefully studied the Chinese online game market and believed he had Chinese game developers firmly under his control.

After his initial outburst of anger, Xu Min gradually calmed down and analyzed the situation carefully: "One company terminating negotiations might be due to internal decisions. But for all of them to terminate negotiations, something must have happened on the Chinese side. What exactly happened in China?"

The executive in charge of overseas markets said, "Our negotiator stationed in China said on the phone that a Chinese company had launched a new game. That new game has almost the exact same core gameplay as 'DNF'."

Xu Min, who had calmed down, became furious again upon hearing this: "It must be Chinese people plagiarizing. I'm going to sue them!"

The executive stated, "We can't sue. The game's world view, storyline, and art style are all different from our 'DNF'. The core gameplay is the same, so it doesn't constitute infringement. This is different from Shanda imitating 'Legend' to create 'Legend of Mir 2'."

Xu Min said, "Have your negotiators re-engage with the Chinese company and say that we are willing to reduce the agency fee and profit sharing. Besides, our Korean games are more fun and have a larger market than the Chinese imitators."

The executive, forcing a smile, said, "The negotiator said that based on the opening animation, cutscenes, and screenshots uploaded by beta testers released by the Chinese company, the Chinese game seems to have more refined graphics than ours. As for its playability, it's still unclear."

Xu Min said, "Have our negotiators buy a beta test account so they can try out the Chinese game themselves. Also, regardless of whether it constitutes infringement, we should sue them with great fanfare. Spend money to hire Chinese media to publicize it, ruin the game's reputation, and label it as a plagiarist! Even if we lose the case, Chinese players will despise that game. This will make negotiations much smoother."

An executive suggested: "Even if we lose the lawsuit, we can still continue to smear that game. We can say that the Chinese government is protecting its own plagiarists, while we are the victims of plagiarism and suppression."

Xu Min was very satisfied with this and praised, "You have a great business mind."

(End of this chapter)