Restart life

Chapter 321, Episode 0318 [35 words in the first month]

My cousin Zhang Qing graduated from high school this year. Because Chen Guiliang provided her with tuition fees, she no longer went to a junior college instead of a third-tier university.

The tuition for a third-tier university is over ten thousand yuan a year.

During the summer vacation, her parents sent her to Chen Guiliang's house so she could earn some recognition. She was to help with housework and farm work every day.

But the adults are all at home, why would they let the children do chores?

At most, they would help peel corn kernels and dry rice during the threshing season.

"Guirong, where are you going? We're harvesting rice tomorrow," Zhang Qing asked.

Chen Guirong said, "Let's go to the internet cafe in town. Do you want to come?"

Zhang Qing thought about it and was genuinely tempted. She hadn't touched a computer for two months, since the college entrance exam.

"Then let's go for a while."

"Come with me, I'll take you on a boat trip today."

Aside from not being a good student, Chen Guirong was practically a carbon copy of his cousin Chen Guiliang in every other way. Or rather, he had admired his cousin since childhood and subconsciously imitated everything he did.

Especially mischievous and daring!

In order to go to the town to go online, and too lazy to walk from the village road to the county road and then take a car, this guy actually just drove off on the small cargo boat from the next group.

The boat owners, an elderly couple, were distant relatives of Chen Guiliang. They kept the boat moored on the riverbank and rarely used it. Especially after the abolition of agricultural taxes, fewer people were farming, so there was no need for them to help buy fertilizer or deliver grain to the government.

"Can you drive a boat?" Zhang Qing asked with some concern.

Chen Guirong said, "Sister, please sit down without worry."

With a sharp push of the pole, the man propelled the small cargo boat away from the shore with ease, and he steered it steadily toward the town.

There's only one internet cafe in town, and last year it couldn't even connect to the internet; you could only play games like StarCraft and Red Alert on a local area network. This year, we can finally surf the internet.

The siblings set off early in the morning and entered the internet cafe before nine o'clock.

But the seats were almost full.

Not only were there children from the town, but also many unemployed people from the town.

"Anyone want to run the Abyss? Let's fucking team up!"

"Hey internet cafe manager, my noodles haven't arrived yet?"

"What the hell is this to me? Go ask the noodle shop next door yourself. Don't bother me while I'm grinding my dungeon."

"Fuck your ancestors, you're the network administrator!"

"If I weren't a network administrator, I would have killed you for saying that!"

"..."

This network administrator used to be a hoodlum and even participated in the ambush of Chen Guiliang, witnessing the entire process of Chen Guiliang stabbing people.

Of course, that's what he claims to be.

In fact, he was so frightened that he turned and ran away. He only saw Chen Guiliang chop the first person down. The rest of the time, he ran with his back to Chen Guiliang.

Several ringleaders were arrested and sentenced because they were involved in other criminal cases.

This guy is just a small fry.

In the past two years, he has started to boast about Chen Guiliang everywhere, as if he has become more awesome because of it.

"Do you know Chen Guiliang? He's the one who went to Peking University and started his own company. Let me tell you, I used to know him. He's from Yaojia Township. We met under unusual circumstances... Let me tell you, Chen Guiliang used to be incredibly arrogant..."

A few days before the launch of "Future Era," the hoodlum who had switched careers to become a network administrator told the customers who came to use the internet, "My friend Chen Guiliang's game is about to launch. It's awesome, you all have to come and play!"

Chen Guirong, ever the friendly type, went over to greet him: "Brother Qiang, two machines."

Upon seeing that it was Chen Guirong, the internet cafe manager, Brother Qiang, was very enthusiastic. He told the game character to stand in the corner and shouted to the team members in the internet cafe, "Keep an eye on me, don't let the monster kill me!"

After saying that, he switched out of the game and helped Chen Guirong and Zhang Qing log in.

Another player yelled, "Qiangzi, hurry up and deposit 10 yuan into the game for me! Damn it, I accidentally ran out of resurrection coins!"

There isn't much paid content in Future Era yet.

Resurrection coins are the most frequently consumed item.

The main issue is that everyone is just starting out, and there aren't any accounts that can easily carry others through dungeons yet. Without using resurrection coins, dying and returning to your starting position not only weakens you but also causes you to lose experience points for your current level.

Moreover, entering a dungeon consumes fatigue points, and if you die before finishing the dungeon, wouldn't that be a waste of fatigue points?

Fatigue points are not unlimited; the game has a fatigue cap. Even if you buy fatigue potions, you can't use them once you exceed the cap.

Under the guise of preventing addiction, the leaders of the State Administration of Press and Publication were very satisfied.

It's really just a way to trick players into buying memberships. Regular members get a certain amount of extra fatigue points, gold members get a certain amount, and black diamond members get even more...

While you can play without spending money, you won't be able to run as many dungeons each day.

Of course, thanks to the arena, free players don't complain. If they run out of fatigue points, they can just go to the arena and PK with other players.

Since it's essentially a fighting game, if you're skilled enough, even someone with basic gear can defeat a VIP player. Therefore, free-to-play players often experience a huge sense of accomplishment in the arena, a thrilling feeling of an underdog defeating a millionaire.

"Right away, right away!" The network administrator, Brother Qiang, quickly switched to the recharge page.

Game Science's Upay payment system has never used a ground promotion model to expand its offline channels. Instead, it has developed an "Internet cafe cooperation program".

Youke's sales representatives purchased contact lists through shady channels and then called internet cafe owners or managers across the country one by one. They also posted announcements on the Youke platform, Youpay platform, and the official websites of its various games, encouraging internet cafe owners or managers to proactively apply for cooperation.

As long as the internet cafe can present its "two certificates, one book, and one license," cooperation can be achieved through remote video operation. In practice, only the "one certificate and one license" are required.

By mailing contracts, internet cafes can reach recharge agency agreements with Youpay.

Internet cafes and their managers can receive a commission on the recharge amount.

Currently, more than 10,000 internet cafes have partnered with Youpay in this way.

However, over 10,000 internet cafes are still too few. To operate a game business, you still need to negotiate distribution agreements with companies like Junwang, which specialize in selling prepaid cards. They have genuine offline channels.

There are currently 12.8 legal internet cafes nationwide, as well as hundreds of thousands of illegal internet cafes without proper licenses.

The internet cafes in Chen Guiliang's hometown are illegal; they don't have any licenses!
The network administrator, Qiang, took a different approach. He felt that "Future Era" would definitely be a hit, so he scraped together more than 10,000 yuan and invested it all at once to buy Youpay virtual recharge cards.

The larger the transaction volume, the greater the discount, and Qiang Ge can profit from the price difference.

Even if the internet cafe where you work can't distribute all the games, you can list them on other game trading platforms for discounted sale.

There are even people who don't work in internet cafes but make money doing this kind of thing.

"Damn it, my fatigue points are all gone again! Manager, give me a membership, I can't play without one!" another player cursed.

Actually, even if you subscribe to a regular membership, the fatigue potions you can use won't allow you to clear many more maps.

Essentially, it's still about preventing addiction.

Otherwise, Chen Guiliang could have allowed players to drink potions freely, instead of the current system where fatigue potions can be purchased but have a daily usage limit. In other games, restricting players from running dungeons would be suicidal.

However, this is a fighting game, and restricting map clearing is equivalent to encouraging arena PvP, which is why the arena is extremely popular.

Some players who are keen on PvP don't even care much about PvE; they're happy as long as their gear is decent. Only after a series of PvP losses do they realize they should upgrade their gear.

Chen Guirong took his cousin Zhang Qing to find a computer to go online. Along the way, they found that 80% of the people in the internet cafes were playing "Future Era".

Generally speaking, the games that are popular in internet cafes are closely related to the local user base.

Some players made the game popular, and other players followed suit and tried it.

Especially free games, since you don't need to spend money. If you see others having fun playing them, you'll want to try it yourself.

Some internet cafes are filled with players playing "Conquer Online". Other internet cafes are filled with players playing "Eudemons Online".

A diverse range of states are emerging.

This small-town internet cafe, thanks to the manager's enthusiastic recommendation, is showing signs of becoming almost entirely filled with people playing "Future Era".

Chen Guirong pointed at the computers and said smugly, "Impressive, right? They're all Big Brother's games!"

Zhang Qing nodded: "It looks like a lot of fun."

So she turned on her computer and chatted with someone on QQ, then went to manage her QQ space. Next, she logged into Renren.com.

Those high school classmates who got into university all said that Renren (校内网) was popular in college, and that using QQ Space would be ridiculed. But Zhang Qing hadn't started university yet, so her Renren connections were limited to her high school and class.

After exchanging comments with someone on the school's intranet, Zhang Qing clicked on the "Audition Online" shortcut icon on the screen.

Chen Guirong, who had already started grinding, immediately complained, "Sis, you don't play our brother's games, why are you playing 'Audition Online'?"

Zhang Qing said, "Besides Audition Online, I don't know how to play any other games."

Chen Guirong said, "Hurry up and get into the game, I'll help you clear the dungeons."

In the internet cafe, there was even a young couple breaking up. The boyfriend insisted on playing the game "Future Era" because he felt his girlfriend was being antisocial.

"Ah! Help me! Help me! I'm going to die!"

One guy was playing YY voice chat very loudly, which quickly attracted a group of players nearby.

People crowded around.

"Wow, it's a girl, and her voice is so nice. Where did you meet her?" one player said enviously.

The man said smugly, "I met her on 51.com, and I even video chatted with her. She's very well-behaved. When I told her I'd help her with some leveling, she immediately registered an account."

"Awesome!"

Have you met in person?

"Yes, yes, ask her out and make her your girlfriend."

"..."

The proportion of female players in Future Era is decent, higher than that of typical MMO games, but slightly lower than that of World of Warcraft.

In the early days of World of Warcraft, the percentage of female players was below 20%, only increasing significantly after the Blood Elf class was introduced. This suggests that WoW's unattractive character models deterred a large number of potential female players.

The art style of "Future Era" is very pleasing, and besides the healer class, female players also like to play the summoner/puppet master because fighting monsters doesn't require as much skill.

Chen Guirong said to her cousin, "See? Women play this game too."

Zhang Qing was watching the game's opening animation intently. She found the story very interesting, much more fun than playing the game itself.

She called Chen Guiliang: "Brother, I'm playing your game, the story in the cartoon is really interesting."

"Guirong showed you around, right?" Chen Guiliang asked with a smile.

"Yeah, he even rowed someone's boat away."

"I'll call his dad later and break that brat's legs!"

"There are still many people playing games in the internet cafe."

"..."

Indeed, there are a lot of internet cafe players, and this is true in many cities across the country, except that there isn't a single dominant internet cafe like the ones in my hometown.

Because side-scrolling fighting online games are particularly novel, they can be a refreshing experience for internet cafe players!
Having frequented internet cafes for years and experienced countless MMO games, I've rarely seen anything like this.

Therefore, despite its various bugs, DNF quickly spread to internet cafes in South Korea. At that time, the Tencent-distributed version of DNF also caused a sensation in internet cafes.

However, in its early days, DNF suffered from numerous disconnections and cheating issues, resulting in a low player retention rate. Every day, a large number of new players registered, and every day, many old players quit the game.

By the end of 2008, when Tencent was distributing "DNF" as its agent, the number of registered users had reached more than 1000 million, but the peak number of online users during the event was less than 50.

Later, it accumulated more than 8000 million registered users, but it was difficult to even break 100 million peak online users.

This indicates that a large number of players have quit the game.

Many players repeatedly register, quit, and then come back, only to be annoyed by disconnections, cheating, and account bans, causing them to quit again. They really want to play, but the experience is terrible, making it hard to continue.

Chen Guiliang learned from the lessons of "DNF" and conducted tests and adjustments six months in advance, and also put a lot of effort into optimizing communication.

"Future Era" possesses the appeal of "DNF" while avoiding its major pitfalls. What phenomenon does this lead to?
Countless internet cafe gamers, after seeing others playing, found the gameplay novel and decided to give it a try. Once inside, the gaming experience was excellent, so they stayed to play long-term.

It's much more successful than Tencent's "DNF"!
As the summer vacation was about to end and the school year was about to start, the peak number of concurrent online players in "Future Era" quickly soared to 35.

Even the game "Fantasy Westward Journey" took three or four months to achieve this result.

"Future Era" was completed in just one month.

The user growth curve shows a surge in the first three days, a slowdown in the following week, and then a straight upward trend.

The surge in stock price within three days of its launch was a result of prior publicity.

The subsequent sharp rise was due to the influx of countless internet cafe users.

The latest issue of Popular Software magazine features "Future Era" on its cover. The headline reads: "The Birth of a Domestic Phenomenal Game—15 Sales in the First Week, 35 in the First Month."

The article concludes with a joke that if Koreans weren't so greedy and hadn't demanded exorbitant prices during distribution negotiations, the current popularity of "Future Era" might very well have originated in the Chinese version of "DNF" last year.

Taking advantage of the situation, CCTV.com launched "DNF," promoting it as "the originator of side-scrolling fighting online games." They also hired online trolls to post everywhere, claiming that "Future Era" was a plagiarism and that "DNF" was the authentic original game.

Regardless, a group of netizens actually believed it and went to play the more authentic version of "DNF" with their friends.

Then they learned what a trap really is!
This cheat exists in the Korean server, and because it's technically impossible to stop, over 10 accounts were banned last year.

When CCTV.com introduced the game to China, cheat software flooded in immediately, with forums and online communities filled with vendors selling cheat software.

Furthermore, the communication optimization in "DNF" is extremely poor because Korean internet speeds don't require optimization. But when it's ported to China... laggy, laggy, I'm disconnected again! Why do I keep getting disconnected as soon as I enter a dungeon?

Screw Korean games, I'm going to play Future Era.

(End of this chapter)