Restart life

Chapter 353, page 0340: [Then let's make it ourselves!]

Tencent is doing very well this year.

A few years ago, Tencent's SP (Service Provider) business revenue accounted for more than 60% of its total revenue. Even slight policy changes could cause Tencent's stock price to fluctuate wildly.

The transformation has now been successful, and the SP business accounts for less than 20% of Tencent's total revenue.

Tencent's casual games have exploded again this year, with several games, including QQ Dance, exceeding 100 million peak concurrent users. CrossFire, which entered closed beta last year and open beta this year, has also performed remarkably well.

Of course, this is mainly due to the overall boom in the online game market.

It took 11 years, from 1994 to 2005, for the number of Chinese internet users to exceed 100 million.

In 2007, the number of Chinese internet users exceeded 2 million.

In the first half of this year, the number of internet users surged by more than 43 million in just six months!

These data do not include internet cafe users, because it is simply impossible to collect statistics on them.

"QQ War Souls reached a peak of 12 concurrent users in its first three days, 20 in its first week, and 33 in its first month. But it can't keep up, and it has declined this week. The player experience... is not very good," Ren Yuxin reported.

Little Ma frowned: "What, is it another case of poor player experience?"

Ren Yuxin explained, "The development cycle was too short, and the game engine wasn't ready. This kind of side-scrolling fighting engine places great emphasis on the feel of physical impact. There are no similar commercial engines on the market, so we had to develop it ourselves. In order to launch quickly and seize the market, we didn't have enough development time."

From April to the summer vacation this year, seven side-scrolling fighting online games were launched in China, all of which were trying to compete with "Future Era" for market share.

Sohu Changyou went even further, creating a game called "Apocalypse," which completely imitates "Future Era" in everything from its storyline to its classes and skills. It's reached the point of being suspected of plagiarism!

Tencent's "QQ War Souls" is not much better. Although the world view and plot have been changed, the rest of the content is a stitch-on-stitch product of "Future Era" and "DNF".

These copycat side-scrolling fighting online games all suffer from poor combat feel because their game engines are poorly designed.

Even games like The9's "Dynasty Warriors: Overlords" seem to have a traditional arcade feel, but players often experience lag when unleashing skills. Players assume it's a network latency issue, but the real problem is a poorly designed game engine that causes frame drops during skill usage.

To put it bluntly, these game developers are eager to launch and make money, afraid of falling behind the trend of side-scrolling fighting online games. They feel they're losing out if they launch a month or two later.

When Game Science was developing "Future Era," in order to enhance the player's fighting experience, they specifically invited fighting game champions, including children, to stay at the company for a whole winter break to test it.

Can the finished products be the same?

The emergence of a bunch of domestically produced side-scrolling fighting online games only makes "Future Era" stand out even more!
It received rave reviews and saw a surge in players.

Little Ma asked, "You guys really think so highly of that American 'League of Legends'?"

Ren Yuxin said, "LOL is derived from Warcraft 3 and Dota, but the online connection methods are different. Warcraft 3 and Dota have many players, but they can only connect through P2P or platform relay servers, making it difficult to make money by selling skins. Once LOL is launched, it can attract Warcraft 3 and Dota players and maximize commercial profits by selling skins!"

Pony Ma said, "I also understand technology. If we change it to a client connecting to the official server, the current mainstream internet speed in China simply can't handle it."

Ren Yuxin said, "So we have to wait. We'll wait for the domestic internet speed to upgrade before launching 'LOL'. This year, China's internet speed has been upgraded, with the mainstream reaching 1M broadband. I estimate that there will be another major upgrade in internet speed in the next two or three years."

When Chen Guang discovered League of Legends, he only considered it as an ordinary project.

He went through the procedures and reported it to Ren Yuxin, who keenly recognized the value of "LOL" and upgraded it to a key import project.

As Tencent's Strategic Investment Officer, Liu Zhiping upgraded Riot Games and League of Legends to overseas strategic investment projects after communicating with Ren Yuxin.

If it's just about distributing "League of Legends", Chen Guang can handle the negotiations.

Now that it has become a strategic investment, Liu Zhiping personally went to the United States.

Since it's a strategic investment, how could Tencent possibly give it up?

An overseas call came in.

Liu Zhiping reported directly to Pony Ma: "There's something I can't make a decision on entirely. Youke is competing with us for 'LOL,' and they're even making a strategic premium investment. They're offering a full 50% premium!"

"Why is it Youke again?" Little Ma was very annoyed.

Last time, we were discussing "DNF" with the Koreans, and things were going well, but then GameSpot suddenly announced the closed beta of "Future Era." This caused Tencent to abandon its plan to import the game.

Liu Zhiping said, "We cannot give up; we must raise the premium to snatch it away."

Ma said, "You are fully in charge. I will fax you the authorization documents first, and then I will send someone to the United States."

The continuous premiums offered by Youke and Tencent have left the other three parties dumbfounded.

In particular, the two founders of Riot Games only intend to retain more than 35% of the shares and then use an AB share structure to confirm their control over the company.

Now that the two Chinese companies are offering exorbitant premiums, Riot Games' two founders suddenly feel incredibly powerful. They're no longer willing to give up so many shares!

After much negotiation, Liu Zhiping made a bold statement: "No matter how much premium Youke pays, Tencent will raise it by another 10%!"

Youke can't compete with just throwing money at the problem. Lü Zhihui communicated with Chen Guiliang multiple times via long-distance phone: "Tencent's attitude is very firm, and I feel they won't give up. I have a compromise idea: Youke and Tencent should register a joint venture, and this joint venture will invest in Riot Games."

"Who will lead the joint venture? Tencent will not relinquish its leading role, and neither will I," Chen Guiliang said.

Lü Zhihui remained silent.

Chen Guiliang said, "If we can talk, we will; if we can't reach an agreement, we will give up."

Chen Guiliang has decided to develop his own product.

League of Legends wasn't perfect when it was first released; it had all sorts of problems and was constantly being updated to improve it.

Chen Guiliang possesses all the "advanced experience" of League of Legends, and he can directly produce a more complete game to seize the Chinese mainland market at crucial moments.

As for going global, when Chen Guiliang's self-developed game is launched, Riot Games should have already abandoned him after using him and taken back the local distribution rights to operate their own games.

That's the perfect time to go global. When Riot Games regains the global distribution rights, the distributors in various countries will need a similar game. Moreover, they're already furious with Riot Games, so they'll be very enthusiastic about promoting Chen Guiliang's game!

Next up, it'll be a head-to-head battle between the two games.

Another week later, as Tencent continued to offer higher prices, Chen Guiliang informed Lü Zhihui to terminate the negotiations.

Tencent was also very unhappy because Chen Guiliang's interference meant they had to spend more money to acquire the same amount of shares in the company.

Moreover, Tencent held a small stake during its Series A funding round, less than 10%. Over the next two years, Tencent will continue to invest heavily, gradually increasing its stake to over 20%.

Chen Guiliang stopped thinking about it; he was going to fly to Shanghai to attend the film festival and promote the animation company he had invested in.

As for the self-developed MOBA game, he plans to design the world view himself. Then, he will form an early project team and let the employees add content. After that, Chen Guiliang will revise and improve it.

The reborn have no other skills; plagiarism is just a basic one.

Chen Guiliang will definitely be the first to create Yasuo, Riven, and the like!
Yes, some heroes from "Honor of Kings" could be brought over. But historical figures would be too incongruous and their names would need to be changed.

On the plane to Shanghai, Chen Guiliang took out his laptop and started typing away at the game's background and world view.

The early lore of League of Legends was very chaotic, lacking even a unified worldview. There were numerous retconnings and changes, even the marital relationship between Ashe and Tryndamere was added later in the game.

Some things can be borrowed.

"The universe is not singular, but composed of countless parallel dimensions called 'Source Realms,' each with its own unique physical laws, energy forms, and civilizations..."

"A catastrophic event that affected multiple source realms occurred, known in history as the Great Rift. The barriers between dimensions became extremely fragile, energy permeated each other, and space was distorted and superimposed..."

“A portion of land, ocean, creature, and even deity from various source realms met at the broken dimensional rift, forming a completely new world and developing their own civilizations and kingdoms…”

"Ten thousand years have passed, and the fragile barrier of spacetime has once again developed a crack. The forces of the void and the astral plane are watching this strange world..."

The various factions are all based on reality, with only the names and historical details changed.

The main continents are actually variations of Asia, Africa, and Europe.

The country with Chinese elements is one of the major powers, and it is further subdivided into several smaller powers.

Foreigners love pandas, just like in World of Warcraft, so they created a panda-themed area. Of course, Sun Wukong (the Monkey King) had to be included too.

There's also Tianji City, which excels at mechanisms.

There are also various sword immortals and Buddhist/Taoist figures, even the Blind Monk was taken by "League of Legends". He is a practitioner who practiced martial arts in his early years, but his family was destroyed, he was blinded, and then he became a monk.

The Peerless Swordswoman was given a Chinese name, and she was made a sword immortal. Her original skin was given a Chinese-style design.

Other factions will also retain elements of slice-of-life comics, as Western players are heavily influenced by slice-of-life comics, especially those featuring ninjas.

The expansion of barbarian power is actually a reflection of steppe civilization, including the steppe civilizations of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

European, Middle Eastern, and North African forces were also involved, but they all had to change the maps and names.

There are also pirate forces, reflecting the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the South China Sea.

There are also American factions, portrayed as mysterious civilizations of ancient Central and South America. Amazonian female warriors and such are also included.

There are also chaotic forces, whose ancestors came from a technological civilization before the Great Rift. The original laws of physics no longer apply in the new world. Technology has declined drastically, but they have retained their technological mindset, so they continue to explore the laws of this world to develop.

This chaotic force includes people of all skin colors, combining technology, magic, and cultivation—it's essentially a reskinned Piltover and Zaun, but definitely very different from the original.

Chen Guiliang's writing became increasingly fluent, a blend of plagiarism and originality, leaving him with a great deal of room for creative expression.

(End of this chapter)