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Chapter 378 0368 [Multiplayer Competitive Game Officially Launched]

Even during the Olympics, we still have to work!
Chen Guiliang drove back to the company and immediately called the three competitors to his office.

He had previously assigned the three of them a task: to spend a month writing a game analysis report on Dota and to find out and contact members of the Dota localization team.

This will determine who will be the producer of the new project.

“I have already read your analysis reports,” Chen Guiliang said. “I’ll have Secretary Hu print them out so you can cross-check each other’s.”

After he finished speaking, he handed over the three reports, which were still warm from the printer.

Apart from Chen Mo, who dropped out of school halfway through, the other two are Huang Feixiang, a graduate of Tsinghua University, and Shi Ke, a graduate of Beihang University.

While the three were reviewing each other's analysis reports, Chen Guiliang logged into QQ and started chatting with Xie Yang.

How's Weibo doing?

"It's incredibly popular. Since the opening ceremony last night, we've already added over 6 new self-paid registered users!"

"It's because your event was well organized."

"..."

There are 100,000 Olympic volunteers in Beijing, and Xie Yang and his team came up with a solution—

1000 million yuan was used to promote Weibo.

Of this, 5 million yuan was Olympic sponsorship fees. When the "Organizing Committee Volunteer Department" was arranging their work, they were asked to also send a Weibo registration invitation to 100,000 volunteers.

For any Olympic volunteer who registers on Weibo, ByteDance will pay for their monthly Weibo SMS and MMS subscription packages. Volunteers who already have a Weibo account will also receive a one-month subscription fee.

ByteDance encourages volunteers to take photos and post them on Weibo during their daily work to record all sorts of fun or touching things.

The 100 people who gain the most followers can receive a Weibo package fee for one to six months.

The 100 most popular Weibo posts can also earn you a Weibo subscription fee of one to six months.

Meanwhile, ByteDance heavily promoted the event on HaiNei.com and its WAP site.

Regular Weibo users can also easily send Olympic-related content and have the opportunity to receive Weibo subscription rewards—you can even post pictures of yourself playing sports with friends, which is equivalent to supporting the Olympics through sports.

This thing can spread viruses!

For example, if I were an Olympic volunteer and ByteDance gave me a free monthly subscription, I would definitely be happy to post on Weibo whenever I wanted during my work hours. It's free, so why not?

But I just opened a Weibo account and don't have many Weibo friends. I hope that what I post can be seen by more people in real time.

So I would call my friends in real life and try my best to persuade them to also open a Weibo account.

Especially among the volunteers, many of them are not short of money at all!
For example, the famous "Sisters' Guiding Team" includes many female entrepreneurs. They didn't know about Weibo before, but after receiving the invitation from the "Olympic Organizing Committee Volunteer Department," they immediately registered Weibo accounts.

The invitation clearly explained all the functions of Weibo, as well as how to register an account and activate a subscription plan.

The female entrepreneurs found it very novel and particularly suitable for their current situation. Especially when they weren't serving tourists and were just standing by the roadside with nothing to do, posting on Weibo was a good way to pass the time.

They would also call to invite relatives and friends, and even their own company employees!

Some entrepreneurs are even willing to pay out of their own pockets to subscribe to Weibo accounts for their employees—just so that their employees can see what they do anytime. How meaningful is that?

ByteDance will have further promotional activities planned.

This involves paying major media outlets to write advertorials, using Olympic news coverage to promote Weibo. Essentially, it's about hyping Weibo, claiming it's become the new Olympic trend and everyone is sharing their Olympic experiences through it.

The diffusion rate is extremely fast.

This isn't even the Chinese team's all-star game yet; I estimate that the number of new Weibo users will increase even more on the day Liu Xiang plays.

"Have you finished reading?" Chen Guiliang asked.

"finish watching."

The three put down the analysis report.

Chen Guiliang said, "You can all evaluate yourselves and see whose analysis report is the best."

None of the three spoke.

“Then let me explain,” Chen Guiliang said. “Huang Feixiang and Shi Ke, you two have a deeper and more detailed understanding of Dota. Have you been playing this game for a while now?”

“Yes, I started playing Dota as soon as it came out,” Huang Feixiang said.

Shi Keya also said, "I started playing it last summer."

Chen Guiliang smiled and asked Chen Mo, "Do you think it's a bit difficult for newcomers to get started?"

Chen Mo nodded: "Yes. I think that for a game to grow big, it must eliminate the barriers to entry for newcomers. The lower the barrier to entry, the better!"

Huang Feixiang disagreed: "That's because you haven't played it much. You'll get used to it after playing it for a while."

Chen Mo retorted, "You think a game will become familiar to newcomers just by playing it a bit? Doesn't that shut out countless potential players? Not everyone is an expert, and it's more likely that they've never played a game before."

Huang Feixiang hesitated, unsure how to refute Chen Mo's statement, because Chen Mo was right.

Shi Ke said, "If a game is too easy, it's hard to retain veteran players. Especially for multiplayer competitive games like this, they'll be ridiculed as games only for elementary school students. Once a game is put into a hierarchy of contempt, it's very difficult for it to recover."

Chen Mo said, "So we need to make it easy to get started, but also give it a lot of room for skill. We need to make it easy for beginners to get started quickly, while also giving experienced players enough room to improve their skills."

"That's probably very difficult," Huang Feixiang said.

Chen Mo laughed and said, "How would we know if we didn't try? We have to follow this principle when designing games and heroes. Dota is too difficult for newbies to get started!"

Chen Guiliang made the decision: "Chen Mo will be the producer. Shi Ke will be the chief planner. Huang Feixiang will be the chief programmer. You all have no objections to this arrangement, right?"

Huang Feixiang and Shi Ke were both somewhat unhappy.

One of them graduated from Tsinghua University, and the other from Beihang University, while Chen Mo was a college dropout. It would be incredibly embarrassing to have Chen Mo as their leader. But Chen Guiliang had given them a chance, and they had no choice but to accept their defeat in the competition.

Chen Guiliang added, "I've already arranged the lead art director, his name is Cai Wei, and we're currently recruiting and building the art team. You guys should hurry up and get your team in place too."

Huang Feixiang asked, "What's the name of the new game?"

Chen Guiliang said, "Oracle Era, abbreviated as OE. If there is an opportunity in the future, we can make another game to form a trilogy with Oracle Era and Future Era."

Chen Guiliang continued to supplement and improve the world view of this lousy game.

The Astral Plane and the Abyss have been stirring things up.

They disguised themselves as gods and continuously sent down divine pronouncements through spatial rifts to lure various creatures in the mortal realm, preparing for their future large-scale invasion.

Different factions received different divine pronouncements, leading to endless wars due to conflicts of faith.

There are also some heroes who believe in no gods at all; such people are called "blasphemers" or "believers."

As the three were about to leave, Chen Guiliang said, "Let's get the official website up and running first. Have the Youke platform announce that we're making a new game. Also, once the game's story is pretty much finalized, let's hold a fan fiction contest for online games."

"Okay. I'll contact the other departments." Chen Mo had already switched into producer mode.

After the three left Chen Guiliang's office, Chen Mo said to Huang Feixiang and Shi Ke, "If 'Oracle Era' is successful after it goes online, I will resign soon."

"Resign?" Huang Feixiang and Shi Ke couldn't believe it.

Chen Mo smiled and said, "President Chen promised me that if the new game is a great success, he is willing to invest in helping me start a business. I like to be free and independent, and I didn't even finish university. I definitely won't stay in someone else's company for long. After I resign, you should take over this game."

Neither Huang Feixiang nor Shi Ke said anything.

Xu Fengyin walked past them and knocked on the door to enter Chen Guiliang's office.

Chen Guiliang, in a work-ready state, said: "Starting today, you are officially transferred to the new game project team."

"OK, I've finally changed jobs." Xu Fengyin was in a good mood.

After finishing his work assignments, Chen Guiliang switched to personal mode: "Have you missed me these past few days?"

"Tch, I'd never miss you," Xu Fengyin said arrogantly.

Chen Guiliang beckoned mysteriously: "Come here, I'll show you something interesting."

Xu Fengyin curiously dragged the chair over.

Chen Guiliang logged onto Tudou.com and searched for "Tan Tan Traffic," and soon hundreds of videos appeared.

These were all uploaded by netizens, and the image quality is very blurry.

In the episode where Chen Guiliang found himself, roads and vehicles appeared in the video footage.

"Hello everyone, welcome to 'Traffic Talk'. That taxi in front of us kept changing lanes, squeezing into any gap we saw, and it didn't use its turn signal... The driver was also smoking and threw his cigarette butt into the middle of the road..."

Xu Fengyin looked puzzled, wondering why Chen Guiliang wanted him to see this.

Then she glanced at the video title given by netizens: "I'm dying of laughter, Chen Shiyi got caught by Officer Tan."

Finally, Chen Guiliang was called out of the taxi.

Xu Fengyin burst out laughing: "You can get caught by the traffic police just for taking a taxi, and you even made it on TV."

Chen Guiliang said, "There's nothing I can do, I'm just too lucky. I even bought an Olympic lottery ticket yesterday."

Halfway through the program, Xu Fengyin kept laughing.

Those passersby were hilarious.

In particular, the elderly people who made cameo appearances as the torch relay team had extremely exaggerated expressions and movements, and some even walked with their hands and feet moving in unison!
Xu Fengyin laughed as she asked, "Why does it seem like there's a script? Even just casting a few random passersby creates such a comedic effect?"

"That's how the people of Sichuan and Chongqing are; given the opportunity, they all become like comedians," Chen Guiliang said.

After watching one video, Xu Fengyin wanted to watch others, so the two sat in the office together watching "Tan Tan Traffic".

Around noon, Tao Xue suddenly called: "I just woke up. I had insomnia last night."

Chen Guiliang said, "I'll bring you lunch back, or would you like to come downstairs and eat at a restaurant together?"

“Let’s eat at home, there are leftovers from last night,” Tao Xue said excitedly as she got to the point. “I just checked the Olympic results, and you guessed all the matches that ended this morning with your lottery ticket yesterday!”

Chen Guiliang said, "There's still the afternoon; you have to guess all of them correctly to win the first prize."

"If it's the first prize, the lottery shop owner will be stunned. You bought five thousand tickets at once," Tao Xue said.

Chen Guiliang said, "The total prize pool is only so small, even if I take it all, it won't amount to much money."

After chatting for a few more minutes, Tao Xue said, "I'll hang up now. I'll heat up your food for you, and we can eat together when you come back for lunch."

"Ok, bye."

Chen Guiliang hung up the phone and noticed Xu Fengyin staring at him.

"What's wrong?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Xu Fengyin laughed and said, "She's not your girlfriend, is she?"

“You guessed wrong,” Chen Guiliang said seriously.

Xu Fengyin got up and left, saying sourly, "I'm going to work. You go home and have dinner with that person."

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(Thanks to reader 20201027193620416349042 for the generous donation.)
(End of this chapter)