The younger generation, starting from where the wind blows...

Chapter 38 A Wave of Matryoshka Dolls is on its Way
Yang Muyi then gave his answer: "A friend ranking is a must, it's a basic requirement for almost all social games. In addition, I plan to add new friend interaction content, such as pest control and watering. Users can do it themselves, and other friends can also help. There's a saying that goes, 'Friendship starts with helping each other out. You help me with pest control, and I'll water your plants.' Gradually, the relationship develops."

The new gameplay sounded alright, but it didn't really give Maqiushan a sense of novelty.

After all, we are no longer in an era where everyone helps me and I help everyone else.

The logic has now become: I can help, but what benefit would it bring me?
Especially after the introduction of friend rankings in social games, if I help you and then your ranking goes up, wouldn't I become the one who suffers the most injustice?
In response to Ma Qiushan's question, Yang Muye explained: "Of course it's not free help. Once two users have added each other as friends, in addition to helping each other with daily crop management when they go online, more importantly, you can take the crops from your friend's farm without asking."

Ma Qiushan's eyes widened.

steal?
I thought Yang Muyi would offer some explanation, but to my surprise, he readily admitted, "Yes, it was stolen!"

While Ma Qiushan was still struggling with the moral burden, Yang Muye shattered Ma Qiushan's worldview with a single sentence.

Abandon your personal integrity and indulge in a life of immorality!
This is the best explanation of the "stealing" tactic.

Even so, Ma Qiushan still hesitated: "If that's the case, wouldn't the more you steal from the game's leaderboard, the higher your ranking?"

Yang Muyi pointed at Maqiu Mountain forcefully: "That's right, but don't overlook the underlying logic behind the act of stealing. You need to have enough friends to steal more, which brings us back to the core of social games: letting users make more friends!"

"So that you can steal the vegetables they grow?" Ma Qiushan asked a thought-provoking question.

"Fighting with others is fun!"

Yang Muyi glanced at Ma Qiushan, who was about to correct his quotation error: "Don't misunderstand, this isn't a quote from some great man, it's something I invented myself. You can imagine this scenario: a user precisely calculates the harvest time of their crops, sets an alarm to get up in the middle of the night to harvest, while their friend sets an alarm to get up in the middle of the night to steal crops. No matter who wins in the end, it will be very interesting, won't it?"

You know, the vegetable-stealing game in the past life sparked a nationwide vegetable-stealing craze.

It truly captivated users of all ages, even getting many people who had never played games before to become addicted and unable to extricate themselves.

but--

The game company that invented the "vegetable stealing" gameplay in my past life didn't make much money from it.

Because this game had just become popular, competitors immediately went all out to copy and paste it, and games with similar gameplay sprang up like mushrooms after rain, diverting a large number of users away.

Especially penguins.

Although this time there was no plagiarism, they spent a "sky-high" price of 300 million yuan to buy out all the revenue of the "vegetable stealing" game on the QQ Space channel.

But soon after, this game, which was renamed from "Happy Farm" to "QQ Farm", achieved a remarkable daily revenue of over 300 million yuan by selling value-added items such as fertilizers in the game.

This is not the short-lived boom created by viral marketing like the cow/sheep series of mini-games.

The "vegetable stealing" game was popular for over two years.

Penguin made a fortune from QQ Farm.

Normally, the game company that sold "Happy Farm" to Tencent must be kicking itself.

But actually it doesn't.

The reason is the same as Yang Muyi's decision to sell the cow/sheep series of mini-games to Tencent.

For Tencent to buy this simple game, which has neither copyright protection nor any barriers to imitation, is already the greatest respect they can show to the original company. The truly tragic situation is in overseas markets, where not only was the name "Happy Farm" registered by other companies, but it was also copied by the well-known social gaming company Zynga, who developed "Farmville," one of the most popular mini-games on Facebook.

At its peak, FarmVille had over 80 million users, accounting for 20% of Facebook's total users and more than 1% of the world's population.

Zynga earned hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from this game, and all of this has absolutely nothing to do with the Chinese game company that developed "Happy Farm" and first invented the "stealing vegetables" gameplay.

In this life, Yang Muye is determined to seize the opportunity that the developers of the "Happy Farm" game missed in his previous life.

At least it won't allow foreign game companies to copy and make a fortune from the innovative gameplay of "stealing vegetables," a purely domestic social game.

As Yang Muyi's explanation of the vegetable-stealing gameplay deepened, Ma Qiushan's eyes slowly lit up.

Although he doesn't have the perspective of a reborn person like Yang Muyi, Ma Qiushan will review and summarize.

Viral marketing was the biggest contributor to the explosive popularity of beef/mutton products.

Now Yang Muyi has proposed a new social game called "vegetable stealing," which is even more controversial than viral marketing.

Intuition tells Machushan that the vegetable-stealing game might be more popular than the cow/sheep series.

If it weren't for the need to go to Shenzhen to negotiate with Tencent, Ma Qiushan would have loved to go back and start coding immediately.

At this moment, Yang Muyi suddenly said, "When you go to Shenzhen to negotiate with Tencent, they will definitely mention the various doubts that have been raised about Shanye Technology recently. They just want to lower the price. At this time, you can give Tencent a little spoiler about the new work to increase your bargaining power."

Ma Qiushan countered, "How can we increase it?"

Yang Muyi patiently explained, "Just tell them that buying 'Goose Goose' is like spending a fortune to buy a horse's bones. If our new game succeeds, it will prove that they have excellent judgment. Even if we fail, Tencent can use this to show society its support for original works and gain a good reputation. Why not?"

Ma Qiushan thought even further ahead, stating bluntly, "What if the 'stealing vegetables' game becomes popular and Tencent tries to buy it out again?"
The cow/sheep series became a hit thanks to viral marketing. It would be difficult for competitors to replicate and imitate it, and by the time their games are released, the hype will have already died down.

However, the core gameplay of the "vegetable stealing" game is not difficult to imitate. Once it becomes popular, similar knock-off games will immediately emerge to seize the market.

When the penguins want to buy it, Shanye will have absolutely no bargaining power.

If they don't sell it, Tencent will just create its own knock-off game, saving even more money.

Yang Muye didn't have a good solution to this, so he could only try to seize the market as much as possible before Tencent got its eye on the "vegetable stealing" game.

The method is the same old one: copying themselves.

This time, it's not just a name change; the whole family of names—farm, ranch, fish farm, and forest farm—are all included.

Meanwhile, overseas markets, with Facebook as their main platform, are also rushing to register game names, taking up every available spot.

While we're at it, let's also release FarmVille.

Just copy Zynga directly, leaving Zynga with nothing left to copy!

(End of this chapter)