Chapter 597: "Emperor of the Desolate Sky" Online Game
at the same time.
9 o'clock in the morning, mainland time.
Penguin Group quietly posted an advertisement on its official Weibo account, with the caption: "See you on January 1st."
If you click on the link, you will find that it contains a four-minute animation that introduces several beautifully designed game characters, warming up the promotion for the online game "Emperor of the Wilderness".
At the end of the animation, there is also a photo of a cosplay game character.
Yang Mi, Liu Shishi, Liu Yifei, Huang Shengyi, Gao Yuanyuan, Zhuang Muxi, Feng Ying'er and all the others appeared on stage. Their aura was enough to instantly overwhelm the Allure Girls Group, and they looked sexy and charming.
Long before he became really famous, Fan Wumian had already started writing "The Desolate Emperor". Up to now, he has written more than 130 million words in fits and starts. It has been translated into more than languages and sold well all over the world. Its influence cannot be underestimated.
This made him both painful and happy.
I am happy because I just write casually and so many people like it.
While countless people regard "The Desolate Emperor" as a classic, the mainstream literary world also praises his wild imagination and grandeur. He successfully broke away from the model of Hong Kong martial arts novels and created a new world.
The painful thing is that there are too many fans of my books and I can't give up easily. Even if I don't make much money, I still have to spend a lot of time and energy to continue creating.
If the work fails, then it’s simple. Even if it suddenly ends badly, no one will pay attention to it and it won’t make any splash.
"The Desolate Emperor" is different. Tens of millions of young people in mainland China have watched it, even if most of them have not spent a penny on it. If Fan Wumian chooses to end the story hastily with a poor finish, he will still be scolded by them.
So he had no choice but to continue writing and try every possible way to monetize this huge amount of traffic.
As a fantasy work with a grand scene, a lot of money needs to be invested to have a chance to adapt "Emperor of the Wilderness" into a high-quality film and television work. However, with the current size of the mainland market, the high total investment amount means that it is difficult to recover the cost.
Under this situation, adapting online games becomes the best option in the short term.
Online games are similar to mobile phone ringtones in that they are born with a monopoly gene. Players either don't play them, or if they want to play they can only operate through the game company's platform. This is much less troublesome than novels, music, and film and television works that can be easily moved around, and the speed of making money is also faster.
When the Penguin Group’s management initially set their sights on the game development rights for “Emperor of the Wilderness”, they first benchmarked it against “Legend” and “Fantasy Westward Journey”, and later sought to make it a mainland version of “World of Warcraft” and tried to enter the overseas online game market.
It’s similar to buying a car or a house, the more you choose, the more expensive it becomes. At the beginning, Penguin Group and Fan Wumian only planned to invest about 5000 million RMB in this project, and then gradually increased it to 1 million RMB, and finally soared to 1.6 million RMB.
From the game engine to the art design, and then to the supporting servers, we use the best from beginning to end.
The development team expanded from dozens of people to hundreds of people, and it took a whole year to work on it. In addition, they cooperated with several top third-party companies and finally completed the development work as scheduled. Since mid-December last year, small-scale testing has been carried out within the Penguin Group, and the evaluations received have been very good.
Fan Wumian has also tried the game and also thinks it is of very good quality. The various transactions, monster fighting, cultivation of skills, weapon forging and pet taming make this large-scale online game very interesting.
According to the plan, if there are enough players of this game and the revenue is high enough, version 2.0 will be further developed and several new maps will be added.
Although closed beta testing has not started yet, the supporting diversified business model has been determined in advance.
This version of "Emperor of the Wilderness" will sell both monthly cards and point cards, and open an official trading platform, taking a certain percentage of commission from each transaction and charging a tiered fee based on the transaction amount. At the same time, the official website mall will also sell virtual products such as clothes, potions, mounts, etc.
For things like peripheral merchandise and advertising, a corresponding management team has been specially formed, and they have been ready to go, just waiting for the players to come in. The 4-minute animation ad has made countless netizens excited, especially the photos of multiple female stars cosplaying game characters, which have been screenshotted by countless people, making them lick the screen.
It was not until the very end that text appeared indicating that only 10 places would be open in the first batch of this closed beta test. In order to give back to old users, if the QQ level reached two suns, one could directly apply for a test place and would not occupy the 10 closed beta test places.
As soon as the news came out, there was a barrage of criticism on the Internet.
Countless people also thought of the time when "Dungeon & Fighter" first started closed testing. A test account could be sold for hundreds of dollars online. Whenever someone played this game in an Internet cafe, there would always be a group of people standing behind them watching.
Seeing that the Penguin Group was being stingy again and only released 10 test places, it was inevitable that they would be attacked due to new hatred and old grudges.
A lot of people mentioned this incident, and in a short period of time, the related news rushed to the top of the Penguin Weibo hot topic list, saving a lot of advertising fees.
Penguin Group is already quite experienced when it comes to hunger marketing, but this time it only released 10 places because there are still some bugs and it is not suitable for large-scale public testing for the time being.
When the closed beta test begins, players only need to submit bugs and get them verified, and they will have the opportunity to get rewards such as mythical pets, advanced skills, advanced props and equipment, and gold coins.
Looking at the old user feedback program that requires "two suns", it is actually no easier than signing up and being selected.
According to QQ's level promotion requirements, you need to reach level 16 to get a sun icon, which corresponds to 320 days online. In the later stages, it is more difficult to upgrade, and it takes about 1152 days online to get two suns.
Unlike later generations, many people clearly no longer use QQ, but still keep their accounts on their mobile phones. Nowadays, they mainly upgrade through computers.
The QQ level can be traced back to 2003, and it is only January 2007 now. Even if you are a top-up member or an annual member, it will take a long time to meet the requirements.
Office workers are slightly better off, as they can use their working hours to hang up their phones.
Students are even worse off. Many of them don't have computers at home, so they can only save some pocket money and occasionally risk being beaten by their parents to go to Internet cafes for fun.
When it comes to QQ levels, it’s simply unbearable to look at. Let alone having two suns, having one is enough to show off among classmates.
The planning team of Penguin Group is certainly aware of this. The main purpose of adding this criterion is to screen out wealthy adult players and find out in advance the profitability of the online game "Emperor of the Wilderness".
As for those students, it is difficult for them to save money to pay for the Internet, so how can they be willing to recharge and spend money? They have to wait until they enter university or step into society to become qualified leeks.
The game is about to start closed beta testing. Xiao Ma Ge, who is staying in Shenzhen, also attaches great importance to this matter. During the meeting this morning, he specifically said:
"Developing games is important, and we must not neglect subsequent promotion and distribution, especially customer service. We should hire more 24-hour customer service managers to provide the most perfect service to major customers."
"There is also the lucky draw that Mr. Fan emphasized. Players can obtain other virtual items by making sacrifices. I think this area will be very profitable. You should optimize the algorithm and make the winning rate not too high to avoid disrupting the balance of the game. If you occasionally find something good, you must publicize it with great fanfare to attract other players to follow suit."
"Also, how is the development of CrossFire going at South Korea's Smile Gate Game Company? Last time I talked to Mr. Fan, he told me about a really good new idea. The project is called PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. After CrossFire is developed, Smile Gate Game Company will immediately prepare to develop this new project again."
Hearing Xiao Ma Ge mention Fan Wumian one after another, all the executives present pricked up their ears and did not dare to take it lightly.
After all, it has been proved that the projects that Fan Wumian was optimistic about eventually helped the company make a lot of money.
The recent news that Fan Wumian has invested heavily in Apple, with a total amount of up to US$15 billion, has spread to almost everyone in the mainland. Many executives of the Penguin Group are busy following suit and have also bought a lot of Apple shares through channels in Hong Kong.
For example, Pony Ma used his HK$5000 million deposit and added a three-fold leverage. He is also counting the days, waiting for Apple to hold a new product launch conference. (End of this chapter)