Top of the big era

Zhou Buqi actually has little interest in playing games. His family members, namely Wu Yu and Sun Wanran, usually play games and have little understanding of game design, development, distribution, sales and other fields.

However, this does not prevent Zhou Buqi from having great confidence in the gaming industry.

The probability of success in developing a game is even lower than making a movie.

Every time you develop a game, it is equivalent to starting a business.

So the gaming industry is extremely risky.

Reproducibility is extremely poor.

The same team, after developing a game that is popular all over the world, may fall immediately and no longer have any success factors.

This is an unsolvable problem. No game studio in the world can prosper forever, and will inevitably face the end of exhaustion of inspiration.

There are nothing more than three ways to solve this problem.

One, new wine in old bottles.

Take out the classic games from the past, add some new elements or change them to new skins, take them out and harvest them again. Even classic games like "Super Mario", "Legend" and "World of Warcraft" still rely on this routine to continue to build blood after their popularity subsides.

Second, purchase IP.

For example, "Star Wars" is the most famous big IP in the European and American markets. In the past few years, Lucasfilm has licensed it to seven or eight game studios and developed many Star Wars games.

It's basically garbage.

However, the "Star Wars" brand is too strong, and coupled with the anti-piracy mechanism in the European and American markets, players can only buy genuine games in order to experience the game.

With the appeal of "Star Wars", many junk games can also sell good sales and make a lot of money.

This is really a trap.

Lucasfilm has been acquired by MSI Universal, and Zhou Buqi has stopped this type of behavior that only cares about short-term interests but damages the long-term value of the brand.

In the future, if you want to develop games with big IPs such as "Star Wars", "Marvel Universe", "Fast and Furious", "Jurassic Park", "007", etc., you must strive for excellence!

It's best to have your own gaming team do this.

Changyou's current flagship game "Dragon" and EA's "FIFA" are typical examples of successful IP adaptation.

However, both of the above points are internal changes.

If you want to have a larger market and greater breakthroughs, you must expand externally. This is the third way and the most important point: buy, buy, buy!

I saw that other companies’ games were pretty good and were starting to show their prowess, so I hurried over to buy them.

The method is simple and crude, but it is the most effective method.

This is also the reason why Zhou Buqi is full of confidence and fighting spirit in the game industry.

It doesn't matter if you can't develop it yourself.

As long as you have money and resources, you can just go to your door and buy it.

EA's model is deeply hated by the game industry. This is from a different perspective. From the perspective of Boss Zhou, EA’s model is the best model.

If you see something good, buy it!

Didn't develop well after buying it?

It doesn't matter, just give up this business, retain the outstanding employees and transfer them to other departments, and directly lay off the inferior employees. Then look for the next emerging game studio and keep buying.

Buy along the way and there will always be success.

Although Zhou Buqi is not very proficient in games, he at least knows the general situation of the future and knows several world-famous games, such as "Plants vs. Zombies", "Fruit Ninja", "Angry Birds", "Minecraft", "Heroes" "League", "Hearthstone", "Fortnite", "Clash of Clans", "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" and a lot more.

Some of them have already been bought, and if you can get the rest if you find an opportunity, it would be a safe bet.

From this point of view, it is not impossible if Shi Jinglin wants to work in Changyou.

She does not need to design, develop, operate, and sell games. She only needs to understand capital operations and start the buying and selling mode along the way.

Games don't have any ecological matrix, and they don't require cooperation between different games. Management is relatively simple, and each studio can operate independently.

Zhou Buqi felt that he should plan carefully in the next few months. Now that you are determined to be the chairman of Changyou, you must do this well.

After the Spring Festival, the whole family went south to Hainan.

Even Shi Jinglin's parents went to Hainan for vacation.

Zhou Buqi took the secretary Ning Yaxian to the Magic City. First, he stood at the door of the company as usual and handed out red envelopes to all employees. Then I went to Giant Network in the morning to talk about games with Shi Yuzhu, and in the afternoon I went to Ninetowns to talk about games with Zhu Jun.

Fortunately, Shi Yuzhu had come all the way through ups and downs, and he was no longer afraid of anything.

Zhu Jun is different. He is a minority shareholder of Manchester United. His relationship with Zhou Buqi has obviously become closer in the past few years. Seeing that boss Zhou is so interested in the gaming industry, he was immediately frightened. "Are you going to end it yourself?"

"ah?"

Zhou Buqi laughed, it is still in the confidentiality stage.

Zhu Jun said: "You're here, I don't know about you? You, a busy person, came here to discuss the concepts and development of the game industry with me. Are you eyeing the game industry?"

Zhou Buqi glanced at him, "So what if I'm not keeping an eye on you? The gaming industry has reached 30 billion U.S. dollars, are you still afraid that I will steal your job?"

"The global market is 30 billion U.S. dollars, and the domestic market was only 30 billion Chinese dollars last year."

Zhu Jun had a lot of contact with him and was very afraid of his strength.

Zhou Buqi said: "The current scale is not large, but as the times develop, video games will become more and more mainstream in young people's daily entertainment life."

The current Internet development is not enough, so the scale of the game market is not large enough. Ten years from now, the global game market will reach US$200 billion, of which the mobile game market will reach US$100 billion.

Zhu Jun said: "I hope so!"

Zhou Buqi said with a smile: "It's not a wish, it's a certainty. Now you see those children in Europe playing football every day. In a few years, they will all use their mobile phones to play games online every day."

"Well..." Zhu Jun nodded, and then his expression straightened, "I almost got fooled by you. Don't change the subject. Are you really going to play games?"

Zhou Buqi was angry and funny, "Why are you nervous?"

Zhu Jun smiled and said: "It's not that you are nervous. If you really want to end up, you can cooperate with Jiucheng."

"How can we cooperate?" Zhou Buqi shook his head, "Ziweixing has its own game business, as well as its subsidiary Changyou... Do you know the relationship between Changyou and Ziweixing?"

Zhu Jun sighed, "Games are getting harder and harder to make. If I had known that "World of Warcraft" could still have such great appeal, I would never have given this game away. "Tower of Aion" is still almost boring. ."

Zhou Buqi said: "Pay more attention to the mobile game market, didn't I tell you?"

Zhu Jun looked him up and down with a look that saw everything through, "It seems I guessed it right. You really want to end up personally... Do you want to end up making mobile games?"

Zhou Buqi said frankly: "I don't know anything about games. I just need to understand the market first. However, in the game industry, relying solely on agents is not enough. You have to do your own research."

"Self-research?" Zhu Jun shook his head, "How can it be that easy? There are only a few successful self-researched games in China, such as Kingsoft, Perfect, and Changyou. The so-called self-research by companies such as Shanda, Penguin, and Giant are based on I imitate other people’s games, the gameplay and design remain the same, just change the skin.”

"Imitation is also a way out."

"If you want to imitate, you can focus on games from South Korea and Japan, which are more in line with some domestic game styles."

"Well..." Zhou Buqi nodded and said awkwardly, "The key is that I don't understand the game. I have set a strategy and the most capable person must execute it."

Zhu Jun said with a smile: "The gaming industry is only so big, and there are only a few great people. Wang Fang from Changyou, and Shang Jin from Changyou, haven't we been having a war of words recently? They are both pretty good. Again. That’s NetEase’s Lao Ding, Giant’s Xiao Li, Penguin’s Xiao Ren…well, Ren Yuxin, this guy has become very popular recently and is now the most popular in the industry.”

"Penguin's people?"

Zhou Buqi raised his eyebrows and was immediately interested.

In the past few years, Penguin has been poaching people from Ziweixing a lot, but Ziweixing has rarely poached people from Penguin... Mainly, there is nothing to poach. The best talents in the country have been in foreign companies like Microsoft and Google in the past few years. , has been with Ziweixing and Baidu in the past few years.

The only one Zhou Buqi was interested in was the QQ mailbox team. He offered two olive branches but failed to recruit them.

Not only was it unsuccessful, the team has now developed a product called "Q Letter" to compete with Ziweixing's WeChat, and has resorted to many dirty tricks.

If you want to play games next time, it will be different.

Ziweixing doesn't have many gaming talents, and Changyou's team has another big problem... It must go to the industry to recruit talented people.

The best option is of course to go penguin digging!

Zhu Jun said: "The "Cross Fire" he developed is the online game with the highest number of online players in China, nearly 3 million."

Zhou Buqi asked: "Cross Fire? Isn't that a Korean game?"

Zhu Jun said: "Yes, it is a Korean game, but it is not popular in Korea at all. It is not fun at all and the design is problematic. After Penguin got the agency rights, it made a lot of changes to this game. It has just regained its vitality. It was led by Ren Yuxin. This guy is very good. Penguin was originally not good at all in the online game market, but it has suddenly risen in the past few years, and it has developed rapidly in terms of game development, operations, marketing, and channel sales. ."

"Ren Yuxin..." Zhou Buqi narrowed his eyes, "What is his current position?"

"President of the game business, right?" Zhu Jun shook his head. "I don't know the details. Anyway, he is in charge of Penguin's game business. In the past few years, Penguin's game business has developed very well, from board games, casual games, From web games to PC games, it seems that recently we are starting to make mobile games.”

"I see!"

Zhou Buqi secretly clenched his fists.

Come on!

It’s him!

In the previous life, Penguin was regarded as the world's largest gaming giant, and this should be the achievement achieved under the leadership of Ren Yuxin. At present, Penguin's game business has not really taken off, and it lacks core heavyweight large-scale games such as "Journey", "World of Warcraft", "Fantasy Westward Journey", "Dragon" and "Perfect World".

If you want to poach people, you have to do it early!

The east is not bright and the west is bright.

If you can’t poach the QQ mailbox team, you can poach the game team!