Chapter 775 You'd better be talking about games
I don’t know why, but when Li Zhengkai saw Xiong Minghua’s distorted expression as if he had eaten a vomit fruit, he really wanted to laugh.
But considering that he was still making a living under Xiong Minghua, he still held it in very hard.
After Xiong Minghua heard Lu Yiming's name, it was as if Garen, who had used Whisper, had hit him with a big sword. He was silent and his defense was broken.
To poach the richest man in Asia to work for him, not to mention him, even his boss Bill Gates didn’t do it.
After taking a deep breath, Xiong Minghua looked at Li Zhengkai, as if asking, or as if talking to himself: "So what should we do now?"
Li Zhengkai chose to remain silent. Like everyone else, they had no way to deal with losing to their opponents technically.
Besides, he is not a company executive, so of course he won’t say anything.
After such a long time since graduation and working in the enterprise, Li Zhengkai has become much more sophisticated than when he was a student and is no longer a rookie.
Microsoft was helpless in the face of QQ's ability to rapidly launch new features. In the face of QQ's encroachment on MSN's mid- to high-end business market share, in order to reverse the decline, Xiong Minghua had to run around and find ways to speed up the development process so that MSN could keep pace with QQ in terms of functionality.
A software that claims to be prepared for white-collar workers turns out to be even less functional than an opponent that has always been looked down upon. This is really too fatal.
However, what they didn't know was that the breakpoint resume function that made them scratch their heads was nothing at all on QQ's side. The real killer move was quietly looming.
China Overseas.
Lu Yiming had just left the airport and embraced Shi Qingxue who came to pick him up passionately. He held her and spun her around for several times, making the little girl blush with embarrassment: "Okay, put me down quickly, there are so many people watching us."
Lu Yiming smiled and said, "If they want to watch, let them watch. Let them be envious."
Shi Qingxue rolled her eyes at Lu Yiming and scolded him with a smile, "You're already the richest man, but you're still not serious."
“Is there any necessary connection between the two?”
"No."
"That's all."
In the car, Shi Qingxue asked curiously, "I heard that you are competing with MSN for users? Why don't you stay in Baiyun City and come to Zhonghai?"
Lu Yiming said, "Of course I'm here to accompany you for serious matters. Of course, I'll also do a little work by the way. I plan to talk to Jiang Rongfa about the new game, hehe."
Shi Qingxue couldn't help but roll her eyes again. She had no resistance to Lu Yiming's behavior of saying cheesy love words anytime and anywhere.
The cheesy love talk actually consists of two parts. If a girl is interested in you, she will ignore the cheesy part, and if she is not interested in you, she will ignore the love talk part. So it is reasonable that the same words have different effects.
Of course, it is obvious that considering the relationship between Lu Yiming and Shi Qingxue, any one of these four words is positive.
Shi Qingxue felt sweet in her heart, but she was unforgiving in her words: "I see, your main business is to find Jiang Rongfa, and meeting me is just a side job, right?"
Lu Yiming immediately protested, "How can my career be as important as you? I love beauty more than the throne!"
"cut……"
After sending Shi Qingxue back to school, Lu Yiming came to Junzi Interactive Entertainment and found Jiang Rongfa.
"Lao Jiang, the game we worked on before, QQ Farm, is ready to go online."
The game has actually been developed a long time ago, and various stress tests have been carried out.
But Jiang Rongfa, the developer, was somewhat resistant: "Boss Lu, do we really want to release this game?"
In his opinion, a game should either have extremely cool graphics or extremely playable, or be like those 3A masterpieces that have been produced recently abroad, where the graphics, playability, and even the plot are made to perfection, and that is a truly good game.
But what the hell is stealing vegetables?
This game has no graphics and no playability, it's simply terrible.
Simply put, throughout the game, what players have to do is to plant crops on the land given by the system, then water and fertilize them, and pick them when they are ripe. The picked crops can be sold to the system store to make money to buy better seeds. Steal the crops that are ripe but not picked in time from the farms of QQ friends, and then raise a dog to try to prevent the vegetables you grow from being stolen by other players.
The key point is that, with such a simple game mechanism, good dogs, good dog food, luxurious kennels and top-level crop seeds actually require real money to buy!
Not cheap either!
This krypton gold mechanism is unique.
Jiang Rongfa didn't even dare to tell others that he was the one who developed the game himself, simply because he was afraid of being embarrassed.
Lu Yiming patted his shoulder and said, "Don't worry, this game will definitely be a big hit, trust me."
Jiang Rongfa suddenly laughed so hard that it was uglier than crying: "I'm afraid it will become a big hit. Then I'll probably become a laughing stock among my peers."
Lu Yiming quickly corrected his wrong idea: "What you said is wrong. When we develop games, we want to please the players. You don't steal or rob, so why are you afraid of being laughed at by your peers? Moreover, when this game becomes popular and you become famous and make a lot of money, will your peers in the gaming industry still laugh at you? Don't be silly, they will be the ones who laugh at you, and you will be their uncle."
Jiang Rongfa still didn't quite believe it: "Boss Lu, can this game really make money? I'm afraid the players will be so angry that they'll dig up my ancestors' graves."
Lu Yiming quickly said, "How could that be? At most, they would just curse your ancestors for eighteen generations. After all, digging up ancestral graves is against the law."
Jiang Rongfa: “…”
Since Lu Yiming said so, he naturally had no reason to object. After communicating with Yixun, QQ Farm implanted the mini-program entrance into the QQ client and began to officially push it.
What surprised Jiang Rongfa was that Lu Yiming not only linked this game to QQ, but also mobilized all the resources at his disposal to promote QQ Farm crazily. The level of promotion was so crazy that it was even higher than the treatment given to "Legend of Mir 2" back then.
QQ Farm advertisements appeared on every interface of Yiwen.
Yixun Technology directly spent money to invite the hottest star group in recent years, the pioneer of later non-mainstream groups, F4, which became extremely popular with the 2001 TV series "Meteor Garden".
Four handsome guys plus a plate of shancai, posing in front of the TV, smiling and inviting the audience: "Come and steal some vegetables with me!"
Who can stand this scene?
For a time, the stealing vegetables game became popular all over the Internet and was unstoppable.
Although it is considered by its peers to be "useless and rubbish", it cannot stop QQ Farm from continuously conquering the social field.
Baiyun City, Bihailongting, Villa No. 16.
This place is surrounded by green mountains and flowing clear waters. The residence of Long Wu, the president of Xinghe Real Estate, is located here. With Lu Yiming as a backer, the company has been focusing on the high-end residential market in the past few years and has made a lot of money.
The scenery is so beautiful, and the neighbors are all rich or noble. The most important thing is that it is very close to the villa of the richest man Lu, so even though he made a lot of money, Long Wu did not move and has always lived here.
After all, the "feng shui" here is so good, only a fool would want to move out.
Unfortunately, Long Wu’s youngest son, Long Wenhao, is such a fool.
In the bedroom, he screamed frantically: "Sister, let me out!"
Outside the bedroom door, Long Yuzhu frowned and sighed, "Long Wenhao, you stay in your room and study hard. Dad and Mom said they can't let you out before the college entrance examination."
Before, Long Wenhao was playing games in a bakery outside, playing "Legend of Mir 2" with a group of his little brothers. He didn't go home for three days and didn't even call.
The family was worried to death, and finally it was Long Wu, the father, who called the police and brought the brat back.
Since then, I have been basically under house arrest, and whenever I leave the house, someone follows me wherever I go.
Long Wenhao said: "It's so boring to stay at home. I can't pretend to be cool without anyone around to help me. It's so boring."
Long Yuzhu said: "You can play games if you want. There is a computer in the room. You can play as much as you want. But you have to stay at home before the college entrance examination. You are not allowed to step out of the house."
Long Wu, who is now a completely different person, has completely given up on this disappointing son. He doesn't care about his academic performance. Anyway, Yinghao International School can help with the procedures for studying abroad, and he can be sent abroad to study directly after the college entrance examination. He can just turn a blind eye to his son.
Being locked in the room and guarded by bodyguards 24 hours a day, Long Wenhao was completely at his wit's end and had to turn on his computer and log into "Legend of Mir 2".
As a result, after going online, there were hardly any people online in the union list. Without him as their rich leader, his younger brothers were all sent back to school by their parents to review well, and no one played games with him.
"These guys are really speechless."
Without his little brother by his side, even though the character in the game was wearing cool equipment, Long Wenhao still felt uninterested. He walked around in the game bored, not wanting to fight monsters or PK.
Just then, he saw a scrolling advertisement.
To be honest, Junzi Interactive Entertainment is a genius. They actually put advertisements directly on the game interface. The slogan floats right in the center of the game screen, making it hard for people not to notice it.
Fortunately, this advertisement is not placed too often, otherwise players would really jump up and down and curse.
"Web game?"
"Click and play?"
Several key words immediately attracted Long Wenhao's attention.
With today's Internet speeds, downloading is always a huge headache.
When a new game is released, it takes an hour or two to download it to your computer. You may lose the mood to play the game while waiting for a good game.
Especially in Internet cafes, not to mention the slow Internet speed, the key is that it costs money. After downloading a game for a few hours, the Internet fee is gone and the time is completely wasted.
However, the appeal of web games that can be played by just clicking on them is completely different.
This was also one of the magic weapons that made 4399 popular on the entire Internet back then.
As long as you open the URL, there will be countless games. Just click and play. Who can resist this?
Anyway, he was bored and had no teammates in "Legend of Mir 2". Out of boredom, Long Wenhao clicked on the link from the QQ client.
Because it was entered from the QQ client, even the one-click login procedure was omitted, and I directly entered the game interface.
The first thing that pops up is the gameplay tips.
There are only three lines of words in total.
It can be said that it couldn’t be simpler.
"Stealing vegetables? Only fools would play such a rubbish game..."
After reading the game introduction, Long Wenhao couldn't help but complain.
But he was so bored now, so bored that he still clicked into such a rubbish game like a fool.
However, once he started playing, he couldn't stop.
His mouse turned into a big Q-version hand, and he was frantically stealing vegetables from his QQ friend's farm.
"I steal, I steal, I steal secretly, so that you won't let me go out!"
The person who was stolen was his sister, Long Yuzhu!
Soon, Long Yuzhu's angry roar came from outside the house: "Long Wenhao! You stole my food!"
In the bedroom, Long Wenhao laughed even more happily.
"Haha, who told you not to let me go out?"
At this time, Long Wenhao had already forgotten what he had just said about the stupidity of this game and started sending the promotional link to all his friends.
This makes the game more fun when there are more people stealing. You steal from me and I steal from you, it's so much fun.
In this world, there is a kind of happiness called getting something for nothing. It is so joyful to take advantage of others.
The reason why the stealing vegetables game is so popular in the world where Lu Yiming lives is because it hits the "secret" psychology deep in people's hearts. It can be said that it perfectly demonstrates the two points of "harming others for personal gain" and "if you don't take advantage of an opportunity, you are a bastard."
If you can't steal your friend's food, you'll feel at a loss, so many people calculate the time when their friend's food is ripe, set countless alarms, get up in the middle of the night, and have a lot of fun stealing food.
In Beijing, at Microsoft's MSN division, Xiong Minghua was also using his newly applied QQ account to steal vegetables. As the saying goes, knowing yourself and your enemy will ensure victory in every battle, he downloaded QQ immediately and learned about the stealing game QQ Farm.
However, the more others stole, the happier they were, but he became more depressed.
MSN is in danger!
QQ Farm is a really addictive game. First of all, the game is very simple and easy to play. It is suitable for everyone, young and old. Secondly, everyone has the instinct to take advantage of others. This has nothing to do with morality and is human nature.
These two points combined give QQ Farm a very strong social attribute. Because if you want to upgrade faster, farming is meaningless, and you can only rely on stealing to barely maintain a living.
The more friends you have, the more you can steal. In order to steal more food, you will actively pull all your friends in. People who don't have QQ will inevitably be exposed to QQ passively as long as someone around them uses QQ, and thus have a high probability of becoming a QQ user.
Although QQ Farm has opened a recharge purchase channel, Lu Yi clearly and deliberately set the level very high.
First of all, of course, it is to encourage users to grow and steal vegetables crazily to accumulate experience.
Secondly, it is to prevent the gap between free players and paying players from being too big right from the start.
Lu Yiming, who has played countless online games, knows very well that if the gap between the rich and the poor in the game is too large, civilian players will take the initiative to leave the game.
It's just a game world. If I can't afford to offend, can't I just hide from it? I'm not having fun playing this game, so I won't play it anymore.
Seeking benefits and avoiding harm is an instinctive body mechanism of human nature. There are not many people in this world who like to seek abuse and be abused.
People will take the initiative to adjust. When life is stressful, they will naturally find ways to reduce stress. In this case, the game officials promise benefits and introduce incentives, but it is actually useless. All rewards are temporary. If you are reluctant to touch the source of pressure, everything will be in vain. Players are not stupid, how can they be fooled by a few sweet words?
Therefore, Lu Yiming does not plan to give paying players a chance now, and will let all beings be equal for a while.
What’s even more clever is that if users attract new registered users, they can get fertilizer rewards. This is better than spending money on advertising. Whether it’s to have more friends to steal vegetables or to get fertilizer, users will promote it spontaneously.
What is the value of the fertilizer in this game? Although the mall shows that it is as high as one dollar per bag, it is actually just a bunch of data. You can get as much as you want, and there is no cost at all. The setting of one dollar is also to make players feel that they are getting paid props for free, which completely meets the mentality of taking advantage.
In fact, online games are about studying the psychology of players.
A great gaming company has a department dedicated to studying psychology.
With this combination of punches, Lu Yiming gained tens or even millions of salespeople without spending a penny. And it is unknown how many more salespeople these hundreds or even millions of salespeople can generate.
Xiong Minghua, who was playing the game, was not stupid. He saw through Lu Yiming's sinister intentions at a glance, but he had no choice because MSN currently had no similar games that could compete with QQ.
At the department meeting, Xiong Minghua mentioned this problem. Chen Yongzheng also looked worried and asked Xiong Minghua: "What should we do now?"
Xiong Minghua said seriously, "The only way is for us to create a QQ Farm. I looked at this game and it's not difficult to design. It can be easily made."
Compared to Xiong Minghua who only looked at the problem from a technical perspective, Chen Yongzheng, as a prominent figure in Microsoft, still had some dignity to look after. He said hesitantly, "Isn't this bad? What if he sues us for plagiarism?"
Xiong Minghua was very calm: "We are not plagiarizing, we are just learning from each other's gameplay."
Anyway, MSN has already borrowed a lot of functions from QQ, so it won't be a problem to borrow another one. As the saying goes, there is no need to worry about too many lice.
Chen Yongzheng was speechless for a long while, and could only say: "...Okay, as long as you like it."
Just like that, at Xiong Minghua's order, the MSN business unit immediately formed a development team, began to "borrow" Yixun's ideas, established the Happy Farm project team, and carried out development in full swing.
They didn't even bother to change the name of the game.
