Wen | Zhang Shule (Columnist of People's Daily And People's Post and Telegraph, Observer of Internet and Game Industry)
In the history of China's Internet entrepreneurship, Shi Yuzhu is one of the figures that is difficult to ignore.
Three years to become a billionaire, five years to rank eighth in the Forbes mainland rich list, in the eyes of some people, he is a marketing master, is an entrepreneurial idol.
But on the other hand, due to blind expansion and broken capital chain, he once became China's "first burden" with a debt of 250 million yuan overnight, thus bearing the infamy of marketing fraudsters and speculators.
No matter what the outside world has to say about him, Shi Yuzhu is still the business tycoon who goes his own way and laughs and scolds people.
Shi Yuzhu, who is about to enter the year of Ear Shun, used his half-life entrepreneurial history to interpret a life drama that has undergone several ups and downs.
Such a Shi Yuzhu, how to correctly understand it?
In this regard, Shen Sihan, a reporter from the "Business School", had an exchange with Shule, and the poor Dao thought:
The ups and downs of the Giant Network have a considerable relationship with the strategic thinking of founder Shi Yuzhu himself.
But in the tide of the times, who can say that the direction is correct and always correct.
Entering the era of mobile Internet, the giant as a terminal game gangster has indeed had the same transformation ups and downs as many of its peers, so that it has fallen out of the first-line camp of the game.
There is a lack of real explosions, and there have been various situations in mergers and acquisitions, so that the overall performance is not ideal.
This situation does have a certain relationship with the founder Shi Yuzhu, who did not have the initial optimal judgment in the upward trend of the industry, so that the giant who started with marketing has fallen behind in the tide of more and more mobile and high-quality games.
However, this situation also generally appeared in various first-line manufacturers of games other than Tencent and NetEase that year.
Therefore, in a sense, it is still caused by the failure to convert the PC side of the thinking, too much want to pan and lack of innovation awareness.
In fact, the conversion of the PC side to the mobile end, many established companies have appeared outdated, before Microsoft's merger and acquisition of Blizzard, it is precisely a group of two giants that have fallen behind.
At home, the pains of this transformation are also different.
In the domestic game industry before 2010, there were generally agency, marketing and copycat game research and development and operation routes, which led to a number of established game manufacturers lagging behind in the era of mobile Internet.
The reason why NetEase, which pays attention to research and development, has been evergreen for 20 years, has social traffic and continues to increase investment in research and development, and the reason why Tencent has come to the top and has taken the top seat after 2009 is that it has jumped out of the "tradition" and invested more energy in research and development.
The journey of the Giant Network is, in a sense, a legendary game, which has appeal among old players like legends, and can be kryptonite and consume their still popularity through various "perverted" costumes, but this consumption cannot be maintained for too long.
A new option has emerged, and that is the metacosm.
On December 15, 2021, according to the national trademark declaration inquiry, Giant Network also applied for registration of multiple meta-universe related trademarks such as space action metacosmology, primitive journey metacosmology, metacostem ball battle, emoji metacosm, Osiri's ring metacosm, walnut metacosm and so on.
In November, Shi Yuzhu expressed his views on the recent explosion of the meta-universe.
It argues that there is no uniform definition of the metacosm, with 100 people having 100 definitions and descriptions. The metaverse era is bound to come but not now, its development is gradual, and there are still some basic problems that need to be solved. For example, hardware problems such as VR vertigo, network latency, blockchain-based economic system compliance, and cloud computing power.
As a veteran programmer, Shi Yuzhu's sunlight cannot be described as poisonous, but what will happen to the giant attack on the meta-universe?
Obviously, Shi Yuzhu's way is steady, and like friends, it is a protective measure to lay out first and ensure that the trademarks around his brand are not infringed.
At present, the giant is not without the ability to enter the meta-universe, especially under the operation of Shi Yuzhu, an "old programmer", it may not be necessary to compete with the Internet technology giants to build the platform, as long as it ensures that the meta-universe is opened and the amusement project of "Journey" exists in the playground.
All in all, in short, as China's first generation of successful commercial programmers, Shi Yuzhu and his contemporaries Qiu Bojun have great business vision.
Compared with Qiu Bojun's idealism, Shi Yuzhu is more focused on realism, and the programmer's acumen and perseverance, coupled with the insight in finding loopholes, have a completely different presentation on them.
Qiu Bojun is to persevere to the end, with a flexible way (game) to support his ideals, while Shi Yuzhu is to build his own cross-border business empire by discovering user needs.
Heroes are not judged by success or failure, but among the first generation of programmers, only these two people really laughed to the end, and repeatedly staged counterattacks and created different business miracles.
On the contrary, that generation of programmers seems to be less mindful of the eyes of others and more focused on achieving their own goals.
Shi Yuzhu's entrepreneurial road is ups and downs, and his marketing insight is always the consistent presentation of the programmer who is looking for bugs.