Author / Wang Yao
Edited by / Pan Maoxue
The pictures in this article are from the Internet
"Why are you six dragging the class back?" After an exam in the first semester of Fenghua No. 1 Middle School, the homeroom teacher said this to the students standing neatly in front of him.
The six students were "fortunate" to be left in the classroom by the class teacher to talk to after school because they scored the bottom in this exam. As just the sixth to last place, Ding Lei was also lucky to join the ranks.
Ding Lei, who has just entered a key high school, is indeed unable to keep up with the rhythm of those students, and the results are touching, which is deserved. Not only did he not graduate from key junior high school, but no one had ever been admitted to college before him. However, it is such a "poor student" who, after three years of hard work, successfully entered the Chengdu University of Electronic Science and Technology with a score of only one point higher than the key line.
In a sense, Ding Lei's later success in online games is also a kind of luck, but NetEase Games has gone all the way down just relying on Ding Lei's luck is not enough.
01 Game lovers
In 2000, Ding Lei, who had experienced "bloody listing", crossed the ocean at a time of distress and went to the other side of the ocean to seek the true scriptures. However, the hopes of the departure were swept away when they reached the other side of the ocean - the landlord's family had no surplus grain, the Buddha did not have the true scriptures here, and even in the Great America, where the Internet Law originated, Yahoo and a few other big factories only relied on burning firewood called "online advertising" to get warm in this cold winter.
However, by chance, Ding Lei, who had returned from the "Great Lei Yin Temple", unexpectedly found the true scriptures in the "Little Lei Yin Temple". The great success of EA, which has developed well-known games such as Command & Conquer and The Sims, was breathtaking to Ding Lei, who came here by chance, and also made him aware of the development potential of the vast game market.
Ding Lei first found the EA company that inspired him, hoping to represent one of its MMORPGs called "Ultima Online", but the person in charge of the other party did not open the door because the smiling fat man had only visited a few months ago. After touching a nose of ash, Ding Lei turned his eyes to another MMORPG "Endless Mission" developed by Sony, and he knew that the Americans had been merciful to him before, and this time Sony did not pay attention to him at all.
These two bowls of closed door soup not only sting Ding Lei's self-esteem but also made him change his attitude towards the game - since spending money can't get overseas agency rights, then use the same money to do a good, others can do what they can't do? So in a small hotel in Guangzhou, Ding Lei bought Guangzhou Tianxia Technology Co., Ltd., which Wasisang and Liang Yuchong jointly founded for $300,000, and the prototype of NetEase Games was born.
Interestingly, three years later, in 2004, Endless Quest entered the Chinese market under the agency of Shanghai Ubisoft, but this game that shined in the European and American markets was unfortunately killed after only two years in China, and the cause of death was a combination of complications such as over-configuration, cumbersome content, and huge worldview. Ding Lei, who perfectly avoided this minefield, had to say that it was due to luck.
Different from these foreign games that have died in foreign countries, netease's self-developed games draw inspiration from traditional culture, take history as the bone fantasy as the wing, and use pictures, text, and code to weave a fantasy world full of strange and chaotic gods, and the bedtime stories that countless Chinese heard at the pillow when they were children are perfectly presented in front of the player's eyes.
Whether it is the "Journey to the West" series with the same name as the well-known movie, which invited Zhou Xingchi to do endorsements, or the "Fantasy Journey to the West", which was once known as China's first online game and still has a large number of fans today, netease games that have only started for a long time have gained fame and fortune, and also made it once a representative of domestic independent game research and development companies.
Self-research and agency are not contradictory but complementary, after winning the "World of Warcraft" China agency rights, netease's terminal game product matrix is like a tiger, from Shanda, Tencent, Nine Cities, Sohu and other game manufacturers to stand out, for a time the limelight, then NetEase is worthy of the name of game lovers.
It has also been rated as the conscience of the industry, in stark contrast to another game company that has been criticized for excessive imitation, and as for who it is, everyone must have already decided in their minds.
02 From end-to-end to mobile
Under a light music song by NetEase Cloud Music called "Opening Hundred Ghosts Qi Tan", there is such a hot comment: "Some people know Merlin Mao through Wong Kar Wai, and I am through the Yin and Yang Division", and this BGM located on the login interface is what every player who has experienced "Yin and Yang Division" will hear.
On the eve of the National Day in 2016, a Japanese 3D mobile game "Yin and Yang Division" came out, which instantly triggered a round of card draws called "Xuan does not change his life, Krypton does not save the wrong". The popularity of the game itself is intuitively expressed through the APP best-seller list, "Yin And Yang Division" in the first month of the launch with its own sophisticated painting and music squeezed into the top five of the charts, and in the following October, it occupied the top position of the download list for several consecutive days.
Such excellent results not only made their peers feel incredible, but even its producer Jin Tao admitted that it far exceeded their expectations. It is no wonder that during that time, when talking about "Yin and Yang Division", there were always game producers who said enviously, "Ding Lei is really lucky, obviously a small production of two-dimensional games but can attract so many player groups." ”
Perhaps a large part of the success of "Yin and Yang Division" needs to be attributed to luck, but luck only gives the seed a chance to take root and sprout, and even grows into a towering tree overnight, and it is still indispensable to the soil and greenhouse provided by Ding Lei - Jin Tao joined NetEase in 2014, and on the day he first proposed the "Yin and Yang Division" project, Ding Lei set up a project for him.
Long before the emergence of "Yin and Yang Division", the focus of NetEase's game business gradually shifted from the PC side to the mobile end. Ding Lei's transformation thinking is not wrong, in the era of mobile Internet, the development of games to the mobile terminal is also the trend of the times, according to the "2017 China Game Industry Report", in the past year, mobile games accounted for 57% of the total revenue of the game market with 116.12 billion yuan, more than the sum of the rest of the items combined.
At that time, like Jin Tao, more than 1,200 people entered NetEase through social recruitment, and a total of 50 R&D teams were responsible for the development of 70 mobile game projects at the same time, and the budget of each project reached 20 million. They were all seeds sown by Ding Lei, but most of them did not have such good luck and did not thrive like "Yin and Yang Division".
Luck is like a red carpet, with the NetEase mobile game to success but also covered the original rugged road. Standing in the spotlight, "Yin and Yang Division" is really too bright, and the 62.8% growth in game revenue on NetEase's 16-year Q4 financial report is indeed too good to look at, so that people habitually ignore the luck problems that cannot be ignored, and also ignore those projects that are unknown at the same time as "Yin and Yang Division".
But who cares how the losers fail? Players will not, the halo of NetEase games naturally will not, but when the boom brought by "Yin and Yang Division" fades, the reef that has been hidden under the water surface is inevitably revealed - after "Yin and Yang Division", there is no mobile game that can take the banner called game lovers from the hands of predecessors. In this way, those exposed problems will have to be faced.
Predicting what kind of achievements a mobile game can achieve before the official operation, its IP's own popularity is naturally one of the important measures, just like the popular stars in the TV series, the essence of the big IP is also its own traffic. In the top 20 of the iOS revenue list of Chinese mobile games in the first half of this year, only six mobile games have no IP.
When Tencent launched the "QQ Flying Car" and "QQ Dance" mobile games, not many people were sure that they would be popular, but not many people believed that they would be cold and silent, which is the benefit brought by IP. The same welfare NetEase has also enjoyed, "Journey to the West", "Fantasy Journey to the West", "Qiannu Ghost" and other mobile games that have achieved good results, all of which are transplanted from NetEase's own classic terminal game IP.
Cold rice can also be fragrant when fried, after all, there is an immeasurable thing in this world called feelings. But after taking out the IP once, Ding Lei also had to face the situation that it was difficult for a smart woman to cook without rice. Compared with Tencent, an old rival that has a large number of classic IPs brought by its starting point Chinese station and Tencent Animation, NetEase does not have an advantage in the IP that can be adapted into a game.
Yin and Yang Division is a miracle of luck achievement, but the miracle of what happens once is enough, NetEase after the launch of the "Bright Continent", "Town Magic Song", "Decisive Battle of Ping AnJing" and other mobile games do not have the blessing of the classic IP this magic weapon, the ending is naturally not discouraged, which also means that the manpower and material resources invested in it in the early stage have been adrift.
No matter how much love the game company should still be for the purpose of profit, NetEase, which has been frustrated successively, has to take the side of the sword, along the road that others have taken the road of success, and what fire to do.
"Dawn Kill" seems to be quite popular, so NetEase launched the "Fifth Personality" with similar gameplay; "PUBG" seems to be quite popular, so NetEase launched "Wilderness Action" with similar gameplay; "Fortnite" seems to be quite popular, so NetEase once again launched "Fortcraft" with similar gameplay.
At that time, the original banner was still the capital that NetEase Games could proudly raise its head among its peers, and now even it has gone to the road of imitation, ironically, the peer that was ridiculed the most at that time has now been gradually washed clean, and it is also a turn of feng shui. But even such a controversial and helpless move has not allowed NetEase Games to achieve the glory brought by the Yin-Yang Division once again.
The mobile game "Wilderness Action", which imitates the chicken eating, briefly reproduced the achievements of the Yin-Yang Division at the beginning of its launch, but when Tencent's genuine authorization entered the battlefield, it could only end up turning to overseas development. After all, the huge traffic entrance brought by Tencent from social software is not comparable to NetEase, and NetEase Cloud Music is far from reaching the height of QQ and WeChat.
Perhaps Ding Lei can no longer show the bright smile of the card draw during the National Day of that year, when the six major platforms synchronously broadcast the card draw.
03 The return end is a long way to go
In a generation of grandmasters, Zhao Benshan once said, "In a door, someone has to be a face, someone must be a lizi", for game manufacturers, if the mobile game that comes to the money is lizi and fast food, then the large-scale end game should be the face, is the meal.
Although in foreign countries, even those with thick eyebrows and big eyes like Ubisoft and Capcom have also begun to do mobile games, NetEase, as a major domestic game manufacturer, is still a bit reserved in the end. The two big IPs of World of Warcraft and Fantasy Westward Journey are naturally on the table, but after all, it is some years old, so they decided to create a new face out, if this face can still make money like Lizi, it is better.
Another reason why NetEase will choose to return to the terminal game market is also to avoid Tencent's sharp edge in the mobile game market. Compared with mobile games, terminal games have the disadvantages of long research and development cycle and large required funds, but also have their unique advantages, that is, they have a lighter dependence on IP and a longer game life. These two points can almost be said to be tailor-made for NetEase, which lacks heavyweight IP and is accustomed to creating high-quality games.
At the moment when the competitiveness of mobile games is insufficient and forced to go to sea, NetEase still has the strength to fight with Tencent in the terminal game position.
"Against the Cold Water" has been placed high hopes since its birth, and from the production point of view, it has indeed not lived up to the name of NetEase Games, and the initial official release of the promotional video and the real machine demonstration screen revealed have attracted countless players to marvel. It's just a pity that from thrift to luxury, NetEase has done mobile games for too long, and seems to have forgotten the correct way to make terminal games.
After the game was officially tested, players found that the game screen was indeed stunning, but it seemed that only the picture was stunning. For a time, "the rivers and lakes that can breathe" has become a jianghu where netizens breathe money, and the slogan of "China's last end tour" has also been spat on as the last end tour of NetEase. According to the player's screenshots, the reverse water cold has begun to recall the lost users through group text messages, customer service calls and other ways during the internal testing period.
So much so that at the annual press conference, Ding Lei directly sent an audio questioning, "Did you make a fake game?" ", making the scene very embarrassing for a while. Some people say that Ding Lei is hyping, but I think Ding Lei may be really disappointed, after all, for a project that took four years to invest hundreds of millions, the performance of the cold water is indeed a bit unqualified.
The cold of the reverse water is somewhat unexpected, but the reason for the failure is reasonable. A long time ago, there was such a passage among players, "Tencent Games seeks wealth, NetEase Games not only seeks wealth but also kills people." This kind of gameplay that not only requires kryptonite gold but also takes a lot of time, has been deeply criticized as early as the "Yin and Yang Division" that not only requires kryptonite gold pumping gods, but also explodes the liver and brushes the imperial soul, and has been continued to "Against the Cold Water" without improvement.
The same is krypton and liver, but for mobile games and end games, the meaning is not the same.
Mobile games themselves occupy fragmented time, may be in the leisure of work, may also be on the way to commute, anytime, anywhere and convenient and fast, simply put, the time spent on mobile games is like water in a sponge, squeezing will always be there.
The nature of the game itself makes the player can only sit in front of the computer to concentrate and a lot of time into the game, the game itself is high intensity and the gameplay is fixed, as if after the online commute to work online, a day of absence will be left farther by others. Long, tedious daily tasks are rather unfriendly to the average office worker.
The job of the planning itself is to maintain the daily active users and online time of the game, and it is understandable to increase the viscosity of the game. But when a game that should be used for relaxation also becomes a must-do job, it becomes a burden and is naturally abandoned by the player.
On the other hand, although there is an overlap between the two, but the end game users and mobile game users are still two different groups, from the market survey data to see that the average consumption level of mobile games is higher than the end game, the maximum recharge amount of 648 yuan is only called "a single" by players.
"Against the Cold Water" obviously introduced the krypton gold standard of mobile games, and did not find a suitable standard between ordinary players and local tycoon players with mines at home. For players without kryptonite, the game experience of "Against the Water Cold" is not perfect; for some local players, "Against the Water Cold" does not make them last long.
Judging from the results, NetEase's "last end game" is undoubtedly unsatisfactory, and if you want to really dominate the end game, you may have to wait until the next "real end game".
From the success of "Fantasy Journey to the West" and "World of Warcraft" from scratch, to the later trough, to the peak of the mobile game, and then to the four years of grinding a sword back to the end of the game market but not unsatisfied, Ding Lei and his game road is like a sine function, ups and downs. And now, NetEase Games is undoubtedly at a low point again.
When it comes to the current Chinese game market, it is always impossible to avoid the only two big manufacturers of Tencent Games and NetEase Games, and players habitually list the two of them together to make a comparison. But at the same time, people also know that just like the Jianghu people called Southern Murong Bei Qiao Feng, Tencent and NetEase are not in the same volume after all, even if it is only the game.
Nowadays, the successive defeats in the terminal game and mobile game markets have left NetEase Games far behind by Tencent Games, and the gap of 15 billion yuan in online game revenue between the two in the second quarter of this year is the most intuitive embodiment of this. Tencent is not only a game developer, but also an agent operator, but also a game investor, which is beyond NetEase's reach.
Ding Lei naturally can't rely on luck alone along the way, more is strength. But from the current situation, whether NetEase Games can find a new inflection point in today's predicament, it seems that in addition to improving its strength, it really needs to rely on a little luck when "Yin and Yang Division" exploded. But even if NetEase can really replicate the miracle of "Yin and Yang Division" and create a blockbuster mobile game, can it really change the status quo of Tencent's dominance in the game market and shake the status of Tencent's games?