Text | Zhang Jiantao
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Speaking of the most famous game companies in China, Tencent can definitely occupy a place as a developer of nationally renowned games such as Honor of Kings and Happy Fighting Landlord; The emergence of Tencent has not only changed the way Chinese communicates online, but also filled the gap in China's network information technology.
At the same time, it has also led the development of online games and mobile games in China.
Many people think that Tencent was founded by Ma Huateng single-handedly, but in fact, this statement is not correct, in the initial stage of Tencent, Ma Huateng has successively pulled many people to join in order to solve various problems including funds;
For example, Ma Huateng's childhood friend Zhang Zhidong, as well as Chen Yidan, Zeng Liqing and other business talents, together formed the first generation of Tencent Group's team.
As Tencent becomes more and more famous, Ma Huateng is also known to more people, but many people do not know that Ma Huateng is now more than fifty years old.
It's hard for business tycoons like this not to be noticed, especially their physical condition, which can even affect the rise or fall of a company's or group's stock price.
However, Ma Huateng is not a star after all, and it is impossible to often appear in front of online platforms and the public, so many people do not know how Ma Huateng is in his current health?
Recently, however, a photo of his recent board speech has been leaked online, which is different from the dashing appearance in the video.
After everyone saw it, they didn't look like real people, and many people made a "weird" guess
First, business bigwigs use AI technology to change faces?
In the photo, Ma Huateng has a wooden expression, his complexion is sallow, and his eyes have lost their radiance, looking like a seriously ill person.
Some netizens who watched more carefully found that the other party's sitting posture and expression were very stiff, not looking like a real person, but more like a virtual portrait synthesized by AI technology.
Netizens who have watched the online drama "Crime Hunting Guide" should remember one of the plots;
An elderly couple saw a video of their son crying to themselves on their mobile phone that they had lost the lawsuit and asked for money, and transferred all the money they had lost their family, only to find that they were deceived and jumped into the sea to commit suicide;
And the son of the old couple who appeared in the so-called video is just a virtual face made by scammers using AI face changing technology.
This is a rare high-tech crime plot in domestic criminal investigation dramas, but in reality, AI technology is not far away from people, and face recognition is often used in subways, movie theaters and banks;
In fact, it is an application of AI face technology, including some P-map technology of a certain sound and other apps, which is essentially the classification of AI artificial intelligence technology.
It can be seen that the application of AI face changing and recognition technology has brought a lot of convenience to people, but it has also given some illegal criminals the opportunity to seek illegal profits by this means;
But this does not prevent the government and society from applying and developing AI technology;
The photos leaked by Ma Huateng attending the board of directors, if they really use AI technology to transform, also indirectly show that AI technology has been more deeply applied in China.
Based on the idea of if it is really an AI face change, there is a lot of speculation on the Internet, some people think that Ma Huateng is old, although fifty years old is not too big for an entrepreneur, but it is not too small;
In addition, online games are a particularly competitive industry, even if it is a leading level of Tencent, it is inevitable that there will be pressure, not to mention that Tencent has recently been exposed to a lot of negative news by the media.
For example, the update and transformation of the game platform, the incident of Tencent's female staff slandering uncles, and the previous fines by market supervision rights have all had a lot of impact on Tencent's social image.
To settle this kind of thing, Ma Huateng naturally has to spend a lot of energy, and it is understandable that his body can't stay up for a while and fall into the root of the disease;
In order not to let the outside world lose confidence in Tencent, Ma Huateng used AI technology to report safety to the media naturally makes sense, but whether the incident is true, most people think that it is not true, it is more likely that he really has some physical problems.
However, don't look at Tencent's continuous setbacks in China, think that Tencent has fallen into the downside in market development, in fact, Tencent has carried out expansion into foreign markets without being known.
Second, the unknown side of Tencent, how Ma Huateng got to the present
The Chinese government has always encouraged domestic companies to actively explore foreign markets and become enterprises that can go global, but given the strong influence of European and American companies in the past;
Many people think that domestic enterprises are only suitable for domestic infighting.
In fact, domestic enterprises have been constantly going out, and our Tencent has long begun to layout overseas markets.
Taking games as an example, many people think that games can only be played by these early-start technology companies in Europe and the United States, but in fact, the influence of Chinese games overseas is not bad at all;
Game is strictly a programming technology, for a person who studies IT, it is not difficult to make a game, the difficulty is how to do a game well;
At present, China's more well-known games overseas are not only "Genshin", but Tencent's "Honor of Kings" and "Peace Elite" also have no less influence than Genshin.
If you usually brush short videos, it is estimated that many foreign netizens are very interested in these two games;
Even some netizens not only taught themselves Chinese in order to learn to play this game, but even learned the Chinese myths and stories associated with the characters.
It can be seen that online games and mobile games have become another new means of cultural export after Chinese novels.
At present, the overseas market has become one of Tencent's main sources of revenue, according to Sensor Tower's revenue survey of Tencent;
"Honor of Kings" alone has earned US$215 million in overseas markets in March 2023, becoming the number one overseas revenue enterprise for Chinese mobile game manufacturers.
In addition to focusing on the growth of overseas consumers, Tencent also focuses on investing in overseas game companies to expand its influence in overseas game markets.
Just as many people think that Samsung will only do mobile phone business, in fact, Tencent will only engage in QQ and online games in the eyes of many people, in fact, Tencent's overseas corporate acquisitions are not bad at all;
Many game companies in Europe and the United States have Tencent's capital injection, such as Ubisoft, which launched "Assassin's Creed", which was bought by Tencent in 9.99% of the shares.
By acquiring shares in these game companies, on the one hand, you can expand your own income;
At the same time, you can also participate in the management of these companies through acquisitions, so as to learn foreign game design and company management methods.
In order to open up overseas markets, Tencent has been making other online games that are more in line with overseas netizens for so many years.
These new games launched in 2022 have a good response in the market, even in 2022 due to the impact of the epidemic and the game market shrinking, Tencent still maintains a global market share of more than one trillion.
Its overseas revenue increased by 3% in 2022 compared with the same period last year, accounting for 33% of Tencent's overall revenue, which shows that although the main revenue of Tencent games still comes from China, the foreign income is not low at all.
Tencent's behavior in exploring overseas markets has encouraged more Chinese enterprises to go overseas, such as NetEase and Mihayou.
Many Chinese game manufacturers have made their own overseas plans with reference to Tencent's overseas layout.
Tencent's success is encouraging many Chinese companies to seek greater market expansion overseas, which shows that Tencent is definitely a legend in the Chinese game industry;
It is precisely because of the emergence of game companies such as Tencent that the Chinese game market is monopolized by Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States.
And Ma Huateng can achieve Tencent to this scale, in addition to Ma Huateng has high business talent, it is inseparable from his environment.
Most of the businessmen who grew up after the reform and opening up were mainly in coastal areas, among which Guangdong and Zhejiang had the most businessmen, after all, Shenzhen is the special zone there;
Many people born in Guangdong also enjoyed the dividends brought by the first wave of reforms, such as Xu Jiayin, Ren Zhengfei, Wang Chuanfu, etc., all rose in that era, and Ma Huateng was just one of them.
Unlike most people who had to make a living and start business because of their poverty, Ma Huateng was a rare senior intellectual in the 80s.
At that time, the university had not yet expanded, so it was not an easy task to enter the university, but Ma Huateng was admitted to Shenzhen University at that time with a score of more than 700 points, and his chosen major was computer.
When the network industry first emerged in China, not many people majored in computer science, but Ma Huateng's love of computer technology made him a senior computer expert in college.
While many students are busy wandering around as soon as class starts, Ma spends most of his time in school studying programming code and learning about data storage and applications.
This gave him an early understanding of a wealth of network technology expertise, which laid a solid foundation for his future entrepreneurship.
After several years of study, Ma Huateng graduated from Shenzhen University, and then went to work in Shenzhen Runxun Communication at that time and became a supervisor.
Ma Huateng has not yet been exposed to game-related work, he is mainly engaged in the development and use of communication technology, but Ma Huateng has just graduated and showed his talent in the field of information.
Not long after joining the company, Ma Huateng quickly discovered the market potential of software technology and proposed to the company that he should invest in research on new software.
However, this did not satisfy Ma Huateng , seeing that many people around him went south to start a business, and the young Ma Huateng was also moved.
However, Ma Huateng's family naturally could not give him the money to start a business, so Ma Huateng took a shortcut, that is, stock trading.
Although Ma Huateng studied computers, but perhaps Ma Huateng luck was better, the stock market at that time was still good, Ma Huateng used 100,000 yuan to earn more than 700,000 yuan in the stock market, which was a huge amount of money at that time.
With this money, Ma Huateng's road to Tencent also began.
Third, from chat software to game opening, how Ma Huateng has come to the present
Today's Chinese may not know about SMS, but certainly not about QQ and WeChat, and many people think that China's web chat tool is QQ.
In fact, in the 90s of the last century, there were two IT companies in China engaged in the development and promotion of this software, and Tencent at that time compared with them, it was the gap between primary school students and college students.
But Ma Huateng was not discouraged, and after exploring the production process and application of ICQ, he soon launched his own ICQ product OICQ, which is also the predecessor of QQ.
As soon as this software entered the market, it became the top product in the Chinese software market, and the popularity continues to this day, even SMS is difficult to compete with it in the Chinese market;
Even later launched the enterprise version and the international version, before the short video was launched, it was the most important online dating software for all classes in China;
Although Tencent later had to change its name to the current QQ due to the lawsuit of ICQ, and some functions were to be modified, it never blocked the domestic consumers' support for QQ.
It can be said that the hot sales of QQ software for more than ten years are the key to Tencent's rise, but as Tencent grows bigger and bigger, various problems have begun to be highlighted.
For example, as the number of QQ users continues to surge, Tengxu's servers are gradually unable to carry the increased network signal, and Tencent has to invest a lot of money in server upgrades;
Later, the millennium saw a network demon, which caused serious damage to China's software market, and Tencent also faced the problem of broken funds.
This is the biggest crisis since Tencent's establishment, and Ma Huateng once wanted to sell QQ to maintain the stability of the capital chain;
However, because no one was able to take over, the idea was not put into practice, but QQ software was also saved.
But since the method of selling the property does not work, the problem can only be solved by attracting investment.
For this reason, the chairman of Tencent had to personally carry the business plan around to find someone to ask for money, and ran from China to abroad, and the plan was changed and changed, and the original plan was only a few pages to more than 20 pages;
However, even though Ma Huateng tried so hard at that time, he still did not find the investor he wanted for a long time.
Just when Tencent was facing the crisis of liquidation, the emergence of two large enterprises gave Tencent a chance to be reborn: Pacific Century Digital founded by Hong Kong businessman Li Zekai, and IDG, China's first investment fund company.
Both companies believe that Tencent's QQ still has great prospects for development in the future, and it is a pity to hang up because of a market change;
So a lot of investment was invested in Tencent, and Tencent's operation finally returned to stability.
With the addition of the two companies, Tencent not only successfully listed in Hong Kong, but also launched the development of software involving online games, music, video and other software, and the subsequent development of Tencent is not without danger, but it is also smooth sailing.
Tencent's success marks the strength of Chinese IT companies, enough to challenge European and American IT giants, but even the most powerful businessmen always have a time to age.
As the helm of Tencent, Ma Huateng has to deal with the deception of the mall every day, use AI technology to change faces, and maintain his demeanor image in the public.
In order to stabilize the confidence of the outside world in themselves, it can also be understood that as long as Ma Huateng does not use this technology to violate the law and commit crimes, it is actually not a big deal.
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