Chapter 2057 The general trend of light mobile games

Shareholders left.

Zhou Buqi held the first board meeting as chairman of Changyou's board of directors.

New people, new atmosphere.

Zhou Buqi was sitting in the first place, and Zhang Chaoyang was sitting in the deputy seat. The meeting had not yet started. This scene made Zhou Buqi feel warm in his heart, and he felt that this was the correct seating arrangement.

The core topics of this board meeting are mainly four.

First, promote the integration of Changyou and Ziweixing International Gaming Division.

The deal has been sealed.

However, the transaction will be officially completed only after review and approval by regulatory authorities in the United States, Europe, and China. If it is not approved, the transaction can actually be completed, but it will not be able to operate in the market.

For example, if the United States does not approve it but Europe approves it, then Changyou's business cannot be carried out in the United States and can only be carried out in Europe.

The United States, Europe, and China are basically the three core markets in the world. Japan is also a supermarket, but Japan has no right to speak and lacks national integrity, so it can only follow the trend.

In other words, if the regulatory agencies of the three major powers of the United States, Europe, and China approve the transaction, it will basically gain global recognition. Anyone who does not recognize this is secluded from the world and the people, and will be ostracized by the global business circle.

Mergers and acquisitions in the game industry are probably the industry with the least resistance in the IT field. There are almost no monopolistic transactions. So despite the fact that Changyou’s acquisition of the game division of MSI has not yet been formally reviewed, everyone knows that it is a done deal.

Even Mattrick, the president of the gaming division, has officially become Changyou’s director and CEO.

The next step is to promote the integration of resources between the two companies.

Second, explore the locations of domestic and overseas headquarters.

Changyou's current cash flow on its books is nearly 3 billion US dollars. Except for super giants like Microsoft and Sony, counting only pure game companies, Changyou's cash flow should be the largest!

More money means more confidence!

You can do great things!

First, you must choose your domestic and overseas headquarters.

This matter, driven by Zhou Buqi, has been intensively carried out in the past six months.

At the board meeting, Zhou Buqi solemnly appointed Vice Chairman Mr. Zhang Chaoyang to take over this mission and do it well! Lao Zhang almost fainted on the spot. I feel like this bastard is really using chicken feathers as arrows.

Third, build a global game distribution and operation system.

This matter cannot be rushed, it needs to be done slowly.

Among the directors of Changyou, there is a person named Kevin Tsujihara, who is an executive of Ziweixing Global. In building this global distribution and operation system, Changyou will definitely rely heavily on the resources of Ziweixing Global's film distribution system.

In this process, Kevin Tsujihara should help more and work harder.

The fourth and most important point is! The replacement of Changyou's board of directors has been completed. Now there is no need to worry too much and we can start a truly global development path!

The core of a game company is games!

Developing excellent games is the cornerstone for a game company to take root.

Gaming is a startup industry.

Creative exhaustion is a dilemma that all game companies have to face.

How to deal with it?

This requires adopting the plan proposed by Ren Yuxin - imitation.

Over the past few years, Ren Yuxin has been in charge of Penguin's gaming business, gradually developing this social company into a gaming giant.

The strategy relied on is imitation.

Then they were scolded by the entire Internet, thinking that they had no innovation at all, plagiarized every day, and followed other people's paths leaving others with nowhere to go...

Should I scold you?

It deserves to be scolded, because this is indeed very criticized. This is taking advantage of some gray protections in domestic laws to infringe on the intellectual property rights of other game companies.

Even if the legal test can be passed, the moral test will still be condemned.

However, there is one thing wrong with criticizing them, that is, they do not innovate. Plagiarism is true, not innovating is false. If you can succeed by just plagiarizing and following other people's paths, then success will be too easy.

Counterfeiting of games developed by others is common across the country, and it’s hard to see which company can do it well. Changyou's own "The Deer and the Cauldron" was plagiarized from "Dragon Movie". It invested countless resources and received rave reviews as soon as it was released.

Penguin Games led by Ren Yuxin can stand out and succeed whatever they can copy. The most important thing is that they do not simply copy, but conduct detailed data research to study players' mentality, preferences and market trends. The original game has been optimized and improved.

In particular, there is an iron rule for game development that Ren Yuxin has summarized over the years - lowering the gameplay threshold of the game at all costs.

The copycat games are more fun and easier to play than the original games. This is the fundamental reason why the Penguin game is so popular.

What Zhou Buqi has to do is to take the essence and get rid of the dross!

Seize the key points and experience advantages in the imitation process, and avoid the weaknesses of intellectual property infringement.

How to avoid it?

Just buy, buy, buy all the way!

If you want to acquire enough game studios and games with complete property rights around the world in large quantities and copy them yourself, there will be no legal or moral judgment.

In this regard, Zhou Buqi has his own statement: "When selecting game studios to acquire around the world, we should focus on those with simple gameplay, easy to use, and relatively strong brands. Especially those like Baokai Studio Light game. "Swallowing Fish" has been around for almost ten years. In recent years, it has not been very popular on the PC side. However, the era of mobile games has arrived. After the mobile game version was launched, it immediately exploded with great vitality. .How is the market performance of this game?"

There are many foreigners on the board of directors.

So don’t think this is a board meeting held in China. The language of the meeting is English.

Don Mattrick saw the big boss's eyes, understood it, and said with a smile: "Excluding the Chinese market, the downloads of the free version in overseas markets are 120 million, and the total downloads of the paid version are 55 million..."

Zhou Buqi waved his hand and said, "Talk about income!"

There are too many game data, including total downloads, annual downloads, weekly downloads, total installations, annual installations, survival rate, activity, paid version, free version, etc.

This is a board meeting, not a business meeting, and no one is in the mood to hear specific data sheets.

Mattrick said simply: "In the first three quarters of this year, advertising revenue in non-China markets reached US$83 million, paid revenue was US$32 million, and total revenue was US$115 million."

It can be seen that the free version of the game makes more money than the paid version.

The reason why many games launch paid versions is that firstly, some players don’t like game advertisements popping up all the time, so they will buy the paid version; secondly, some games are not promoted enough, and advertisers are unwilling to provide advertisements, so they can only rely on selling genuine games. Make money.

Zhou Buqi looked at Ren Yuxin, "What about the domestic market?"

Ren Yuxin said: "The domestic version is called "Big Fish Eat Little Fish", and it is mainly free version. The revenue in the first three quarters was 18 million U.S. dollars, and the revenue from the paid version was less than 2 million U.S. dollars."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "The domestic market has not developed yet and is limited by the stock of smartphones. This is a good thing. This further illustrates that this is an unexplored blank market. With more and more smartphones, the market The potential benefits will be greater and greater!”

Zhang Chaoyang said with deep feeling: "Light games are the general direction that must be adhered to. Even the PC side is the world of social web games. The total revenue of "Swallowing Fish" in the first three quarters reached US$130 million. This is the general trend.”

Especially Wang Fang, he was shocked.

He was previously the CEO of Changyou. He was not a direct descendant of Zhou Buqi and had long been excluded from the core of power. Moreover, Baokai Game Studio belongs to the game division of Ziweixing International and had nothing to do with Changyou before.

So Wang Fang barely understands "Swallowing Fish".

Hearing this, it was unbelievable. Wang Fang opened his eyes wide and said in horror: "The revenue of a small mobile game "Eating Fish" in the first three quarters reached 130 million US dollars? "Dragon Babu" It’s only US$230 million!”

Zhou Buqi looked at him with a smile and said calmly: "So to run a company, you must step on the general trend of the times. The current general trend is the mobile Internet and mobile games. There is a domestic game company that is also a listed company called Perfect World. , has devoted itself to overseas business in the past few years and acquired several companies. One of the investments was very successful, a game company called Runic, and they only spent US$8.4 million."

Don Mattrick is indeed an industry leader. He has heard of it and said with a smile: "Torchlight, right?"

Zhou Buqi said: "Yes, Runic's main game is "Torchlight", a stand-alone game that sold very well and earned Perfection millions of dollars. Then, they wanted to invest further and launched " The online game version of Torchlight.”

Mattrick shook his head, "The online game version is really a big loss. Adaptation and imitation of games may sound simple, but in fact it is not easy. Let alone imitating other people's games, even if you imitate your own games, the probability of failure is Extremely high too.”

Zhou Buqi said: "On the one hand, it is due to the type of game. The threshold for getting started with such a large-scale game is too high, which is not conducive to popularization. It is also difficult to adapt, and the direction is even worse. The current trend is mobile games. "Swallow" "Eat Fish" made 130 million U.S. dollars. How much did "Angry Birds" make? It was more than "Dragon". This is the strength of the international route and the light mobile game route."

Kevin Tsujihara is a Japanese-American and has a lot of experience in this. "All top game IPs are often light games. The value of Mario and Pokémon is higher than that of "World of Warcraft" and "Dragon". "It's still high. "Angry Birds" has already made its way out of the entertainment industry and has formed a big brand. The next step is to make animations."

There are so many benefits to light gaming.

First of all, the gameplay is simple and its popularity is wider.

Secondly, it is easier to adapt and more likely to succeed. It's not like "Torchlight", where the stand-alone version was a huge success, but it was adapted into an online game version and suffered a huge loss.

Also, light games require less investment.

Even if it is a light game, after the adaptation is launched, there will be fewer wins and more losses.

If it is a large-scale game such as "The Deer and the Cauldron OL" or "Torchlight OL", tens of millions of dollars will be invested in it. Once it fails, you will lose money.

The investment in light games is low, and even if it fails, the impact will be limited.

The last point is that it is more IP-based and easier to get out of the circle. Derivatives of games such as "World of Warcraft" and "Dragon", such as pillows, T-shirts, water cups, and pencil cases, will definitely not sell well with light game brands such as "Angry Birds" and "Talking Cat" .

Especially Talking Cat.

This game has actually become very popular in recent years. Because the gameplay is simple, its popularity has faded after a few years, and it is no longer considered a mainstream game.

However, the brand has been built.

The annual game revenue is not much, but the revenue from brand licensing can be hundreds of millions of dollars... For example, licensing the brand to T-shirt manufacturers and letting them produce "Cat Family" T-shirts.

It can even be made into movies and cartoons.