Chapter 359: Can't Go Up or Down, Stuck Here

"Why do we still need to engage in e-sports? Isn't the answer obvious?" Pei Yunteng looked at Feng Xianjun, who seemed a little absent-minded, in surprise.

Yes, no one can bear it if a career that they have devoted themselves to for more than ten years is suddenly denied by their boss.

Otherwise, his brain wouldn't be in such a state of panic.

"Old Feng, you must know how fierce the competition is in the online gaming field, right?" Pei Yunteng asked.

Feng Xianjun thought about it, and cautiously did not say that he "knew a little", and put on an attitude of listening attentively.

He first worked in esports for Honor, a game that almost monopolized the MMO market, and then turned around and joined a large company like Tencent, which also has a dominant position.

To put it simply, we have never made any demands for payment.

"So, I said that you don't know how lucky you are. You don't know how expensive firewood and rice are until you take charge of the household." Pei Yunteng scolded with a smile.

Why do we need e-sports? For most games, there is only one reason: to maintain popularity.

In the field of gaming, it is extremely difficult to maintain popularity.

Because it is basically impossible to achieve this by relying solely on game content.

The content produced by a company's programmers working overtime for several years may be almost appreciated by players in just a few dozen hours, and discussed for about a month, and the enthusiasm will gradually fade away.

It’s okay for stand-alone games, they’re a one-time deal, and if you can sell the game while it’s popular, it’s considered a success.

But for long-term online games, this is very fatal.

Countless predecessors in history have proven how difficult it is to retain players in the online gaming field relying solely on game content.

The most typical one is the predecessor of Black Myth, God of War.

At the beginning, Feng Ji and a group of dream chasers spent countless manpower, material resources and efforts to create the extremely amazing first three chapters of Douzhanshen. However, players finished the game in just a few dozen hours and started waiting for new products.

There was no way to ensure the quality and quantity of updates, and in order to make a profit, the game was forced to launch various systems that had been criticized countless times in traditional online games, and gradually became mediocre.

Seeing his hard work and dreams gradually deteriorate made Feng Ji sober up and realize that to create plots and content for online games, unless you have the scale of World of Warcraft, it would be pure madness.

Finally, he brought his core members with him, and after more than ten years of hard work, he created the Black Myth.

Online games have been studied for so many years, but the core has never changed: how to make players spend money and time repeatedly for similar content?

In addition to developing a set of gameplay with great replay value, there is only one key point:
Let players spontaneously pursue power in the game.

E-sports, especially those e-sports players who shine brightly under the spotlight, are naturally the best benchmark.

"So e-sports has never been something particularly high-end from the beginning. In a sense, it is just a special kind of game advertisement."

“On the one hand, the performance, bond and brilliance of e-sports players are used to motivate players to constantly pursue power in the game, thereby spending money or time.”

“If it is done successfully, it can also form a trend, thus attracting people outside the circle to try it, and thus achieve the goal of breaking the circle.”

"But no matter how you look at it, it's essentially an advertisement for the game itself."

"Unless we can take e-sports to a level where we can try to enter the Asian Games or even the Olympics, like we have done, we can give e-sports new meaning."

For games like League of Legends and CSGO, which are essentially about selling gameplay, e-sports is still one of their ways to maintain their differentiation.

Because this is a game centered around gameplay, it is very easy to copy a fake one.

Apart from other things, when CF was popular, there were countless similar online shooting games with similar maps, similar guns and similar game content.

If you want to maintain your differentiation, you can either learn from Fujiko and strongly integrate your own social software with games to add social attributes to the games.

Otherwise, just create an e-sports game for players to discuss.

Obviously, the latter is a more cost-effective solution.

"In a word..." Pei Yunteng, who had said a lot, took a sip of tea and then concluded.

"Esports is a tool used to increase the popularity and controversy of games, thereby maintaining player stickiness, but conversely, it will inevitably overdraw the vitality of the game."

"For most online games, including ours, this is a necessary sacrifice."

"But Honor... I really can't think of any need for them to get involved in e-sports." Pei Yunteng scratched his head.

No, considering Honor's historic materialization engine, it is no exaggeration to say that all the laws mentioned before are bullshit when applied to Honor.

Other online games cannot survive by creating content, but Honor can.

That highly realistic world is just there, it's an ultra-high-end version of Minecraft.

The officials don’t have to think too much about it, the players will develop it for them themselves.

Pei Yunteng had no doubt that based on the quality of the game, even without any plot content, it was equivalent to a collection of countless game simulators.

Fishing, building a house, cooking, mining, traveling...

With such a high degree of realism, the boring and repetitive parts of other games become extremely interesting, enough to make players shout "shut up and take my money."

In Pei Yunteng’s previous life, those manufacturers had been clamoring for so long about the “Metaverse”, but in the end, they achieved nothing except cheating a bunch of fools out of their money.

But if Glory wants to create the Metaverse, Pei Yunteng has no doubt that they can really do it, and do it with guaranteed quality and quantity.

If Pei Yunteng were allowed to obtain Honor's technology and given a few more years, nothing except antitrust laws would be able to prevent him from unifying the gaming industry.

So...what did Honor officials come up with?
They created an MMORPG online game and asked all players to participate in dungeon PVP.

That's fine, just do the dungeon. Although fighting is faster-paced, has a higher threshold, and the perspective is so shaky that it can easily make people feel 3D dizzy, it is also content that players like.

Then we will do more dungeons, fight more wild bosses, and then find excuses to let players fight during various holidays, and get some paid props during the period.

That's also a good thing to make money while lying down.

But Honor doesn’t do that. It wants to engage in e-sports, and it wants to engage in e-sports with equipment.

Once e-sports competitions are officialized, the environment immediately becomes utilitarian. Large guilds begin to monopolize resources, the gaming environment becomes more hostile, and the threshold for newcomers to get started is further increased.

A super high-end Warcraft treasure project that was originally guaranteed to operate for 50 to 60 years has become half-dead in just over ten years.

"Honor's e-sports is very weird." Pei Yunteng couldn't help but make a sharp comment.

"For other online games that are a little lower than them, they either do e-sports to maintain user stickiness or to run advertisements. In the final analysis, it's all about making money, but Honor of Kings doesn't make much money from e-sports."

"We are a little more advanced than them. We are aiming for e-sports to enter the Asian Games and the Olympics, thereby improving the historical status of the entire gaming field. But as for the Glory competition system, there is no inherent possibility of going further."

"I can't go up or down. I'm stuck here."

Feng Xianjun was speechless.

"Okay, the past cannot be changed, but the future can still be pursued." Pei Yunteng waved his hand casually.

“The most important thing is to learn enough lessons from Rong Yao and not make these mistakes again in our own projects.”

"Our...own project?" Feng Xianjun keenly heard the emphasis in Pei Yunteng's tone.

After a pause, his tone was filled with uncontrollable surprise: "You mean--"

"Well, the deal is about to be done." Pei Yunteng nodded calmly.

However, the corners of his mouth, which were harder to suppress than AK, had already exposed his extremely uneasy state of mind at the moment.

"Be prepared, it may not be long before—"

"We will have our own glory."

... "This condition is still a bit harsh..."

In a conference room, a representative from Tenghai read the agreement in his hand word by word, and then spoke slowly.

This negotiation has been going on for a long time.

The core theme is also very simple, which is to divide the cake.

For the traditional forces in the gaming field, with the e-sports games of Honor and the subsequent Gunslinger both suffering Waterloo, their desire to gain dominance in the e-sports field has completely failed.

Tenghai has proved that in the current industry, they are the only ones capable of steadily expanding the pie.

It is precisely because of this confirmation that those people have a major reversal in attitude and directly abandon their own minion Kodik as one of the signals of reaching a reconciliation with Tenghai.

However, acknowledging Tenghai's current leadership in the industry does not mean that they will be content with the current status quo.

You can be the one in charge.

But if we are not given more of the benefits, wouldn’t that be a bit too much?

How to squeeze more benefits from Tenghai has become one of their most important projects at present.

Coincidentally, Tenghai actually has a demand in this area.

No matter how many little tricks these people have, or how many despicable schemes they use, their combined power is still extremely terrifying, at least more terrifying than the power that Teng Hai himself can mobilize.

Tenghai is not so arrogant as to think that it already controls half of the gaming industry.

Now that commercialization has been done well enough, if e-sports wants to take the next step, it has to work on traditional recognition.

Putting aside other things, we have to try to get into the Asian Games and the Olympics, right?

Just to enter the Asian Games, Tenghai can still rely on its own family and official support to take the next step, and Pei Yunteng also thought so at the beginning.

But later the system told him that in his original world, the E-Sports Olympics had been successfully launched?
Then Pei Yunteng had to raise his goal a little bit.

If we want to achieve such an epic achievement as e-sports entering the Olympics, we must unite the entire gaming community to have a chance.

So, everyone sat down and started talking.

Because the matter is of great importance and is very likely to involve the future landscape of e-sports and even the gaming industry, this is destined to be a long tug-of-war.

"This is the result of many setbacks, isn't it? And even so, won't your company be able to get the biggest piece of the pie?"

“This will be a win-win deal, right?”

Seeing the question raised by the representative of Tenghai, the representative of the gaming industry replied with a smile.

"We understand the principle, but we still have some doubts about some details." The representative of Tenghai smiled.

"Take the project you listed as 'transferring benefits to us' for example. Do you really think that transferring the development and operation rights of Honor to us will benefit us?"

There was a hint of disdain in his words.

"Glory is the most glorious online game in the past ten years, and it is the youth memory of a generation of players. As long as it can be operated well, the benefits it brings to you will naturally be immeasurable, right?"

The smile of the representative from the gaming industry stiffened a little.

"How about you take back the development and operation rights of Honor, and the other conditions are in accordance with the proposal we put forward?" The Teng Hai representative's words made the atmosphere tense.

“This is difficult…” said the representative of the gaming industry.

Since the e-sportsization of Honor has completely failed, in addition to Kotick himself being abandoned, the game Honor has also been put on the negotiating table and become a bargaining chip.

To its original owners, glory has completely become a piece of chicken ribs.

The cost of maintaining operations is not low, but the income is quite pitiful, the game is half-dead, and e-sports is completely cold.

Unfortunately, the most valuable technology of this game cannot be separated out and integrated into other projects due to various complex reasons.

The most important and core technology could not be absorbed and digested, and the value of Glory suddenly plummeted.

After the failed attempt to revive Honor of Kings after gathering the elites of the gaming industry, the only remaining value of Honor of Kings was to tempt Tenghai.

After all, only Tenghai still has some hope and can bring some vitality to Honor.

But unfortunately, Teng Hai is not a fool.

We have no use for this thing even if it's given to us. What we need is a money-making project?

All the former e-sports players of Honor are fighting hard in our league. Do we need your passion?

There's no profit in the operation, and we can't get the technology, but you want to exchange this for benefits. Are you taking us for fools?
Therefore, they have always maintained a disdainful attitude towards Honor, and would rather let them take back its development and operation rights than give up even the slightest bit of interest for it.

Seeing that Tencent was not fooled no matter how hard they tried, Lao Deng gave up the idea of ​​making a fuss about Honor. From then on, Honor became an insignificant small clause in the negotiation agreement.

Even so, Tencent is still insisting that it doesn't want the operating rights, can you just take it and play with it yourself?

However, those guys who always felt that it would be troublesome not to sell this useless piece of food insisted on keeping this clause.

Coupled with other conflicts of interest, this is why the negotiations have been deadlocked for so long.

However, the attitudes of both sides have softened in the past few days, and they are only one step away from reaching a final consensus.

After another half day of verbal sparring, the moment that everyone had been looking forward to finally arrived.

After both parties took a step back, they finally came to a price that was acceptable to both parties.

Everyone is happy.

The negotiators, who had been fighting for several months, breathed a sigh of relief at this moment.

When signing the contract, the representative of Tenghai gave one final reminder: "Why don't you delete the clause about Honor's operating rights?"

"No need to delete it! With your company's capabilities, I believe you will be able to make Glory shine again!"

The representative who completed the task was in a good mood and flattered the person with a joking tone.

They had gained a small advantage in this negotiation.

According to the intelligence they had obtained, one of the supporters behind Teng Hai, the big boss named Ye, seemed to be quite interested in letting Teng Hai take over Honor because of his son.

After receiving the news, they immediately raised the price slightly based on this, and no matter how hard Tenghai tried, they had to include the development rights of Honor in the contract.

As it turned out, Tenghai did not continue to be tough. Amid the bright smiles of the representatives from the gaming industry, he pinched his nose and signed the contract which was a bit unprofitable.

The Tenghai representative who signed the contract seemed to be in a bad mood and soon said goodbye and left.

Especially the leading representative, who walked with great speed.

"Young people are still a little impatient." The representative of the gaming industry commented calmly, feeling quite proud.

I can't keep my cool.

Tenghai's representatives must move faster.

Otherwise, he was afraid that he would not be able to help laughing during the negotiation.

The development and operation rights of Honor are obtained!

　The cold hasn’t healed yet, so I’ll update again.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)