Reborn multinational giant

With the passage of time, the game "Plants vs. Zombies" began to spread virally on the Internet. After playing this game, many players recommended it to their friends, colleagues and classmates around them. .

In addition, many players who are eager to unlock various plants in the game also specifically follow the built-in sharing tasks of the game to share the game to Baidu Tieba, Renren, QQ Zone, and Weibo that just appeared. Social platforms.

In the Internet industry, there is a very famous term called virus transmission, which refers to the speed at which a product spreads between users after it has become popular. It is as fast as a virus. Products that can cause virus transmission are rare. The Happy Farm at the beginning of the year is counted as one, and the flappybird from the previous life, surrounded by Nervous Cat, 2048, jump and jump and other small games, is also one of them.

As long as a product has the characteristics of virus transmission, is fun, easy to share, and users are willing to share, then its users will increase exponentially at an exponential rate!

Three days after "Plants vs. Zombies" went online, it climbed into the top 10 of Baidu's hot topics list and the top 5 of Baidu's game search list. The number of registered users reached 1 million within three days!

On the surface, 1 million users are not many, but thinking that "Plants vs. Zombies" is a stand-alone game that needs to be downloaded, this data is very scary.

With the viral spread of "Plants vs. Zombies", the number of new registered users of this game is increasing exponentially every day. In just one week of public beta, the number of downloads of "Plants vs. Zombies" on the entire network exceeded 3 million. The number of users is more than 2.5 million.

Among them, the official Weibo account of Plants vs. Zombies, which has just started operating on Weibo, has also played a significant role in marketing.

Every day, the official Weibo account will post a variety of exciting game videos for players and various activities of forwarding comments and sending game props, etc. In less than a week, the official Weibo of "Plants vs. Zombies" accumulated 30,000 Many Weibo fans, even more than many celebrities who have been invited to join the Weibo internal beta!

Although there are not many more than 30,000 fans, all of them are real active users. They are far from the zombie fans of later generations. Driven by the reposts and comments of these fans, the Weibo that attracts new users has almost become Huizhong’s own products, any newly registered Weibo users will always unknowingly see "Plants vs. Zombies" related microblog forwarding and other dynamics, and are attracted to download "Plants vs. Zombies" to play .

Although the number of registered users of "Plants vs. Zombies" has increased exponentially, the profits it generates are not proportional at all. There are as many as 2.5 million new users a week, and only 50,000 users pay for items or purchase new levels through the Internet. At this point, the pay rate is only 2%, that is, for every 100 players, only two players are willing to pay.

Therefore, the total turnover of "Plants vs. Zombies" in a week is only a little over 2 million, and the per capita arup value is less than 1 yuan, which is more than a dozen of products on Huizhong, which has a monthly turnover of more than 100 million yuan. A world apart!

Under such circumstances, the directors of the game operation department are a little confused. With a turnover of 2 million, they can't even collect the development cost of their Chinese translation, let alone the overwhelming advertising expenses during the public beta!

Until now, advertisements on the entire network are still being placed. The daily revenue of games and the cost of advertising can not be recovered. Is it that Huizhong will encounter Waterloo in the first battle in the domestic terminal game field?

Finally, Liu Yinglong, the head of the newly independent game operation department, couldn't bear his temper, and went to talk to the big boss Fang Zhe himself. This game was decided by the big boss himself. Now that this situation occurs, he has to do anything. Talk to the boss about the situation.

The 5th floor of Huizhong is to the southwest, the CEO office with the best light in the whole company. Fang Zhe looked calmly, watching Liu Yinglong report to him with a somewhat anxious tone about the record of "Plants vs. Zombies" this week, nearly 3 million downloads. Over 2.5 million registered users, these are all fictitious, and finally turned into a tangible number, only in the early 2 million.

Until Liu Yinglong finished the report, Fang Zhe's face remained calm. This situation also made Liu Yinglong, who was a little anxious, gradually calm his mind. Looking at the boss, it seems not surprising that the revenue data of this game is so poor.

"Ying Long, I remember you were working perfectly before?" Fang Zhe didn't directly ask about work, instead chatting with Liu Yinglong about other things.

Liu Yinglong's heart trembled. Generally, the boss asks you about your past work history. There are only two situations. One is that you want to promote you, and the other is that you are not satisfied with your job. Obviously, Fang Zhe is not in the current situation. He may want to promote him. After all, he has only been in charge of the game operation department and the company's deputy general manager level for more than a month.

Liu Yinglong was a little nervous, and he pretended to calmly replied: "Yes, I used to work in the Perfect Operations Department, and I was responsible for the publishing and operation of "Perfect World" and "Zhu Xian"."

"Yeah!" Fang Zhe hummed, nodded, and said in the same tone as a copy should be: "That's right, the perfectly developed game has always been a master game of the end game, the style and themes are also biased towards the serious school. , There should be no single-player game like "Plants vs. Zombies" released?"

"No, at least I haven't heard of a similar project before coming to our company!" Liu Yinglong answered cautiously, not knowing what medicine the boss sells in the gourd.

"How do you think the user growth rate of the game "Plants vs. Zombies" is faster than that of "Happy Farm"?" Fang Zhe asked Liu Yinglong a little puzzled question.

Although he didn't know what the boss wanted to express, Liu Yinglong patiently replied: "Although it is not as crazy as "Happy Farm", it is not bad. The number of new users every day is increasing exponentially."

"Then what do you think is the maximum number of users of this game?"

Fang Zhe continued to ask, because Huizhong had no experience in operating terminal games before, so Liu Yinglong was specially dug from outside by Fang Zhe. It seems that although this person has sufficient experience in operating terminal games, his mind and thinking are also solidified. If it doesn’t work, you’ll have to replace it!

After being asked a few questions by the boss, Liu Yinglong already understood that if he couldn’t figure out what the boss meant, he might be in danger of being replaced as the new official’s butt is not hot yet. Finally, his mind flashed. After a flash of light, he seemed to have grasped the key to the boss's problem, and he said in an uncertain tone:

"President Fang, I understand what you mean, I will go back and adjust my operations!"

Until Liu Yinglong went out, Fang Zhe didn’t ask him what he understood. He didn’t understand it. From the work arrangement behind him, he could tell that if he did it right, he continued to be his vice president. If he didn’t do it right, I’m sorry. My Fang Zhe was wrong at first!

However, judging from the operating arrangements of the game operation department later, Liu Yinglong seems to have guessed what Fang Zhe meant.

First of all, Huizhong’s "Plants vs. Zombies" advertisements that Huizhong kept on the whole network have all stopped!

Secondly, the rewards for sharing Qzone, Renren, Weibo and other social networking sites in the game "Plants vs. Zombies" have been adjusted up three times in a row!

Then, the game was resurrected from the dead, paid levels, plants and other various props were put into the game as an update package.

Stand-alone?How can stand-alone games make money in China?In the past, "Plants vs. Zombies" became popular all over China. More than 99% of users played pirated editions. The developer Baokai didn't make any money from the Chinese market at all!

How can Fang Zhe who understands this make this game repeat the same mistakes?Selling stand-alone games, not many Chinese pay the bill, and piracy will breed, but free games sell props and skins, and players all over the world are not as crazy as Chinese!

At the end of August, the popularity of "Plants vs. Zombies" as a "single player game" in the country finally surpassed "Happy Farm", which was popular for more than half a year. "Did you steal my food last night?" It became "Which level did you unlock?" "Does your Pea Shooter have any skin?"