Chu Yuanxi didn't figure out the leader's question all weekend, and on Monday, he simply talked to Zhao Jie about the specific problem first. After all, what if Ali's self-confidence bursts again? Or maybe he doesn't want the team of Baren Games, and only buys the business and assets of Baren Games. It's called "I don't want your heart, just your people."

Two interesting things happened on Monday, both of which had a little to do with Chu Yuanxi's business. The first one, Ren Dolphin, Sogou and Microsoft, the three largest console game companies in the world, jointly protested to the Ministry of Commerce of the United States against the tax increase on game equipment in the Celestial Empire, saying that the profit of this thing is very low, others are not rare to do it at all, and there is no threat to the United States, you are so sick, you raise taxes!

Suddenly, players all over the world felt inexplicably excited, and Ba Ren, as a substantial game company, was also excited and applauded. You must know that these three are a day and two places of enmity, almost never cooperate, the three giants who have been fighting for decades have actually united in order to open up for the game equipment OEM industry of the Celestial Empire, and since then the players in the world are one!

The second thing is that Toutiao will launch a co-producer plan for short videos and short programs, and boldly spend 1 billion yuan worth of traffic to provide commercial support to co-producers.

Chu Yuanxi was quite surprised at first when he watched the news, and said in his heart that the big immortal had changed his sex? Although the amount of one billion is like a soup pouring snow for video production, it can't even make a splash, but it is already a rare big investment for the headline department. Take a closer look, oh, it turned out to be a traffic support worth 1 billion yuan, which is in line with the image of Toutiao's consistent small family.

In fact, since the beginning of this year, the three major video platforms have turned around to develop a short drama cooperation model, iQiyi's short drama and Penguin's hot pot drama all reflect the urgency of the online video platform to enter the short content.

As an explorer in this field, Baren Entertainment has handed over the micro-film series "Brother Fang" to iQiyi as early as December last year, and another popular series of short dramas "Life Started with Me" is still barely hot.

However, the micro-film series or short content series itself is tepid as a whole, and the filming method of "Brother Fang" is still traditional, but it compresses the time of each time, and the content of the script is as concise as possible, and there is still a certain distance from the more successful short content later.

It's like changing a novella to a short one, but it's still, not a diary. Later, the more successful short content presented an abstract, fragmented, and partial expression technique, only filming the "drama waist", that is, the most intense part of the plot conflict, without filming cutscenes and bridges, allowing the audience to make up for it by themselves, but achieved better broadcast effects and communication attributes.

Therefore, the limited success of the micro-film "Brother Fang" is very good in the eyes of others, it can gain a foothold in the rivers and lakes, can carry out a lot of commercial operations, and attract investment, advertising, and cooperation, but for the Baren Group, it is only a few hundred million plays, which is better than nothing.

Therefore, when Lu Yu asked Chu Yuanxi whether to participate in the co-producer plan of the Toutiao Department, Chu Yuanxi's reply was: "You can do it, if it is beneficial to the company, you will participate, and if it is not profitable, you will not participate, only consider whether our existing resources and content can get a high conversion rate, and consider it from the perspective of cost and benefit." ”

In fact, although Chu Yuanxi said it very easily, it was a new test for Lu Yu. His situation is actually similar to Zhao Jie's, they are all based on the execution of work as their daily life, they are all tactical operations, and there are few directional and selective tests.

For example, recruiting Feng Lin and Feng Xueling to open up two categories, e-commerce buyers and food exploration stores, is a test of direction and selectivity, which is equivalent to a product line that enriches the information of Ba people, but it was rejected by Chu Yuanxi by half.

Choosing who to work with and how to cooperate is more complicated than opening up a product line. It is necessary to consider the extent of cooperation, the attitude in the negotiation with Toutiao, the positioning and reaction to oneself and the other party, the expected amount of traffic, the development of a plan, and the constraints of Chu Yuanxi - the price-to-earnings ratio must be considered, and the rate of return must be considered, so that some trial-and-error behaviors cannot be let go.

The key is that Lu Yu also doesn't know what the "traffic/fans" conversion rate is as a key data. The key to this business is that the production content from the script to the shooting to the post-production, the Ba Ren information has to pay a cost, and even the way of the director and screenwriter who has been used for a year and a half must be changed, and a professional short story screenwriter needs to be hired to enter the project.

Assuming that investing a million to get two million followers is the passing line, there are only two factors that determine whether Lu Yu applies to be a co-producer of Toutiao. First, you can get how much of this 1 billion worth of traffic, and how many fans can be converted into the content provided by the Ba people.

This problem is very complicated when taken seriously, because, even if there is no traffic support of the headline system, the works of the Ba people themselves will attract fans, and there are also playbacks, because the short videos of the Ba people never accept commercial orders, according to the weight calculation method of Douyin, they always maintain a relatively high weight, and even if they are restricted, they can stimulate a certain amount of forwarding, so how to eliminate the "background noise" that comes with this kind of account to calculate the real conversion rate is quite a problem for Lu Yu's level.

Thinking from a business point of view, this is an intermediate test that Chu Yuanxi gave Lu Yu, and it is time for him to leave the novice village.

Zhao Jie also wants to leave the village. The small game group he was thinking about can also be understood as a directional test, and it also enriches the company's product line, but this product line was not particularly favored by Chu Yuanxi.

Mini games, especially in the middle of the year, have explored a mature business model, which is a special traffic business.

This mature process, in a word, is to acquire users through the spontaneous fission of the game, and then let the users click on the ads to obtain advertising revenue. Therefore, mini games are a more naked business than normal games for game companies, and whether they make money depends on the following three factors, first, R&D costs, second, fission efficiency, and third, whether they can achieve positive capital rollover through buying.

Of course, there is also an invisible factor, that is, when the dragon father raises the knife. After all, the fission of the mini game is too fast, which will affect the social experience of the entire WeChat, and Long Dad will never allow any mini game to shake the foundation of WeChat after the ravages of Kun.

The common indicators of game companies, such as retention rate, absorption capacity, daily active users, etc., are actually reflected in the above three factors. On the contrary, the payment rate and Arpu value are not worth mentioning, and there is no such thing in the mini game.

In fact, Chu Yuanxi's energy in the past half a year is no longer on the game, although he has been taking care of the mobile game "Out of the Troubled Times", but he is no longer so sensitive to the information of the entire game industry, and the elements of the mini game are all reports submitted by Zhao Jie.

Why does Zhao Jie want to get started so much? Because since it is a traffic business, there is a problem of users being washed away. When no one does it, it is the bonus period, and after the methodology matures, there will be a large number of competitors, and the bonus will become a red sea, and the small game that can be repaid in three days may not even be able to rush up to 1 million DAU when it is released at another time.

In this way, to a certain extent, after the mini game enters the red ocean period, it becomes a battle for buying volume, and it is necessary to produce enough awesome advertising materials to attract traffic through advertising.

Of course, high-quality products, containing ingenious innovations, are competitive at all times.

And Chu Yuanxi was not optimistic about this product line at first because the mini game was still a blue ocean the year before last, and it began to turn red last year, and it was already very red by June this year. Although correspondingly, the methodology is also becoming more and more mature, but according to Zhao Jie's meaning, it is to let the brothers with DKP incubate small games within the Ba Ren game, and then get the traffic blessing from the Ba Ren information, so as to obtain a certain degree of success and independence.

The problem is that the ceiling for this kind of success is too low, although now a small game can still earn tens of millions if it is successful, but it is almost impossible to make a long-tail product as explosive as "Monsters Must Die", almost all of them are flash flash products.

And successful products are not spelled out, they are tried by trial and error, for Chu Yuanxi, if the brothers are satisfied, it is okay, if they decide to do it, and then find that they have been pitted, DKP has been lost, it will be more than worth the loss. Especially Zhao Jie has started to try it at the beginning of May, and the result of testing the water is that the three small game projects have been incubated, and the data from the small-scale test is too bad, and he is embarrassed to care about the traffic of Chu Yuanxi's information over there.

So before, Chu Yuanxi only allowed Zhao Jie to try it on a small scale, and did not support him to do it. But because he had to make major adjustments, he felt that there were things that he could try to change.

Sitting face-to-face with Chu Yuanxi in the conference room of the Ba Ren game, Zhao Jie felt a lot of pressure. Chu Yuanxi was obviously conservative after the reorganization of the Ba people's group, especially the Ba people's information and Ba people's games can be regarded as the two hands of the current group, but there are few big moves. In other words, Chu Yuanxi's attitude is not positive.

"That, Lao Chu, it's not like you think, the brothers are happy to do this. Zhao Jie pondered how he could persuade Chu Yuanxi to support him.

The three water-testing products in the past month and a half have not extinguished his enthusiasm, because the investment in the water-testing type is small, so the logic of hitting the street makes sense, if the investment increases, the plate is expanded, and it may not be on the street. This kind of thing is seen a lot at the enterprise level, and Penguin doesn't know how many copycat products are so hard stacked with resources to fill in the trenches.

And their DKP is more. Zhao Jie is more conservative and more earthy in that he gathered a group of brothers who were interested in this, each of whom had as little as hundreds of thousands, and as many as tens of millions of DKPs, put together a small employee platform, and then collectively came out of DKP to do this. This method can ensure that everyone bears the loss.

So although there are three small games, there are still millions of DKPs on the small platform that employees have partnered with.

Chu Yuanxi made a downward gesture and asked, "So you are looking for me, the purpose?"

Zhao Jiexin said what are you pretending to be confused! Of course, the purpose is to approve money! The grievance of he, the CEO of Baren Games, is that Baren Games generates a huge amount of cash flow, hundreds of millions of dollars every month, but does not go through the accounts of Baren Games, and directly enters them into the group account. Therefore, Ba Ren Game is nominally a branch, but in fact it has no financial rights and is not financially independent.

Therefore, if Zhao Jie wants to develop a mini game, he has to be given money by the group company, one part as the payment of DKP, and part as the investment of Baren Games in the incubation project, thus showing the structure of investment and entrepreneurship.

Therefore, there are a lot of DKP empty on the employee platform, and when Chu Yuanxi does not approve the money, he can't convert it into cash, and he did three small games in front because Chu Yuanxi approved three million and has spent it all......

Chu Yuanxi was amused by Zhao Jie's resentful expression, "Don't be like this, Zhao Jie, what you told me at the beginning was to find a successful methodology, you can close your eyes and make money, and then invest it on a large scale." In this way, you can take your brothers to eat and drink spicy food, make a profit by buying and eating, and let the brothers ensure that they make money. Right?"

Zhao Jie immediately withered.

"But you haven't figured out a dime methodology yet, isn't it too early for you to find me now?"

"You have to believe me, although all the products tested the water are cold, but we really found a little feeling, not only me, you ask other people. ”

In fact, about half of the old employees in the Ba Ren game joined this small platform, and then really left their posts to make small games by themselves, according to the rules determined by Chu Yuanxi, the salary was halved and the bonus was retained. However, the right to distribute bonuses is not calculated during the period of leaving the post, and it is a loss. Of course, once the Mini Game is successfully developed, the people who leave the post will get more money than other people who make money, and there is a distribution plan that they approve internally.

Therefore, Chu Yuanxi asked a question: "Do you think the brothers will earn more money by working in the company's position, or will they make more money by transferring to a small game production position? Even if I approve the money according to the DKP and ask you to clear all the DKP, you are not sure whether you are playing an orange copy or a purple copy, aren't you fooling around? Isn't the report you gave me quite clear? You do it." ”

The so-called color copy is related to what color equipment is produced, which is the term of online games. And DKP is a special currency used to shoot equipment after the next dungeon in the online game guild.

Zhao Jie was immediately speechless, because the so-called easy to know and difficult to do means that it is possible to score zero in the open-book exam. The standard answer is in the book, look at this maybe, look at that maybe, but after trying for a long time, none of them are right, how embarrassed!

In fact, Chu Yuanxi felt that if he gave Zhao Jie another five million, it would be possible for him to try the correct answer, but he couldn't try it and Wang Le.

Judging from the report submitted by Zhao Jie, the key to the success of Mini Games is first of all the quality of the game, followed by the operation. Wang Le, as the Sankei of the mobile game "Out of the Troubled Times", is also a master of operation anyway, and he is the person recruited by Chu Yuanxi in person to interview and replace him, at least in terms of protecting the DAU of "Out of the Troubled Times", he is completely qualified.

With such an experience of regulating 35 million DAU, Wang Le will not worry about going out to find a job in the future, all game companies in the Celestial Empire can go flat, and there is hope to try the key products of Toutiao or Penguin. Even, although Chu Yuanxi didn't ask, there should be some investors who will be interested in Wang Le and pull him out to start a business, just like Zheng Della Chu Yuanxi went out to start a business by himself in the original world.

After all, on the Internet entrepreneurship map of the Celestial Empire, most of the operation masters are the founders, followed by the financial masters, and the rarest are the technical masters.

Therefore, based on the cost of an experiment of 1 million, it is impossible for Wang Le to try eight times and not be able to try a successful methodology, unless there is no methodology at all.

But looking at the many companies in the market that focus on mini-games making money, it is obvious that this methodology exists.

However, letting Zhao Jie and his gang try out the methodology is not friendly to Chu Yuan Xixin's strategy, that is, the strategy of selling Zhao Jie.

In fact, he understands Zhao Jie very well, Zhao Jie envies Yang Jiangang! After being hatched, he is directly the boss of the company, although he still has to rely on Chu Yuanxi's snort, but from the perspective of company law, the peak visual effect is completely independent, at most, it is the invested company of the Baren Group, which has its own human rights and financial rights, and can fantasize that one day Chu Yuanxi, the CFO, will be kicked and the real financial power will be mastered.

Of course, he didn't know what the terms of the specific investment agreement signed by Peak Visual Effects and the Baren Group were, and he had never seen the real Term Sheet in his life, so there was such a large-scale misunderstanding. Once they find a successful methodology, they will definitely want to be independent...... This kind of independence and will not be deprived of the group's options, Yang Jiangang is a good case.

Therefore, Chu Yuanxi found that this time was still good, and it was an opportunity to "buy the bottom". "If you really want to hatch, there is actually a big problem with this model now, and it is estimated that there will be a few internal tears, and if you don't get it, you will make trouble with me. I don't think it'...... like this."

After a while, Zhao Jie looked dazed and unbelievable after listening to Chu Yuanxi's suggestion, "You mean, we don't want to make income when we make small games?"

"That's right, why do you have to make a small game for income? Isn't the most attractive part of a small game the communication attribute?" Chu Yuanxi was quite confident in his proposal, "Moreover, our company has a successful precedent for not making a 'small game' for income, and it is because of you." Have you forgotten all about it?"

Zhao Jie was stunned suddenly, and immediately remembered that the reason why he was able to get a special option of 30 million and become the CEO of Baren Games was actually because of the important suggestion he made at the beginning. Then Ba Cai made the H5 text sharing game of "Out of the Mountain in Troubled Times", which attracted a large number of new users to the mobile game, and got a large number of fission forwards, and the final effect was remarkable.

Then, Yang Jiangang copied his idea, and he Zhao Jie's original concept only gave Yang Jiangang a meal, which is a big loss!

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