At the end of June, after a period of research and discussion, Facebook Games began to take action.

On the special account, tens of billions of yuan in cash have arrived.

The money will be used to make big acquisitions in China, with clear targets, software companies and game studios.

As for foreign acquisitions, they will also be carried out simultaneously, and Facebook Games North America, with its own funds and loans from banks, is even more staggering, with nearly six billion US dollars!

At home and abroad, major acquisitions will be carried out simultaneously.

After the completion of this operation, Facebook Games will also become a well-deserved overlord in the global game industry!

There is no company that can challenge its position.

The domestic acquisition was presided over by the executive vice president of Facebook Games Continental.

Foreign acquisitions are naturally in charge of Brian, CEO of Facebook Games North America.

Effie and Shen Nanpeng supervise the actions of both sides at the same time, and make final evaluations and decisions on each acquisition of both sides.

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Xishanju, this is a game company named by Yu Wenfei himself, and he only named this one name.

Clearly, for this game studio, the ambition is to win.

The mention of this name may be familiar to some veteran single-player players.

Because this is the earliest stand-alone game studio in China, and it has produced many well-known stand-alone masterpieces.

For example, the first commercial game "Zhongguancun Apocalypse" in China, and the first domestic RPG stand-alone game "Swordsman Love".

Of course, what is more famous is the online masterpiece "Swordsman Love Online Version" that took three years to create with an investment of 15 million, and the sequel to this game "Sword Network III".

Even now, it has been more than ten years, and Sword Network III is still one of the most popular online games in China!

It can be seen that this game has a long lifespan, and how much it is loved and sought after by players.

But in 2004, life in Xishanju was not so easy.

In fact, all the game studios and game companies in China at that time were not having a good time.

Because of the rampant piracy, which has led to the huge amount of money and the launch of single-player games for several years, there is no cost at all, let alone making money.

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Xishanju was established in 95 years, and until 2020, this company has been active in the domestic game industry, and its history can be regarded as a microcosm of the domestic game industry.

It has witnessed the development of China's game industry for more than 20 years, although Xishanju has not been able to achieve success during this period, and has not become a giant company.

However, it is the only survivor of the first batch of domestic game companies!

From the earliest game studio in China to today's independent company, Xishanju is the only classic game brand that has no fault line and is active to this day.

In the transformation of China's game industry in the past of stand-alone games, online games, web games, and mobile games, many game manufacturers that once led the trend have now withdrawn from the stage of history, but Xishanju is the only one who has witnessed and participated in all the processes of the development of China's game industry.

In this sense, Xishanju is the epitome of the entire domestic game industry in the past 20 years.

Moreover, the reputation of this game company has always been quite good among the player base.

It's even harder than making a masterpiece!

Compare other big game companies in China, Goose Factory and Pig Factory......

It also shows the rarity of Xishan Residence.

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In 1996, Xishanju released the first commercial game in China, "Zhongguancun Apocalypse".

In terms of game type, "Zhongguancun Apocalypse" can be regarded as a serious game, focusing on the enlightenment and education of players, which is the biggest feature of this type of game.

As far as the works are concerned, "Zhongguancun Apocalypse" contains the cognition and thinking of the first batch of IT people such as Mr. Qiu and Rebus on modern business.

Through the simulation of running a Zhongguancun enterprise, players are told about the traps and risks existing in the shopping mall, and based on this, they are taught practical and condensed coping strategies, and inspire players to understand and think about modern business.

They believe that games should not only be a pure entertainment way for recreation and relaxation, but also combine the wisdom of traditional culture to actually solve the problems faced by modern society, and explore and think about some practical fields, which is often referred to as "edutainment".

And this point has also laid the tone of the game theme of Xishanju for nearly 20 years, and it is a new carrier of national culture!

Of course, "The Apocalypse of Zhongguancun" was not a commercial success.

As the first commercial game in China, it has no reference object, and it is unrealistic to compare it with foreign stand-alone game masterpieces.

This can be regarded as a exploration and temptation of the market after the establishment of Xishanju.

It also laid a solid foundation for subsequent game development.

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In 1997, Nishiyamaju's famous work "Swordsman Love" was released!

This was a classic in the minds of that generation of gamers.

After the tempering of the first work, at this time, Mr. Qiu, Rebus and others have realized that in the market environment at that time, it is difficult for serious games to meet the appetite of players.

If you can't get widespread player support, you can be commercially successful. Then the mission of "edutainment" is impossible. Games need a simpler, more accessible way to incorporate traditional culture.

Xishanju chose to integrate traditional culture into the "martial arts game", and the object of learning was the same as when Mr. Jin Yong integrated traditional culture into the "martial arts" in his pen.

This choice is actually related to the situation of Xishanju at that time.

At that time, Xishanju was still a studio under Kingsoft Software.

Kingsoft is facing a huge challenge from Microsoft, and the highly-anticipated Pangu software has failed miserably, and the entire Kingsoft company is facing bankruptcy.

In the end, Mr. Qiu sold his villa and luxury car in exchange for funds to support the company's development, and chose to continue to fight to the death with Microsoft.

The following year, Kingsoft's WPS97 was released, representing domestic software to fight Microsoft's Word on the frontal battlefield, and in the same year, Xishanju's "Swordsman Love" was released.

Therefore, "Swordsman Love" is actually a portrayal of Jinshan's internal and external troubles and being in a desperate situation, and it is also the epitome of the battle between Kingsoft and Microsoft.

The final finale in the game can be seen as Xishanju's best wishes for the future of the entire Jinshan, that is, to "recover the rivers and mountains" under the guidance of the general manager

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2000 was the first year of online games in China.

Xishanju had the opportunity to continue to lead the game industry and act as an agent for the release of the first real online game "King of Kings" at that time. But in the end, Xishanju still chose to stick to the stand-alone game and continue to work the "Swordsman Series".

Xishanju's understanding of games began to be relatively pure, but he was not willing to put aside the game research and development accumulated over the years, and shifted his focus to acting online games.

This year, Nishiyamaju's goal is to become a world-class game production company.

In the following 2 years, Xishanju released 3 "Swordsman Series" works in a row, "Swordsman Romance 2", "Legend of Moon Shadow", and "New Swordsman Romance". Changing the conventions of traditional martial arts RPGs, the three works use real-time combat methods to reflect the swords and swords in martial arts, and the technical level has reached the technical level of top production companies in Europe and the United States in the same period.

Among them, "Swordsman Love 2" set the highest sales record for domestic games with sales of 200,000, and was hailed as the pinnacle of domestic games, leaving a strong mark for the domestic stand-alone game market at dusk.

Even so, it was not a fruitful harvest that greeted Nishiyamaju, but on the contrary, it was the most difficult period.

At that time, Rebus said, "Because of the double pressure of piracy and Microsoft, Kingsoft is about to close its doors." ”

This is the price of sticking to the faith in the harsh environment of piracy in the domestic single-player game market.

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After 2003, the domestic game industry ushered in the golden age of the best environment, and many game manufacturers were established one after another, among which several game manufacturers representing Korean online games rose rapidly, and the momentum was unparalleled for a while.

Xishanju has a long reputation, and in the face of the high hopes of the entire Jinshan and even the industry to revitalize the national game, Xishanju chose to embark on the tortuous road of independent research and development without hesitation.

In order to invest more R&D strength in the online game project, Rebus temporarily transferred the leaders of other R&D projects in Jinshan to Xishanju, and he also served as the project manager, and the R&D team of more than 100 people developed in Guangdong City for half a year.

In the unremitting exploration, the "Sword Network Trilogy" of Xishanju came out one after another.

"Swordsman Romance Online", "Swordsman Romance Online Version 2", "Swordsman Romance Online Edition 3", with years of accumulated R&D strength and fine carving of game details, Xishanju once represented the top game R&D strength in China and was known as "China's Blizzard".

However, there must be a time cost for independent research and development, and the launch of the "Sword Network Trilogy" did not catch up with the best time, which was embarrassing for both Shengyu and He Shengliang. "Sword Network 1" encountered the flourishing "Legend", and "Sword Network 3", which took 6 years to develop, met the invincible "World of Warcraft".

Although sweat and hard work did not win the first place, it has become a benchmark in the domestic game industry and has won the support of millions of fans.

More importantly, it has also been recognized by Yuwenfei.

Mr. Fei hand-picked the name of Xishanju this time as the first target of Facebook's big acquisition.

After the acquisition, Facebook Games will inevitably invest heavily to support the work of Xishanju, expand the scale of the studio, and recruit a large number of industry elites.

For the domestic stand-alone game industry, retain the last piece of pure land.

The purpose of this is to change the fate of domestic stand-alone games, so that domestic martial arts RPG games can make real masterpieces and go to the world!

Other game companies in China are busy acting as agents and developing online games to make a lot of money.

So the "loss-making" business of stand-alone games, only Facebook Games has the ability and is willing to do it.

This burden, Facebook Games is also incumbent on us, and it must be picked up!