Separation?

When Zhou Fangyuan said this proposal, everyone present was stunned.

They didn't think about such an operation, Far Away Agriculture was originally just a company, if it was separated...... Besides, is it really possible to split up the family? Won't it lead to vicious internal competition?

Zhou Fangyuan didn't think about it so much, the company's division is not uncommon in the world, not to mention that Blizzard has also divided Blizzard headquarters and Northern Blizzard internally.

Of course, Blizzard headquarters and Northern Blizzard were not one from the beginning, nor were they the kind of branches that everyone imagined.

Northern Blizzard was founded in 1993 as the Vulture Company, founded by the Scarford brothers, Marcos Scarfor, Eric Scarfor, and David Breivik. At the 1994 Chicago Consumer Electronics Show, the three young founders of Vulture met Alan Adhan, one of the co-founders of Blizzard, although Blizzard was just a new signboard at the time, the company had already been established for 3 years and was already a well-known development studio. During the exchange, the Vulture founders were surprised to find that they were strikingly consistent with Alan Adhan's game philosophy, so they exchanged phone numbers to ask questions about the game's development process in the future.

A few months later, David Breivik called Alan Adhan, and the concept they had been envisioning for months was met with a cold reception, no publisher willing to spend a penny on the idea, and Blizzard was the last straw for them. In January 1995, Blizzard and Vulture formally entered into a production agreement, under which Vulture would be solely responsible for the development of a new game, and Blizzard would provide Vulture with $300,000 in development funding and advice.

At Blizzard's suggestion, what was originally conceived as a clay-style turn-based game was gradually transformed into a real-time combat game with a gothic style, and this became known as Diablo. At the end of the game's development, Vulture and Blizzard, who had already formed mutual trust and admiration at work, officially married, and in March 1996, Vulture officially joined Blizzard, and with the successful release of "Diablo", Northern Blizzard became an instant hit.

After the marriage, Northern Blizzard has always maintained an independent attitude, and the reputation of "Diablo" allows them to enjoy the privilege and influence of independence from Blizzard headquarters, with their own work sites and independent research and development rights, and Blizzard headquarters mainly handles quality inspection, marketing, public relations, technical and customer service support, Battle.net erection, etc., and does not interfere too much in their development work. In this partnership, which is both independent and close, many of the employees' talents are exploited to the fullest – and it is at this time that Bill Roper, known as one of the Big Four, began to emerge.

Bill Roper, a truck driver with a passion for games and music, joins Blizzard as a contract worker, and after becoming a tester, Bill communicates with Blizzard's still vulture North Blizzard as an executive producer. In the process, Bill developed a close relationship with the Scarford brothers and others, and his personal abilities were shown to the fullest, and during the development of Diablo 2, Bill became the game's chief executive producer, and for this reason he was affectionately known as the Father of Darkness.

Blizzard of the North, which started with Diablo, continues its game development plan step by step, but the forces of reality interfere with this process in unexpected ways. Long before the vulture marriage, Blizzard had changed hands several times, and was finally acquired by Prestige Global. In 2003, Prestige Global, which had fallen into a serious financial crisis due to its frenzied expansion, announced that it was going to sell its game division, including Blizzard, much to the uneasiness of Northern Blizzard's executives, who had been developing PC games.

In order to ensure the right to speak for themselves and the product, the three founders of Northern Blizzard and Bill Roper tried to negotiate with Vivendi by resigning, but what they didn't expect was that Vivendi agreed to their resignation without hesitation- On June 30, 2003, Bill and others, known as the Big Four, officially left Blizzard, after that, the independence of Northern Blizzard basically collapsed, employees continued to resign, and the original development work was abruptly stopped, until 2005, the studio was officially banned, and Northern Blizzard no more products came out.

Even ardent conspiracy theorists would not dispute that the departure of the Big Four was premeditated – on June 30, 2003, Bill Roper, vice president and official spokesman for Northern Blizzard, happily accepted a reporter's request for an interview about Blizzard's upcoming blockbuster game Warcraft 3 and the development of World of Warcraft. Just five days later, his resignation and personal phone number appeared on the pages of various gaming media.

It came so quickly and so suddenly that he didn't have time to think about what to do next - "We couldn't even think about what to do after leaving Blizzard, and you can't leave the place where you used to work without feeling dazed. Without the files we use every day, without the emails we have to reply to every day, we have made our phone numbers public, and now we have a lot of time to deal with this. ”

This simple approach worked so well that there were immediately a lot of phone calls, including publishers and investors, and a few months later, the flagship studio was established, joined by five former members of Northern Blizzard, in addition to the Big Four.

Although EA and Namco have long announced that they will become flagship studio partners and regional game publishers, it is Hanguang Software, an online game manufacturer that has emerged with "Miracle", that is the biggest financier of the studio's founding. The fledgling flagship studio was so ambitious that it soon launched its own website to recruit staff, and with the excellent connections he had built up as a spokesman for Blizzard, Bill Roper was always in the best news positions.

Players are extremely interested in this newly formed studio, and any news about a new game can get them excited.

"A new game that combines the characteristics of a single player with an online game style that will blow the hearts of players around the world," said Bill Roper in an interview, describing his vision. At E3 2005, the game was finally revealed, and Hellgate: London, a postmodern post-apocalyptic game that blends the ARPG concept with the FPS experience, tells the story of the war between the Templars and demons.

Expectations and the desire to create a game product that would be "groundbreaking" have led to a plethora of work plans – indie game developers who were founded by a few founders without a strong backing to support them at any cost, but who are doing more work based on their work experience than they did during Blizzard. In addition to its goal of making a game that surpasses Diablo, the flagship studio has also undertaken a number of additional work projects – creating a single-player mode, support for the Vista system, and support for 17 Chinese languages.

In addition, while developing the game, they also had to establish an online service mechanism. From a purely game development point of view, it's like trying to make an RPG, an FPS, and an MMO in the same room. In addition, the flagship studio also established Ping0 as a joint venture with Hanguang Software to be responsible for game operations and customer service projects, which not only distracted the focus of the game development program, but also invested a lot of additional money and resources. Compared to the freedom, money, resources, and development time that the development team had at Blizzard, the nascent flagship studio had neither a well-developed game engine nor a solid process system, and everything had to be built from scratch, which was undoubtedly fantastic.

If we give our flagship studios enough time and support, we may be able to see a group of veterans of the gaming industry recreate their dreams and miracles.

But there are often no ifs, and the power of reality has once again demonstrated its power.

In 2007, under pressure from both the economy and publishers, the stand-alone version of "Hell's Gate: London" was rushed to the market. Due to the lack of development completion, the single entertainment mode and the many bugs, the game only sold less than 2 million units, and caused criticism from many players. What's even more embarrassing is that Hanguang Software, which has been giving freedom to the flagship studio, has also been acquired by T3 Entertainment, and the scene of not being able to control its own destiny a few years ago has reappeared, and this time, the appetite of the new "boss" is even more greedy - the Korean software that changed hands interrupted the financial support of the flagship studio, and issued a statement that it owns the studio's two games.

Before it could turn around and get the flagship really on track, the fuel had already run out.

In July 2008, the Big Four paid the last month's salary to all employees with their own savings, and the flagship studio officially announced its closure.

When leaving Northern Blizzard, Bill Roper told a CNN reporter: "The success of a game is not determined by the name, brand, or anything else printed on the box, but by the people who made the game." Just as you want Arnold Schwarzenegger to be part of your film and Steve King or Rowling to write a book for you, you want the best people to make games for you. ”

The question now is how the flagship, saddled with the "loser" brand, will choose the next leg of his journey.

In addition to handing over two titles that they had invested five years and a huge investment in, the top management of the flagship studio had to accept that the carefully selected team members and countless hard-earned engine tools and processes were in vain. The Scarford brothers took a group of old departments that had followed them for many years to join forces with Travis Badley, a dark iron fan and designer and programmer of "Dark Epic", to form a rune studio and quickly launched "Torchlight" based on "Dark Epic", David Breivik received consortium investment after a period of hiding, re-formed the company and began to develop a new work "Marvel Heroes", as for Bill Roper, after a series of entry, After resigning, he was eventually acquired by Disney Entertainment, and in 2012 he officially began to serve as vice president of Disney Interactive in charge of product development.

Another five years have passed, and the former Big Four of Northern Blizzard and the founders of flagship studios have found their own new directions. But for many, their names have always been tied to Blizzard and Diablo, players can throw out "these old guys are always eating from the old names" without investigation, and the media is happy to chase the attacks of the old and new generations of dark designers, especially the impulsive remarks like "f*ck that loser", and it seems that there is nothing else to follow these veterans of the game industry.

If we can turn the angle a little and project our vision on other producers or teams who are also famous, we can also taste some bitterness - Richard Garrett, the father of UO, has not been able to achieve anything since he joined NCsoft, and finally fell to the bottom due to the complete failure of "The Veil", and even had to start a months-long labor lawsuit with the owner. The rock painting statue created by the members of Westwood Studio has taken a big stumble on two online games, Mytheon and UN End, after releasing two tepid RTS games with the aura of the past. The experience of success has given them far more media exposure than other practitioners, which will give them more opportunities, but also carry more pressure, and these "stars" who have been praised by the media and players in the cloud may fall and fall to pieces at any time due to these pressures.

Therefore, there are good and bad companies that divide up.

The advantage is that the separated companies have a certain degree of independence, they will not be overly entangled by the decision of the headquarters, and if they can have a strong backstage and backer, they may not be able to show the brilliance of the headquarters. But there are also disadvantages, that is, it is easy to cause malicious competition and unfavorable communication, after all, once the separation means that the company is forcibly divided, and the situation of unity is broken......

But then again, Zhou Fangyuan's distant agriculture is not quite the same as Blizzard.

Blizzard acquired Northern Blizzard, and they are not one in the first place, so there is no affection for each other at all. And Yuanfang Agriculture, according to his idea, will set up two branches, Yuanfang Agriculture and Yuanfang Non-staple Food. It is equivalent to two branches in the north and south, and the northern branch is distant agriculture, which will focus more on agricultural and grain production, how to deal with those large domestic grain groups, and how to develop its own grain production and supply system, which is what distant agriculture needs to do. On the basis of the previous ones, we should continue to expand the types and scales of planting and breeding industries other than agricultural grains, and dig deeper into the value of these products.

After a brief discussion, everyone voted by a show of hands, and finally passed the resolution by a large majority.

In fact, the dispute within the distant agriculture for some time ago, everyone saw it in their eyes, and they also knew that it had reached an almost irreconcilable level, and both sides were very persistent and convinced that they were right, and the separation seemed to be the only choice.

Zhou Fangyuan himself is reluctant to get involved in agricultural grain production, because the water is very deep, but then again, agricultural grain production is indeed a death-free gold medal, of course, the premise is to do a good job, once something goes wrong, the death-free gold medal will also become a throat-sealing poison. Therefore, the supervision of the group must be in place, but Zhou Fangyuan also gave his subordinates enough rights, so that they can let go of their actions, and when the time comes, it depends on the level of the other party.