Some people may say, since Blizzard has proven a failed project in the previous life, why should it be restarted in this life?

As a traverser, Zhou Fangyuan, who has the ability to be a prophet, shouldn't he avoid such risks?

That's right.

But obviously, people who think this way probably don't really know Blizzard as a company.

Blizzard is a company with some romantic feelings, some people may disagree with this, but compared to those companies that only know how to make money, Blizzard at that time can definitely be called a conscientious company. They have a passion for games, and the Titan is the best embodiment of this. In the case that the technology and funds are not enough to fully support it, they still started the project, which shows that the culture of Blizzard is the romance of the game. For this kind of person or this kind of company, they have their own obsessions, and if you don't think it's successful, they don't necessarily think so.

If you stop it strongly, I am afraid that in the end it will be the end of the gods, and there is really no need for this. Everyone knows Blizzard's temper, even when it was acquired by Vidiwang, they tried to maintain their independence as much as possible, although at the time, Blizzard basically failed.

Everyone knows that Zhou Fangyuan and Brother Xiao Li bought Blizzard from Vidiwang, which is what happened in this life. What happened between Blizzard and Vidiwang? And what did Vidiwang do?

That's where we have to talk about it.

Vidiwang, a well-known and notorious company, is definitely a cancer in the gaming world.

This company is not very good at other capabilities, but in terms of bringing down the company, countless people have seen their terrible, many people know that Vivendi is a nightmare for game companies, but what did they do to be known as a nightmare for game companies?

If you want to talk about the most typical case, then you have to say a company called Xuele Mountain, for this company, few people are familiar with it now, but old players must remember the game "Half-Life", that's right, they were responsible for selling "Half-Life" back then, if there was no Xuele Mountain, there would be no later V Society, back then, they didn't lose Blizzard, and even beat the existence of EA.

In the eyes of many people, "Xuele Mountain" is a publisher. The success of V Society's leading product "Half-Life" is based on Xueleshan's strong market sales channels back then. If it weren't for Xuele Mountain at that time, "Half-Life" might have sold poorly, and V Society might be unsustainable, so steam and G Fat, which now control the global game distribution channels, may become unknown.

Back in 1999, "Pharaoh" took the mainland by storm, and unlike real-time strategy games at the time, you could not only recruit troops, fight, but also build houses, and see the changes in the cityscape through the satisfaction of the residents, and experience the whole process of a settlement growing from a small village to a metropolis. In particular, the NPC people in the game are busy in the game, and for the first time, players can feel the fun of strategy management with this overview perspective. Whenever the melodious music plays, the eardrums are filled with music played by classical Egyptian instruments, and the exotic sound effect makes players feel as if they have arrived in ancient Egypt and experienced the details of being a pharaoh.

Attentive players will find that the publisher of "Pharaoh" back then was "Impression Games", because at that time, "Xuele Mountain" was still a pure game developer, and "Pharaoh" and later "Pharaoh: Cleopatra" are classics that are familiar to more domestic players. Since then, Xueleshan has become a leader in the SLG genre with the "Pharaoh" series, and has also released strategy games such as "Zeus: King of the Gods", "Emperor: Rise of the Dragon", and "Caesar" series.

Many gamers may not know that there is an award in the game industry that is compared to the "Oscars of games", called the "Game Icon" award. This trophy is sponsored by Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Folford and other technology industries and game companies The Game Awards annual ceremony, each selection of a total of 21 awards, each award can only have five shortlisted products, the results of the competition must be selected by the media in 28 countries around the world, the difficulty also shows the high gold content.

The "Icon of Gaming" award, comparable to the "Hollywood Lifetime Achievement" award, is the most important award of the event. In 2014, Ken Williams and Roberta Williams won the "Icon of Gaming" award at the inaugural gala event. They are a husband and wife, and they are the co-founders of the famous "Snow Le Mountain". Ken Williams was 58 years old when he received the award. The old couple is a popular figure in the American gaming industry, known as the originator of adventure games, and the escape room genre that female gamers especially love, they played 40 years ago. Even Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, has great respect for Ken Williams and his wife. In 1977, Steve Jobs launched the Apple II computer, and in that era when computers were slightly professional, Ken Williams, who was only 21 years old at the time, was a well-known hacker and was deeply loved by Jobs.

Two years later, at the age of 23, Ken Williams married Roberta Williams, and together they published the Apple II computer graphics editor, which is still used today. In the same year, in 1979, with their technical talent in the field of graphics, the couple established "Online Systems Company", and the following year released the world's first graphic adventure game, which is the originator of graphic adventure products - "House of Mysteries".

Ken Williams' wife was fascinated by Ken Williams' 1977 text adventure game Cavern Adventure, which led him to develop an idea for a graphic adventure game. In 1980, "House of Mysteries" hit the U.S., selling more than 15,000 copies at $24.95 for the Apple II as a platform based on the Apple II. The popularity of "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" is the same as that of today, prompting many players to buy Apple computers in order to play the game. That was the year that the game finally broke free from the shackles of words and entered the age of graphics.

Soon after the success of House of Mysteries in 1980, the Ken Williams soon released The Wizard and the Princess, the first game to feature a graphical interface and a color element. At the same time, only Fuso Nintendo's FC could match such a skill in game production. At that time, Fuso launched the red and white machine, and the American computer could play graphic games, and called the two landmark events in Europe and Asia in the history of game development. In 1982, the company was officially renamed "Snow Mountain Online", and its headquarters was officially located in California.

Since then, by 1996, Xuele Mountain gradually entered a golden age. During this period, Xueleshan's "King's Secret Envoy" was published by IBM in 84 as the first graphic game built with pseudo-3D technology, and the game income went to Xueleshan, and the royalties were paid by IBM. The reason is that IBM believes that only this game can prove the powerful computing power of IBM computers at that time. However, in addition to the pseudo-3D graphical interface, the game was highly praised for its first time with a background music and a command system for the game.

Beginning in '84, the King's Secret Envoy series was developed until 1998, and after eight generations, it is one of the highest-grossing franchises in the history of PC gaming. In the 90s, he began to work with other companies, including Impression Games, which published "Pharaoh", and they were also the publishers of "Julius Caesar", "Overlord of England", and "Medieval Lords". Five years later, the powerful Sherlehill outright acquired Impression Games, which had thousands of employees and monopolized the SLG market before the Ken Williams spun off the company in 1996.

Unfortunately, in 1996, it was acquired by CUC, and then in 1998, under the operation of the capital market, it was sold to the French publishing company, that is, Hawass News Agency. The name of this company may be unfamiliar to many players, but the owner behind it is none other than the notorious Vivendi Group in the gaming world. The group is good at dismantling and restructuring valuable companies and reselling them at a high price. Like Blizzard at the time, Xuele Mountain was divided into five parts, and as a result, two studios closed down the following year, and a large number of employees left. It was also in 1999 that Xuele Mountain stopped developing games and only retained the publishing function.

In 2002, Xuele Mountain was reorganized into "Xuele Mountain Entertainment". Although it released hit hits such as Homestead, Half-Life, Thunderbolt Team, and Diablo: Hellfire, it was officially disbanded in August 2004 due to the loss of its R&D core. Ken Williams, who left in 96, have already made a name for themselves, traveling around the world every day to enjoy their old age, and the passing of Xuele Mountain has caused the SLG market to enter a period of recession, and it has not recovered.

This is the biggest and most well-known case that Vidiwang has done as a cancer in the gaming industry.

However, what is unacceptable is that it is not enough to kill Xuele Mountain, and the next one to be poisoned is Blizzard. In the original time and space 98 years, Blizzard was acquired by Vivendi, which made many people sweat for Blizzard, and a large number of Blizzard employees left, including the former Dark Four, and Northern Blizzard was also killed by Vivendi's first wave of seconds, and then, Vivendi's merchant nature was exposed, and they completely swallowed Blizzard into their Vivendi game. So, then there was Activision Blizzard, and in Vivendi's time, Blizzard was about to die.

Fortunately, the opportunity came, in 13 years, Vivendi did not know that he wanted to sell Activision Blizzard shares, at this time, Blizzard seized the opportunity and proposed a buyback plan, Activision and Blizzard united for the first time and recovered a large number of shares from Vivendi, so far, Activision Blizzard has completely achieved freedom.

After Blizzard's successful redemption, Vivendi will not stop there, they soon set their sights on Ubisoft, since 15 years, Ubisoft has been eyed by Vivendi, eating away at their shares little by little, Ubisoft looked at Vivendi, and immediately understood what they wanted to do, so they took measures to save themselves and began to milk themselves, but who is Vivendi, how can he give up the meat to his mouth?

In 16 years, Vivendi did not hide it anymore, and took decisive action against Ubisoft, but under Ubisoft's stubborn resistance, Vivendi still ate Ubisoft's mobile game company, and after being eaten by Vivendi, the mobile game company completely fell, all internal management personnel were replaced, and the board of directors resigned collectively.

At that time, Ubisoft was infinitely close to death, because the shares held by Vivendi at that time had reached 27.3%, and if it was 2.7% more, Ubisoft would completely become Vivendi's worker.

At this point, Ubisoft, who was shocked into a cold sweat, completely got rid of Vivendi's control.

So you see, this is Vidiwang, as a commercial company, they don't have any affection, often just buy and squeeze the game company, and then, when it's almost done, decisively sell the company and make a profit.

So in fact, Blizzard is also quite lucky, in the last life, they redeemed themselves and completed self-rescue, and in this life they were acquired by the Yuanfang Group. But before the acquisition, Zhou Fangyuan said that he would not interfere too much in the company's operations, but only put forward some suggestions as a similar consultant. It's just that his suggestions are from the perspective of later generations, so in the current view, except for a very small number of people who can't see the future clearly, most of the suggestions are successful and very effective.

Because of this, Blizzard still values this chairman very much, so Zhou Fangyuan was able to make Blizzard advance the movie plan, and forcibly launched Hearthstone when there was no relevant development plan within Blizzard.

But what about the Titan, it is not Zhou Fangyuan's idea, as mentioned earlier, Blizzard itself had a plan to develop the Titan in 05 years of his previous life, so Zhou Fangyuan just didn't stop it, not only did he not stop it, he even took the initiative to push it. 、

Someone is worried about the defeat of the Titans?

Zhou Fangyuan didn't care, the failure in the previous life did not mean that he would definitely fail in this life, it could only be said that the probability was relatively high.

What's more, the previous life is the past life, the present life is the present life, now Blizzard has joined the Yuanfang Group, the Yuanfang Group is rich, Zhou Fangyuan has so many cash cows under his hands that continue to produce milk, the company is developing well, bank loans are one after another, and the people in the bank even take the initiative to chase him to give him a loan, in this case, there is no problem in supporting Blizzard's R&D engine. And he probably knows what the crux of the Titan game is, so he can provide some suggestions that may be useful in the early stages of the game's development, in short, he is actually optimistic about the Titan from the bottom of his heart.

Blizzard's failure in the previous life, as mentioned above, has their own faults, and there is also a non-war crime side, and now what Zhou Fangyuan has to do is to wipe out those stores that are not war crimes as much as possible, and his colleagues will make up for Blizzard's mistakes as much as possible, and strive to see the appearance of Titans.

If the Titan can really succeed in meeting players in the end, then it can definitely be regarded as a milestone game, and Zhou Fangyuan is very confident in this.