The moment the dust settles, it is destined to wait until the wheel of history enters 1983.

With the end of the Christmas-New Year's Day holiday, the preliminary transcripts of "ET Aliens" and "First Blood" were basically exposed to their respective peers.

The movie "First Blood" broke $10 million at the box office in the first week, just reaching 10.2 million, which lifted the spirits of the producers and the industry.

In the second week of the following, because it caught up with the intensive entertainment time from Christmas to New Year's Day, it bucked the trend compared with the first week, and won 14 million, completely venting the accumulated enthusiasm for watching movies. Until the third week, because of the end of the New Year's Day holiday, it fell back to 8.6 million.

As of Sunday, Jan. 9, "First Blood" has grossed $35 million. The producer can theoretically get 14 million US dollars, which is not far from the return of 18 million. Considering the inertia of the subsequent box office curve, if you are lucky, you can get a net profit equivalent to 200% of the investment.

Local distributor Miramax Films, which currently has about $10 million in shares, can already write off all the distribution costs of Harvey Weinstein's external offer. What you get in the future is pure earning.

Although this profit multiple is not as exaggerated as "Terminator", the absolute amount is not inferior to "Terminator", after all, the investment in this film is 2.5 times that of Terminator.

The industry is also convinced by the proportion that Miramax deserves, because Harvey proved his ability to hype up the first week box office, which is a purely effective indicator of advertising effectiveness. It is impossible for a movie that is not well publicized to be full in the first weekend.

At the same time, in addition to Harvey, a new star in the publishing industry, Gu Biao, a Chinese investor, has once again entered everyone's field of vision.

Although because of his Hong Kong-funded background, Gu Biao has never had the opportunity to invest in big productions after "The Terminator", and the production company does not want to take his money.

However, he proved that he can still get a piece of the pie with a strong curve by investing in a small publisher like Miramax - even if you ignore him when you shoot it.

Once it can be dog luck and accidental, and twice it must be faced.

Compared with his American counterparts, Gu Biao's power is even hotter in the eyes of his Xiangjiang counterparts.

Although he has not filmed anything in Xiangjiang, he has a high start, and within two years, two consecutive Hollywood "$100 million clubs" have something to do with him, which is too scary.

At the same time, Cheng Long, the top superstar that Xiangjiang people are most expected to, hit the street in "Killer Trench" in 81, and "Cannonball Speed" in 82 is still only to protect the capital. After two setbacks, this year I am obediently returning to Xiangjiang to lick my wounds and get the Chinese New Year movie "Five Lucky Stars", and I don't dare to enter Hollywood easily in a year or two, and I have to finish filming "Police Story" in 85 years in history before I gradually became famous in Hollywood.

And Gu Biao's traditional younger brother Li Lianjie has no film appointment for the time being after the TV series "Hujiang Beach", the movies "Shaolin Temple" and "The Terminator". Because he is a newcomer with no acting foundation after all, he became popular, and he was only 18 years old when he became popular, which cannot be compared with Cheng Long, who has been making movies for nearly 10 years.

So Gu Biao suggested that he go back to study after the filming of "The Terminator", at least learn acting systematically, he is still young and can't drift. Li Lianjie has always respected the boss like a god, after all, he witnessed how he was brought up, so Gu Biao asked him to study, and he would study.

Li Lianjie first returned to China to find a way to apply to go to Beiying to audit, but unfortunately the universities in China in the 80s were still very rigorous. Then he could only continue to study hard to improve his English, and asked Gu Biao to help him go back to Los Angeles, and after getting a green card, he applied for the acting department of USC.

American universities in the 80s were not as rigorous as in China, and if you have already made a movie first, you can find a university to study a book, and the university is basically willing to accept it. Gu Biao felt that after a few years of polishing, he would be able to use it when he reached the age when he graduated from a normal college student.

From Cheng Long and Li Lianjie down, today's Chinese have no way to enter Hollywood.

This can also be imagined, how valuable the resources and prestige in Gu Ao's hands are.

To put it mildly, if Gu Biao is willing to sleep with the most front-line Chinese female stars, he can do it with a hook, but he is not this kind of person.

If Gu Biao returns to Xiangjiang next year, even Sir Shao will no longer dare to regard his status in the industry as higher than Gu Biao.

……

In terms of "ET Aliens", the game has been on sale for almost a month after the Christmas break.

In the two weeks leading up to Christmas, the game cartridge sold 500,000 units a week. In the seven days from Christmas to New Year's Day, another 400,000 units were sold, but in the week after New Year's Day, sales plummeted, falling from 400,000 to 100,000 in an instant.

And this plunge has no intention of turning point at all, and in the first two days of the fifth week of the release, the total sales in the United States are less than 5,000 units, and the whole week is estimated to be a maximum of 20,000 units.

This trend curve is simply that the new sales volume of each week has plummeted by 80% compared with the previous week.

It's just that the sales data of the last week or so has not had time to be counted and reported to Atari executives. In the era of the absence of the Internet, the feedback statistics of physical goods dealers are very slow, and some even end once a month, so these bad news, including the president of Dardanelle, are not yet known.

The clearest warning sign that President Dardanelle has received these days comes from the company's after-sales service and customer service department.

A middle-level cadre in charge of statistics on the operation of the company's outsourced customer service calls submitted an early warning report before the annual meeting, which showed that the company's customer service complaints have increased sharply recently, and the game's reputation has deteriorated significantly.

However, President Dardanelle publicly set the tone at the annual meeting: "There is a lot of customer service feedback, that's because the sales of our new games have become higher! The sales base is large, of course, there will be more people who curse and dissatisfied, and there are a thousand Hamlets in the hearts of a thousand people, that's just a lot of hard to adjust, it doesn't mean that our games are bad, there's nothing to worry about!"

This attitude is actually similar to that of later generations when iron-blooded and ruthless Internet writers ignore trolls: "Lao Tzu is blowing in the wind/selected/guide/omni-channel, the recommended position is good and the exposure rate is high, of course, there are more trolls!It doesn't matter, as long as the background adds new collections and new subscription data, don't be afraid of trolls!

Theoretically, it's not necessarily wrong to do this, but unfortunately, Atari was really wrong this time.

This kind of ignorance continued until January 10, and it became a funny news.

Moreover, Gu Biao, a competitor, and Atari's internal executives, got the news almost at the same time.

That night, Gu Biao was in the villa approving documents and remotely controlling business. Shulhoff, the president of Tiankun, personally made a phone call to report.

Gu Biao: "Shulhoff?

Schulhoff: "Boss, Atari has a little scandal, it was a few Atari engineers who privately revealed to their former colleagues who were poached by us, and they should feel sad that the rabbit died of a fox." ”

Gu Biao was slightly stunned, and his mind flickered.

The R&D team of Tiankun Entertainment has indeed recruited rebels from Atari in the past few months, and has recruited some engineers with high salaries, mainly to do system, as for game development, Gu Biao has not recruited many people.

Gu Biao has never been a blind believer, he knows that Atari is very good at being a developer of game consoles, but the game is like that.

Now it seems that those who have changed jobs are still in close contact with their former colleagues.

"Tell me straight, what's the situation. Gu Biao asked.

Schulhoff: "I heard that at noon today, two Atari outsourced customer service workers committed suicide by jumping off the building. Atari's internal preliminary investigation concluded that he had been subjected to verbal abuse for more than three consecutive weeks, had mental problems, and could not commit suicide under pressure. Now Atari is finally getting a little flustered inside. ”

Gu Biao's expression was frozen, and then he was a little suffocated. But he's more concerned with why things are going the way things are: "Atari's new game is doing badly, and we all know that we've tested. However, there was a problem with their customer service, and Atari didn't even notice it? ”

Schulhoff: "Atari didn't expand its own phone customer service team at all, and when their sales were high, they went to a customer service outsourcing company to temporarily add people when they were busy. This kind of labor dispatch does not need to pay social security directly to employees, and it is convenient to lay off employees in the off-season, or it is not called layoffs, but only repatriation to the labor dispatch company. ”

Gu Biao immediately understood.

Because large game companies don't produce heavyweight hits all year round. If you recruit a lot of customer service for the sudden increase in workload during the release of "ET Alien", then no one complains in the off-season, and you have to keep these customer services. The "Labor Law" in the United States is very powerful, and once you are officially employed, it is difficult to get rid of it.

Therefore, finding a labor dispatch company for temporary outsourcing is also a very awesome strategy, and it is a great idea for Atari executives to come up with it.

"So, those people who committed suicide in a mental disorder must have heard too much abuse for weeks in a row?"

Schulhoff: "The commission given is progressive. If you answer less than 100 calls per day, there is an additional bonus of 10 cents per day in addition to your basic salary. 100~200 parts, 20 cents each. More than 200 sections, 30 cents each -

The two people who committed suicide were finally counted, and each earned $3,000 in overtime pay for 3 weeks, and had to answer an average of 16 hours a day to spray game calls and listen to 500 times of abuse, accumulating more than 10,000 people, and then went crazy, drank some wine at lunch, vented insults on the roof of the company for a long time, and jumped down. ”

Gu Biao secretly wondered: progressive performance ...... This thing is really the best partner for labor outsourcing, just like the assessment indicators given by Eleme/Meituan to the little brother. After sending more than N orders every day, the commission ratio of each order will be multiplied by a bonus coefficient as a whole, so the little brothers are forced to run red lights every day.

If Eleme/Meituan dares to only send 10 orders a day, then you will definitely not reach 20% of the money of the person who sends 50 orders - the number of orders sent is small, and the money you get for each order will be multiplied by a multiplier.

Sure enough, capitalists from ancient times to the present day are the same.

As for outsourcing the scolded task to a labor company, Schulhoff may have been shocked for a while when he first heard about it, but Gu Biao was not shocked at all, but felt that "it was really like this again".

Because of this trick, it is exactly the same as Didi Taxi in later generations, and it can even be said that Didi Taxi learned this - before Didi's two consecutive driver homicides occurred in later generations, Didi's customer service was outsourced to labor dispatch companies in this way, and even some teachers in Pheasant University who were responsible for taking internships were organized, and then outsourced to students in their senior internships.

When they set up customer service, they didn't expect to solve the problem at all, they just let the customer service take responsibility for being scolded. Outsourcing customer service doesn't have any authority, even if you want to solve it professionally, you can't solve it, just let the user be angry. (I don't know if the two murders were solved after that).

It's just that this time Atari seems to have someone scolded to death.

"Shame on the industry, we can't sit idly by. Gu Biao sighed.