Ren Pingsheng's desire to do online games was not a whim, but a deliberate decision.

At present, several typical cash cow industries in China have high access conditions, and it is difficult to intervene from Ren Pingsheng's current ability.

Insurance, banking, telecommunications, ports, etc. are all industries that are monopolized or semi-monopolized by the state, and ordinary people don't even have to think about it, and they can't get involved at all.

Electricity, water, and highways are all cash cows for local governments, and they are all reserved land for people with their own attributes, and they are not for ordinary people to set foot in.

Outside of these fields, the only ones that are not monopolized and have a low threshold are online games.

Aside from R&D, servers, and bandwidth costs, the cost of an online game is negligible.

After the online game starts operating, all that remains is to deal with bugs and regular maintenance,

There is no problem with depreciation of software.

As long as a large-scale online game has more than 200,000 users, it can achieve a return on investment after half a year of operation, and the future income will be pure profit.

With the exception of drugs and tobacco, there is no more lucrative business than online games, and the money is legal.

From 2006 to 2017, the size of China's online game market grew from 8 billion yuan to 200 billion yuan, an increase of 25 times in ten years.

In 2006, Shengda Network, the leader of the domestic online game market, had a net profit of 200 million yuan per quarter, equivalent to a daily net profit of 1.66 million yuan.

In 2017, Tengxun, the boss of the domestic online game industry, made a quarterly profit of 24.4 billion yuan, equivalent to a daily net profit of 200 million yuan.

The stable cash flow brought by online games has fed countless Internet companies.

To put it bluntly, except for Ali Ma Ma and Baidu, other companies in China's Internet industry have more or less relied on the profits of online games to whitewash and beautify their financial statements.

Luoyi, which was once on the verge of delisting, survived by self-developed online games, and Sohu, whose market share has shrunk a little bit, has also survived since its online game revenue.

Tengxun, the first brother of China's Internet, although its business is regarded as a social network giant, but more than 40% of its operating income is contributed by online games.

Therefore, before consulting the opinions of others, Ren Pingsheng had already made up his mind to intervene in the online game industry and cultivate his own cash cow.

After listening to Ren Pingsheng's analysis, Zhang Wenwu's eyes became more focused, and he frowned and asked: "Although online games are very profitable, we don't understand technology and are not familiar with this industry, so it is very difficult to participate?"

"Yes, I can't play games except for others, how can I do it?" Lin Lisong also echoed on the side.

Ren Pingsheng saw the worries of his classmates, and he had already calculated these considerations, and they were reasonable.

Although they are well aware of the trends in the global game industry, they do not have the ability to participate in the game industry at this time.

Since 1999, China's online games have developed in tandem with the rest of the world, and now they are a very mature industry.

At that time, there were only two ways to operate in the online game industry, one was to represent the works of other manufacturers, and they were only responsible for their own operations, and the leaders in this category were Shengda, Seven Cities and Tengxun in the future.

The other is independent research and development, and the representatives of this category are Luoyi, Jinshan and Youmei. With Ren Pingsheng's current ability and volume, it is very difficult to introduce and act as an agent for online games abroad, and there are also many difficulties in taking the road of independent research and development.

Because the production cost of a large online game is very high. One is the long production cycle, from the engine to the code, from programming to testing, there is no way to get out of 2-3 years; the other is the high cost of personnel, the planning team, the art team, the program team together, without hundreds of people can not be done, referring to the average salary level of Shengda, Qicheng and other industries, the annual salary of each person ranges from 80,000 to 300,000.

It is impossible to do such a large-scale online game without hundreds of millions of investment. Take the industry-benchmarking World of Warcraft as an example, the research and development cost is $100 million and takes 3 years.

Even if Ren Pingsheng can reduce the cost to half, it is not supported by the income of generic drugs alone.

Not to mention the rapid change in the direction of the game industry, when Ren Pingsheng really developed the game, the large-scale online game was almost at the end of the MMORPG life, and at this time it had to face the challenges of MOBA games.

Why bother spending so much effort on a thankless job.

Ren Pingsheng overturned the possibility of his own research and development at the first time, and he then analyzed his current advantages and weaknesses.

Advantages: 1. Grasp the trend of the game market in the next ten years, know when and what types of games are popular, and know which games are more popular; 2. The generic drug business can provide stable capital income, if nothing else, it can make a net profit of about 50 million yuan a year.

Disadvantages: 1. There is no software programming ability, and it is impossible to master it through self-study; 2. Lack of experience in the game industry and large-scale software project management; 3. Lack of contacts in the IT industry and game circle, and insufficient human resources.

Considering the above factors, Ren Pingsheng decided to make use of his strengths and avoid his weaknesses, and first dig a mature team from several large companies in the domestic game industry, as long as he does a good job in direction guidance and detail management, he can create an online game that detonates the market in a short period of time and provide him with a steady stream of cash.

"Well, the plan of poaching people is feasible, if we want to build a cash cow, we have to shorten the time and cost of the initial investment, operate as soon as possible, and charge as soon as possible, which is the king. Zhang Wenwu nodded frequently, he had unconsciously kept up with the rhythm of Ren Pingsheng.

"Then who are we going to dig up now?" Lin Lisong said unwillingly.

Ren Pingsheng shrugged and said, "You guys play a lot of games, you can make suggestions." ”

"The online version of martial arts romance is very good, and Dongshanju has always been a representative studio of independent research and development in China. Zhang Wenwu, who likes martial arts novels, first put forward his point.

Ren Pingsheng nodded, shook his head again, and said: "Dongshanju must be very good, but it is the son of Jinshan Software and the biggest cash cow, it is too difficult to dig this." ”

Lin Lisong also got involved, and with his own understanding, he proposed: "The "Perfect World" developed by Candle Dragon Studio also has great potential, although it is only an imitation of "World of Warcraft", but Candle Dragon Studio's technical strength is very strong, and it imitates decently. ”

Ren Pingsheng compared it in his own memories, the operation of "Perfect World" is indeed a masterpiece of domestic online game self-development, and Perfect World Holding Group also relied on this game to successfully go public, and successfully represented VALVE (Villefort)'s DOTA2, becoming a game company that can be compared with Tengxun and Luoyi.

"Candle Dragon Studio has been acquired by Grace Online, Grace Online is a giant in the domestic education software industry, their main business is cash cows, and some money supports Candle Dragon's research and development, and we have no chance to pry Candle Dragon. ”

Ren Pingsheng's analysis made Lin Lisong deflated all of a sudden, and Zhang Wenwu added at this time: "What about "Journey"?"

"Isn't Journey a free-to-play game, and what kind of money can you make from this?" Lin Lisong puzzled.

Ren Pingsheng smiled and said nothing, he crossed over, and naturally knew the status of "Journey" in the history of Chinese online games.

It can be said that since the implementation of free operation of "Journey", the entire online game industry will be swept by the wind of free in the future, and the profit model of "free games and charged props" has also extended to other fields such as web games and mobile games, and even formed the so-called "krypton" culture, which can be described as far-reaching.

And the initiator of all this, "Journey", has made a lot of money by relying on prop fees, contributing more than 10 billion profits to the parent company Giant Network every year, while the R&D cost is negligible, and it is a real cash cow.

It's just that Ren Pingsheng traveled a little late, and the Heroic Age Studio, which developed "Journey", was originally one of the many studios under Shengda Network, and it was dug into his door by business wizard Shi Yuzhu two years ago, and it has been half a year since the game "Journey" was launched.

Although I regret missing "Journey", in the timeline of history, there are still two opportunities waiting for Ren Pingsheng.

One of Ren Pingsheng's two opportunities was Sohu's Fire Tiger Studio, which developed the online game "Heavenly God Babu" in 2007, which was a huge success in the domestic market with its technical ability and deep understanding of martial arts culture, combining the game's powerful community features with perfect interactivity.

In just two years, "Tianshen Babu" achieved an operating income of 1.8 billion yuan, and in 2012, it surpassed Shengda Games and sat on the third place in the domestic online game industry.

Sohu Changyou, which was established on the basis of Fire Tiger Studio, is not only independently listed on NASDAQ, but also provides a steady stream of profit support for the parent company Sohu, which is in dire straits, and can be said to be a cash cow that is not inferior to "Journey".

And what is beneficial to Ren Pingsheng is that "Tianshen Babu" is still under development, whether it is Huohu or Sohu, it cannot foresee the huge potential it will have in the future, if it can be dug up by Huohu Studio at this time, the return will be huge.

And another opportunity is a person, this person is called Xu Tao.

Xu Tao was originally just a game customer service of Luoyi, and after participating in the experience of "Fantasy Three Kingdoms Online" operated by Luoyi, he wrote more than 30 pages of problem feedback and improvement suggestions and submitted them to the project leader, but was shelved and ignored by the project leader.

Later, due to the unfavorable operation of "Fantasy Three Kingdoms Online", after Xu Tao's repeated requests, the project leader agreed to let him be responsible for the operation and maintenance of "Fantasy Three Kingdoms Online", and he was also upgraded from customer service to planning.

On the one hand, it is the rich experience accumulated in customer service work, and on the other hand, it is also a personal talent, Xu Tao, who is an ordinary gamer, understands the pain points of players very well, and he uses "Fantasy Three Kingdoms Online" as a platform to start building the "really interesting game" that players want.

One year later, "Fantasy Three Kingdoms Online", which was changed to the Q version style, began operation under the new name "Fantasy Three Kingdoms" and began a legendary history.

The success of "Dream Three Kingdoms" is unprecedented, it only took one year to reach 300,000 people online, and the highest number of simultaneous online users reached 2.71 million in 2012, which was the highest number of simultaneous online games in Chinese mainland at that time, and second only to Blizzard Entertainment's epic masterpiece "World of Warcraft" in the global online game market.

"Dream Three Kingdoms" not only has many players, but its contribution to profits is also amazing, from a net profit of 200 million yuan per quarter in 2006 to a net profit of 2 billion yuan per quarter in 2016, and the net profit has increased tenfold in ten years, which even "World of Warcraft" cannot match.

It's just that although "Dream Three Kingdoms" has been successful, its planner Xu Tao himself has not been taken seriously, and Yu Xin, the boss of Luoyi, is a person who values academic qualifications very much, and Luoyi's company culture and internal atmosphere are not suitable for the development of game planners born at the grassroots level.

Xu Tao, who did not get the due return, left in 2006 and took away a number of members of the original "Dream Three Kingdoms" project team, and established Jinshan Multi-Arts Network after accepting the investment of Jinshan Software.

Although Duoyi Network did not come up with any products at this time, and the team strength was also very weak, Ren Pingsheng knew that under the leadership of the legendary planner Xu Tao, Duoyi Network successively developed two online games, "Dream World OL" and "Divine Soldier", and achieved success.

Although the volume of Duoyi Network is not large, with its recognition and understanding of the needs of players and excellent R&D strength, it has created a self-reserved land in the online game market segment, and has achieved an annual net profit of 1 billion yuan and a gross profit margin of 98.7%.

Compared with the Huohu Studio, Xu Tao and Jinshan Multi-Arts Network is smaller, poorer, and weaker, and Ren Pingsheng has a greater grasp of winning Jinshan Multi-Talent.

But he still stressed the need to approach both studios at the same time to avoid missing the opportunity.

After listening to Ren Pingsheng's analysis, Zhang Wenwu and Lin Lisong's faces showed a look of great admiration, and they also unanimously agreed with Ren Pingsheng's plan.

It's just that Zhang Wenwu is still a little hesitant, after all, he still has a formal job now.

Although he is currently only a small credit officer, Handong Bank is a very glamorous position in the eyes of others, and it is difficult for him to jump out and start a business with Ren Pingsheng with Zhang Wenwu's cautious personality.

"You don't have to worry, we'll run and contact during this time, you can help me do one thing first. Ren Pingsheng saw Zhang Wenwu's worry, and he comforted.

"Whatever I can help, I will definitely do it. Zhang Wenwu was a little embarrassed and asked.

"You're going to help me get the money out. Ren Pingsheng smiled, took out two red real estate certificates from his pocket, and put them in front of Zhang Wenwu.