In another time and space, SimCity, which was released in 198-9, can be said to be the originator of business simulation games. The entire SimCity series, and later the Sims series, has been a very best-selling game in the United States.

The main content of SimCity is that the player takes on the role of mayor and has the freedom to plan and develop a city from scratch. Whether it is residential, commercial and industrial land, the construction of various facilities such as roads, railways, police and fire stations, and even the allocation of taxes and various public facilities, it is up to the player to design.

The excitement and satisfaction of watching a barren land become a metropolis full of high-rise buildings under its own planning, with various facilities such as airports, ports, and subways, is the most enjoyable thing about this game.

Of course, the upcoming "SimCity 1987" still has many deficiencies in the eyes of Li Xuan. Its graphics are all in 2D and the world's tallest skyscraper for your city won't really be as majestic as it is on a flat map!

And this original version of SimCity, the gameplay is relatively simple. In fact, players are cycling through the four steps of planning, building, expanding, and managing, and the complexity is not high enough. In Li Xuan's own memory of "SimCity", he, the mayor, even cut down a few more trees, and there would be protests from environmental groups.

Of course, these more complex and interesting ways to play can be slowly rolled out in subsequent versions in the future. With a fresh perspective that SimCity 1987 has never had before, it's enough to make a lot of money in the current gaming market. And when players get bored, it's time to launch a new version of the game!

Learn to swim long. Instead of taking out all the good things at once, this is the way capitalists make money. Of course. The level of development of game software is actually closely related to the progress of hardware technology.

At the current level of configuration of mainstream ABC-5 computers. If the city screen of "SimCity" is directly turned on in 3D, and the skyline of the city can be displayed from a three-dimensional perspective, it is estimated that the computer will crash directly in an instant.

The new generation of personal computer ABC-6 that will be launched next year will use the ERM-3 processor, and the performance will be much higher than the current ERM-2, and there may be a chance to make the graphics of "SimCity" more gorgeous.

However, SimCity 1987 was not going to wait for the ABC-6 computer to be released, but was still developed according to the hardware standards of ABC-5. Because it takes time for new computers to become widespread, it took nearly two years to replace ABC-3, taking the previous ABC-5 as an example. It has become the mainstream configuration of the personal computer industry. However, ABC-3 and even the older ABC-2 and ABC-1 still have a lot of room to survive.

So ABC-6 became the workhorse of personal computers, most likely in the nineties. Although Oriental Games Company also has benchmark projects like "The Lord of the Rings", it is directly aimed at the latest and most high-end configurations, and even has the ambition to accelerate the upgrading of computers.

Taking "The Lord of the Rings" as an example, the total investment of Oriental Games in this game is as high as 15 million US dollars, and if the factory price of each copy of the game is 30 US dollars, it will need to sell at least 500,000 copies of the game to recover the cost.

The sales target of 500,000 copies is in the 21st century. Nature is a very easy number. But in the '80s, when computer games were just beginning to take off, it wasn't an easy achievable goal. In particular, in order to ensure the sophistication of the game effect, "The Lord of the Rings" has too high requirements for the configuration of the computer.

None of these ABC-3 and ABC-5 on the market can be OEM games, and they have given up a large part of the target market! Only the ABC-6 computer will be launched next. to have enough power to run the game. In other words, existing computer players who want to experience the excitement of The Lord of the Rings games next year will have to buy an expensive ABC-6 computer first. This is for the Lord of the Rings games. It's definitely a big challenge!

So it's enough to have one or two game projects like The Lord of the Rings to highlight the Oriental Game Company. As the world's most well-known game company, if every project is done like this, even the Eastward Journey Company will not be able to bear it!

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After more than a minute of buffering. The game on the new page opened by Lixuan is finally downloaded. This kind of online game in the American online community is actually to download the game data to your computer before you can start the trial. In fact, even online games in later generations, there is not much data that really needs to be transmitted online in real time.

For example, data such as maps, people, background music, etc., are actually retrieved from the client installed on the computer. So the better the game, the bigger the client's installation package. In the era of 2D online games, the installation package is usually only a few hundred M, but in the 3D era, it has directly become several Gs!

The online game that Li Xuan opened is also called "SimCity". This should be part of the promotion that Journey East is running on the US online community for the upcoming SimCity 1987!

Of course, SimCity 1987 has a package size of 5.8M, while this eponymous mini-game in the AOL community is only a few hundred K, so the two are naturally not on the same level at all. But Li Xuan only played for a while and found that the gameplay of this little game was indeed similar to the "SimCity 1987" that he had experienced not long ago.

After closing the web page of the mini game, Li Xuan manipulated the mouse to enter the chat room of the American online community. According to Derek Owen, the former CEO of AOL, this online chat room is now the biggest highlight of the American online community.

After all, if users want to browse the news, they don't need to go through the Internet at all. All they have to do is turn on their televisions, the three major public television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC. A large amount of global news is broadcast every day, and there are also channels like CNN that broadcast news 24 hours a day. In fact, AOL does not have its own news gathering and editing department. All the information on the AOL community was purchased from NBC broadcasters!

And if the user wants to book air tickets, hotels and other services. Internet access is not necessarily required. You can do this by phone, without leaving your home. Of course, AOL also has its own advantages, such as the fact that it can get a lot of discounted tickets by negotiating with airlines.

Users only need to enter their itinerary on the computer, and they can see the ticket information of all airlines at a glance, so as to make the most beneficial choice for them. And you can't call all the booking hotlines of dozens of airlines and then make a ticket choice!

However, AOL also has its own weaknesses, such as its online payment system is far from perfect. Although AOL has developed a PayPal online payment system, most banks in the United States have not yet recognized its security.

Compared with. Online chat rooms have become the most popular part of the online community in the United States. Because of the emergence of online chat rooms, the boundaries of space are broken and a new way for everyone to communicate with each other.

Staying at home, we also had the opportunity to discuss issues of common interest with new friends from all over the United States. And compared to the popular BBS and newsgroups, online chat rooms are more real-time and interactive.

The average number of online chat rooms in AOL is now as high as 15,000, and the highest number of online users is as high as 312,000. The entire chat room section is divided into two parts: public chat rooms and private chat rooms.

Each public chat room is capped at 100 people. If the number of people is full, then the paid premium members have priority access and can squeeze out the free regular members. Private chats, on the other hand, can accommodate 50, 100, and 200 people, respectively, from level 1 to level 3. But only for premium members. to have the right to create your own private chat room.

During the peak hours of the Internet in the evening, AOL's chat rooms are always very lively. In particular, many hot topics are often full in the room, and this is when the advantages of premium membership are reflected. They can squeeze in and chat without restrictions. And ordinary members can only stare dryly outside, even if they are already participating in the chat inside. There is also the danger of being squeezed out at any time!

Does this trick feel very familiar? That's right, Li Xuan learned it from the "twist vine" of the Penguin Empire. After the development of online chat rooms. Li Xuan sent a creative copy to AOL. But then he forgot about it, but Derek Owen immediately understood the essence of the Penguin Empire in another time and space from his creativity, and did everything possible to make money!

AOL's free regular members, while they can enjoy most of the basic services in the virtual community, paid members enjoy even more benefits. Owen and AOL's technical team encourage and guide ordinary users to become paid members by differentiating different user experiences.

For example, in AOL's gaming area, paid members can try twice as many online games as regular members. And even the privileges of paid members have been divided into many levels by the AOL company that has fallen into the eyes of money! This is most evident in the most popular online chat rooms.

For example, a general premium member can only build 3 private chat rooms, and the maximum number of online users is 50 people. And if you want to build more chat rooms, you'll have to pay an extra fee. Or if you want to increase the maximum number of people online at the same time in a private chat room to 100 or even 200 people, you will also need to pay an additional fee!

Is it true that so many people are willing to spend extra money to open their own chat rooms? The just-concluded 85th MLB World Series undoubtedly gave the best answer!

MLB is the abbreviation of Major League Baseball, and its popularity and the NFL (Major League Rugby) in the United States far exceed the well-known NBA. The World Series is the MLB year-end finals for a season.

Every year the MLB World Series is a best-of-seven series, but this year's two teams competing for the title, the Minnesota Twins and the Louis Cardinals, have been evenly matched. After the first six matches were tied 3-3, the final decisive seventh game began, and the AOL community opened 50 special chat rooms for 200 people.

As a result, all 50 chat rooms were full, and almost all of the people who could squeeze in to chat were paid premium members. In addition, there are as many as 779 private chat rooms for this championship match!

More than 10,000 users were upgraded to premium membership on the same day in order to participate in the chat. You should know that the annual fee for the premium membership of the American online community is as high as $150, which means that it brings AOL $1.5 million in revenue in one day.

Of course, this is mainly because online chat rooms provide fans with a new way to communicate with like-minded friends across the country without leaving their homes. After all, watching football is an activity that is more interesting when there are more people, but not everyone can gather a bunch of friends to watch football together, so partying with others on the Internet has become a new choice!

With this year's World Championship, AOL invested $1 million in advertising just to promote its U.S. online community. And the money was well spent, as AOL added nearly 100,000 registered users during the World Series alone. Even users of many other online services are beginning to know about the free online communities in the United States, and then become part of the online communities in the United States!

Of course, AOL's competitors, such as computer service companies, are far behind AOL in their development speed, and a large reason is that they are not as willing to burn money as AOL. Investing a lot of money in exchange for traffic and data is the first thing Yahoo started playing!

And in the eyes of the people of the eighties, AOL's approach was a little too radical. But from the perspective of Li Xuan's reincarnation, this part of the investment is actually completely worthwhile. AOL, which now holds the "American Online Community" and "Navigator" browsers, has actually occupied the commanding heights of the future Internet era.

For example, AOL's information section can be transformed into a web portal. PayPal can develop into an online payment system, and now online chat rooms can evolve into online communication software in the future. Other businesses such as online stores, search, group buying, etc., will be made easier to succeed with AOL's large user base!

Li Xuan spent an hour carefully exploring the "American Online Community" and "Navigator" browsers, and basically figured out the development status of AOL. For the development of AOL, he did not intervene too much directly except for providing some creative copywriting.

However, the development speed of AOL company still made him more satisfied, and as for the problem that the company has been losing huge amounts, it is not an unacceptable thing for Li Xuan. In fact, after AOL completed its latest valuation, he has prepared another new funding of up to $100 million for Derek Irving, which will be enough to prepare the next phase of AOL's cash-burning operation.

Before the commercialization of the Internet, Li Xuan did not plan to make money from AOL at all! So when he personally visited AOL the next day, he was more to cheer up the management team, so that everyone could give full play to their imagination and creativity, and expand the value that the Internet can achieve wider! )