The 099th dance forest moe master

On May 27, 2004, the rewritten version of Chunteng Games, a joint venture between Spring and Tencent, was officially launched. Due to the drag of previous reputations, the previous week's data was not outstanding, and the number of new users was very limited. However, looking at the essence through the appearance, the effect of the new version of the board game is very obvious, and the retention rate of new users is much higher than that of the old version. Users of the old version also praised the new version for being much easier to use, not only the interface is smooth and refreshing, but it has also become a rare phenomenon to drop the line.

Chunteng company is based on technology, adheres to Wei Dongsheng's "rapid iteration and update" product manager thinking, and looks for a suitable point with QQ users. Tencent was very excited and persuaded Goldman Sachs Asia to temporarily delete the shareholder recruitment plan, and regarded Chunteng Games as one of the core selling points of bullish Tencent.

Tencent is scheduled to go public in Hong Kong on June 16, 2004.

This is a very important event. Spring and Autumn is Tencent's third-largest shareholder, so it should help out. Wei Dongsheng had no intention of trying to raise Tencent, and refused to come forward in person under the pretext of being busy with supercomputer projects. However, Wei Dongsheng did not hide from his obligations, in addition to sending Lei Jiafei, Lu Binqi and others to support Tencent's listing, other parties also actively cooperated.

At the end of 2003, after the Spring and Autumn Network finalized the agency of "World of Warcraft", it immediately prepared a new online game project. Spring and Autumn Network and Spring Software have the practice of first determining the needs of players before operating games, excluding the internal friction in the field of hourly payment and freemium, and pinning the growth point on casual players and female players. Wei Dongsheng's attention turned to supercomputers at that time, unwilling to waste time developing new games himself, and asked the game development team under the jurisdiction of Spring and Autumn Software if they had any good ideas, but unfortunately got a very disappointing result.

In order to save time, Wei Dongsheng decided to introduce another game agent to operate.

Looking around the game markets in the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea, Wei Dongsheng is a casual music game called "O2Jam". "O2jam" was developed by O2Media in South Korea, and just opened in June 2003, and the operating data is so-so. However, in this era, the cost of online game agency has always been disproportionate to its operating data in South Korea. As mentioned earlier, "Paradise", which was on fire in South Korea, went to the streets of Huaguo; South Korea's "Legend" has become popular in China to occupy 70% of the market. With "Legend" in front of Zhuyu, even if the operation in South Korea is so poor that it is about to go out of business, the manufacturer dares to shout an incredibly high price.

coincided with the uproar of the Spring and Autumn Network's sky-high signing of "World of Warcraft", O2Media took the Spring and Autumn Network as a Kaizi, saying that "O2Jam" was equivalent to "World of Warcraft", and the lion opened his mouth to ask for a signing agency fee of 830 million. Spring and Autumn Network negotiated with O2Media for several rounds, and O2Media reduced the signing agency fee to 600 million, and then bit 600 million and never let go.

At the same time, Wei Dongsheng despised the program structure of "02JAM" with his programmer technical background, and looked down on the gameplay mechanism of "O2JAM" with his product manager experience, and was unwilling to simply mechanical agents. During the negotiations, Spring and Autumn Network was ordered by Wei Dongsheng to buy out the source code of "o2jam", and in the future, Spring and Autumn Software may be allowed to freely modify or even rewrite "o2jam" 2Media Company arrogantly refused, saying that the source code would not be given anyway, and the 600 million yuan signing agency fee would not be less.

The Spring and Autumn Network Negotiation Team was frustrated by South Korea and asked Wei Dongsheng for advice.

Wei Dongsheng gave a simple instruction: "Return to China." ”

Wei Dongsheng spent 830 million yuan to sign "World of Warcraft", in addition to the strong profit expectations of "World of Warcraft" itself, but also because it is a key to send Spring and Autumn Network to the United States to be listed. As for "O2Jam", no matter how profitable it is, it is only a game.

"02jam" is not worth 600 million yuan bet.

Negotiations to operate O2JAM broke down.

O2Media saw that the boiled duck had flew, and at first it was indignant and contacted other game operators in China to sell it, but it was expected that the game operators were speechless: how stupid are we to come up with 600 million yuan to sign a contract for this game.

O2Media turned around and found that it couldn't sell "O2Jam" at a high price, so he came back with a shy face and contacted Spring and Autumn Network: "We are willing to reduce the price to 500 million yuan." ”

The Spring and Autumn Network asked Wei Dongsheng for his opinion, and Wei Dongsheng casually instructed: "Let them roll the calves." ”

After the failure of the Spring and Autumn Network's negotiations in South Korea, Wei Dongsheng extinguished the idea of cooperating with O2Media at that time, and deliberately took out more than ten days of part-time planning in his spare time to set up a freemium casual music and dance game based on the previous life "Audition".

After the birth of the computer intelligent life orange algae, it has continuously optimized its own programs, and its execution has become stronger and stronger. With the assistance of Orange Algae, Wei Dongsheng completed the core main program of the new game in just one month, named "Dancing Forest Meng Master". "The Master of the Dancing Forest" was lost to Spring and Autumn Software for further refinement, and the internal test was quickly launched in mid-March 2004.

In a word, the introduction of agents becomes independent research and development.

The "O2Jam" agency incident completely eliminated the impression that people were stupid and had more money brought about by the sky-high price of signing "World of Warcraft" on the Spring and Autumn Network. Huaguo game operators, the Korean game industry, and more companies in the outside world have re-understood the temper of Spring and Autumn Network, and realized that signing a contract with "World of Warcraft" at a sky-high price turned out to be a special event that could not be replicated, and Spring and Autumn Network is not really stupid and has a lot of money. Because of this, Wei Dongsheng's acquisition of Foxmail and the purchase of Tencent's equity did not encounter the lion's unreasonable asking price.

From the internal test of "Martial Arts Alliance Master" to May 2004, the Spring and Autumn Network investigation found that this game may not be suitable for the operation of the Spring and Autumn Network.

Why?

In recent months, the crazy money-making "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" has been envied and hated by all game operators, and the Spring and Autumn Network once replaced Shanda Network and became the object of severe criticism by public opinion. In order to curb the dumping of peers and save social credibility, Wei Dongsheng commanded the Spring and Autumn Network to fight back strongly, offering a "online game anti-addiction system" to kill a big weapon, calling on the state to limit the time of minors playing online.

Wei Dongsheng counted the user group of "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms", although there are many players under the age of 18, the contribution of their paid recharge is less than 5%. In other words, the vast majority of the money circled by "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" comes from adult players, and if Wei Dongsheng offers an "online game anti-addiction system", the damage to himself is far less than the loss of other game operators. Therefore, whenever a game operator or its partner criticizes "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" for inciting players to hate and stimulate consumption, etc., Wei Dongsheng will fight back with the banner of "online game anti-addiction system".

During the internal beta test of "Dance Forest Cute Master", based on various surveys and research, Spring and Autumn Network found that the user group of "Dance Forest Meng Master" tends to be young players, and the proportion of underage players is much higher than that of "Spring and Autumn of Ten Kingdoms". Considering the discrimination of online games in the general environment of public opinion, and the uncertainty of "The Master of the Dancing Forest", if someone deliberately falsifies the facts in the Spring and Autumn Period, and transitions from the adverse events of a small number of underage players in the "The Master of the Dancing Forest" to the Spring and Autumn Network, and then borrows the Spring and Autumn Network to transition to the "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms", it is very likely that the public opinion prestige of the Spring and Autumn Network and "The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" will be pushed to the abyss.

In view of the fact that "Dancing Forest Cute Master" is destined to not bring far more revenue than "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms", Spring and Autumn Network decided to abandon the operation of "Dancing Forest Cute Master" and hand it over to Chunteng Game Operation. The QQ user base is very young, and the overlap with the target users of "Dancing Forest Meng Master" is very high, and it should be more suitable for operating this game than Spring and Autumn Network.

In mid-May 2004, Chunqiu Software signed a contract with Chunteng Games to transfer the domestic operation rights of "Dance Forest Mengzhu" in China on the condition of zero copyright tax and 35% sales share. Tencent had a misunderstanding, did not believe the sincere explanation of the Spring and Autumn Network, and secretly suspected that the Spring and Autumn Software and the Spring and Autumn Network underestimated the economic benefits of "The Dancing Forest Meng Master". However, considering that the agency contract is 0 copyright tax, Chunteng Games will pay the cost of trial operation at most, and Tencent will allow Chunqiu Network to take this "risk transfer" measure.

On May 13, 2004, Shanda successfully listed on NASDAQ and raised US$150 million through a public offering. Since then, Shanda's stock price has risen and fallen, and its market value has now risen to more than one billion dollars. Shanda Shangneng, which has gradually slipped into China's second game operator, has a market value of more than one billion US dollars, and the Spring and Autumn Network, which has a more violent money-making situation, will definitely have a strong potential, not a weak one. Tencent therefore attaches great importance to Chunteng Games, a joint venture with Spring and Autumn Network, and sends positive signals to the market to escort its listing in Xiangjiang. In order to avoid the good news of Chunteng Games being dragged down by the operating data of "Dancing Forest Cute Master", Tencent did not dare to actually operate and test the market acceptance of "Dancing Forest Meng Master", and hoped that the Spring and Autumn Period would postpone the public beta time.

Spring and Autumn Software, Chunteng Games, etc., actively cooperated, and postponed the public beta time of "Dancing Forest Cute Master" from June 1 to June 23.

However, Tencent's road to listing is destined to be full of ups and downs.

On June 15, the day before Tencent's listing, the Ministry of Information Industry issued the "Notice on Carrying out Self-Examination and Self-Correction Activities of Mobile SMS Services", which opened the prelude to the rectification of the wireless value-added market. Mobile value-added business is Tencent's core profit, Tencent's total revenue in 2003 was 735 million, of which mobile value-added business provided 467 million revenue, with a dependence rate of 63.5%. The setback of the mobile value-added business and the fact that Tencent broke its legs instantly cast a shadow on Tencent's road to listing.

The good news of Chunteng Games' operation of chess and card games in the game hall was also dispelled by this notice, and the capital market collectively looked down on Tencent's future.

On June 16, 2004, Tencent was officially listed.

At the beginning of the market opening, Tencent's share price was not bad, slowly rushing to a peak of HK$4.85. Unfortunately, after the lunch break, the situation suddenly changed, and Tencent's stock price was suppressed by a large-scale sell-off, with a turnover rate of 103%. That is to say, the vast majority of shareholders buy Tencent shares because of short-term speculation to take advantage of the listing bonus, and they are not optimistic about Tencent's potential in their hearts.