Chapter 159: The Trap
Translator: _Min_ Editor: Yukira_
Whenever Lingyu Technology’s name cropped up, most mobile games fanatics would automatically think of games with unique designs and outstanding gameplay, such as ‘I am ATM’ and ‘Dota History’.
Inside the Lingyu Technology building in Wanghai City, Ling Zhongtian was sitting in front of the office table with a dark face as he silently looked at the information on his table. The manager responsible for mobile game development, Qian Haiming, had his head lowered while sweating profusely and waiting for the boss’ reprimand.
After a long while, Ling Zhongtian finally spoke.
“In one month, ‘Dota History’s’ ACU dropped by 10% and KPI indices decreased by 17%…This is the goose that lays a golden egg you’re telling me about? And what about ‘I am ATM’? What’s your team doing for the past month?” His voice was trembling due to rage.
ACU referred to the average concurrent users, while KPI referred to key performance indicators. The first was related to the sustainability of the game, while the latter was related to the game’s profitability. At this moment, however, in front of him was a report that showed the stats of their two most profitable mobile games were in great decline.
[It was still fu*king okay last month!]
BANG! Ling Zhongtian threw the document in his hands on the table with great force, his lungs were on the verge of exploding due to anger.
The scolded Qian Haiming had a face of being greatly wronged. It was really not his fault.
Swallowing, he tried to organize his sentence in his head before explaining quietly to his boss, “Boss, this really cannot be blamed on us.”
Taking a deep breath, Ling Zhongtian picked up the cup on the table to take a sip of tea, and gradually calmed the anger in his chest.
“It’s that ‘New Era’, right?”
“Mhmm.” Qian Haiming felt secretly relieved that the boss understood the situation, but the atmosphere remained tense as ever.
These two games of the company were very profitable, and ‘Dota History’ had a record of a staggering cash flow of 200 million per month. Although the result was somewhat watered down, it was not far off from the truth.
The issue had to do with ‘Dota History’, despite running for over a year, had nothing new to offer. Unlike PC games, mobile games’ real-time interactive capability was already very limited; thus, it was destined to severely limit the player’s likelihood to stick to the game through social interaction. It could be said that when mobile game players quit the game, the reluctance to part with the game would be mainly due to the equipment and diamonds and not because of their good friends in the game.
After last year’s success, the active users of ‘Dota History’ had been gradually decreasing. However, Qian Haiming had still a bit of skill, as he led the entire project team to devise numerous unique events which allow the KPI to barely hit the mark.
But who would have thought that a highly competitive game would take the market by storm and took a huge piece of the pie away?
Ling Zhongtian fell into a deep contemplation while looking at the report on the table.
As the president of a corporation, he obviously would not be clueless about the existence of the most promising mobile game in the market.
The game’s massive content made it difficult for players to get bored due to repetitive gameplay.
It also offered real-time interaction comparable to that of PC games which meant that when players play the game, it really felt like an online game rather than playing just with a single list of friends.
And more importantly, how come it didn’t consume a lot of data?
Ling Zhongtian was so jealous that he wanted to spew forth profanity, or perhaps he had already cursed in his mind.
The three points above were the major limitations of today’s mobile game development. All major game developers that wanted their share of the market were racking their brains to come up with the best possible solutions to overcome these three major hurdles.
Too much game content? If users saw a game with a few gigabytes, they would be too lazy to download it. High hardware specs? This would cause lag and make the phone hot. High data usage? This might make telecom companies happy, but this would definitely enrage the users; thus, the game would naturally be unable to survive.
How to use software packers to include more game contents that most of the mobile phones would be able to run, and would not consume too much data. This has always been a great source of concern in the industry.
Fortunately, came a software which realized the inspiration of many programmers.
It was Future 1.0.
By simplifying the algorithm, the performance of mobile phones was increased by three times, and energy consumption was reduced twice as much. This would undoubtedly enable them to recapture the ideas that had been cut off before.
Ling Zhongtian was indeed a man with foresight. When he saw the download record of Future 1.0 continually being refreshed, he immediately issued instructions to Qian Haiming to gather people from project development team to develop high specs “large-scale mobile game”.
The idea was undoubtedly insane.
At present, there was not a single mobile game that could meet the standard of the so-called “large-scale mobile game” in the market despite every developers’ bluff and bluster. To deploy a large amount of technical resource to venture into an entirely unknown market was unquestionably a huge gamble.
The reason for making such decision was because he was able to foresee the change in the future of the development of mobile games.
Given how Future 1.0 had turned out, the future would have high-quality games with high resolution and rich, diverse game contents that could compete with PC games to fill the gaps in the current market. PC and console games would continually be pushed out of the market, and the mobile game industry would only going to get bigger. The only thing he needed to consider was how to gain the upper hand and acquire a bigger slice of this pie.
However, his ambition was already deflated before it was realized.
Turned out that Future 1.0 had a far greater ambition.
Before they gained a foothold in the market, they quickly launched an independent game and ventured into the mobile game market.
‘New Era’?
In the beginning, Ling Zhongtian had not given their promotion of: “open game world”, “sandbox game map”, “the strongest freedom in history” much thought yet…
Who didn’t know how to brag? Which developers did not vaunt their own game? Not just the players, even their own marketing staff didn’t believe in the marketing.
But when the game went online, Ling Zhongtian’s expression instantly turned green with envy.
He heard a lot of empty promises before, but it was his first time seeing all the promises got fulfilled.
Its unbelievable game quality set a whole new record in terms of gameplay. With the support of the Future 1.0’s user base, ‘New Era’ took the market by storm with no less than the impact that Future 1.0 produced and once again become a hot topic of the media. Future 1.0 made headlines again.
Without a doubt, ‘New Era’ had seized the initiative and took the lead in this market, which he had such high hopes for.
“How are things going on your end?” Ling Zhongtian no longer reprimanded Qian Haiming, and instead asked about the “large-scale mobile game” that was currently under development.
Hearing this, Qian Haiming looked inconceivably bitter.
“It is almost developed and currently in alpha phase, but compared to ‘New Era’…”
As the project manager, no one knew better than him the product his own team was developing.
If the quality was almost comparable, he would at least try to boost his own project by a bit to let the boss see they really tried and achieved some results, however, after personally playing ‘New Era’ for a few hours…
Mhmm, he went on playing for a while, and it was undoubtedly fun that he couldn’t help but expand the warehouse.
They had completely lost.
“INo hard, just do everything you can to utilize your ability and creativity. Try a bit harder in the operations,” Ling Zhongtian advised exhaustedly as he rubbed his temples.
“Yes, boss.” Qian Haiming nodded and quickly left the office.
Elbows on the table, Ling Zhongtian stared at the report blankly.
He’s already 50 years old, and regardless how tough his body was, his temple already had a white streak on it. After being in business for so many years and starting with only a handful people in a 10-sqm studio to gradually becoming the industry leader in the mobile game development, it was his first time experiencing such troublesome issue.
What made it troublesome was not the game itself, rather the chain reactions that came with it.
The mobile game industry was huge, too big to imagine, so no matter how voracious the appetite of the Future Technology was, it would be impossible to completely dominate the industry. In most users’ phone, it would be impossible not to have more than one game. Thus, even if they lost the “large-scale” game market, Lingyu Technology still maintained a strong market share within the industry.
However, with the emergence of this large-scale mobile game, users’ spending habits would undoubtedly have a huge impact. Lingyu Technology’s continuous profit decline during this period was a clear indicator of this problem.
Similar to the analogy that if you have an excellent game on your phone, would you still pay for a game like Tetris? Even if you did, it probably wouldn’t be much.
The mobile industry had been divided for the longest time where everyone had similar games comparable to one other, and not one company had been able to monopolize the market.
However, that was before that game was launched.
‘New Era’ quickly gathered all players who were already bored with monotonous mobile games in the market. It revolutionized the perspective of users about the mobile games having “monotonous content” and “poor real-time interactive capability”.
[Since the inception of this game, their days began to become difficult. and from the looks of it, it’s not only Lingyu Technology’s that got the short end of the stick…] while Ling Zhongtian mulled this over, he lightly tapping on the table with his finger.
[Perhaps it’s high time to give this “rookie” a lecture?]
While thinking of this, Ling Zhongtian grimaced. He picked up the phone and called his old rival.
“Hello, Wang Zong. Haha, how have you been?”
“Ok, enough chitchat. It’s been a tough day for everyone. Don’t you think we should do something…”
Shifting the public opinion, providing funds for development of hacks, exploiting ‘New Era’s’ vulnerabilities, hiring hackers to attack the server…
There were still many things they could do to preserve their interests.
Just be careful not to get caught in the act.
Ling Zhongtian hung up the phone, his mouth curved in a sneer.
[Regardless how powerful Future Technology is, how would they be able to ward off attacks from all sides?]