Top of the big era

When he came to Sweden, Daniel Ek heard that Boss Zhou was inspecting the game industry. He laughed and volunteered to recommend him, saying that he knew many people in the industry.

There are too many game studios with excellent game development talents, but they suffer from insufficient funds and hope to obtain investment or be acquired by a large company.

This is not an isolated phenomenon. The five Nordic countries, especially Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, all have very strong gaming industries.

For example, Zhou Buqi previously led the acquisition of "Angry Birds" from Finland and "Minecraft" from Sweden.

The Nordic region is freezing cold and has little energy to sell. The reason why it is the most developed region in the world is because they are targeting industries with high added value.

Gaming is one of them.

Making games does not require a high technical level. It mainly relies on entrepreneurship and understanding of the market. It is very suitable for a small country with a small number of people.

Zhou Buqi saw that Daniel Ek was so proactive in trying to connect people, so he accepted his kindness and asked Mattrick's team who was still in Cyprus to come over quickly and let everyone inspect the Swedish game market together.

He was originally on vacation and took care of some work matters.

I couldn't leave now, so I just walked around Stockholm with Shi Jinglin, Wu Yu, Sun Wanran and others. This can be regarded as a historical city.

It was already very cold in Sweden in mid-October, so Aunt Xue and Bao Shan went to London to rest. Senior sister Zhen Yu followed them for a while and then left for the United States. The Los Angeles Dodge case has been started and is making progress.

In the evening, we stayed at the local Royal Hotel.

Because he was going to investigate the Swedish game industry tomorrow, Sun Wanran took the initiative to check some information and came over to report, "I think we should focus on investigating P Club."

"P Club?" Zhou Buqi raised his eyebrows and smiled, "P Station?"

Sun Wanran was slightly startled, "What P station?"

"Then what is P Club you are talking about?"

"It's a famous game company. You don't know this? It's one of the top game companies in Europe. It has several big and heavyweight games."

Zhou Buqi asked: "What is P club in English? Tell me your name. If you use a nickname, who knows what you are talking about?"

Sun Wanran said: "Paradox."

"Oh." Zhou Buqi nodded with sudden realization, "Yeah, I know, I've read some materials. It's not top-notch, it's a little famous. But it's all traditional large-scale stand-alone computer games, right?"

Sun Wanran said: "Yes, but the games are amazing. They are all blockbuster games, absolutely world-class."

Zhou Buqi said amusedly: "Have you ever played?"

Sun Wanran is similar to him and is not a game enthusiast. "I have never played it, but you don't have to play it at all. You only need to read other people's game introductions to know how powerful this game is. Just like what you taught me When choosing an investment project, you don’t even need to look at any materials or data for truly excellent projects, and you don’t need to conduct on-site inspections. You will be tempted and invest money after hearing what others say.”

"Is it that exaggerated?"

Zhou Buqi hasn't paid much attention to P Club, mainly because P Club makes traditional games, large-scale 3A stand-alone games, and then makes money by selling genuine games.

This business model really has no future.

Making too little money.

A game has a development budget of 20 million U.S. dollars. After a year of hard work, a new version is launched and sells for 39.9 U.S. dollars. Even if it sells 1 million units, how much money can it make?

Not as good as Angry Birds.

Just like Japan's "Three Kingdoms" series, it has actually been a bit immobile in recent years. If it is well received but not a hit, who will develop games?

The larger the game, the less profitable it is; the more stand-alone game, the less profitable it is.

Many traditional game manufacturers produce world-class games that are amazing on many levels, but they just don’t make money.

In the era of mobile games, things are different.

Grandpas and aunts can also play games on their mobile phones. The rapid increase in the player base will make the lightweight casual game market shine.

Sun Wanran saw that he didn't take it seriously, so he said anxiously: "It's true, I... I'll tell you about two of their games. I checked it out and was surprised. One is called "European Universal Storm", Timeline It is around 1500. Players can choose the forces in the world at that time, and then lead the people to experience the opening of new sea routes, the Renaissance, become powerful in diplomacy and war, and unify the world. There is also the Ming Dynasty in there."

"A strategy game like "Three Kingdoms"?"

"Yes, but this is not a level game, right?"

Sun Wanran rolled her eyes at him.

Zhou Buqi smiled, "Okay, what else?"

Sun Wanran: "It's still a strategy game. P Company mainly makes strategy games. There is also a game called "Hearts of Iron". The timeline is during World War II. Players can choose any force in the world at that time and then develop and grow."

Zhou Buqi was a little surprised, "There are also domestic forces?"

"Yes, the domestic battlefield was also the core battlefield of World War II. The Sichuan Army, the Shaanxi Army, the Ma Jiajun, the Feng Clan, the Zhili Clique, the Central Army, the Puppet Manchukuo, the Wang Jingwei Puppet Regime, and...you know." Sun Wanran He smiled and said, "There is no Chinese version of this game, so I guess it won't be released in China."

Zhou Buqi twitched his lips and said, "It covers the whole world. How big of a game does this have to be? The database alone must be 10G, right? An average computer wouldn't be able to run such a big game."

"right……"

Sun Wanran is not sure about this.

Zhou Buqi sighed, "The idea is quite good. It makes me want to play it, but it's too niche. Especially in countries with relatively weak spending power, who can spend a few dollars just to play a game?" How about spending 10,000 yuan to purchase a computer?”

Sun Wanran hesitated for a moment and said with a guilty conscience: "But I have a little different idea, do you want to listen?"

Zhou Buqi said amusedly: "Tell me, our understanding of the game is actually about the same. Neither of us understands it very well."

Sun Wanran pursed her lips, and then said very subjectively: "I think the game structure of Changyou is too simple. You can't just make mobile games, and you can't just target the lightweight casual game market. Even if you really do it, Well, I don’t think it adds much to Changyou’s brand. If Changyou wants to have a top position in the gaming industry, just making more money may not be enough, at least it’s not justified.”

Zhou Buqi was a little surprised, "What do you think?"

Sun Wanran said quickly: "It should be diversified. At least there should be heavyweight games. Just like when I mention Ubisoft, I think of "Assassin's Creed". This is a top brand. Such heavyweight large-scale games will It is more shocking and more recognized by senior players. Just like Xiaonei.com, Ziweixing does not need to make money from Xiaonei.com, but the existence of Xiaonei.com plays a vital role in Ziweixing's brand."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "It makes some sense."

Changyou owns "Dota 2", "League of Legends", "Dragon" and so on, but these games are not considered large-scale games at all, they are far from enough.

For truly large-scale games, such as "Assassin's Creed" and "Call of Duty", many CG images look like movie shots, making them truly immersive and shocking.

You don’t have to play it, but you can tell by looking at it that this is a top-notch game.

This is often also a symbol of a game company's heritage and strength.

Zhou Buqi felt that Sun Wanran's statement was right.

This kind of traditional 3A large-scale stand-alone game cannot be ignored. It should be diversified and developed to match Changyou's status as a world-class game giant.

This is not over yet, Sun Wanran continued: "Today's game sales are no longer selling game discs, but online sales. Didn't Purple Star International acquire Steam? This is now the most popular genuine game platform, which allows Players buy games. As long as the algorithm is correct, players can be guided to buy 'self-operated' products."

"awesome!"

Zhou Buqi was full of praise.

In particular, the algorithmic mechanism is used to guide players' consumption. This kind of advanced thinking means that the people around Boss Zhou can have such a vision.

Ziweixing International and Changyou are two companies, but Changyou's games can also be regarded as self-operated products for Steam, the game platform owned by Ziweixing International.

Sun Wanran was very happy when he was praised and said with a smile: "Am I right?"

Zhou Buqi said: "That makes sense. Come to my room at night and I will give you a reward."

Sun Wanran frowned slightly, "You don't want to have a child with Shi Jinglin? Can she let you go?"

Zhou Buqi said grandly: "You can come too, don't delay."

The next day, Don Mattrick came with his team, and Zhou Buqi followed them and had a general survey and understanding of the entire Swedish game industry.

It's really unusual.

There are more than 500 game companies in total, and the industry chain is very complete. This includes both upstream game developers and downstream game publishers.

Various special divisions of labor in game operations also have many independent studios that provide services to other companies, such as motion capture, game testing, data analysis, special effects production, etc.

The game categories are very complete, ranging from puzzle and casual mobile games to large-scale 3A projects.

Of course, the focus of the investigation was P Company, which Sun Wanran strongly recommended. This is a company that focuses on the development of historical strategy games, which are related to economy, business, politics, diplomacy, technological development and military power. The complexity of the game can be said to be the top in the world. , it’s really difficult for ordinary players to get started.

This will inevitably lead to slow performance growth of P Company.

For example, "Europa Universalis 3: Kamikaze" released last year only sold 820,000 units worldwide. It took a year of hard work to develop the game, but its revenue was only 20 million US dollars.

Fortunately, this type of product has strong continuity. "European 3" can use a large amount of data and code from "European 2", so the development will be relatively simple, with a development budget of only 8.5 million US dollars.

An annual flagship game has only made more than 10 million US dollars, which is really shabby.

However, it is also a good thing for Zhou Buqi.

He prefers history and is very interested in this kind of historical strategy games. If he wants to acquire P Club or part of its shares, the cost will be much less.

The financial pressure on Changyou will not be great.

We need to hold a board meeting later to discuss whether to place bets in the field of large-scale 3A games. Now is the lowest period of the global 3A game industry, so it is really appropriate to take action now.