Reborn on the Internet: Starting with Games

Chapter 133 Blizzard is coming

Blizzard is headquartered in Irvine, California.

The address is No. 1 Blizzard Road, and it is named directly after the company, which shows its domineering power.

After Chen Hao and his party entered the Blizzard headquarters gate, they came to a circular square. At first glance, they could see a 1:1 real-scale Warcraft Wolf Cavalry statue in the middle.

Directly in front is a building complex consisting of a large building and multiple small buildings. It was named the Whispering Building because its shape resembles a pair of ears. The Whispering Building covers an area of ​​more than 100 acres and is a very magnificent building. Blizzard currently has more than 2000 employees worldwide.

Whisper Tower is not only the headquarters of Blizzard game company, but also one of the offices of the famous animation production company Pixar.

The distance between the headquarters of these two companies is only a few hundred meters, which can be said to be a golden combination of games and animation.

No wonder players later joked that Blizzard is actually an animation company that makes CG with heart and games with feet. This may have some reasons.

Following Riot Games in the future, it made music with its heart and games with its feet, and was known as Yuliang for a while. However, Riot later entered the animation industry and launched the League of Legends animation "Battle of Two Cities" with great success and challenged Blizzard.

Later, Blizzard and Legendary Pictures finally got down to business and launched the movie "World of Warcraft" with the same name. Due to its huge world view, non-fans felt that there were many characters and the plot was too big, and the plot was based on the content of Warcraft 1 and 2, which led to polarized reviews. , became a fan of the movie.

After watching it at the time, he also complained that it would be a big mistake for you to start filming from scratch instead of filming such a classic plot as 2234 and an Egg.

The investment in the film was 1.6 million U.S. dollars. Calculated based on three times the film management investment return, it would take 3 million U.S. dollars to be expected to recover the capital. The Chinese market was very lively, but the North American market was not strong enough and it was completely blocked. In the end, the global box office was only 4.8 million U.S. dollars, which left the two companies We lost a lot of money, which resulted in "World of Warcraft 4.32" being aborted.

This is the headquarters of Blizzard Game Company and a sacred place in the hearts of countless Blizzard players.

The group of people stood in front of a sign introducing the park. Chen Hao stopped to look at the English words on it and nodded repeatedly. Blizzard is indeed a Blizzard.

Related company profiles and other information were translated and told to him by Xu Pengkun.

Otherwise, with Chen Hao's English proficiency, which has not even passed level 4, he can only understand Iyouwe (ouch).

This is also the significance of bringing Xu Pengkun with me on this trip abroad.

Since it was an appointment made in advance, Xu Pengkun went to negotiate. After a while, he led a fat Chinese man over. His round face looked very friendly. Chen Hao vaguely felt that the man looked familiar, but he couldn't remember where he met him. Pass.

According to Xu Pengkun, this was Wyatt Chen, the project manager in charge of Diablo from Blizzard Entertainment, who was responsible for receiving their group.

Chen Hao was a little surprised. A project manager was responsible for reception?I don’t understand the thinking of foreigners.

But after all, Century Zongheng is only famous in China, and its reputation abroad is at a neutral level, so the department manager's reception is worthy of the money they spend.

After the other party’s introduction, it turned out that the surrounding small buildings were separate office areas for each game project. Over there was the building responsible for the StarCraft project, here was the building responsible for Diablo, and the building in the distance was for the Warcraft project. .
Then he led Chen Hao and his party to visit the Blizzard Exhibition Hall. There were many statues or figures full of allusions, as well as a whole wall of honor.

Scaled models of the Terran ship, the Protoss Zealot, and the Zerg Queen from "StarCraft".

Diablo's Book of Khaine, the Soul Stone.
Chen Hao and others were so dazzled by it that they never wanted to leave. How could they not take a group photo of such a holy place?

Chen Hao and Xu Pengkun had a great time filming.

Before Blizzard and NetEase divorced, every Blizzard player was a Blizzard player and was full of emotions for Blizzard's games.

Although Blizzard, known as the king of ticket bounces, affects the hearts of players with ticket bounces time and time again, Blizzard still treats it like first love.

Nowadays, Blizzard's StarCraft series, Warcraft series, and Diablo series have already laid a solid foundation among the Chinese player base.

Chen Hao also clearly knows that Blizzard has not yet reached its peak at this time, and subsequent classics such as "World of Warcraft", "Hearthstone", "Diablo 3", "Overwatch" and "Heroes of the Storm" are still on the way to production. .

During Blizzard's peak period, there was a slogan circulating among gamers: "Every product produced by Blizzard must be high-quality."

This also explains to a large extent the influence of Blizzard.

After all, the games produced by Blizzard carry the youth and memories of a generation.

Chen Hao is one of Blizzard's fans, otherwise he wouldn't be thinking about representing World of Warcraft every chance he gets.

It can be said that except for the earliest Diablo 1 and Warcraft 1, which I have never played, I have played all the remaining Blizzard games without playing any of them.

It's just that under the pressure of follow-up work, I will focus on one or two Blizzard games every two years as appropriate.It wasn't until before the rebirth that Blizzard and NetEase separated, and he completely transformed into a Blizzard player, so much so that even a die-hard Diablo fan didn't even buy Diablo 4.

The player who played this king bomb hand with the effect of four doubles and two kings was none other than Bobby Cowdick, a businessman who made his fortune through speculation.

It was this person who forced out Blizzard founder Mike Mohan. Since 13, the company had promised not to interfere in any way with Blizzard's game development, but it had become a piece of waste paper. Blizzard was also turned upside down. From the peak to decline.

Later, Blizzard was basically just a game studio, a tool for businessmen to seek benefits, without any decision-making power or voice at all.

Caldick began to work hard for more than ten years. For example, "Overwatch" was actually born out of Blizzard's aborted project Titan. After Blizzard decided to shelve Titan, Caldick forced Blizzard to come up with a remedy plan.The price of rushing to launch is "Overwatch". It built overwhelming momentum in the early stage, but it has been going downhill since then.

Later, Microsoft spread its intention to acquire Blizzard, which made Caudick even more emboldened. When the contract between Blizzard and NetEase expired and they were negotiating to renew the contract, Blizzard's financial report that year was not good, which meant that if Microsoft acquired it, the price would be affected. .

Based on this, Blizzard wants to increase the commission ratio for cooperation with NetEase to make up for the gaps in subsequent financial reports. After all, NetEase really makes money. If the commission is included and the true income level is restored, NetEase's national server revenue will at least account for One-third of Blizzard's revenue will naturally fuel Blizzard's greed.

The Cowdick Lion asked NetEase to prepay $5 million in renewal fees in advance and increase the commission ratio in order to make Blizzard's financial report for the next quarter look more beautiful.However, what surprised them was that NetEase did not perform according to their script, because at this time NetEase games had become a trend, and the revenue of Blizzard games' national server only accounted for 2% of NetEase's annual revenue.

Since most of Ding Sanshi and NetEase Blizzard Game Division are also fans of Blizzard, although it is a bit useless, they still continue to operate out of sentiment.

When the two parties negotiated the last item, Blizzard actually wanted the data of all NetEase players. This completely touched Ding Sanshi's bottom line. NetEase's attitude began to become tougher. This made Caudick think that NetEase was threatening them, thus on NetEase's side. Without knowing the background, unilaterally announcing the termination of the contract caused thousands of waves with one stone.

Then Blizzard issued a letter to the players, with an aggrieved face, saying that it was the other party's problem that blamed NetEase, and we actually wanted to renew the contract.

Fortunately, domestic players are not fools, and they all support NetEase to stand up straight and not lie down.

On January 1, Blizzard issued a statement stating that "NetEase is unwilling to postpone the game service for six months based on the existing cooperation terms while we are looking for a new partner, so that everyone can continue to play during this period. For this reason, we cannot help players We regret that we continue to provide services.”

On the same day, NetEase made a strong statement: "We believe that Blizzard's proposal - including today's sudden statement - is outrageous, inappropriate and inconsistent with business logic. What's even more egregious is that Blizzard did not consider this The behavior of asking for and taking everything, riding a donkey to look for a horse, and staying divorced puts players and NetEase where!"

On January 1, NetEase's internal cafe launched a new product - "Blizzard Green Tea", priced at 18 yuan.

At 13:28 on the same day, NetEase started a live broadcast to dismantle the Blizzard Warcraft ax sculpture in the park and replace it with the "horse-killing knife", an eternal prop prop.

Countless netizens in the live broadcast room expressed their support for NetEase's actions through comments.

"The team is about to be disbanded. Are you waiting for two weeks before the server is released to negotiate an extension? Do you really think about this for the players?"

“I offered to break up, but I haven’t found a new home yet, so I proposed to postpone the breakup. yue~~~”

"It is indeed a company that has been an onmyoji. The yin and yang weirdness is very popular with me. I would like to call NetEase the great onmyoji!"

After the official shutdown on January 1, NetEase did its best to deal with the aftermath. Players' game data should be sealed and sealed, the service should be stopped, refunds should be refunded, and finally NetEase's internal Blizzard game-related teams were disbanded.

NetEase is also ruthless, and in a few days directly chooses to make public the terms that Blizzard requires domestic players to give them information.

If any other company cooperates with Blizzard next, there is a high probability that it will agree to Blizzard's conditions. This has caused several other major domestic companies to be on guard for a while and not dare to act rashly. After all, Didi has learned from the past and no one dares to commit crimes.

NetEase's Nishuihan game team joined the new force of the original World of Warcraft department. One month later, the online game Nishuihan drew on World of Warcraft-related mechanisms and added a World of Warcraft veteran server, and the charging model also separately implemented a point-card monthly card system, with sincerity To welcome these homeless wowers, it attracted a large number of World of Warcraft players to settle in.

What’s even more dramatic is that on the other hand, Blizzard didn’t expect that NetEase was so determined to die together, and secondly, it was difficult to find domestic agents. Several other major companies gradually became wait-and-see, especially one that belongs to China. In this case, a game change agent needs to re-apply for a version number. This process is, well, very complicated.

The beautiful country and the eagle country began to investigate Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard, which also made Microsoft's attitude become ambiguous. For a while, Blizzard was in a dilemma, and then it got out of control.

The lost memory struck again, reminding Chen Hao of this grudge situation.

In this rebirth, we must learn lessons. Agents are always just an alternative, and self-research is the mainstay of future development.Whether it is chips or games, the phenomenon of stuck necks does not distinguish between industries.

Xu Pengkun walked around and saw that Chen Hao was still staring at the statue of a heifer shaman in a daze.

He patted the other person's shoulder with his hand, "What's wrong? Your taste is quite unique? Do you like this?"

Chen Hao did not refute, but looked at his best friend with an unclear meaning, "Nothing, let's go."

Why was he babbling? Xu Pengkun was a little surprised by Chen Hao's unusual behavior.

(End of this chapter)