Offside game

The entire science park has now been cleared, and construction and landscaping companies have begun moving in and starting work. Liu Jun has assigned specific people to handle these matters. Lechang Network Company's main task now is preparing for its charging plan and developing a series of fee-charging measures.

All parties are in close contact and negotiations, and the European branch is also working on this matter. At this time, the European branch is more like a sales agency. All of Lechang Network's servers are located in China, and the main task of the European branch is to promote Lechang's various platforms overseas.

With the success of "Evolution of History", the Lechang gaming platform has developed rapidly overseas. However, Lechang Chat is not yet enough to pose a threat to foreign instant messaging software such as ICQ and MSN. Therefore, the benefits of charging fees are not expected to be very high. It is estimated that the profits from charging fees overseas should mainly come from the Lechang gaming platform.

As Su Yi was once again busy juggling school and work, he received another call from Luo Juan of Tiandi Software. Su Yi and Luo Juan's relationship was now somewhere between friends and business partners, and she had been a great help to him in many ways.

Luo Juan told Su Yi that someone wanted to see him. When Su Yi asked who it was, he was told it had to be kept secret, only that they wanted to meet him that evening.

"Why all this mystery?" Su Yi thought, feeling a little annoyed and unable to help but speculate. But there was no point in dwelling on it; he would find out when they met that evening.

That evening, Luo Juan personally picked up Su Yi in her car. She drove him to their meeting place, and on the way, they casually chatted about the sales figures for the two games, *Historic Evolution* and *Mechanical Civilization*. In the second month, while *Historic Evolution* sales had declined somewhat, it still achieved around 100 million copies sold in Asia. *Mechanical Civilization*, even before its official release, had already received 50 pre-orders, a success largely attributed to the strong sales of the former game. In a few days, Su Yi's share of the second month's revenue would be deposited into his account.

Luo Juan drove directly to the outskirts of the city. The meeting place was a private club. Luo Juan was a member of this club, and she entered the parking lot without any problems. Su Yi was quite familiar with this kind of place, and under Luo Juan's guidance, he entered a private room in the club. The person he was supposed to see was already waiting inside.

He opened the door to the room, and there was someone Su Yi recognized waiting inside. It was Luo Ning, the president of the Peking University Finance and Economics Society. In fact, Luo Ning wasn't a conventionally beautiful woman, but she always exuded a confident aura that captivated every man who saw her. Today, she was dressed in a gray suit, the typical attire of a professional woman. However, unlike the chill outside, it was warm inside, making one feel the need to take off their coat to feel comfortable.

Upon seeing her, Su Yi's first thought was of the Mingcheng Community she owned, and he couldn't help but wonder what her purpose was in taking the initiative to find him.

Luo Juan took the initiative to introduce Su Yi, saying, "Xiaojing, this is my cousin, Luo Ning. She's also in university, but she's already a junior at Beidu University. She also started her own business, founding a famous online community called Mingcheng. You should have heard of it, right?" Then she turned to Luo Ning and said, "Ningning, this handsome young man is Su Yi, the chairman of Lechang Network, whom you've been wanting to meet. Oh, right, he should be called the chairman of Dream International now."

Upon hearing her say this, Su Yi humbly replied, "Sister Luo, please don't make fun of me. Our company may have a good reputation, but it's far inferior to your Tiandi Software."

Luo Ning was quite generous, extending his hand to shake hands with Su Yi and saying with a smile, "If Chairman Su's Dream International is a small company, then our company is just a small workshop, haha."

"Sister Luo, you flatter me. Your Mingcheng Community is very well run. I'm a user myself, though my level isn't very high," Su Yi said with a smile. After meeting Luo Ning at the last ball, he actually registered an account and tried it out in the Mingcheng Community, because he himself had the idea of ​​integrating Lechang's various platform communities.

Hearing Su Yi say that, Luo Ning's eyes lit up, and she asked, "Really? Does Chairman Su have any suggestions for our Mingcheng Community?"

“Sister Luo, you don’t need to call me Chairman Su. It feels a bit strange, haha. Just call me Xiao Yi like Sister Luo does.” Su Yi thought for a moment and said, “I feel that Mingcheng Community is quite mature, but from a business perspective, the profit model doesn’t seem obvious yet. The main profit should still be from advertising revenue. Obviously, Mingcheng Community’s user base is mainly students and white-collar workers. I wonder if this was the intended scope when the community was first established. Within this segment, Mingcheng Community already has a strong appeal and influence.”

During the conversation, Su Yi learned that Luo Ning had approached her this time hoping to collaborate with their Lechang Network. She had initially approached Tencent to discuss this matter, but without satisfactory results. Then, she learned about Su Yi from her cousin Luo Juan, who happened to be the chairman of Lechang Network. Luo Ning thought that Lechang Network was also an extremely suitable partner, hence this meeting.

“Lechang Network has a large user base, while Mingcheng Community’s strength lies in its content and influence on students and white-collar workers. If the two can cooperate, it will indeed have a strong synergistic effect. I just don’t know what kind of cooperation Sister Luo wants to use?” Su Yi raised a substantive question.

"Your company can acquire less than 50% of Mingcheng Network's shares through investment." Since Mingcheng Network was independently founded by Luo Ning, she owns all the shares. As long as Su Yi's shareholding is less than 50%, control of the company remains in her hands.

Su Yi shook his head and said, "Sister Luo, let's talk business. Although you founded Mingcheng, I can understand your feelings for it. But I can't accept this condition. After all, Dream International isn't my own company, and I have to be able to convince the other shareholders. You should understand that rather than getting a company we can't control, I think they would prefer to create such a community themselves. Although it won't have the same influence as yours immediately, I believe that with Lechang's nearly 100 million registered users as a foundation, the development of the new community won't be too slow. It will just take a little longer."

Hearing Su Yi say this, Luo Ning considered it and said somewhat helplessly, "I can give you 60% of the shares, but you must stipulate in the agreement that one year later I can acquire at least 10% of the shares at three times the price when the agreement takes effect."

Su Yi shook his head again and said, "I've said before that we can't accept a company we can't fully control. Sister Luo should be able to imagine that if we follow your ideas, all we'll get is a partnership with reservations, which may not be beneficial to Mingcheng Community, because the effect will be greatly reduced. I know that besides Mingcheng Network, Sister Luo has another company under her name, which mainly operates online games. The game you operated before was quite successful. It seems that your company is currently in talks with a Korean company about game distribution. It seems that Sister Luo has a high opinion of the online game market."

Just now, Su Yi had secretly connected with the Mother Nest and found out a lot of information about Luo Ning. When he saw the information about her online game company and the general financial situation of her company, he also keenly guessed why Luo Ning had found him.

It seems she wants to switch her focus to the online gaming market. The domestic online gaming market is still in its early stages, but some people have already seen its potential, and Luo Ning also wants to quickly grab a large share of this market.

As Su Yi had predicted, Luo Ning initially entered the online game market tentatively, only to find the results unexpectedly good. This led her to see the market's potential. A very decisive person, she immediately contacted a South Korean game company, intending to distribute one of their highly popular Korean titles, but the company insisted on a very high price.

Although the online game she's currently running has a large user base, it hasn't been charging for long and hasn't recouped much of the investment. Furthermore, she hasn't yet paid off the loan she took out from the bank to acquire the game company, and she doesn't want to use her family's influence to force a loan. In addition, she's heard that several domestic game companies are also eyeing this game and are preparing to send representatives to South Korea to discuss distribution agreements.

Relying on her family's power and her cousin's wealth, Luo Ning could easily have handled these matters. However, her initial motivation for starting her own business was to prove her abilities; otherwise, with her family background, she wouldn't have needed to work so hard to build her business. Therefore, she didn't intend to use her connections. The only solution was to find a suitable company to sell a portion of Mingcheng's shares.

Luo Ning and Luo Juan were surprised by Su Yi's excellent information, but then they heard Su Yi continue, "I believe Sister Luo also agrees that integrating with Lechang's chat and battle platforms will be most beneficial to the development of Mingcheng Community. To be honest, our company is also developing a related plan to integrate all of Lechang's platforms, with the direction of community building, portalization, and interconnectivity. Therefore, if Mingcheng Community joins, it will make this plan even more perfect. Even if we don't get Mingcheng Community, we will still launch this plan. I believe that as a community personally created by Sister Luo, you would also want it to have the best future."