Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

Page 351

Back in February 2018, Tencent completed an investment round in Jipai Network, but not many people knew about this investment.

After learning about this, Chen Zhou orchestrated a whole scheme to buy a horse's bones with a thousand pieces of gold.

First, Hejipai Network made a high-profile announcement.

Final Crown became the first game to be included in WEGAME's global release.

Then, Final Crown was available for pre-registration on the WEGAME platform.

Not only was it featured in Times Square, but it also offered a $5 no-minimum-spend coupon to those who logged in and reached a certain level.

Although overseas players don't like the platform.

But this $10 is real money.

Even if there aren't many games on WEGAME right now, it's still a good idea to spend $10 on League of Legends!

As a result, WEGAME, which had been dormant for a long time, saw a surge in downloads in a short period of time.

By using a marketing strategy similar to distributing in-game purchase vouchers for League of Legends, Tencent demonstrated to domestic development teams what a true penguin is.

Although everyone understands this move, it's just an outsider throwing punches haphazardly.

They also knew that the chosen "Final Crown" was just an isolated case.

However, some manufacturers are once again caught in a state of confusion.

Many manufacturers who haven't yet signed platform agreements with Spark are starting to wait and see again.

They didn't necessarily side with the penguins out of turn.

I just wanted to see how Spark would respond to this offensive from the penguins.

~~~

While the penguins were frantically implementing their ALL IN plan.

Lin Li is receiving a guest.

The guest's name was Paul Krof.

Paul Krof, one of the founders of Mediatonic.

M-Company is not well-known in the industry because they mainly focus on developing web games for other studios.

Simply put, it's an outsourcing company.

At the beginning of this year, M-Company, which had been making web games for almost 10 years, decided to transform its business model.

They then presented their first game development proposal and began seeking investment globally.

This proposal is based on an American obstacle course TV show and incorporates some battle royale elements; it has not yet been named.

The plan seemed excellent to them.

It's so much fun.

Unfortunately, from an investor's perspective, this kind of game, which has no successful precedent, is really hard to arouse any desire to invest in.

Just when they were desperate.

The west is dark, but the east is bright.

A new platform found them.

At the exit of the Shanghai airport terminal, Lin Li and his team from Xinghuo shook hands with Paul and the M Company team.

"Hello, Paul."

"Hello, Mr. Lin, Dave asked me to express his gratitude to you in person once again."

"Is he alright? He sounded pretty good on the phone."

"Of course, it couldn't be better. Xinghuo's investment has solved our urgent problem, and we can finally start this great project. Mr. Lin, your investment will definitely yield unimaginable returns."

There are indeed significant differences between overseas developers and domestic development teams in many ways.

For example, Paul actually had no confidence in the quality of the game at this time, but that didn't stop him from bragging in front of Lin Li.

This is both his personality and his negotiation skills.

To be honest, Paul was initially unwilling to cooperate with the Spark platform.

It wasn't for any other reason, but because in his eyes, Spark, with its annual revenue of several billion US dollars, was already a large company.

As someone with a technical background, he doesn't particularly like collaborating with large companies.

Especially large companies in the gaming industry.

M-Company and EA had previously collaborated, but the collaboration was quite unpleasant, partly because EA always tried to influence their creative ideas through investment.

They insist on adding random, inexplicable things to web games.

So when Dave, a partner who had attended the Spark Carnival in China, returned and excitedly told him that he had found the money and the project could begin, he was overjoyed.

Paul's first words were...

"Okay, don't get so excited, Dave. So, what's the price?"

Dave smiled.

"This is not World of Warcraft, there is no price to pay, it's just that our project will be exclusively released on Spark, and we will also give Spark the global operation agency."

Paul nearly broke down upon hearing this answer.

"This is what you call no cost?! Do you even know what exclusive distribution means? Do you know what global distribution means?!"

Dave shook his head with a smile.

"Of course I know that, but Mr. Lin also thought of that."

Speaking of General Manager Lin...

Dave's expression turned somewhat fanatical.

"My trip to China was absolutely the right decision. President Lin truly understands games and we! He's willing to give us $20 million in initial development funding!! And if that's not enough, we can apply for more!!"

"We only need 20 million for 10% of the shares!! And if we reach a certain milestone later, we can provide an additional 20 million in interest-free loans, and we promise not to interfere with our decision-making!"

"That's equivalent to $4 million in development costs."

"Forty million dollars!! Paul!!!"

The amount really shocked Paul, but he remained relatively sober.

"Can be exclusively distributed globally..."

"No, to be precise, it's not an exclusive contract, it's a performance-based agreement. If our global revenue in the first month under Spark's agency doesn't exceed $50 million, then this exclusive contract will expire."

"If that happens, Xinghuo will waive the 20% commission for agents and terminate the exclusivity agreement. At that time, we can go to whichever platform we want, and we may even have the right to change agents."

"??? Really?! Fifty million US dollars? Do they really think our game has that much potential?"

“Yes, and not entirely,” Paul continued in a slightly reminiscent tone:

“You haven’t met President Lin, so you don’t know his personality. He values ​​us highly and believes that we are on the right track, which is why he is willing to invest in us. During this time, he also believes that Spark can develop to the point where, even if it’s a monopoly, it can still push our game to the world.”

"Furthermore, they promised to bring our game to China. Paul, China is a huge market, and I sincerely believe that Xinghuo getting the agency rights is a good thing for us. Otherwise, on our own, we would never have been able to enter that market so quickly..."

Although Paul was skeptical after hearing Dave's words.

But for all the employees of M Company, the information Dave brought back was something to be very excited about.

Forty million US dollars!! That's forty million US dollars!

People can joke, but capital doesn't.

But Paul was still a little worried.

That's why this trip to China came about.

Chapter 423 Head-to-Head

Paul and Lin Li had their first conversation in the car.

As they talked, Paul quickly realized that Dave was right.

Lin Li is not a traditional big company boss, nor is he like the boss of EA or Blizzard's Cordick.

He is a true gamer.

During the half hour from the airport to Spark Company, the two talked a lot about the ideas for Fall Guys.

most of the time.

As Paul chatted, he was surprised to find that the Asian boss sitting next to him knew more about the idea than he did.

Various gameplay options and points to note

This made Paul realize what Dave meant when he said that Lin Li was different.

At the same time, I have some concerns.

If he doesn't agree to cooperate with Spark, based on his feeling just now, it seems like Spark could also make a similar game on its own...

He held back for a long time, but finally asked the question.

"President Lin, since you are so familiar with this subject matter and idea, why don't you do it yourselves?"

"How do you know I didn't?"

"what?"

Seeing Paul's stunned expression, Lin Li smiled and waved.

"Just kidding. Although I mentioned to Dave before that we would port the game to mobile after you finish the base game, we will now fully support you in completing the base game. From technology to funding, you can make any requests you have."

Paul was somewhat skeptical of Lin Li's claim, but he had no choice but to believe it.

In fact.

Lin Li wasn't lying. For Lin Li, the reason Xinghuo didn't become Fall Guys was because the management costs of Fall Guys were too high.

As a newcomer, he was well aware of Fall Guys' popularity.

However, it is also clear that Spark needs to prepare a lot of things to organize a team to make Fall Guys. They need to recruit talent in this field, find suitable people, accelerate development, and launch before Paul.

And all that effort might not yield as much return as directly investing in Paul and binding them to the Spark platform.

More importantly, Paul is an American team.

This attribute is not a bad thing in Spark's globalization strategy.

Not to mention.

Paul's team isn't really good at mobile games. If they get a mobile game license and port it directly to the lower-tier market, they might make more money than with the original game.

~~~

Fall Guys is done.

Have the Spark team liaise with Paul.

For the rest of the time, Lin Li began to focus his attention on the penguins.

He flipped through the report that the platform operations team had given him.

Lin Li fell into thought.

As many media outlets have said, the most terrifying time is when Tencent stops using fancy tricks and starts directly using money to buy traffic.

Although, Penguin only has one game in the global market: League of Legends.

But the problem is.

League of Legends is still competitive in 18. Excluding the Chinese server, it has 1500 million active users across all servers worldwide.

For a newly established platform.

The incremental growth generated by converting League of Legends users alone has been enough to sustain KPIs for a long time.

The newly appointed head of WEGAME may not understand games, but he knows how to spend money.

"Being rich really makes you carefree."

Lin Li sighed, but said nothing more.