Although the game business of daenerys entertainment has an ex gratia quota from Nintendo, it is not as good as kapukong and other local elders. In recent years, Nintendo has felt the threat and has suppressed the games produced by daenerys entertainment either explicitly or secretly.
Simon is very clear about the future development pattern of the host industry.
The last two years have been the last time for Nintendo. After Sony launched PS, Nintendo will decline rapidly.
There is also the rise of PC games.
That's what Simon values the most.
PC games, including stand-alone games and online games, have a potential market scale no less than that of console games. In addition, danielis entertainment and even the whole westero system still have a lot of opportunities.
With the accumulation of danielis special effects in 3D technology, EA has released several 3D games in the past two years. Although the 3D effect at this time is still a bit ugly in Simon's eyes, it is also far beyond the 2D host, which is also a leading place of PC platform.
In addition, the real-time strategy game adapted from the sand dune science fiction series has also launched an online version of the game, which can be said to be the pioneer of online games, and online interaction is also the advantage of PC games.
In the original time and space, because of the historical development, the stand-alone game industry in the West has been very prosperous, and to a certain extent, it has restrained the development of online games. In contrast, China's game industry, because of its late rise, has also encountered a ban on game machines, which has led to the prosperity of the game industry directly from the era of online games, while the stand-alone game industry has not done much because of the lack of copyright protection.
For Simon, the past direction of development is not unchangeable.
At this stage, Denise entertainment and igritte are fully capable of leading and creating a new development direction of American game industry.
EA headquarters in Redwood City, north of Palo Alto.
It's Monday, January 17, 1994.
After the completion of the restructuring, danilisi Entertainment's game business is all incorporated into the EA system, including blizzard, which was originally relatively independent, and silicon and nerve bond studios, which have recently finalized the acquisition. Simon personally led the determination of EA's next stage development plan. At the same time, Simon also personally conceived a cooperation project between EA and the Facebook social network of igritte in recent days.
Happy farm.
This is Simon's memory is very familiar with a web game.
The reason for this idea is not Simon's whim, but more purposeful.
At the end of last year, igritte portal officially launched online video technology. Igritte software department also quietly released two new software, ygritte flash and ygritte flash player. The former is a tool software for interactive animation design of web pages, and the latter is an embedded player software for users to play web animation and video and audio content.
In the original time and space, the prefix of these two softwares was initially micromedia, and later both belonged to adobe.
At this stage, however, micromedia is completely eliminated by igritte. Adobe is still focusing on the development of peripheral software for printers, and mainly cooperates with Apple's Macintosh computer. Apple is also one of Adobe's major shareholders. Simon also bought part of Adobe's shares after the 87 share disaster.
Both companies have deviated from the original development track, but the world wide web has risen ahead of time, so the development of basic tool software is imperative.
In the past few years, igritte company has successively launched ygritte Dreamweaver software for web design and ygritte fireworks for web image processing. With the recent release of ygritte Flash software for Web interactive animation design, all the former web design "three swordsmen" have been gathered by igritte software department.
Not only that, igritte company quietly took more and more mature Photoshop software into its own last year. C girl's dinkbail company only intercepted some of the most basic functions and launched a free image browsing and processing software Isee. At the same time, with the launch of online video, igritte is quietly developing and improving a video editing software ygritte VideoStudio, which is expected to be officially released in the middle of this year.
From Dreamweaver, the earliest web design software, to VideoStudio, the video editing software to be released in the middle of this year, the release of each basic tool software means a substantial increase in the content richness of the world wide web platform.
For example, the flash and supporting flash player software.
Igrit portal has launched online game business in the past two years, mainly some chess and card games.
Before the release of flash technology, if you want to develop an online game with a graphical interface, you need to use a very complex script program, and the display effect is not satisfactory after all.After the launch of flash, it is also a small game. It may take only one or two days for an engineer who can skillfully use the Flash software to develop it, and both the display effect and the running fluency of the game are far better than the original script language to realize the same type of small game.
Happy farm is just a web game realized by flash technology.
Simon has the idea of developing happy farm games, one of the main purposes is to let developers and users see the flash technology of the game, and then promote the rapid popularization of this new technology. On the other hand, if happy farm can achieve the same success as in the original time and space, it can further promote the interaction between Facebook social network user groups and enhance the user adhesion of Facebook.
As for making money, Simon didn't think much about it.
The former happy farm was developed by a game manufacturer named "five minutes studio". It was initially released on the campus network platform and quickly achieved success. At its peak, the number of users exceeded 16 million, but the campus network platform did not bring much profit to the operators.
Until later, it was transplanted to the QQ platform to become a QQ farm. This small game has gone from 3 million yuan a year in kaixinwang era to 50 million yuan a month in Tencent era.
Simon has played several versions of "happy farm" and was impressed by the geese factory's changing game settings.
Because of the different consumption habits between the East and the west, Simon doesn't expect North American users to pay for the props system. However, relying on Facebook, he almost monopolizes the huge scale of social user groups in North America. As long as this game can be popularized and only depends on selling fattening props, he believes that he can still get good profits.
After all, the operating cost of this online flash game is really limited, with a gross profit margin of more than 90%.
What's more, Simon's main purpose of developing this little game is not to make a profit. As long as he completes the promotion of flash technology and increases the adhesiveness and activity of Facebook users, it doesn't matter whether he makes more or less, even if he doesn't make money in the end.
The financial data of the past year is still in the process of statistics. However, it is only a preliminary estimate of the revenue situation. The growth rate of igrit's performance in 1993 is still terrible.
Simon doesn't allow igritte to deviate from his own direction when he sees any business profitable.
Search engine, social network, e-commerce and cloud computing services have always been the top priority of Simon's personal follow-up. Even the portal information business with the largest user base at this stage has to give way to the four core businesses in case of conflict.
At present, with AOL portal, MSN portal and other types of websites catching up, igrit's business focus is to keep its own industry advantages at all costs to avoid being overtaken by other companies.
"In a word, the basic setting of this little game is very simple. The key is the sustainability and interactive system of the game, which you will discuss yourself. Just now Vick's wild boar attack farm setting is very interesting. Not only pets can drive away wild boars, but friends can also help each other drive away attackers in each other's farms, which greatly increases the interactivity of the game. However, you should also pay attention to the fact that the game must be simple enough. Too complex system is very dangerous for this kind of leisure game. My requirement is that players can directly start the game through a set of simple guiding tasks after entering the game. So, any other questions? "
A conference room in EA headquarters.
Simon personally took an hour and a half out of his busy schedule to explain the basic design idea of the game to the technical team selected to develop happy farm. He also named the group "five minutes studio" because of his long-standing bad taste.
Happy farm in my memory only took two weeks to develop.
Simon gave the group of ten a full month in order to get the best possible work.
Simon's voice dropped, and all the ten people in the conference room raised their hands. It's not a chance to say a few words in front of the boss. Simon smiles at the engineer named Victor Aiken whom he just praised.
The 20-year-old, who had only worked in EA for three years, got up and said, "boss, can we leave the city and choose a farm to develop this game? You know, it's going to give us a lot of inspiration. "
Simon looked at the others and everyone was smiling. It was obviously agreed in advance.
Nodding, Simon said, "where do you want to go?"
Victor Aiken did not hide: "my farm in Alabama is very good. I talked to them and everyone wants to see it."
Simon said with a smile: "that's too much, but, well, remember that you only have one month. If you can't produce a game that satisfies me after one month, you can just stay in Alabama farm and become farmers. Next, what are the questions? "The crowd raised their hands again.
Simon looked around and said, "well, it's OK. Let's get ready after the meeting."
This little cold humor made us laugh again. Unconsciously, we felt less awe and closer to this legendary young boss.
When the boss said that, people stopped asking and got up one after another to leave the meeting room.
Larry Probst, the new CEO of EA, came into the meeting room and complained half truely: "Simon, you really connive at them."
Simon took a sip of the coffee from girl A. he didn't mean to leave the meeting room in a hurry. He motioned to Larry Probst to sit down and said, "I've become a good policeman. You're going to be a bad policeman."
Just agreed that the "happy farm" development team went to the Alabama farm to make this game. It's just a small episode of Simon's "loosening the ties" to EA's game studios these days.
The most relaxed working environment and the greatest degree of independence in game creation also mean that there will be a lot of uncontrollable risks in his next job. If he is not the leader of EA and the rich salary, Larry Probst is not willing to take over the job.
Still in a dilemma, Larry probustre said: "the point is, Simon, if I'm a bad policeman to control them, the employees are likely to move you out."
Simon shook his head and said: "Larry, I have never been a boss who indulges his employees without restraint. The core of the authority given this time is the dominant power of game creation. I hope you can have a relaxed game development environment. In addition, if any employee has other violations, it is within your management scope. To be frank, I may be more involved in EA in the last two years, mainly in order to reshape the corporate culture and operation ideas of this company and complete these. Even if you want me to intervene, I don't care. "
This kind of guarantee makes Larry Probst happy and worried, but there is no objection. He is not the founder of EA who likes his own power very much like Tripp Hawkins. As an excellent professional manager, Larry Probst does not lack his own persistence, but is also better at implementing the will of the boss to a large extent.
Simon fired Tripp Hawkins because of that.
The founder of an enterprise often has a deep influence on a company, and inevitably has a strong desire for control.
If we want to reform EA, Simon must fundamentally eliminate the influence of the founder on the enterprise.
With Simon's assurance and knowing his boss's mind, Larry Probst doesn't worry about this problem. Instead, he talks about "happy farm" just now and some projects that EA is developing recently.
In addition to Warcraft, which is being developed by silicon and neural key studio, there are many well-known games under EA, such as dune castle, simulated city, top speed car, dungeon and guardian, etc.
EA's basketball, baseball, rugby and other sports games are more iconic brands than other manufacturers in the industry.
In addition, after initially completing the technology accumulation of 3D game development, Simon also selected a 3D first person shooting game from EA's many incubation projects, which not only provided a lot of design ideas, but also gave the name of "anti terrorist elite" (CS) as usual.
Simon also drew up an E-sports competition plan in private, planning to select EA's PC games with high popularity to hold E-sports competition, so as to further promote EA brand.