Adding Chinese elements to "Plants vs. Zombies Online" has become the top priority of the entire game team.
Chen Tong, who came from a cultural background, does have a keener sense of culture and a very unique understanding. Li Mu simply hopes that Plants vs. Zombies can become a well-known game produced by China, and at the same time hopes that the images in the game can become a well-known game produced by China. A well-known cartoon image, but he has never thought of directly adding elements of Chinese culture into this game, especially the proposal of a "cartoon Chinese zombie" image, which is simply exciting.
In order to deepen the brand, Li Mu asked Chen Tong to take the lead in setting up a spin-off team. This spin-off team should cooperate with toy manufacturers to design and produce corresponding toys, dolls, and hangings for each cartoon character. Decorations, ornaments, dolls, figures, and a variety of interesting daily necessities.
Li Mu himself came up with several ideas, such as a small pea shooter that can actually shoot plastic pea bullets. Such a small toy can be designed to be the size of a keychain, or even become a keychain with a hanging chain and key ring;
The nut wall can also be designed as a keychain, and at the same time, the nut wall itself is a small pocket tumbler. At the same time, the beaten nut wall has tears in its eyes and a firm expression. The image is particularly cute and cute, and is deeply loved by little girls. He has the temperament of a cute and responsible boyfriend in the eyes of girls, so the nut wall can also be designed as a pillow or doll, and the target group is those young female customers;
In addition, each image can be tried in various ways. As long as you pay attention and do quality control, the derivatives produced will definitely be loved by users.
However, Li Mu also reminded the person in charge of the public relations department to do a good job in combating piracy and to use Makino Technology's strong influence, good reputation and government relations to monitor the small commodity industry on the market. If any discovery is made, There are unscrupulous merchants who pirate the image of Plants vs. Zombies. We must resolutely fight against it to the end.
Finally, Li Mu gave everyone a big plan that no one had dared to think of before: if the offline promotion and derivative products of Plants vs. Zombies are done well, in the second half of this year, he will cooperate with Hollywood to film the animation of the same name as "Plants vs. Zombies" For big movies, you can cooperate with Spielberg's DreamWorks, Disney, or Pixar. Whoever can best animate this game, I will cooperate with.
"Angry Birds" can earn 300 million box office, why can't "Plants vs. Zombies"? As long as the influence is sufficient, it is completely expected.
The plan for a big movie gave everyone great encouragement. No one dared to imagine that a game could be turned into a movie and put on the big screen, but they believed in Li Mu. As long as Li Mu said it could be done, it would be done!
Li Mu will no longer worry about purely making money. In a few years, his current company, as well as the investments in Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, will create at least hundreds of billions of dollars or even more for him. With a wealth of over 100 million US dollars, under this tone, what Li Mu has to consider is not simply the addition of money, but the transformation of money.
For some businessmen, making money becomes boring and boring after making a certain amount of money. They even feel that making billions a month already makes them feel miserable. But while they are miserable, they continue to make money. Li Mu will not be so pretentious. The thought of making billions or tens of billions a month would not cause him pain, but if the money earned back was just a number piled on a bank account, it would really make him feel pain.
Therefore, Li Mu has many things and responsibilities planned for himself in the future, including helping China export its culture on a global scale.
If you want to export culture to the world, you must first have super IP as a weapon to conquer the city. The so-called IP, in a written sense, is intellectual property. Marvel's drawing of Iron Man is IP, and Li Mu's own drawing of "Old Man Ding" is also IP, but The difference is that Iron Man can gain more than one billion fans around the world, and "Old Man Ding" is probably tired of playing it even today's three-year-old children. Therefore, if you really want to talk about an IP in a strategic sense, it must have a strong fan base. And only if fans have intellectual property rights that have the potential to pay.
These days, the concepts of "IP" and "IP derivatives" have not been created yet, but "IP derivatives" themselves have long been a way to make money in the entertainment field in Europe, America and Japan. Disney was the first to play with IP derivatives. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck have become popular around the world decades ago, and various derivative products containing the images of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck have also begun to be sold in the global market. When Li Mu was young, some of his kindergarten classmates Half of the people are carrying Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck schoolbags. Although they are all pirated copies, in a mature market environment, all similar derivative products are helping Disney make money.
The most powerful IP derivative of Disney is the theme park. The first theme park opened almost fifty years ago. The elements in the theme park are all its own super IP, which are the ones that are popular around the world. Cartoon images, including Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Cinderella, and Winnie the Pooh. These super IPs can not only directly convert fans of their own cartoons, but can also be unique in the global market. This is indeed very powerful.
Looking back at China, until Li Mu was reborn, there was no theme park that was truly based on China IP. On the contrary, as soon as the Disneyland in Shanghai opened, its business was so booming that even Disney doubted its life. The richest man, Mr. Wang, once boasted that with Wanda Today, Disney has not been able to make a profit for twenty years, but Shanghai Disney has already achieved profitability in the first year of its operation. This shows that a company with a historical background, a mature model, and strong IP support has performed well in the market. How stable and powerful.
In Li Mu’s eyes, if Wanda Theme Park does not have strong IP support and does not have the ability to continuously create high-quality IP, then Wanda Theme Park will never be able to compete with Disney. At most, it will be as pure as Happy Valley and Fantawild. The amusement park's hardware and management level are worth a try.
But Disney’s soft power can never be surpassed by Wanda. Even a three-year-old child knows that when you go to Disney, you can see Mickey Mouse, Snow White and Cinderella, and there are even fairy tale worlds, entertainment facilities, and entertainment facilities belonging to these characters. The characters and wonderful performances cannot be surpassed by Wanda.
Li Mu hopes that in addition to making money in the future, he can use the earned money to create some super IPs for China that can take the world by storm. Plants vs. Zombies is just the first one. There may also be Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and Temple Run in the future. If these phenomenal super games develop, they can also help the web IP to flourish, allowing China’s classic web texts to be exported to the world in the form of excellent film and television works.
The failure of Eastern adventure IPs like "Ghost Blowing the Lamp" to be exported to the world has always been a big regret in Li Mu's view. Classic Chinese science fiction such as "The Three-Body Problem" has not been able to be made into excellent movies and then exported to the world. It is also a big regret in Li Mu's heart. There are many reasons for this regret, such as the overall strength of China's film and television companies is not enough, the level of employees in China's film and television industry is still lacking, the capital courage of China's film and television industry is not enough, etc., but Ultimately, it's still a matter of money.
For independent projects, no capital is willing to lose money, because if an independent project loses money, it is almost impossible to make money back. Film and television drama production is a standard independent project. The story of "Ghost Blowing the Lamp" is indeed very good, but the presentation The cost is too high. The first thing that film and television companies and film and television funds consider is whether they can earn back the cost. Under this premise, they either don't make a film, or they only invest a small amount of money to make a bad film, which is why there are so many 50-cent special effects. Rubbish films are constantly emerging. Whether it is "Ghost Blowing the Lamp" or "Tomb Raiders" produced in this way, even domestic audiences cannot accept it. How can it be exported overseas
However, if Li Mu were to operate, there would not be such a problem. In the future, his assets may be so much that he can’t spend them all. If he had a budget of 200 million US dollars in 2010, he would hire the most professional team in the world. The filming of "Ghost Blowing Out the Lantern" will definitely promote "Ghost Blowing the Lantern" to the international market. If we can invest US$500 million in 2015 to film the "Three-Body" trilogy, this Chinese science fiction masterpiece that won the Hugo Award will definitely be able to It has become a world-class science fiction IP, but why did "Ghost Blowing the Lamp" and "The Three-Body Problem" fail to achieve great success in film and television? The bottom line is that there is a lack of money.
There is no shortage of rich people in China, but there is a shortage of people who are willing to pay for cultural dissemination, regardless of returns. When the movie box office first started to improve in China, all kinds of capital entered the film and television industry, but none of these capitals were for Regarding culture itself, they all regard culture as a business that can make quick money. They organize a film and television fund, invest in several film and television projects, incubate them for a few months and then release them. They expect the box office to exceed 100 million, 500 million, or 1 billion.
In order to achieve the purpose of making money, a considerable number of these so-called "cultural people" do anything to make money. Some plagiarize other people's stories, some infringe other people's copyrights, some treat the audience as fools and make false propaganda, and some hire various people to make money. Lu Shuijun madly hypes and even discredits competitors, buys box office, and even steals other people's box office. Therefore, the overall professional ethics of these people in China's cultural industry is not as good as that of the real estate speculators. After all, the real estate speculators want everyone. Let’s stir up the real estate market together. No one ever expects other people’s buildings to collapse due to accidents, let alone blowing up other people’s houses...
Li Mu does not want to associate with such a so-called "cultural man" who is full of copper odor. He wants to do culture as a noble thing. In the future, he is willing to spend tens of billions or even tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in his own business. I will continue to support China’s cultural projects throughout my life, and provide sufficient support for the export of Chinese culture around the world. After all, culture is not a business, but an art. The culture of a nation is not just an art, but also an art. A legacy!
PS: I have been very busy recently. I have always wanted to watch "Wonder of the West", but I didn't get around to it until tonight. I personally feel that the overall film is a bit deliberate. The director wanted too much, so the whole thing was a bit out of control. However, Wang Leehom plays Shen Guangyao. The plot of that unit still moved me very much, and it was in line with the psychological tone of my fictional movie "Flying Tigers" in this book. Thanks to the director, today, when there are so many commercial bad movies, I can still think of the history of the nation and these martyrs. This should be the content that people in today’s cultural circle are lacking! I also sincerely hope that one day, an excellent director and an excellent film investor will be able to shoot a complete movie about the Flying Tigers.
(End of chapter)