At midnight on New Year's Day, Li Mu celebrated the New Year with the core technical team at Makino Technology. Lin Qingya also took the initiative to stay because she also wanted to witness this historic moment.
The game Happy Farm has been internally tested for several rounds within Makino Technology. All employees without exception are obsessed with this seemingly boring and mentally retarded game. It is hard to imagine that a man in his thirties with a wife and children would Gentlemen will also pay attention to the plots of land they have on Happy Farm every day, when the crops will mature, when they can steal food from their friends, when they can upgrade, when they can expand the farm, when they can plant more advanced crops, When can I have my own dog to look after my home and care for my own home...
In short, everyone at Makino Technology is extremely optimistic about this game. In Lin Qingya’s words: “This game is addictive.” The core employees of Makino Technology also firmly believe that this game will completely change the domestic market of Makino Technology. The status of an Internet company, but the real goal behind it is more ambitious. Li Mu wants to use it to establish the largest social network in the domestic Internet field. Once this goal is achieved, Makino Technology will have the best user base.
At 11:30 in the evening, Lin Qingya called and ordered a dozen cups of coffee from the 24-hour cafe downstairs. She accompanied a group of men with technical backgrounds to stay in the large office of the company's technology department, staring at the projector to type out the results. data recording system.
Seeing that there was only half an hour left to go online, Kong Lingyu took a sip of coffee and asked Li Mu: "BOSS, how long do you think it will take for Happy Farm to become completely popular after it goes online?"
Li Mu held his chin and thought for a while, then said seriously: "If we are optimistic, three days will be enough."
"Three days..." Kong Lingyu sighed: "It sounds difficult, but it doesn't feel impossible."
Lin Qingya said with a smile: "Don't forget, Happy Farm has its own communication attributes. Once users get involved, they will definitely add new friends and even recruit friends around them to join. After all, this game is more fun when you have more friends." .”
Kong Lingyu nodded and said, "Yes, when I think of this, I think three days is possible."
Li Mu said: "Comparison and showing off are typical social attributes. The product design of our two sets of rankings will definitely make most users flock to it. Coupled with our early model of inviting friends to give away props, it will definitely become popular very quickly and make you happy. In the first half of the month when the farm goes online, it will definitely bring a large number of new users to Tieba, so we must be prepared to meet the traffic peak."
Kong Lingyu said: "BOSS, don't worry, we will definitely not be embarrassed in terms of server hosting like Q Bar."
Li Mu said with a smile: "Be prepared for everything in advance."
Seeing the time gradually entering the countdown, the mood of more than a dozen people present began to gradually become nervous, and the tension was also filled with uncontrollable excitement and anticipation. After counting down for ten seconds, the perpetual calendar clock on the wall finally jumped to January 1, 2002. At 0:00 on the same day, which is the standard Yanjing time, Li Mu pressed the online button on Kong Lingyu's computer, and the new version of Tieba, which had been prepared for a long time, was finally officially launched.
Many loyal users and competitors of Tieba are waiting for the arrival of midnight to see what kind of "personal space" and games Tieba will launch. Therefore, before midnight arrives, a large number of users begin to refresh the Tieba page. , waiting for the new version to be launched.
At midnight, those users who kept refreshing the page suddenly found that a prompt with a picture popped up on the Tieba page: 2002, a new journey, let’s start with Tieba.
The picture is a blurred photo. In the photo, it can be vaguely seen that a Boeing 747 is taking off.
At the bottom of the picture, there is a beautifully designed button with only four words: Start Now.
The user hurriedly clicked to start the trip immediately. Afterwards, the page changed significantly. Tieba was a bit more beautiful than before. In addition to the design being more modern and beautiful, a "Personal Space" option appeared in the upper right corner of the Tieba page. This option is based on Li Mu's request was made into red fonts and highlighted, which is quite eye-catching. According to Li Mu's request, this highlighting will last for half a month.
Click to enter the personal space, and the user will find that the entire page seems to be designed on a base map. The base map is a simple picture transitioning from sky blue to white, like the classic background cartoon of Windows XP. This design method is very important to today's For Internet users, they have almost never seen it, so the first sight and impression are excellent. The most important thing is that the base map supports user customization.
There is also a line of English letters written in light blue artistic font on the base map: YYzone. If you look carefully at its domain name, it is also yyzone.tieba.com.
Li Mu did not use any official language to describe his personal space as YYzone. He just gave these two less obvious elements to pave the way for his future instant messaging software named YY.
Many times, he also wants others to sincerely praise him when they evaluate him: Awesome. That's why he wanted to leave some clues to users and industry insiders, and when they were shocked by YY in the future, he wanted to tell them that he had actually planned all of this.
The page style of personal space is very close to that of QQ Space in later generations. This kind of visual design is indeed very advanced in the current Internet field. Users who are used to seeing various other websites can easily be impressed.
The initial version of personal space integrated five major functions: "photo album", "message board", "diary", "talking" and "game". It was basically a product built based on the architecture of QQ space. But now There are still several years before the emergence of QQ space, so these have become original creations of Makino Technology.
The data on the projector starts counting from zero, and what keeps rising at an extremely fast speed is the number of visits to the personal space after it goes online.
A large number of users poured into the personal space from the eye-catching entrance in the upper right corner, one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand...
In the 26th second after it went online, a user tried to send the first comment, which contained only three words: "La la la."
In the 39th second after it went online, Happy Farm got its first user after it was officially launched.
Ten seconds later, the first crop of Happy Farm was harvested. The first trial user, when planting wheat that took five minutes, followed the system prompts and used a pack of ordinary chemical fertilizers given by the system. The effect of ordinary chemical fertilizers is By advancing the maturity time of crops by ten minutes, crops that require ten minutes or less can mature instantly.
In the third minute after going online, the first user who replaced the default image with a custom image was born.
Within twenty minutes of going online, the number of visits to the personal space reached one million.
In these twenty minutes, "Tao Shuo" posted 680,000 messages, left 120,000 messages, and uploaded only 30,000 photo albums.
Within twenty minutes, 300,000 new friends were added. This data is the statistics of each time a friend is added. User A added a new user B, which counts once, and added user C twice, which only takes the initiative. The added behavior is used as the measurement standard. That is to say, if user B is added by user A, the system will not record it repeatedly.
In these twenty minutes, there were more than 500,000 new users of Happy Farm, and 90% of them planted their first crops.
For users, when they first opened this game, they did not think that this game would be very fun. It was just that the cartoon graphics of this game were more attractive. However, since the game had a fool-like automatic planting process at the beginning to reduce User trial cost, so the user conversion rate is very high.
Twenty minutes in, and the true viscosity of this game is still not evident.
An hour later, the number of users of Happy Farm reached 860,000, and the number of new friends added reached an astonishing 2.2 million times.
The social aspects of the game are already beginning to emerge.
Tonight, many big names in the industry are also paying attention to Makino Technology's new moves. What they first pay attention to is personal space. The personal space is beautifully made and has many and novel functions. Many big names in the industry are seeing this interface and seeing these When talking about product functions, they all secretly praised Makino Technology’s product concept as extraordinary. Personal space is completely a product created to increase user stickiness and interaction. Messages, talks, logs, and photo albums basically embody the concept of display and interaction. Gene, these product positionings will definitely greatly increase user stickiness and loyalty in the end, which is quite innovative.
As for the game Happy Farm, many people in the industry scoffed at it.
Today’s games are dominated by client games. The so-called client games are naturally client-side games. The current page technology is not mature enough and the network speed is not fast enough. If you want to achieve the exquisite game graphics and the large and interesting structure, you basically can only rely on Developing a client to reflect this, so embedding the game into the page sounds as boring as trying to modify a motorcycle engine on a 28-year-old bicycle.
However, out of the mentality that only by knowing yourself and the enemy can you win every battle, almost all people in the industry have played this game.
Mr. Li is also one of them. At the beginning, he was not interested in this cartoon-like Flash***, but after playing for a while, he discovered the charm of this game.
Happy Farm upgrades quickly in the initial stage. Plant crops on several plots of land. After harvesting, you can upgrade to the second level, and then get an unlocked piece of land, a new crop, and some free props.
Quickly allowing users to upgrade, allowing users to discover the changes and fun of upgrades, immerse themselves in it, and constantly look forward to upgrades and more advanced exclusive rights. This is almost the most followed principle in the game industry, and Happy Farm is The setting of the game at this point is extremely powerful. Li Mu's system architecture ensures that users can definitely experience the obvious difference from the previous level every time they upgrade. In other words, each level has its corresponding crops. , you can add a piece of land every three levels, and you will unlock a privilege every ten levels, such as being able to have pets, being able to build various in-depth workshops for crops, being able to beautify your own farm, etc.
This kind of fine division is very attractive to most users. Even Mr. Li is not immune to this. He has long had an account on Tieba named RobinLi, and he likes to hang out. I met many netizens on the Internet forum, and also added a group of friends on the Tieba forum, including Tan Yaocheng and colleagues from several companies.
Tan Yaocheng also played Happy Farm at home with the mentality of doing some research, but when he started trying to steal food from his friends, he unknowingly fell in love.
A friend had just planted a piece of wheat. When he was looking for a lighter to light a cigarette, he found that his wheat had been stolen. He jumped up and cursed in anger. But Tan Yaocheng dodges after stealing. Once he successfully steals vegetables, he can not only steal For a certain amount of crops, you can also get a certain amount of experience and money rewards, which made him feel happy. It turns out that stealing vegetables is the shortcut to quickly upgrade!
So, Tan Yaocheng calculated the maturity time of his several pieces of land, and then checked them one by one in his friend list. Once he found out that someone's land had matured but had not had time to harvest, he would definitely go up and rub it, that is, put a cartoon Place the hand icon on the opponent's mature vegetable patch and click it, and that "hand" will quickly remove part of the opponent's crop.
After playing for less than an hour, Mr. Li reached level four and expanded two plots of land. Now there are six plots of land and four types of crops that can be planted. After harvesting them all, he planted the crops that took ten minutes to mature. carrots, and then went to the toilet. I originally thought that the battle would be resolved within ten minutes, but unexpectedly it took dozens of seconds longer. When I came back, I found that my carrots were ripe, but I could harvest ten units of carrots from each plot of land. , six pieces of land equaled sixty units. Unexpectedly, each piece of land was stolen as soon as he turned around, and there were still four units left, which made him grit his teeth in anger.
The 40% crop guarantee is the rule of Happy Farm, and all six of his fields have been stolen to the minimum, which makes him feel like he has lost 60% in just ten minutes.
Take a closer look at the list of users who stole your carrots. Among them is a guy named Piao Piao in white. Isn't this Tan Yaocheng? Your uncle, you even steal my food
Taking another look at the friend rankings on the right side of the game, the one ranked first is Baiyi Piaopiao, and he is only ranked eighth. Moreover, this guy is now level six. How did he rise so fast
Mr. Li hurriedly clicked on Tan Yaocheng's farm. The crops grown in Tan Yaocheng's six plots of land were potatoes. This was a crop that could only be unlocked at level six, and it took eighteen minutes to mature.
Looking at the time, this batch of crops still has fifteen hours to mature.
Mr. Li suddenly became playful and thought to himself: "Okay, if you steal my food, then I will steal from you no matter what!"
(End of chapter)