Some fruits are grown here, some flowers are blooming elsewhere. While life in No. 10 Middle School continues, Cheng Ran's career, CQ virtual community is gaining momentum because of its online graphic games.
"Today is the National War in Spirit Realm. According to the ranking, the first-place guild leader will get the Dragon Slaying Sword and the Orange Weapon. The top ten will get the third-level blue soldiers of the Heavenly Ladder. If they win the member reward chest of the Heavenly Fortress, they will have the chance to get purple weapons and a lot of good stuff..."
"Is that right? Then after school this afternoon, let's play for an hour during the evening self-study session! We can eat at the Internet cafe. Where are we going?"
"We can only go to the one in Diagon Alley. There's definitely no space in Skywalker Gym! And their sausage fried rice is pretty good."
"By the way, my card is almost out of money. Can you lend me ten dollars? I'll go buy it today and pay you back tomorrow."
"Can you hold out for an hour? The point cards are out of stock in Chengdu now. I went to several newsstands yesterday, but they couldn't find any... Then I went to the software store near Xinhua Bookstore and bought some! It is said that they are all close to the software store. Many newsstands are out of stock now!"
"When will there be ..."
"It's the eighteenth. Arrive tomorrow."
After class in the afternoon, a group of people gathered together, some standing by the table, some on the stools, and some simply sitting on the table. At this time, the college entrance examination was still relatively far away, and the return of Macau was the theme of the entire society. The song "Do You Know That Maau Is Not My Real Last Name" from the Seven Sons' Song was sung in the streets and alleys, and the school even organized a return chorus. You would often see boys and girls with red faces lining up to practice singing under the guidance of their teachers on the wall of books and newspapers.
The future is still relatively far away for everyone. During the period from afternoon classes to evening self-study, there are many students in No. 10 Middle School who bury themselves in textbooks and study hard, but there is also no shortage of students who carry their schoolbags to play football or go to Internet cafes whenever they have free time.
In Zhang Ping's circle, the most popular game recently is the "Spirit Realm" web game that emerged in Internet cafes. The game uses a new algorithm and can accommodate many players to interact in the same area. Previously, Internet cafes basically only had stand-alone games. "Spirit Realm" was the first to turn chat room-based mud games such as Mud into visual graphics.
The game "Spirit Realm" has great advantages. First of all, it does not require a client and can be interacted directly through the web page. As long as there is a computer with Internet access, open the web page and load it, enter the CQ account and password, and you can log in anytime and anywhere, and join the colorful and ink-style immortal cultivation journey.
However, the game charges based on online time, 30 yuan for 120 hours, 15 yuan for 60 hours.
Zhang Ping turned around and asked Cheng Ran, "Are you going? Really, I'm telling you, that game is super fun. In the past, everyone played stand-alone games, with only a few people fighting each other. We were tired of playing on LAN, but after playing this, it was like opening up a new world. Cultivating immortals, I jumped off a cliff to get a secret book, and when I came out, I encountered a battle between Qingtong Sect and Wanshou Sect. Which side you choose to join will affect your game direction and camp. Now the Zhenjiao and Zongmen World War is in full swing, hurry up and join our sect..."
Cheng Ran laughed, "What's the difference between a true sect and a sect?"
"This is the setting of the game. Zhenjiao refers to practitioners who seek the Great Dao. They forget about emotions and pursue the goal of becoming a true immortal. 'Heaven and earth are not benevolent and treat all things as straw dogs'. You have heard of this saying, right? It comes from the Tao Te Ching. There are many sects in this camp, such as Qingshan Sword Sect, Changsheng Sect, Tianyi Sect, etc. Zongmen is another direction, which is to maintain the balance of power in the secular world. It emphasizes checks and balances, that is, to prevent the secular world from collapsing while practicing. Zhenjiao doesn't care, so there is a conflict between the two sides. This is the background of the game. After the player joins one side, he automatically becomes a mortal enemy of the opposing camp, and the two sides will fight to the death. Playing a game every day, practicing immortality, and planting crops is also good. I ate steamed buns in the afternoon for several days, saving a few meals, and then I had the money for the card. Fortunately, there are now 15 yuan card, 60 hours, I play on the weekend, one hour a day, and I can play for nearly a month."
Of course Cheng Ran knew all this, because he was the one who wrote the entire game background framework. As for the settings of the True Religion and the Sect that Zhang Ping and the others are talking about so much, it might not be until the release of World of Warcraft four years later that everyone would suddenly realize it... Blizzard, this is what we left behind!
CQ's virtual community, the Avatar Project has not achieved much success, but the Lingyu web game is very popular, and now there is a trend of conquering Internet cafes.
Cheng Ran can't conquer a large-scale game now, and there is no need to be an agent, because the most important thing about the virtual community plan is to expand CQ. The Spirit Realm game is a link in the entire CQ chain, and it also accumulates some technical strength for CQ. Web games can't compare with client games in terms of graphics and sound effects, but Cheng Ranjian took a different approach and used the ink and wash 2D style to build the game world, so the effect presented is actually amazing. For this reason, the CQ game technology department has undergone a reorganization, and hired many exquisite artists from the Taiwanese game industry to join. The effect is a bit like the style of the stand-alone game "Xuanyuan Sword".
The style is good, but what attracts people to Spirit Realm is the story and the core of the game. The conflict between the two camps builds the world structure and forms the main contradiction, which brings players the source of power to explore and develop this world in depth. It can be said that this is a fusion of Cheng Ran's imagination of the game, so many ideas from previous lives are added. So in fact, the success of Spirit Realm is not the technical level, but these novel, novel, and advanced ideas from the future.
So now that Zhang Ping was discussing these things with him and seeing Zhang Ping and his group talking about it with great interest, Cheng Ran still felt a sense of accomplishment. This could be considered as a private survey of user feedback.
At that time, graphic online games were a big pie in China. Whoever got it first would get the biggest piece of the pie. Without saying too much, "King of Kings", "Magic Baby", "Stone Age"... once launched, they were all able to conquer the country and make a lot of money.
As long as the user experience is good and the game mechanics are good, the graphics and sound effects are actually secondary. For example, some online games, even though the graphics of later ones are getting better and better, such as "Elf" and "Lineage 2", which are called next-generation online games with dazzling 3D, are only popular for a while, and in the end they are still defeated by the old games with rough graphics.
The game experience of the core game of Lingyu, which was supervised by Cheng Ran, and even the UI interface, at least made Cheng Ran feel that he, a time traveler with the soul of his previous life, couldn't put this game down. It had that kind of old-fashioned yet trendy pleasure. This was probably the kind of game he expected.
Such games will exist for many years and will have strong vitality. Even if they are submerged in the tide of progress in the future, many people will still miss them.
"Why can't I buy a point card? Is it out of stock?" Cheng Ran asked. In Li Mingshi's email, Cheng Ran seemed to have some impression of this situation. The channel payment was slow, and it seemed that the point card distribution was also slow. He didn't care about this matter at first. It was simply because Lingyu was popular now and CQ was growing. In order to ensure the user experience of the game and the number of CQ users increased with the advent of the new era, the server expenses and the expenses of newly recruited personnel were rapidly increasing.
If the income from Tianxing Dojo and board games is used to subsidize CQ now, it will not be enough. Lingyu has opened up a way to make money, and it can just break even with the expenditure. If there is a problem with the income of Lingyu, it will start to have a negative surplus.
"You don't know how many people are playing the game, but the software store said that the number of point cards distributed to newsstands is very small. The newsstand I often go to said that Lingyu point cards are very popular. When they go to the physical store that is responsible for the software to get the goods, they have to buy some game discs together before they can get the goods! If they get less, the quota will be less. Miss Zhang from that newsstand said that the software is not selling well, so she didn't dare to buy too much, so naturally the point card quota is less. I didn't expect it to sell out so quickly, so I had to hurry to buy more. As a result, each point has a purchase quota, and they won't give you any if you exceed the quota, because everyone knows that Lingyu point cards are selling well, and software stores are more willing to keep the profits in their own stores!"
As he spoke, Zhang Ping took out his point card again. Although it had been recharged, he put the card back in his pocket as if it were a treasure. Maybe he wanted to learn from other people in society and show off his status with some cards.
Cheng Ran took the card from his hand. It was a red-printed card with a 30-yuan limit, similar to the phone card issued by Cheng Feiyang, made of PVC. He pinched the card between his thumb and finger and tapped the side of the desk lightly. Every time he tapped the card, the card rotated with the movement of his fingers, making a crisp sound.
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