A web Game maker's "atypical sleeve"

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May 12, 2009 11 o'clock in the morning, just usher Zhang Fumao standing alone in his huge new office, from the 12-storey height downward, the crowd outside the window is bustling, look, the distance of the parking lot and five crossings are also faintly visible. He walked from the window to his desk and began to wonder when the web game would be able to make billions of dollars.

Entrepreneurial vocabulary for most ordinary people have some kind of aura, but for the Zhang Fumao as an entrepreneur, but only with "soul-stirring" to describe.

As an entrepreneur, although not plain sailing, but Zhang Fumao belongs to the more fortunate group of people, through more than 2 years of efforts, he already has a company of more than 200 people, the Office also from the original house moved into the five near the land of expensive office buildings, however, Zhang Fumao still thinks he has no courage to go through the entrepreneurial process again.

Mysterious Phone Change Destiny

Prior to September 2007, Zhang Fumao had several titles, including the head of the marketing business of Jinshan Corporation, director of marketing and operations of Sina Igame, and he was also responsible for the channel planning business in the Sony PS2 software China General Agent Sheng Company.

In the year of September, he founded a company of his own, named the Beijing Ranger Network Information Technology Co., Ltd., the name until January 2009 was "game Valley" replaced.

Like most entrepreneurs, finding a way to maintain the company's operating capital became Zhang Fumao's biggest headache at the time.

"We started out in the early days of Huilongguan, at that time, although only 5 employees, but nearly 20000 yuan per month wages are still a headache, the most sad when my bank card is less than 3000 yuan in the balance, no way, in order to gather the wages of employees only around to borrow. At that time, although there are a lot of Jinshan old friends of his hand, but Zhang Fumao in mind, with borrowed money to pay after all is not a long-term solution.

"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get." "There seems to be no sentence more appropriate than the movie Forrest Gump to describe Zhang Fumao full of drama."

A mysterious phone call has changed the fortunes of the entrepreneurial team as the company is struggling to make a living. At that time was driving Zhang Fumao received from the Royal Network Human Resources Department of the phone, the content is that the other party invited him to join, because he has begun to start a business, he declined the other party did not care too much about this matter. Unexpected is, one months later he received from the grand phone, and the previous difference is, this time call him is not the grand Human Resources department, but the head of the 18 program, the other party invited Zhang Fumao to Grand explain their company research and development of the game products.

"I did not expect the Human resources department to transfer my resources to the 18 planning Department, received their invitation, I took the game was developed the" hero Gate "came to grand. Zhang Fumao recalls.

December 18, 2007 became the turning point in the fortunes of Zhang Fumao and his entrepreneurial team.

"began to think that will be 18 plan of the person in charge to listen to my introduction products, the results of the door found Chen, Danian, Tan are there, really let people take a surprise." At that time, someone said to me can introduce their own products, if the good can speak more, said the bad will be replaced one. ”

Including Zhang Fumao himself did not think, he and research and development team in the United States and Europe stand-alone game "heroes Invincible" the development of the Web game "heroes" to become the most optimistic Chen Tianqiao works, 2 hours later, this piece was grand to 5 million yuan to buy down the price.

"No one thought Chen was" invincible heroes "fans, I was there to explain the time he kept making comments, and asked us how to increase revenue, how to prevent plug-in, chatting 1 hours later decided to buy our game, began our offer 1 million dollars, and later after a bargain, Finally traded at a price of 5 million yuan. ”

Declined Grand takeover invitation

Will many entrepreneurs to block outside the capital threshold, because a mysterious phone and Chen overpass favor, so that Zhang Fumao magic across the past. After a 5 million yuan infusion, he quickly freed himself from the dilemma of financial restraint.

"Then we signed a cooperation agreement with Shanda, Grand will the" door of Heroes "this game to us to operate, and then the two sides according to the proportion of 2:8 divided, the performance of the game is good, we can take 20% of the profit to maintain the day-to-day operation of the company, the company carrying a surplus of 5 million yuan. This can be considered the next development plan. ”

The company has enough cash flow to maintain, carrying millions of of cash, plus the company was founded in less than 1 years, all of which is enough to make an entrepreneur feel at ease and proud, but for Zhang Fumao, but think that only one game to conquer the situation there is a huge crisis. The correctness of his judgment was confirmed by a nine-city gaming firm 1 years later, after losing its profit pillar, the World of Warcraft, its share price plunged 25%.

"A successful game company cannot rely solely on a game to conquer the Games." After making this judgment, Zhang Fumao immediately began to organize the team to conduct the second web game works of "Huashan on the Sword" Research and development, and in "Huashan on the sword" soon after the establishment of a new project team research and development of the third piece "The Warring states world."

The Zhang Fumao of March 2009 ushered in two good news. One of them is the development of the second game, "Huashan sword" ushered in Kamengon, which began operating in February, the game soon broke through the revenue of 2 million yuan. Another thing that he was happy about was that the company had completed its first round of financing.

March 12, Zhang Fumao and his company "Game Valley" announced the acquisition by the Qiming Venture and Steamboat Ventures (Disney's Wei Investment) two major international venture capital injection. Before that, he had rejected a grand takeover offer.

"Shanda has proposed the acquisition of our ideas, they opened a tens of millions of-level price, the face of this number, we are not no heartbeat, but the management can be set off now, how do we staff?" Being acquired by other companies is clearly not the goal of Zhang Fumao's entrepreneurial success.

"We look at the data, now MMORPG online users are 80 million, SNS users more than 100 million, leisure Chess card class has 6 million users, add up to be 240 million of the user scale, which has 20–30% users and web games to create intersection, 40% Users can make you easy to accept the web game, SNS users will be more easily converted into web game users, so that the estimated number of future web game players will be more than 100 million, I have confidence in this number. From the revenue, the web game is now very close to MMORPG's earnings, "Zhang Fumao said.

The data from Eric support his point of view. According to the data disclosed by the agency, web game development will be much higher than the online gaming industry, by 2012, the user size will increase by 320%, the market size will increase by 231%.

Dialogue Zhang Fumao: The target enters the market first three names

NetEase technology: What do you think is the most impossible to make a business mistake?

Zhang Fumao: There are three mistakes that cannot be made. The first is not overhead products, must be done in line with market positioning products, only by a few planning or art is impossible to make good products, good products need a complete team collocation; the second is to find a good operating team to operate, excellent products have been operating across the example has been a lot of; the third is good wine is afraid of the deep alley, Therefore must have the excellent market personnel to promote. In addition to these three mistakes, some other mistakes can be made by entrepreneurs, for example, to try a new product style, if the online found that the player is not particularly accepted, but also can be gradually to adjust, as well as inaccurate advertising, server instability, and so on, these problems notice immediately to correct or can do.

NetEase technology: Since the completion of the first round of financing in March this year, what has been the main work in this period?

Zhang Fumao: After financing our plans did not make any changes, the main product line is rich, the original product line only a game, so the product line must be rich to a certain extent, these are should have a more complete planning. There is no way to do things before financing, and now we can do it. We set up a studio and another studio was in preparation.

NetEase technology: What is the next step in the product planning?

Zhang Fumao: Mainly two products, Huashan Sword We will launch a new version, named "Huashan on the Sword 2", but there will be some changes in the play, another is our positioning for the works of fine games, called "Warring states World", the product development cycle of more than 12 months, is our focus on the launch. Another 2010 will also introduce some action classes of online games.

NetEase technology: From the initial 5 employees to expand to more than 200 employees, in this development process you feel the most missing?

Zhang Fumao: A man who lacks dudangyimian. Including the backend server technology master, another good game planning industry is very needed, with the late project team on the line, will also lack of excellent marketing staff. Finally there are good packaging products market personnel is also what we need.

NetEase technology: You have said a lot of optimistic about the view of the Web game, this industry is no risk?

Zhang Fumao: The first big risk is that a good product is easily copied and flipped, we all know that the threshold of web game development is low, more from the creative, but the idea is easy to copy, another security is also risky, web games in encryption more difficult than the client game, so you will also face the threat of plug-in, etc.

NetEase technology: What should be done?

Zhang Fumao: First of all, like building, the accumulation of high enough time to copy will become difficult, only rely on us to constantly update their own ideas, and constantly add new features. In addition, will hire more security experts to do some preventive work, such as in the room to add hardware firewall.

NetEase technology: Are you worried about the large online gaming companies to rob you of the Web game market?

Zhang Fumao: The worry is that their team and technical capital are better than us, but there are areas of concern. We are very focused on doing this thing, all the resources are invested in the web game, the big companies can not put all the resources here. And many of our employees have also been major game companies elite. Finally, big companies will not be too willing to share good products, we are very happy to do some joint operations, the mentality of more open.

NetEase technology: What is expected in the future?

Zhang Fumao: Web game is really the focus of attention to the trigger point should be to produce a single income of over billion products, now look at the market, there is no such products, so it can be said that the market has not really hot up. Our goal is to achieve the top three in the market. Without this goal, our current income is already living comfortably, and there is no need to finance and build new projects.