Sheng Star: The "game" of decentralization

Six months ago, 龚峤 was still obsessed with how to plan for his subsequent career.

Middle School began in the game manufacturer part-time game research and Development, 22 years old as the Net Star (SEC) Product manager, was born in 1982 龚峤 is a typical online games industry teenager.

2006, 龚峤 joined the Beijing Guangyu China, is responsible for free round game product "ask" product development and operation work, this product finally successful, and at the same time the online number of millions of achievement record, Guangyu to leapfrog the domestic gaming industry in the top ten. A year later, 龚峤 was promoted to vice president of the company's product operations. But soon after, 龚峤 budding career development "ceiling" feeling, he considered to start a business. In the "more money than people," the online games industry, the most is not missing is "so-and-so senior people took a sum of wind, pulled a few brothers out of business" Story Bridge section.

The appearance of Tan brings another temptation to 龚峤. Tan is Shanda Games Limited (NASDAQ:GAME; hereinafter referred to as: Shanda game) Chairman and CEO, is also following Chen from entrepreneurship to the old Grand people, Chen is the grand game of the parent company Grand Group founder and chairman.

Game producer

Attract 龚峤 "Olive branch" is a grand game called "game producer" game new product development system. The so-called "producer system" brewing in the grand game for about one year, the relevant organization model adjustment quietly unfold, and has clarified the clue, in tan words, "began to improve."

In Tan's plan, "freshly baked" producer system, in short is the Grand game platform content "dispersed independently" out, each domain is authorized to the relevant producers, although the form is not necessarily independent company, but the producer's power and responsibility is actually equivalent to "subsidiary boss", "ranks equivalent to Shanda game Vice President" , the project team personnel, resource deployment, as well as the project from the development cycle, to follow-up operations are the producer "full responsibility."

龚峤 is "tempted".

This March, 龚峤 officially joined the Grand game. Soon thereafter, including 龚峤, 7 game producers were appointed. About a year ago, Shanda appointed Zhang as its first and chief game producer. So far began to explore the new game producer Architecture System. In the grand definition, can become the producer, the need is "many years", has the rich experience, generally already can become the related company Vice-President level personage.

In absolute product-oriented online games industry, is good at developing new products is the game company "core", but also the most difficult to retain assets. How to retain talent in this industry, known as the 24-hour money-making machine, has also become the boss's nightmare. "They have been playing for five or six years, with a successful work, or to become a lean management company, or resign to start a business, or a career can easily fall into a state of stagnation," Tan said. In the view of Analysys international game industry analyst Yuyi, China's local game companies are generally facing the issue of retention of core personnel, because the current industry poaching is the norm.

Let Chen and Shanda network company most unforgettable once "be dug angle", when the Royal Network company deputy general Manager and technical director of the Forest tsunami to invest in Shi Yuzhu just created the giant network, and launched can be seen as "Heroic Age" upgrade version of the online game "Journey", the latter in business to get dazzling success; The Heroic Age is a new product developed by Lin in Shanda network.

Two years later in July 2006, when the Grand arts director of the fuming again chose to leave. The former Grand employee, "felt the rising bottleneck and ' Growing pains '." At this time, the grand, has been listed, the organization has been completed, in addition to wages and bonuses, he can not find a more online game industry "legend" feeling.

On the one hand, each company's executive position is limited, not everyone has the opportunity to be promoted; On the other hand, in the past five years, the online games industry has no lack of online games developers "through the sale of companies or IPOs" and a Night rich legends. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand the majority of the ability to bring the team, the production of online games industry talent's loneliness intolerable and create a rich impulse.

And the grand game tries to solve the above problem through the full authorization, in fact, whether the full authorization is the key to the sustainable production of the human system.

According to the introduction of 龚峤, the main organizational structure of the domestic net swims company is the so-called "three plus one mode", namely a main program, the main art, the master plan plus a project manager. Procedures, planning, art between the pillars, their respective business level of personnel management, professional boundaries between, while the project manager focused on day-to-day affairs, for market changes and the company's strategic deployment of lack of understanding.

In this case, the comprehensive communication adjustment work generally requires the company's executive high-level to coordinate, the product quantity is single, this mode can be effective operation, once the product quantity increases, the enterprise scale increase, will produce more management internal friction. Moreover, the accuracy and timeliness of decision-making is greatly compromised by the lack of adequate and timely attention to the operational aspects of progress.

"Relatively speaking, the advantage of the producer system is here," 龚峤 said. The producer is more focused on the control of the project than the company's executive level understands the key points. Daily progress of the project, detailed report by PM. Can make the producer understand the change of the project every day clearly. Prior to that, many of the approval issues need to be reported to the executive level of the company, and now the producers can be approved, the accuracy of decision-making can be greatly improved, and more efficient.

龚峤, who worked for six months on the producer's title, thinks he has an independent right to operate. For example, the project team needs to recruit the number of employees, what type of staff to recruit, even the appointment of the project manager, the decision is in the production staff. And in the course of the game project, such as the project from the development to the operation process, the cost is how much, each quarter with how much market costs, producers also have control. In 龚峤 's view, the final form of the producer system's future development is that the relevant studios appear as subsidiaries and have independent brands and styles, while producers are the shapers of these different brands and styles.

"Now 8 producers, everyone has a different line," 龚峤 said. Shanda's producers of "line" division, is the first grand under the game according to the region, type and other dimensions of the first grand under the category of the game, and then according to each producer prior experience and expertise in the field one by one match.

龚峤 is specifically responsible for the grand game of the system and the overall development of cartoon-style game products, at present, by his eight of the producers of the game project mostly belong to these two types. And this is his expertise, gong in the Light Yu Huaxia is responsible for the operation of the "ask" is a "humorous and funny style" of the round game products.

After the different functional groups of the same type of game (procedures, planning, the United States) were assigned to the same producer, the barriers between the project teams were also broken. The most intuitive example is that the project team, which has a relatively advanced schedule, can be deployed at any time to support slower projects. This is a very difficult thing to do before, because of the different standards of assessment among the teams and the lack of understanding of each other's progress.

It is difficult to solve some management problems before the project resource deployment and the project experience permeate each other, and then naturally find the solution. In the past, a project was successful, "often only the top brass knows why it was successful, but the project team doesn't know, and now I regularly make horizontal communication between my project managers." ' It's not hard to accomplish this seemingly extraordinary task, ' says 龚峤, ' for example, people often get together or go to dinner together, or go on a game, and they can achieve it. '

The entertainment show or the real drill.

In fact, over the past five or six years, there has been a tipping point in the size of the products and teams within the Shanda game. The Grand first game was launched in 2001, the Korean game "legend", after a successful start to form their own research and development team, and in 2003 developed and launched the "legendary World." After the Grand agent and independent research and development. By the end of March this year, Shanda games agents and independent research and development of the game, only MMORPG (large multiplayer online role playing game) has reached 26, "we have a variety of products, there are many teams, the previous model does not apply," Tan said.

"The domestic online gaming industry, has not been the producer as a system to specialized construction, or specifically for the position to carry out recruitment and training," Tan said. However, in his view, now is the time to "clearly define and system set up", at least the grand game has now come to such a "node."

Tan called "Node" is not difficult to understand.

Chinese gaming companies, including Shanda Games, have been "voting with their feet" by Wall Street after a separate listing on September 25 last year: In the past six months, Chinese online gaming companies have had low prices for shares and several companies have broken shares. Shanda games, Giants network ranked among them. As of June 16, shares in the US-listed NetEase, Shanda games and perfect space-time were down 26%, 48% and 41%, respectively.

A common concern among the empty-looking is that the product is weak.

"China's online gaming industry is now in the doldrums of the consolidation period," said Yuyi, an international analyst at Analysys. In his view, one of the important reasons is "game product supply increased, but the homogeneity of serious", many games for the same group of users. The introduction of new products, as the market competition more fully, bringing ARPU (per capita consumption) and increase in revenue is not much.

At the same time, Shanda is in a more subtle stage: although its research and development team, the number of games to operate has increased and already considerable scale, but today, "legendary World" and "Blood Legend" is still a grand game of profit pillars, according to its 2009 annual report, The contribution of the two profits accounted for still as high as 78.2%. The product is the core of the online games industry, how to continue to find the next or several successful online games?

"Future development depends on the content of the support, so we also want to constantly innovate, through different types of games, expand some user base." Otherwise the development will surely slow down. "Tan said.

In fact, Shanda's attempts to expand the source of its content have never been broken. Starting from 2005, Grand start to try in the independent research and development and agents, looking for a third source of game sources, and in 2007 launched 18 funds, the situation and other three plans, to the third party online gaming company opened up to become an entrepreneurial platform of the company, and formed through investment and joint operations to obtain a new source of game sources But this is mainly aimed at the industry's "small players".

Last December, Shanda and Jinshan had a high-profile announcement to set up a joint venture. On the surface, the grand and Jinshan cooperation, both sides seem to be able to learn from each other, combined with the grand experience of the agency operating platform and Jinshan strong independent development capacity of joint operations. But the operation of the joint venture ended abruptly.

In Yuyi's view, the core reason is that Shanda as a platform to provide the market and user resources for the industry mature companies do not have too much attraction, "these, after all, to promote investment will be available." "Joint operations can only exist between innovative companies and a platform such as Shanda, with a strong voice and a strong market demand, so that we can go more in the long run." "Yuyi said.

One guess is that such an outcome seems to be happening in the grand and grand online now among aspiring small companies. "We have our own steps, Shanda also has its own steps, when a certain time, everyone's steps are more in line with, before we can do something together." "2008 joined the Grand Project" Villers Information Technology CEO Jingjingjing in the media interview said.

In Yuyi view, in the past 10 years, the domestic online game learning overseas focus is the pursuit of technology, but "ignore the game of entertainment origin." An important embodiment, is the game as the core of the quality of the controller's producer vacancy, also did not receive enough attention. In fact, whether in Japan or Europe and the United States, game companies have already had a mature and successful game producer model, almost every large game companies have their own "Trump producer", such as "Mario's father" Miyamoto to Nintendo, Suzuki Yu in the Sega.

May 26 This year, the Grand Game "Allstar" product launch, Tan led by such as Zhang, 龚峤, Guang and other producers, in the way of the first public debut. "I don't expect all of them to be stars, to be the best, but anyway, the producers will be the basis of our entire operation," Tan stressed.

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Grand Eight producers background profile:

★ Tan: Chairman and CEO of Shanda Games. 1999 joined the Grand, April 2008 to January 2010 as president and chief technical Officer of the group, since May 2009 as chairman of the Grand game, and in January 2010 as CEO. He led the development and operation of the legendary world, at present, continues to lead the "Blood Legend" and "legendary World" team, but also personally guided the "0 world" and "Star change" development.

★ Guang: The original Tencent Mutual Entertainment of the marketing department deputy general manager. 2009 joined the Grand, was appointed as Shanda Games vice president, and "Shushan online", "Dragonnest" and "MFO" and other five of the game's producer positions, "Dragonnest" namely the Dragon Valley as a grand game of the year's key game will begin to market in the summer.

★ Gebin: President of the Golden cool game. Golden Cool Game is a grand 18 fund in early 2010 to invest in the acquisition of the industry famous companies, the Golden Cool has self-developed 3DMMORPG "Magic Circle 2".

★ Zhang: 2001 to join the grand. Since April 2008 as the chief producer of Shanda Gaming Co., Ltd, he has previously been a vice president and director of Shanda Group.

★ Tsai: One of the first products manager, who has been a game planning, supervisor, Deputy manager, manager, assistant director, director and other positions, has been a "legendary World" project research and development, operations Manager, Hao side online general manager, "Heroic Age 2" producers.

★ Zhing: 2002 joined the Grand, since 2006 as a grand game "legendary World" producer. 2009 years later, he became the product director of the legendary World studio.

★ 龚峤: March 2010 to join the Grand game. He served as deputy general manager of Beijing Guangyu Huaxia Company. In 2010 led "asked" to obtain 1 million people at the same time online results, leaving Guangyu Huaxia, join the Grand game. Today, 龚峤 is the "Swallow Heaven 2", "Goddess Ol" and "bubble fighter" three game producers.

★ Huang: 2008 joined the Grand game, as the Grand Game Technical Support Center senior Director. Now the head of the Mochimedia China area. Nearly 10 years of technical and operational experience in foreign companies, has served in IBM, ATT, EA and other enterprises.