Just half a month ago, many media outlets around the world thought that the development of Makino Technology had reached a bottleneck. They thought that Li Mu's creative genius had finally gone from a blowout to a dormant period after the eruption of a volcano. However, who would have thought that in just half a month, Li Mu would once again drop a nuclear bomb on the internet.
The power of this nuclear bomb was beyond everyone's imagination. It was like a full-coverage attack. Almost every netizen, regardless of nationality, gender, or age, would be brainwashed by this game.
In the face of such a super explosive game, the media didn't hesitate to give all of their attention to Makino Technology, to Plants vs Zombies Online, and to Li Mu. This also made the media realize that a genius was a genius, and a father was a father. In the future, they definitely couldn't assume that their father was old and couldn't move anymore just because their father took a vacation once in a while.
As a result, all the media outlets weren't stingy with their praises, sending Li Mu and the game to all the headlines.
At the same time, because of this little game, Plants vs Zombies Online, the entire internet went into an unprecedented frenzy.
The brainwashing mode of the game, as well as the addictive online experience, dragged netizens all over the world into the same "abyss".
Lin Ching-ah, who was in America, excitedly called Li Mu to tell Li Mu a very interesting piece of news. Because of Plants vs Zombies Online, a lot of people in Silicon Valley were late to work. Many bosses even called Lin Ching-ah to "complain", saying that the release of Plants vs Zombies Online this morning caused a lot of their company's employees and management staff to forget about their working hours.
Not only did they forget about their working hours, almost all the employees of the Silicon Valley companies were enthusiastically discussing this game that had instantly become popular all over the world after arriving at the company. To these Silicon Valley elites, this game not only attracted them, but it also had great research value.
How, how could such a simple game become popular all over the world in such a short amount of time? In just one morning, the number of concurrent users had exceeded 20 million. In a single day, the highest number of concurrent users had exceeded 30 million. Many game company owners wouldn't even dare to dream of such an extravagant situation, but Muye Technology had accomplished it in 12 hours. How on earth was this possible?
Lin Ching-ah also said that in addition to receiving calls from the bosses of all the big companies in Silicon Valley, she also received calls from the top executives and even CEOs of the top five investment banks in America.
While these investment banks congratulated Makino Technology on its new breakthrough, they were also concerned about Makino Technology's future capital operations. Everyone knew that with the super strength that Plants vs Zombies Online had displayed, if it was given half a year to develop and create more capital, Makino Technology could easily achieve an IPO on Nasdaq, and might even become the world's leading internet company through an IPO.
At this time, the investment banks naturally hoped to maintain a good relationship with Makino Technology, so that when Makino Technology went IPO in the future, the investment banks would have the opportunity to be the broker for Makino Technology's IPO business.
Li Mu himself was shocked by the unimaginable popularity of Plants vs Zombies Online. He knew that Plants vs Zombies Online would become a popular game in this era, but he didn't expect it to become so popular …
It wasn't just him, the entire society didn't expect a game to become so popular in such a short period of time.
Most phenomenal and popular games far exceeded society's expectations. When Steve Jobs released the first iPhone, Nokia and the rest of the world didn't think that the phone would become a global hit, let alone create an empire worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
When Uncle Bird released Gangnam Style, none of the musicians expected it to become so popular across the five continents, to the point that even the First Lady of the United States was learning his horse-riding dance.
Even in their wildest dreams, the local musicians could never imagine that a song that could only be regarded as a second-rate online song, "Mice Loves Rice", paired with a singer whose appearance was indistinguishable from Sun Nan and Wang Daye, could become so popular that the whole country would repeat the single.
Famous video game companies like Blizzard, EA, Konami, and Rockstar suddenly realized that their worldview had been completely overturned overnight.
While they were working hard to develop all kinds of large-scale games that challenged the limits of today's technology and hardware, while they were racking their brains to build a huge worldview in the game, an unprecedented and popular game suddenly appeared in the world. The simplicity of this game made these elite gamers want to cry.
At this time, Blizzard, which was located in the same state as Makino Technology's American subsidiary in California, was in a state of self-doubt.
At the same time, Blizzard had become one of the leading video game companies in the world. In the past decade or so, they had released many classic and popular games to the world, including the Warcraft series, Diablo series, and Starcraft series.
These three game series laid a strong foundation for Blizzard. Therefore, this year, they secretly started a new plan: using the story of the Warcraft series as the game background, and using this game's worldview, heroes, and historical events, they created an unprecedented super online game called World of Warcraft.
Blizzard regarded World of Warcraft as a major strategic product for the company in the next few years. The CEO of Blizzard often used a metaphor, which was to make World of Warcraft into a strategic nuclear missile for Blizzard.
A strategic nuclear missile in a peaceful world might never be used in a real battle, but a strategic nuclear missile in the internet industry was born to blow up all enemies. Blizzard's hope with World of Warcraft was to use it to conquer the online gaming market all over the world, knock out the online games of other companies, and become the overlord of the online gaming industry.
Blizzard had done in-depth research on the online gaming market, and had also done in-depth calculations on the future development of World of Warcraft. From Blizzard's point of view, if they could operate this game to the extreme, they could gain tens of millions of paying players all over the world in the next three years. In their eyes, this was already the peak of the industry. Moreover, this super game with a grand background, huge structure, beautiful graphics, and top-notch user experience could bring a huge boost to the development of computer hardware in the world.
They worked hard with such a big dream, but in the blink of an eye, a game that was so simple that it made people's hair stand on end would dominate the world's netizens overnight. The executives of Blizzard immediately organized a core team meeting. During the meeting, they requested everyone to try out Plants vs Zombies Online on the spot, and then discuss how awesome this game was, and how they could learn from or even imitate it.
A bunch of people started playing the game on their laptops in the meeting room. At first, it was the single player version, but then someone yelled, "Hey, why don't we try the online mode?"
After that, everyone subconsciously immersed themselves in trying out Plants vs Zombies Online with their friends.
All the way until noon, everyone was still trying out this extremely brainwashing game mode. Shouts and yells could be heard from time to time in the meeting room.
"Jimmy, quick, help me plant a peashooter in this line, I can't hold it anymore!"
“Oh，shit！ Anglo, the Nut Wall is almost gone, is your cooldown on cooldown? Quick, help me plant a Nut Wall! "
"I found a great way to deal with the Pole Vault Zombies. Plant a man-eating flower in the space behind the Nut Wall. That way, the Pole Vault Zombies will be swallowed by the man-eating flower as soon as they land. Hahaha, I'm such a genius!"
"Peter, didn't you notice that the Mashed Potato Bomb is also very useful? Duang, it's gone in an instant, and it's super cheap too! "
"But that thing is a one time use only. Although it's cheap, it still needs time to cool down, and it takes time to grow!"
"Tom, for God's sake, help me plant an Ice Archer to slow down these zombies. My line of defense can't hold them off any longer!"
"Sorry Justin, I also need an Ice Shooter to solidify my defense, why don't I help you throw a Cherry Bomb first!"
…
After Plants vs Zombies Online exploded in popularity, all the other games on the market took a big hit. Even Muye Technology's Paradise Town was no exception. The number of active users decreased by about ten percent, and the average usage time decreased by more than thirty percent.
Li Mu analyzed the reason. Paradise Town wasn't a fast-paced game, it was a very slow-paced business game. After a long period of operation, the users would have their own businesses in the game, and the longer they played the game, the more loyal the users would be. However, after the foundation of the game was established, the active users would log in every day, but they wouldn't spend as much time immersed in the game as they did in the early stages.
Plants vs Zombies Online was a fast-paced game, especially the single-player mode and the cooperative battle mode with friends in the dungeon. The pace was very fast, and the users mainly liked the fast-paced battles. This kind of game could easily immerse the users in a short period of time, and they would lose track of time once they were immersed in the game.
All of a sudden, all sorts of characters in Plants vs Zombies became popular. Whether it was the plants in the game, or the silly and funny zombies, they all became the most popular cartoon characters.
In order to increase the influence of Plants vs Zombies Online, Li Mu decided to strike while the iron was hot. He gathered the design team of the game, as well as the entire Makino Technology production team for a meeting, in order to push forward the development of Plants vs Zombies Online.
In Li Mu's mind, there were many directions for development. Taking Plants vs Zombies Online for example, it could be made into an anime, a manga, a movie, as well as a variety of products using the characters in the game, such as dolls, pillows, keychains, exercise books, etc. It could even be sold to McDonald's or Kiki Eggs as themed gifts.
Just like the anime characters of Minions, as long as it was developed further, there would be a lot of room for development, and it could permeate into every area of life.
However, if he wanted to strike while the iron was hot, and quickly produce the first batch of products, anime, manga, movies, and other physical products couldn't be his first choice, as the development and production time couldn't be broken.
Therefore, Li Mu personally selected a few directions for the first stage of development, including:
1. The design team would immediately design an official HD wallpaper, and provide it to the users on YY website for free download. The cost of making the wallpaper would be very low, and the materials for the game would be available. An excellent designer would be able to make multiple themed wallpapers in a day. Although it didn't have any direct economic value, it could further increase the game's reach and user influence.
2. The YY production team would immediately develop a custom skin interface with Plants vs Zombies Online as an element, and release a cartoon show related to Plants vs Zombies Online on the YY website.
3. The BD team would immediately contact McDonald's, KFC, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other brands to license the brand and image of Plants vs Zombies Online to them for special products.
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