At midnight on New Year's Day, Li Mu spent the New Year with the core technical team at Makino Technology. Lin Ching-ah also took the initiative to stay because she also wanted to witness this historic moment.
Happy Farm had been in internal testing for several rounds in Makino Technology. All the employees, without exception, were addicted to this seemingly boring and retarded little game. It was hard to imagine that a man in his thirties with a wife and children would also pay attention to the few pieces of land on Happy Farm every day. He wanted to know when the crops would be ripe, when he could steal his friends' vegetables, when he could level up, when he could expand the farm, when he could grow more advanced crops, when he could have his own dog to guard the house …
In short, everyone in Makino Technology was extremely optimistic about this game. In Lin Ching-ah's words, "This game is addictive." The core employees of Makino Technology also firmly believed that this game would completely change Makino Technology's position in the domestic Internet industry. The real goal behind it was even more ambitious. Li Mu wanted to use it to build the largest social network in the domestic Internet industry. Once this goal was achieved, Makino Technology would have the best soil for users.
At 11: 30 at night, Lin Ching-ah called the 24-hour cafe downstairs and ordered a dozen cups of coffee. She accompanied a group of technical men in the company's big office in the technology department and stared at the data recording system displayed by the projector.
Seeing that there was only half an hour left before the game went 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 be completely popular after it goes online?"
Li Mu held his chin and thought for a while. He said seriously, "If I'm optimistic, three days is enough."
"Three days …" Kong Lingyu sighed. "It sounds difficult, but it doesn't feel impossible."
Lin Ching-ah smiled and said, "Don't forget that Happy Farm has its own spread attribute. Once users are invested in it, they will definitely desperately add new friends and even pull friends around them to join. After all, the more friends this game has, the more fun it is."
Kong Lingyu nodded and said, "Yes, when I think about this, I think three days is possible."
Li Mu said, "Competing with others and showing off are all typical social attributes. Our product designs with two sets of rankings will definitely make most users flock to it. Along with our mode of inviting friends to give us items, we will definitely become popular very quickly. Happy Farm will definitely bring a large number of new users to Tieba in the first half a month after it is released. We must be prepared to welcome a flood of traffic."
Kong Lingyu said, "Boss, don't worry. We definitely won't be like Q Bar and embarrass ourselves on the server."
Li Mu smiled and said, "Everything must be prepared in advance."
Seeing the time gradually enter the countdown, the dozen or so people started to gradually become nervous. Their nervousness also brought uncontrollable excitement and anticipation. After the countdown of ten seconds, the perpetual calendar clock on the wall finally jumped to January 2002. This was the standard Beijing time. Li Mu pressed the online button on Kong Lingyu's computer. The new version of Tieba that had been prepared for a long time was finally officially released.
Many loyal users and competitors of Tieba were waiting for the arrival of midnight. They wanted to see what kind of "personal space" and game the Tieba was going to release. Therefore, before midnight, a large number of users started to continuously refresh the Tieba page, waiting for the new version to be released.
At midnight, those users who were constantly refreshing the page suddenly found that a notification with a picture popped up on the Tieba page: 2002, a new journey, set off with Tieba.
The picture was a blurry picture. In the picture, a Boeing 747 was rising into the sky.
At the bottom of the picture, there was a beautifully designed button with only four words on it: Set Off Immediately.
The user hurriedly clicked "Set Off Immediately". Then, there was an obvious change on the page. The Tieba page was a bit more beautiful than before. In addition to the more modern and beautiful design, the "personal space" option appeared on the upper right corner of the Tieba page. This option was made into red fonts and highlighted according to Li Mu's request. It was quite eye-catching. According to Li Mu's request, this kind of highlighting would last for half a month.
Clicking to enter the personal space, users would find that the whole page seemed to be designed on a base map. The base map was a simple transition from sky blue to white, just like the classic background cartoon of Windows XP. This kind of design was almost never seen by current Internet users, so at first glance, it left a very good impression. Most importantly, the base map supported user customization.
On the base map, there was a line of English letters written in light blue artistic font: YY zone. Looking at its domain name carefully, Li Mu did not use any official language to describe the personal space as YY zone. He only gave these two elements that were not very obvious. It was to pave the way for his future instant messaging software named YY.
Most of the time, he also wanted others to sincerely praise him when they were evaluating him: Awesome. Therefore, he wanted to leave some clues for users and industry insiders. When they were shocked by YY in the future, he wanted to tell them that he had actually prepared all of this.
The style of the personal space page was very similar to the QQspace of the future. This kind of visual design was indeed very advanced in the current Internet field. Users who were used to seeing all kinds of other websites would easily have their eyes lit up.
The original version of the personal space integrated five major functions: "photo album", "message board", "diary", "chat", and "games". It was basically a product built on the framework of QQspace. However, there were still a few years before QQspace appeared, so these became the original works of Makino Technology.
The data on the projector started counting from zero, and what kept rising at an extremely fast speed was the number of visits to the personal space after it went 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 …
On the 26th second after going online, a user tried to send out the first chat. The content was only three words: "La la la."
On the 39th second after going online, Happy Farm officially had its first user.
Ten seconds later, Happy's Farm harvested its first crop. The first user to test the game used a bag of normal fertilizer given to him by the system when he needed five minutes to plant the wheat. The effect of normal fertilizer was to increase the time needed for the crops to ripen by ten minutes, and for crops that needed ten minutes or less, they could instantly ripen.
On the third minute after going online, the first user to replace the default picture with a custom picture was born.
Within twenty minutes after going online, the number of visits to the personal space had reached a million.
Within twenty minutes, 680,000 "chat" posts were posted, 120,000 comments were left, and only 30,000 photos were uploaded.
Within twenty minutes, there were 300,000 new friend additions. This data was based on the statistics of every friend addition. If User A added User B, it was counted as one time. If User C added User C, it was counted as two times. In other words, when User B was added by User A, the system would not record it again.
Within twenty minutes, Happy Farm had more than 500,000 new users. Among them, 90% of the users had planted their first crop.
For the users, when they first opened the game, they did not think that the game would be very fun. It was just that the cartoon graphics of the game were more attractive. However, since the game had an automatic planting process to reduce the cost of trying out the game, the conversion rate was very high.
After twenty minutes, the real stickiness of the game could not be seen.
An hour later, the number of users of Happy Farm had reached 860,000. The number of new friend additions had reached an astonishing 2.2 million.
The characteristics of the game in the social field had begun to show.
That night, many big names in the industry were also paying attention to the new moves of Makino Technology. Their initial focus was on the personal space. The personal space was beautifully made, and it had many new functions. When many big names in the industry saw the interface and the functions of the product, they secretly praised Makino Technology's unique product concept. The personal space was a product created to increase the stickiness and interaction of users. Messages, chat, diary, and photo albums basically embodied the gene of display and interaction. These product positioning would ultimately greatly increase the stickiness and loyalty of users. It was quite innovative.
As for Happy Farm, it made many people in the industry scoff at it.
The current world of games was dominated by client-side games. The so-called client-side games were naturally client-side games. The current page technology was not mature enough, and the internet speed was not fast enough. If one wanted to achieve the beautiful graphics, large, and interesting structure of the game, they could only rely on the development of the client-side. Therefore, embedding a game into a page sounded as boring as modifying a bicycle's engine.
However, with the mentality of knowing oneself and knowing the enemy, almost all the people in the industry played this game.
Li Zong was one of them. In the beginning, he was not interested in this kind of cartoonish flash game. After playing for a while, he discovered the charm of this game.
The initial stage of Happy Farm was very fast. A few crops could be planted on a few plots of land. After harvesting the crops, it could be upgraded to level two. Then, it would obtain an unlocked plot of land, a new crop, and some free items.
Allowing the user to quickly level up, allowing the user to discover the changes and the joy of leveling up. From there, they would be immersed in it, constantly looking forward to leveling up, and looking forward to higher levels of exclusive rights. This was almost the most important principle in the game industry. Happy Farm was set up to be extremely powerful in this aspect. Li Mu's system structure ensured that the user would definitely be able to experience the obvious difference every time they leveled up. In other words, every level would have a corresponding crop. Every three levels, a piece of land could be added, and every ten levels, a special privilege would be unlocked. For example, the ability to own pets, the ability to build all kinds of deep processing workshops for crops, the ability to beautify one's own farm, and so on.
This kind of detailed division was extremely attractive to most users. Even Li Zong was no exception. He already had a Tieba account called Robin Li. Moreover, he liked to hang out on the internet and got to know many netizens. He also added a group of friends on Tieba, including Tan Yaocheng and a few colleagues from the company.
Tan Yaocheng also played Happy Farm at home with the mentality of doing some research. However, when he began to try to steal vegetables from his friends, he unknowingly sank into it.
One of his friends had just planted a piece of wheat and was looking for a lighter to light a cigarette when he realized that his wheat had been stolen. He was so angry that he jumped up and down and cursed. Tan Yaocheng, on the other hand, ran away after stealing vegetables. Not only could he steal a certain amount of crops, but he could also obtain a certain amount of experience and money as a reward. This made him secretly happy. It turned out that stealing vegetables was the shortcut to quickly leveling up!
Therefore, Tan Yaocheng calculated the ripening time of his few plots of land. Then, he checked his friends' list one by one. Once he discovered that someone had a plot of land that had ripened but had not had time to harvest it, he would definitely go up and steal it. In other words, he would place a cartoon hand-shaped icon on the person's plot of land and click it. That "hand" would quickly steal a portion of the person's crops.
Li Zong played for less than an hour and had already reached level four. He expanded two plots of land and now had six plots of land. He also had four types of crops that could be grown. After he harvested all the crops, he planted the carrots that needed ten minutes to ripen. Then, he went to the toilet. He originally wanted to finish the battle in ten minutes, but he did not expect to spend more than ten seconds. When he returned, he found that his carrots had already ripened. Originally, he could harvest ten units of carrots from each plot of land, and six plots of land would mean sixty units. He did not expect that in the blink of an eye, he would only have four units of carrots left.
He immediately gritted his teeth in anger. A minimum of 40% of his crops was the rule of Happy's Farm, and his six plots of land had been stolen to the minimum. This made him feel as if he had lost 60% of his crops in just ten minutes.
He then looked at the list of users who had stolen his carrots. There was a person called Fluttering White Robes. Wasn't that Tan Yaocheng? Damn it, he even stole my vegetables?
He then looked at the friend ranking on the right side of the game. The person ranked first was Fluttering White Robes. He was only ranked eighth, and this person was already level six. How did he level up so quickly?
Li Zong quickly clicked on Tan Yaocheng's Farm. Tan Yaocheng's six plots of land were planted with potatoes. This was a crop that could only be unlocked at level six, and it needed eighteen minutes to ripen.
He then looked at the time. This batch of crops still needed fifteen hours to ripen.
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