Reborn in 2000 as a scholar

"Brother Xin, here are the relevant data from Haowan.com this week." The staff of the technical department handed a report to a young man and left.And this man called Brother Xin looked at the report, and his brows gradually loosened.

His name is Zhou Xin, and he was originally the deputy editor of a well-known game magazine.In addition to being an associate editor, he is also a very famous game reviewer. His ID "Little Bird" is not only well-known in the Chinese Internet world, but even game websites in Japan, Korea, Europe and the United States know and recognize his reviews.

For Zhou Xin's resignation from the original magazine, many people in the industry were surprised and unbelievable.Because according to how much the magazine attaches importance to Zhou Xin, it only takes three years at most for him to take over as the editor-in-chief.But at this critical moment, he resigned and went to work as the editor-in-chief of an obscure game website in Shenzhen, which shocked countless people.

Others don't understand Zhou Xin's resignation, but Zhou Xin knows it very well.With the popularity of game magazines, the interference of game manufacturers and hardware manufacturers on magazines is also increasing.Although Zhou Xin felt a little disgusted by the thicker and thicker advertisement pages of the magazine, he tolerated it, because he was also a manager, so he knew how much income these advertisements could bring to the magazine, so as to support the editors to buy the latest Machines and games to test, but also allow the journal to pay enough to attract the best talent to submit articles.Most importantly, this money allows editors to go overseas to read other people's games and game magazines, so that everyone will not limit their realization to an acre of three-point land under their noses.

But thick advertising pages are fine, and advertisers have already pushed their limits and asked to edit content tailored for their products, which is the so-called "soft text".The remuneration for a "soft article" is several times that of a normal article, so editors and writers naturally rush to the soft article.What made Zhou Xin intolerable the most was that a critical draft about a certain game that he had agreed to publish was withdrawn before it went to press.This retraction did not go through the consent of the editorial board, which completely challenged the power of the editors.

But before Zhou Xin raised his protest, the manager of the advertising department came to him and scolded him.The reason is that the producer of this game is a major advertising client of the magazine, and the magazine is obliged to maintain the image of the major client, so any manuscripts that are not conducive to the major client and the products of the major client are prohibited from publication.This made Zhou Xin completely give up. If game magazines don't even have the freedom to criticize games, then what's the point of this magazine?

Zhou Xin received an invitation from a headhunter, saying that a game website intended to hire him as the editor-in-chief.For this invitation, Zhou Xin felt a little ridiculous.With my own qualifications, if I go to any magazine as a senior editor or deputy editor, why do I need to go to the website to make a living?At this time, both the news circle and the editorial circle believed that only those who could not get along in the industry would become editors on the website, so the news website sounded like another world.

However, after being rejected for the first time, the headhunter contacted Zhou Xin again. He told Zhou Xin that the founders of this website were Lin Jinqi and Pony, and at the same time gave Zhou Xin their information and the planning brief of the website.Zhou Xin is no stranger to Pony, and he himself uses his chat software; and Lin Jinqi seems to be no stranger either, his optimization wizard and Hi123 are also commonly used by him, and his plan for the million-grid website is also It was studied by myself, and I was shocked at the time.

After learning about the founder and the positioning of the website, Zhou Xin expressed the hope that he could have an interview with Lin Jinqi.So the two had this meeting, and Zhou Xin felt frightened. "Mr. Lin, to be honest, I never thought you were a high school student before I met you. I thought you should be a junior or senior at least."

"Actually, it should be said that I just happened to be participating in the training for the International Mathematical Olympiad in the High School Attached to Tsinghua University, otherwise I really didn't want to fly to Beijing to meet you." Lin Jinqi said out of breath, "I'm sorry, I'm short on time. After finishing the mock exam, I had no choice but to run away in order not to be late. I don’t know why Mr. Zhou must have an interview with me?”

"I want to know who is the service group of Mr. Lin's Haowan.com? In other words, who is my content mainly for?" Zhou Xin asked, "And Mr. Lin's Haowan.com must find advertisers in the future. ? If an advertiser is dissatisfied with one of my articles and wants to withdraw it, what will Mr. Lin do? Mr. Lin, I want to know your real way of thinking."

"The service group of Haowan.com will always be players, so we will always look at and evaluate games from the standpoint of players. As long as you ensure that your content is true and not malicious, I will not let you withdraw your manuscript. Even if they It's useless to threaten me with advertisements, and even if they send a lawyer's letter, I will let the legal department stand by you." Lin Jinqi replied, "In the company, your content department is directly under your management. I am responsible.

The advertising department and the business department will not interfere with you. You just need to make enough excellent content and bring enough clicks.Of course, I hope that our content can have a certain depth while being loved by players.I accept grandstanding, but rational thinking is more welcome.

However, I also need to remind Mr. Zhou that our website has comment areas and forums. If players criticize your manuscripts, I will not delete them.This, I hope you can also accept. "

"Of course, our manuscripts are naturally subject to criticism from readers, and it's only natural that they don't like it or even hate it." Zhou Xin replied, "I have another question, Mr. Lin seems to have his own game company, right? What would you do if one day Haowan made a negative review of your game? Can your game accept our review?”

"As I said before, as long as it is an objective, neutral, and rational evaluation, I will allow it." Lin Jinqi replied, "If my game gives you a negative evaluation, I think it is my R&D personnel who should be fired. Not you. Mr. Zhou, if you have doubts about my words, I can ask the lawyer to write these promises in the contract and use legal clauses to restrict our mutual obligations and rights. What do you think?

However, Mr. Zhou, please also remember that I have given you full freedom, and I hope to see that you have enough ability.If the traffic and registration volume of the website do not meet our expectations, I can only say sorry to you at the end of the trial period.We need enough clicks and strong enough user activity, because I still want to make money.The advertising department and the commercial department will not interfere with your content, but it is not acceptable if your content cannot give them enough confidence. "

"I understand this point. If my performance appraisal fails, I will naturally leave voluntarily and never fall in love with the company!" Zhou Xin replied.

It has been almost a week since the official launch of Haowan.com. Although the data in just one week is not enough to affect the ranking of Haowan.com in the world, it still has a great influence in the Chinese online world.At this time, Hong Kong and Taiwan did not have formal game websites, so the appearance of Haowan.com not only satisfied users from mainland China, but also satisfied Chinese-speaking users from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Singapore, and even players from neighboring countries Japan and South Korea would also come to visit .It's a pity that there is no automatic translation website yet. Simplified users and traditional users who belong to the same Chinese-speaking world can still be compatible with each other, but Japanese users and Korean users are a bit struggling.

Hearing Zhou Xin's report, Lin Jinqi suddenly wondered if he could consider making a tool similar to Google Transte. Google Transte is not just an online translation software, it is a translation software that integrates artificial intelligence.So don't underestimate Google Transte, thinking that it can only translate rigidly. In fact, it evolves its own translation ability through network learning, and at the same time adjusts and optimizes its own translation according to user feedback.

According to some foreign media reports, in 2014, Google Transte's English proficiency was equivalent to that of British and American high school graduates.Of course, this is related to the fact that Google Transte is mainly used in Europe and the United States.If it is placed in the East Asian market, the translation function of Google Transte is actually very poor.Leaving aside those small languages ​​in Southeast Asia, Google Transte is no match for a Chinese-Japanese translation website researched by the Japanese themselves just because of the conversion between Chinese and Japanese.

However, Lin Jinqi is busy with real questions at this time, so the development of online translation tools can only be postponed. I hope that Google does not have the energy to bloom everywhere for the time being.According to the course of history, Google at this time was deeply affected by the cold winter of the Internet in Europe and the United States, and it was almost on the street.As a result, after surviving the cold winter of Google, it became the second-generation Yahoo miracle, and it did far better and went further than Yahoo.

Because Yahoo's entire company has started to "reverse water" since the stock price avalanche, the most frightening thing is that it "reversed" until it went bankrupt as soon as it "reverse water".In the nearly 20 years after Yahoo’s stock price collapsed and Yahoo sought bankruptcy protection, Yahoo was actually not that miserable. After all, the Chinese ancestors had a saying that “a skinny camel is bigger than a horse”, and Yahoo is far from being “skinny”. dead camel" so unlucky.

Yahoo's management cannot be said to have no vision. The Internet projects they acquired later were all the hottest and most popular projects at that time.But the problem is that this project will inevitably die after being acquired by Yahoo, without exception.So Yahoo and Electronic Arts (EA) were dubbed by European and American netizens as "the two new killers of Internet companies", but Electronic Arts bought one company and killed one on its own initiative, while Yahoo bought one company, which is inexplicable A family died.

On the contrary, Google, despite its frequent research on some "dead" projects after the stock price took off, they did not die. product.For example, one of Google's ambitions is "global barrier-free high-speed Internet access." For this reason, they have launched many satellites, so that in the future, mobile phones equipped with Android systems can access the Internet anytime, anywhere.

And in order to help people in countries like North Korea to access the Internet, Google has also developed the technology of using high-altitude balloons to carry Internet devices.They hope to fly such a balloon to North Korea one day, and then the North Korean people will be able to go online.So it's a miracle Google isn't dead.

Although Zhou Xin didn't know that his boss was already worried that the Japanese and Koreans couldn't run his website smoothly, Zhou Xin was very happy with the advertisements he received from the advertising department.Only a week after the official launch of Haowan.com, advertisers have found the door. Is there anything better to reflect the value of Haowan.com than this news?

However, some of the requirements of advertisers also made Zhou Xin a little unhappy, but holding the "Shang Fang Sword" Zhou Xin still said to the advertising manager: "Our advertising space and creative material requirements have been determined, and these It’s all determined by Mr. Lin. If you want to modify it, you can send an email to Mr. Lin to apply. But according to my understanding of Mr. Lin, he will never allow advertisements that affect user experience to appear.

In addition, such advertisements that are not clearly distinguished from the content are also prohibited.By the way, if manufacturers want to do content or other cooperation, we are also open-minded.However, they shouldn't expect our reviews to be all positive or blow them away.Our evaluation is absolutely objective and neutral, we will praise what should be praised, and we will criticize what should be criticized.You can write down these words of mine, and when advertisers come to you in the future, you can answer them like this. "

After seeing off the manager of the advertising department, Zhou Xin stared at the pictures in the email in a daze.He was the first person to know about the "God King" project besides the "God King" project team.The picture in the mailbox is the concept map of the main game characters and the game's main city in "King of Gods". Its exquisiteness makes Zhou Xin almost think that this is a 3A masterpiece of Ubisoft and other European and American manufacturers.

However, after seeing the text "concept drawing" in the lower right corner of the picture, the corners of Zhou Xin's mouth twitched. Isn't this too "deceptive"?However, Lin Jinqi has already explained in the email that under the current computer hardware, this level of sophistication can only be a "conceptual drawing".However, Lin Jinqi also said that after five years at most, such a game with exquisite graphics will no longer be a "concept".

Zhou Xin may not know that, in fact, around 2004, the South Korean company Actoz launched an online game called "A3".Even in the 2010s, the graphic sophistication of this online game was few and far between, and it simply amazed all players in that era.When the pictures and videos of "A3" leaked out, the players of that year almost went crazy.If you have to use an online game for comparison, the player's expectations for "A3" back then were no less than "World of Warcraft".And that time was also the first climax of China's online games. The online game company that was not short of money even invited Zhang Huimei, a diva-level singer who was already popular in Asia at that time, to sing the theme song.It can be said that "A3" has set a benchmark for the promotion of online games for later generations.

It's a pity that "A3", which has exquisite graphics and qualified game itself, died, and it died so thoroughly that it didn't even survive the public beta.The reason is very simple. Almost none of the mainstream computers at that time could run "A3".In addition, "A3" required a large amount of data exchange, and the Chinese network environment at the time did not allow it, so such a game was really "death before the success".

But fortunately, in 2005, Perfect Company came up with their "Perfect World". When this game appeared, it came under the gimmick of "exquisite graphics".Fortunately, when "Perfect World" started beta testing, Huaxia's computer hardware and network environment had been upgraded to a higher level. Otherwise, "Perfect World" would not have had the brilliant performance it did later, and it has always been the signature product of Perfect Company.

After reading Lin Jinqi's introduction to "God King", Zhou Xin still has great expectations for this game.The current online games have put too much emphasis on "PVP", which has led to the rampant use of hackers and RMB players, and has also caused more and more casual players to fear entering the online game market.This can be said to be the shadow of the prosperous age of online games. If no manufacturers pay attention to and reverse this problem, then the winter of online games will come as soon as it is said.

And Zhou Xin's worries were later proved to be not "unfounded worries". The decline of "Stone Age" and "Magic Baby" proved how stupid it is for the manufacturers to ignore external links. You must know that these two games were once reduced to The point where you can't play without opening the plug-in.Even some old players complained that he didn't know whether the player he was playing with was a "real player" or a "robot".

The biggest difference between online games and stand-alone games is that online games can build online communities. Once the foundation of trust in this online community is destroyed, the decline of this game is a matter of time.However, Lin Jinqi said that "King of Gods" will not only have a powerful built-in anti-cheat plug-in, but also severely crack down on cheat players.Once verified, any hacker players will be banned for one week for the first time, and permanently banned again, and there will be no tolerance for "no more than three things".At the same time, the game will limit the occurrence of "PVP (Player Versus Player)" and guide a reasonable "PVP" battlefield; at the same time, more excellent "PVE (Player Versus Game)" copies and tasks will be launched.

"I hope this game will finally be as he said." Zhou Xin said. "If true, he's changed the game."

Lin Jinqi said at the end of the email that he was going to South Korea to participate in the IMO finals. Although he would also bring a computer with him, he could not ensure that the hotel could access the Internet, so he said that during this period of time, he might not be able to communicate well.When Zhou Xin read this email, Lin Jinqi, five other contestants and the team leader teacher were already at the overseas departure gate of the Capital International Airport, waiting for the customs to check their passports.

It is not a very common time for Chinese people to go abroad in this era, so the players looked at the airport very excitedly.Lin Jinqi, on the other hand, listened to the music silently with headphones on, not because he was putting on airs, but because Lin Jinqi knew that he was a little "claustrophobic". OK.