readsfreenovel Chapter 466 The Concept of Mobile Games
Chapter 466 The Concept of Mobile Games
Upon hearing Lu Ran's words, Li Chen paused for a moment, then nodded in agreement.
Zhao Yiming walked over from the opposite row with a complicated expression on his face.
He walked up to Lu Ran, stared at him for two seconds, and then said, "Was that Orianna's R-flash just now a prediction or a reaction?"
Lu Ran thought for a moment: "Anticipation. I saw he was going to move to the right, so I passed the ball to him in advance."
Zhao Yiming paused for a moment, then shook his head: "You're like you're cheating at everything you do. Even in games, you're cheating."
Lu Ran picked up his coat and put it on, patted Zhao Yiming on the shoulder and said, "This is normal for me. You can learn it if you practice more."
Zhao Yiming said, "Stop it. I've been playing for three years and I've never seen anything as outrageous as you."
The lights were still on in the internet cafe, and the screens of the machines in the next row were glowing blue and white.
Some people were packing up their peripherals, some were discussing the details of the match they had just played, and others were watching the replay on their phones.
Several colleagues who were watching were still whispering among themselves, reviewing Lu Ran's actions in a low voice.
Lu Ran didn't say anything more and turned to walk towards the door.
As I stepped out of the internet cafe, a cool evening breeze greeted me, carrying the unique chill of autumn.
There weren't many pedestrians on the street, and the streetlights were already on, casting long shadows of the roadside trees in the dim light.
A food delivery rider rode by on his electric scooter, with two unfinished cups of milk tea in the basket. The scooter was jolted so much that the lids almost slipped off, but he pressed them down with his elbow and kept going.
Lu Ran stood at the entrance of the internet cafe and took out his phone to take a look.
Shen Yuege sent him a message half an hour ago, asking if he had finished playing and saying that dinner was ready and she had made pork rib soup.
He replied, "Just finished playing, now I'm heading back," put his phone back in his pocket, and started walking towards home.
The glass door of the internet cafe behind him popped open again after he walked away, and the voices of several colleagues poured out, mixed with laughter and the sound of typing on keyboards, drifting in the October night breeze of Shanghai.
...
At Monday's morning meeting, the first item on the agenda was not a review of last week's data.
After Zhou Mingzhe sat down, he glanced at Lu Ran and then said, "Let me digress for a moment. I was there during yesterday's match, and I was the opposing mid laner. I have to admit, I was completely dominated by President Lu and barely had any presence throughout the entire game."
Several people in the meeting room laughed.
Lu Ran leaned back in his chair, picked up the teacup in front of him, took a sip, and said nothing.
Zhao Yiming continued, "Later I went back and watched the first-person replay of that Orianna game. Lu Boss out-farmed Zhou 50 CS during the laning phase, and by the five-minute mark, Zhou Boss couldn't even leave the tower."
Zhou Mingzhe raised his hand to signal a halt: "No need for a debriefing, I already understand. For future internal company competitions, I suggest assigning President Lu to the referee team, not to our team. Otherwise, the competition becomes his personal show, and the rest of us are just there to play along."
There was another burst of laughter in the meeting room.
After the laughter subsided, Lu Ran put down his teacup and said, "Let's put the competition behind us and get down to business. Everyone saw the data from the European server last week; the peak reached over 1.5 million. This data shows that the basic base in the European market has been established. The next thing to consider is how to connect with subsequent products."
He turned on the projector, and a timeline chart appeared on the screen.
The chart marks several key milestones: Minecraft Europe, CrossFire Europe, the launch of research in the Middle East market, and channel evaluation in the South American market.
"Minecraft will launch next week," Lu Ran pointed to the first node on the chart with a laser pointer. "The game has already surpassed 800,000 pre-registrations in Europe, and the launch numbers should be quite good. CrossFire will launch two weeks later, so the two products will be released one after the other, and there won't be a gap in player experience."
Zhou Mingzhe jotted down a few notes in his notebook, then looked up: "I received the research report from the Middle East the day before yesterday. The data is good, but there are a few problems. First, the localization workload is greater than we anticipated; the right-to-left writing direction of Arabic and UI adaptation require a separate version development. Second, the approval process there is completely different from Europe; it takes longer and the standards are more ambiguous. Third, the selection of distributors is relatively narrow; there are only two or three large publishers we can work with locally, leaving little room for negotiation."
After listening, Lu Ran said that there was no rush in the Middle East market, and that it was better to stabilize the European market first.
After all three products are launched in Europe, we'll wait a month or two to run the data before considering the Middle East.
Wang Huabing sat at the back of the conference table and didn't speak until Lu Ran finished discussing the Middle East and South America topics.
His voice wasn't loud, but every word was clear: "The channel research in Guangzhou is almost finished. It's pretty much what I expected; local players are much more receptive to competitive games than casual ones. The initial launch performance of 'League of Legends' and 'CrossFire' in Guangzhou shouldn't be any worse than in Shanghai."
Lu Ran nodded: "You need to come up with the promotion plan for Guangzhou as soon as possible, and stagger the pace with Shanghai. Don't launch large-scale campaigns on both sides at the same time. A month's difference will reduce the pressure on channels and operations."
Wang Huabing said "okay," wrote a line in his notebook, put down his pen, and didn't say anything more.
After the meeting, Lu Ran returned to his office, turned on his computer, and glanced at the reservation backend for the European version of Minecraft.
That number had risen even further since he saw it last weekend, now approaching ninety, and the growth curve showed no signs of slowing down.
He stared at the number for a while, then closed the page and opened another document.
The document is titled "Project Concept for Honor of Kings".
This idea came to me last weekend when Zhao Yiming mentioned "civil war".
That day, after finishing the match, he returned to his office, turned on his computer, created a new document, and started typing.
The core gameplay of Honor of Kings is actually not complicated. It's a five-on-five MOBA game that simplifies the operation logic of the PC game League of Legends, compressing the complex keyboard and mouse operations into two or three skill buttons plus a movement joystick.
The pace is faster, and a game can be completed in fifteen to twenty minutes.
It has a very low barrier to entry; you can play it on your mobile phone without having to go to an internet cafe.
He knew exactly how well the game had performed in the market in his previous life.
With peak daily active users exceeding 100 million and annual revenue in the tens of billions, it all comes down to one thing: bringing the core fun of League of Legends to mobile phones.
There isn't a truly successful MOBA mobile game in the world yet.
It's not that no one wants to make it, it's that the products made have a poor feel or terrible balance, and they quickly become unpopular after being launched.
Lu Ran felt that he had a much greater advantage than others. He had a thorough understanding of the underlying logic of League of Legends and knew what could be simplified and what had to be retained.
He began writing down the core design principles in the document: reduce hero abilities to three, one of which is an ultimate ability. The map size will be scaled down proportionally, with matches lasting no more than fifteen minutes. All heroes will be free, with revenue coming from skins and effects. A ranked system will be included, but it won't be too complex.
He spent over an hour writing, expanding the document from two pages to more than ten pages, which included the gameplay framework, hero design direction, map layout, economic system, ranking mechanism, and operational rhythm.
When he finished writing the last word, he leaned back in his chair and stared at the document title on the screen for a long time.
Then I saved the document, closed the page, stood up, and walked to the window.
It was lunchtime downstairs, and several young people in white shirts came out of the office building, carrying takeout bags or holding newly bought coffee cups, looking down at their phones as they walked.
When they look at their phones, their thumbs move very quickly across the screen, clearly indicating they're scrolling through short videos or chatting.
Lu Ran looked at those people, but was thinking about something else.
PC games require a computer, a fixed location, and a block of uninterrupted time.
Mobile games only require a mobile phone, and can be played anywhere.
I can play a game while waiting for the subway, I can play a game during my lunch break, and I can play a game while relaxing on the sofa after eating.
If this game is made, it will reach a much larger user base than PC games.
Users who don't play PC games, those who don't have time to sit in front of a computer, and those who are afraid of the difficulty of PC game operations will all become potential players of MOBA mobile games.
He stood by the window for a while, then returned to his desk and reorganized the document, adding what needed to be added and deleting what needed to be deleted. Then he sent Zhou Mingzhe a message: "Brother Zhou, I have a new project I'd like to discuss with you. It's about a MOBA mobile game. When are you free?"
Zhou Mingzhe replied: "After 2 PM."
Lu Ran replied with an "OK", then dragged the "Honor of Kings Project Concept" document into an encrypted folder and shut down the computer.
Lu Ran sat at his desk and read the document over and over again.
After confirming that nothing had been missed, he closed his laptop, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling quietly for a while.
There was still some time before the 2 PM meeting, so he checked his phone. Shen Yuege had sent him a picture of pork rib soup. The soup was milky white, the meat chunks were tender and falling off the bone, and a few goji berries were sprinkled on top.
The photo was captioned: "There's one bowl left, I'm saving it for you."
"Wait for me to get off work."
...