RBCT Chapter 428 Broadening one's horizons
Chapter 428 Broadening one's horizons
Lu Ran was unaware of the big move that Sakura Games and EA were planning.
He is currently focusing all his energy on a few things at hand: monitoring the data of "Minecraft", urging the progress of "CrossFire", and also having to manage the daily operations of TUTU.
I'm busy from morning till night every day, and I even eat at my workstation.
Zhou Mingzhe said that he would eventually wear himself out if he continued like this. Lu Ran said he understood, but then went on to attend another afternoon of meetings.
It's not that he doesn't want to rest, it's just that he has too much to do.
Tutu Technology has grown from a small team of a few dozen people to nearly two hundred, and new people are still coming in one after another. Just getting them to gel together takes a lot of effort.
Most importantly, Lu Ran is playing a very big game.
The core of this strategy is not a single game, or even two games, but a complete product matrix that covers different player groups.
MOBA games have League of Legends, sandbox games have Minecraft, and shooting games have CrossFire.
Three products, three ways to play, three different user groups, overlapping but not completely overlapping.
The advantage of this matrix is that no matter what type of game you like, there's always one that suits you.
If you like using your brain, you can play Minecraft; if you like action-packed games, you can play CrossFire; if you like team battles, you can play League of Legends.
Moreover, these three games are not in complete competition; players can play them simultaneously.
If you're tired of playing League of Legends today, you can relax by building a house in Minecraft.
If I feel like shooting tomorrow, I'll go into CrossFire and play a few rounds.
Switching between the three games keeps you entertained forever.
This is Lu Ran's true idea: to use a product matrix to firmly bind players' time.
A player's time is limited. There are 24 hours in a day. You need to eat, sleep, go to work, or go to school. The time you can use to play games is only three or four hours.
If he spends those three or four hours playing games from Tutu Technology, then he won't be able to play any other games.
It's not that I don't want to play, it's that I don't have the time.
This tactic wasn't invented by Lu Ran; Tencent did it the same way in his previous life.
Use League of Legends to bind one group of people, use CrossFire to bind another group, and then use Honor of Kings to bind even more people.
You want to play games? Sure, but I've already booked all your time.
Lu Ran is doing just that, except he has an extra card in his hand—Minecraft.
This game is different from other games; it's not as competitive, but it's more addictive.
You might get tired after playing two games of League of Legends, or get bored after a while of shooting in CrossFire, but you can spend an entire day building houses in Minecraft, so much so that you forget to eat.
This comprehensive encirclement makes it extremely difficult for other game companies to compete for users. It's not that their games are bad; it's that players don't have the time to play them.
I'm exhausted when I get home from get off work, and all I want to do is turn on my computer and relax.
There are three games from Rabbit Technology in front of me, and each one is quite fun. You can play any one of them for hours.
Who has the energy to try a new game?
Trying new games comes at a cost: downloading takes time, learning takes time, and if it's not fun, the time is wasted.
Why not go back to playing what you're familiar with? It's pretty fun anyway.
This is the power of first-mover advantage combined with a product portfolio; once formed, it is very difficult to break.
The release date for "CrossFire" is set for mid-June, two weeks later than originally planned.
It's not that the progress is lagging behind; it's that Lu Ran deliberately pushed it back.
Minecraft has only been online for a short time and its popularity is still rising. If another heavyweight product is launched at this time, the traffic of the two will interfere with each other.
Perhaps we should wait until Minecraft stabilizes a bit and its popularity starts to naturally decline before letting CrossFire take over.
The timing was very precise, not based on feeling, but on data.
The operations department prepares a detailed user behavior analysis report every day, and the first thing Lu Ran does when he arrives at the company every morning is to look at this report.
He would check if the online time of Minecraft users had decreased, if the return rate of old players had changed, and if the growth rate of new users had slowed down.
All the data tells him that mid-June is a suitable window.
On June 15th, CrossFire officially launched its open beta.
This public beta launch was less big-scale than the one for Minecraft. It's not that we didn't want to make it a big deal, it's just that there was no need.
Tutu Technology's brand awareness no longer needs to rely on a barrage of Google Ads to attract users; Tutu's reputation for producing high-quality products is more effective than any Google Ads.
The data from the first day of the public beta wasn't as exaggerated as that of Minecraft, but it was still quite impressive.
The number of registered users exceeded ten million on the first day, with a peak of nearly two million users online at the same time.
This number, placed within the FPS sub-category, already puts China at number one in the market.
The second-ranked FPS game has fewer than 500,000 concurrent online players.
Unlike Minecraft, CrossFire has a younger user base.
Most of them are students, including junior high school students, high school students, and college students, aged between fifteen and twenty-five.
This group has two main characteristics: one is that they have a lot of free time, and they can play for an entire day during holidays.
Another trait is a strong competitive spirit; they are unwilling to accept defeat and must win back their losses to be satisfied.
These two characteristics combined produce a terrifying result: extremely high user stickiness.
Many players start playing as soon as they enter the game, playing one game after another. They want to win when they lose, and they want to win again when they win.
It goes on and on, and you just can't stop.
One player posted on the forum that he originally just wanted to try it out, but ended up playing from 8 pm to 3 am.
He swore he would never play again the next day, but he played until 2 a.m. the following day.
This addictive gameplay caused CrossFire's data to climb steadily within a week of its open beta launch.
The number of registered users has exceeded 20 million, with a peak concurrent user count consistently above 2.5 million, and the average online time per user exceeding three hours.
These numbers combined create a reality that leaves other FPS games in despair: the FPS genre has already been locked in by Tutu Technology.
After CrossFire was launched, Lu Ran made a very interesting decision.
He didn't have the operations department promote it extensively; he simply posted an announcement on TUTU's game section, briefly mentioning the launch of the new game.
Zhou Mingzhe asked him why he didn't promote it properly, and Lu Ran's answer surprised Zhou Mingzhe.
Lu Ran said that there was no need for promotion because the players would promote it for us themselves.
Think about it, if someone is having a great time playing CrossFire, wouldn't they tell their friends?
Will.
Would his friends want to try it after hearing this?
Highly likely.
Once you try it, you can't stop, and then you keep telling your friends.
It spread from one person to another, faster than any other word.
Now, Tutu Technology no longer needs to invest too much in advertising.
After listening, Zhou Mingzhe thought about it and realized that it did seem to be true.
Over the next month, the players' reactions indeed confirmed Lu Ran's judgment.
CrossFire has consistently ranked among the top three in terms of discussion popularity on the TUTU Games section, taking turns with League of Legends and Minecraft to hold the top spot.
Players share their amazing plays, discuss the pros and cons of weapons, and analyze map tactics in the forums.
The atmosphere in the community was lively and enthusiastic, more like a mature product that had been running for several years than a newly launched game.
Every morning when Lu Ran arrives at the company, the first thing he does is open the backend of the three games and go through the data from beginning to end.
Looking at the fluctuating numbers, he wasn't calculating how much money he had made, but rather how much of each player's day was spent on Rabbit Technology's products.
After calculating, he discovered that the total daily user time consumed by the three games from Tutu Technology was an astonishing figure.
This means that other game companies wanting to steal users from Tutu Technology need to not only compete for players but also for their time.
People are easy to grab, but time is hard to grab.
A player only has so much time in a day. If you take up all of their time, even if someone else makes a really fun game, they won't have time to play it.
This is not a problem that can be solved by a good game; it is an ecological barrier that requires years of accumulation to build.
Lu Ran built this barrier in less than a year.
Of course, he also knew that the wall was not permanent.
The gaming industry changes too fast; a product that's at its peak today might be obsolete tomorrow due to new gameplay mechanics.
He needs to keep moving forward and constantly come up with new things in order to make this wall thicker and higher.
His system library contains dozens of products that have been market-tested in his previous life, each of which is a powerful weapon.
But he can't rush things; he has to take it one step at a time. Going too fast could lead to trouble and arouse suspicion.
What he needs to do is find a suitable pace, neither too fast nor too slow, so that the company can continue to grow without seeming too outrageous.
He's been searching for this rhythm for almost a year, and now he's finally found it.
With three to four products a year, including one flagship title and several smaller titles, the company avoids appearing too crowded or inactive.
We already have two games this year, Minecraft and CrossFire, so we can release another one in the second half of the year.
As for what to recommend, he hasn't decided yet, but he has a few alternatives in mind, which he will bring out when the time is right.
As for what Sakura Games and EA are up to, he doesn't have time to care for that right now.
It's not that I don't care, it's that there's no need to.
We must do what our opponents do, and we must also do what we need to do; the two are not contradictory.
If you do your own thing well, no matter how much your opponents try to cause trouble, they won't be able to make a ripple.
Moreover, Lu Ran's goals are no longer limited to just the Dragon Kingdom.
It's time to go out and see the world, or let the world see the world.
However, there is one more urgent matter: going home.
Shen Yuege just sent a message saying that she learned a new dish and promised that she wouldn't mess it up this time.
Lu Ran looked at the message and hesitated for a long time before deciding whether to reply with "I won't be home for dinner tonight".
After thinking about it, I decided against it. I'll just go back. At worst, I'll just have to eat another meal of terribly salty braised pork.
He shut down his computer, picked up his coat, and glanced back at the empty room as he walked to the office door.
Several unfinished reports were piled on the desk, and the whiteboard was covered with various data and nodes. The setting sun outside the window dyed the entire city orange-red.
This year has gone by so fast.
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