May 8th.
At five o'clock in the morning, Renren.com underwent maintenance updates.
Subsequently, Renren Parking Grab officially went online.
Lu Xing is an office worker in Shenzhen.
Due to housing rent, he has to walk fifteen minutes to the subway station every day to get to work, and then transfer to a bus after getting off the subway.
This morning, Lu Xing caught the subway as usual.
He then noticed that today's Shenzhen subway was a bit different, with a bunch of advertisements plastered on the floor and handrails.
"Renren Parking Grab?"
Initially, Lu Xing didn't pay much attention.
It wasn't until he transferred to the bus that he saw the 29-route bus he frequently took was also entirely covered with "Renren Parking Grab" advertisements.
With doubt and curiosity, Lu Xing arrived at the office and, before starting work, typed Renren.com's website into his browser.
After the page loaded, a pop-up window, large enough to occupy half the screen, jumped out, clearly also about Parking Grab.
"Log in now to receive a newcomer's gift package. Includes: one double coin card, one Bumblebee experience card, and one exclusive fragment for a premium private car."
After completing the registration process, Lu Xing finally started the game.
Looking at a lonely second-hand Alto in the garage, under the guidance of the new user tutorial, Lu Xing found an empty parking spot, parked his car, and looked around.
"Park your car in someone else's private parking space, earn 10 yuan income per minute; however, income will no longer increase after continuously earning 7200 yuan in this spot."
"If you find your parking space occupied by someone else, you can 'ticket' that car and collect a fine, which will be the income that car earned from this parking session."
"So, the gameplay of this game is to continuously park and ticket to accumulate funds, then buy cars and upgrade them?"
Lu Xing suddenly remembered the newcomer's gift package he had just claimed and quickly clicked to use it.
As the mouse clicked, a bright yellow Chevrolet Camaro appeared on the screen, with charming curves and graceful lines.
Lu Xing couldn't take his eyes off it; it was his dream car.
Especially since the first Transformers movie was scheduled to be released domestically in less than two months, he had already watched the trailer countless times.
After using the double coin card, Lu Xing quickly found a parking spot for Bumblebee and parked it, as the experience card was only valid for one day.
"The second-hand Alto costs 16,000 yuan, earning 5 yuan per minute. If you calculate it, it would take 53 hours to buy another one."
"Damn, Bumblebee actually earns 20 yuan per minute. With the double coin card, that's 40 yuan per minute, amounting to an incredible 57,600 yuan a day."
"Oh right, I can also ticket other people's cars. But the game just launched, so there aren't many players. Ticketing back and forth every day in the future wouldn't be bad."
Lu Xing, a programmer by profession, suddenly discovered an interesting loophole.
"It seems I can register another small account and park all my main account's cars there."
Lu Xing's interest grew stronger and stronger until he had to reluctantly close the game when it was time for work.
At the same time, he recommended it to his colleague sitting next to him.
"Old Wang, I recommend a game to you. Come play with me."
"What game?"
Wang Jiang, sitting next to Lu Xing, was a bit confused; he hadn't seen Lu Xing enjoy games before.
"Open www.renren.com, there's Renren Parking Grab on it. Go register quickly; it'll be fun if we interact."
"Sister Li, you should try it too."
Throughout the morning, Lu Xing sporadically opened the Renren Parking Grab page 5 times to check his parking status and see if he had been ticketed.
Every time he entered Parking Grab from the left navigation bar, after a while, Lu Xing found it hard not to pay attention to other pages on Renren.com.
"The front-end UI is well done; it feels much better than other SNS, looking clean and refreshing."
Lu Xing casually browsed a few posts and unexpectedly saw strategy guides for Parking Grab and some redemption code lottery events.
He then clicked on other sections he was interested in, namely the music section, novels, and the ACG section, happily slacking off.
...
In Yuzhou, a third- or fourth-tier small city, Yuan Xiaoen opened the QQ link sent by her childhood best friend out of curiosity, which also redirected her to Renren.com.
"Xiaoen, come try this game quickly! Jiang Tao and I are also playing. Oh, you can also invite your friends, there are rewards."
Due to the friend invitation reward mechanism, many players, after some thought, began frantically inviting friends.
For each person invited into the game, a reward of 1000 gold coins could be obtained.
A second-hand Alto cost 16,000.
There was an upper limit to the number of friends that could be invited, a maximum of 30 people.
This meant that in the initial stage, one could have nearly two more cars than others, and with the newcomer's gift package superimposed, they could steadily win at the starting line.
...
When Chen Pingjiang arrived at the company in the morning, Miao Bingwei excitedly rushed over as soon as he sat down.
"Good news! It's a great start. As of 10 AM, more than 30,000 people have registered for Renren Parking Grab, and registration numbers are exploding geometrically due to the invitation rewards."
Chen Pingjiang smiled and nodded, not at all surprised.
"Keep an eye on the servers. We'll have a meeting in the afternoon."
Although this data was decent, Renren.com itself already had so many registered users, and advertisements were also placed on buses and subways in first-tier cities, so there wasn't much to be ecstatic about.
What truly needed to be monitored were the 24-hour registration volume and retention rate.
The fission of Parking Grab was quite formidable.
Players who understood it even slightly were frantically inviting friends.
Gaining a head start in the early stage meant their asset accumulation speed would be much faster than others.
Moreover, the more friends one had, the more places they could park their beloved cars in others' spaces.
When starting the game, most people didn't have many cars, but as the number of vehicles under their name increased, more and more friends would be needed; otherwise, there would simply be nowhere to park.
Furthermore, the more friends one had, the more tickets they could issue.
Each ticketing could earn the car's income, and there was no limit to the number of times, which was as refreshing as getting something for free.
It turned out that Miao Bingwei had underestimated the explosive speed of Renren Parking Grab; by the time the meeting started at 2 PM, the number of registered users had already surpassed 100,000.
This was truly an unimaginable number; it took Renren.com two or three months to go from 0 to 100,000, while Parking Grab achieved it in just half a day.
In the conference room, everyone's expressions seemed a bit excited, feeling that this was a good start.
Chen Pingjiang sat at one end of the conference room, listening to everyone's reports, occasionally adding a few remarks.
"Which version has the technical department developed to?"
With Miao Bingwei joining the board, the entire Renren Parking Grab project was now led by veteran Ye Songxiang, who had joined Renren.com through social recruitment when the Parking Grab project was first conceived.
Hearing the big boss's question, Ye Songxiang quickly opened his laptop and replied,
"It has been developed to version 1.5. We plan to update versions monthly. In the already developed versions, we have added features such as honor badges, car modifications, a points mall, a license plate system, and a lottery system.
In the subsequent versions under development, we plan to add a car model system, a guild system, an epic parts system, and a transforming car system."
Chen Pingjiang nodded,
"Don't rush to update the game too much right after launch. Make it easier for players to get started. Once the registration growth slows down, then begin version updates to achieve active user retention."
From its inception, Renren Parking Grab had prepared several version updates, and some of the gameplay was already very different from the Parking Grab game in his previous life.
The reason for preparing so many gameplay features was entirely for Chen Pingjiang to extend the game's lifespan and to prepare for competitors.
Back then, QQ Farm could update three or four versions in a week; compared to that, Chen Pingjiang felt he was being too restrained.
The main issue with social games is that if they are too difficult to get into, they will inevitably deter many people and are not suitable for older users.
But if it remains too simple, with sparse game content, players will quickly lose interest after the initial novelty period.
Therefore, gradually increasing gameplay is necessary.
At the same time, it serves as a dimensionality reduction strike against competitors who might plagiarize Parking Grab.
No matter how you copy, I will always be one step ahead of you.
Many of these gameplay features were suggested by Chen Pingjiang, and some were, of course, added independently by the technical department.
For instance, the car experience card and exclusive private car fragments in the newcomer's gift package were not present when the game first launched in his previous life.
Thinking of this, Chen Pingjiang turned to Zhuo Ling, the head of the content department, and asked,
"How's the promotion going on your end? Remember to connect and interact Parking Grab with our Renren.com. To put it bluntly, the purpose of us making this game is to drive traffic to Renren.com, and the ultimate goal is to increase the number of online users on Renren.com."
Zhuo Ling had also been under considerable pressure recently, and her dark circles were quite severe from staying up late.
"We have not only launched strategy guides and redemption code lottery events on Renren.com but also specifically added a Parking Grab dating section to facilitate social interaction for users with fewer friends.
At the same time, we've set up a check-in post, offering certain rewards for daily check-ins. Concurrently, we optimized some sections of Renren.com and organized a Parking Grab Declaration Contest."
Chen Pingjiang took the laptop Zhuo Ling handed him.
On it were some amusing declarations.
"Loyalty is precious, but reporting is more; if there's a good car to ticket, both can be thrown away!"
"My parking space, my rules."
"Reporting tickets is not a crime; waiting for a rabbit, you can't sleep."
"Strengthen police-civilian cooperation, build a harmonious parking lot together."
"If you park out, you're bound to get ticketed sooner or later!"
"..."
(End of Chapter)