Luo Yicheng, a first-year student at a finance university, was almost completely wasted after only half a year of college.
Now he skipped classes and spent every day at internet cafes.
Unlike other students, he had little interest in dating, but was obsessed with going online.
"Boss, open an account."
Luo Yicheng pulled out a crumpled 10-yuan bill from his pocket, preparing for his usual all-night session.
While waiting for the account, Luo Yicheng's gaze suddenly caught sight of a roll-up banner nearby.
"DNF Explosive Open Beta, Renren Online Games Invites You to Play for Free."
Luo Yicheng pointed at the banner and asked the front desk,
"What does 'play for free' mean?"
The boss explained,
"You know Renrenwang, right? Their online game company just launched a 2D fighting online game today, it's quite fun. Our internet cafe has twenty machines where you can play DNF for free. During this period, you can't play other games. Want to give it a try? We still have machines available now, it'll be full later."
Luo Yicheng thought, there's such a good deal?
He quickly said,
"Yes, of course, I'd be a fool not to take advantage of something free."
With a monthly living allowance of around 600 yuan, just internet access alone cost him two to three hundred yuan a month.
So, to save on internet fees, he usually chose all-night packages because they were cheaper.
An all-night session required the "all-night trio": instant noodles, cigarettes, and cola.
Therefore, Luo Yicheng's monthly living expenses were never quite enough.
Now with the good fortune of free internet, how could he let it slip by?
After starting the machine, the "Dungeon Fighter Online" icon on the desktop was exceptionally conspicuous.
Luo Yicheng noticed a buddy next to him, wearing glasses, playing with great enjoyment.
"Hey, buddy, is this game fun?"
Luo Yicheng leaned over with a smile,
"Why is it only 2D? Games like 'Jade Dynasty' are 3D now, 2D feels a bit outdated."
The buddy with glasses turned his head and said,
"I think it's pretty fun. I chose the Poison King. I saw in the beta player guides that in ACT1, Poison King and Striker are top-tier, and the rest of the classes are trash. Don't let the bad graphics fool you, the PK is awesome."
"So, leveling up is just by clearing dungeons?"
"Yeah, but soloing is too hard. You definitely need to team up to clear dungeons, these damn maps are impossibly hard. You play Striker, and we'll team up to clear dungeons together."
"Alright, alright, I'll register an account first."
"No need to register, you can log in directly with your Renrenwang account."
"..."
Similar scenes unfolded in internet cafes big and small across the country.
The vendor-sponsored machine strategy was truly dominant, making players happy and internet cafes delighted.
Especially with the good rebate ratio offered by Renrenwang, many internet cafes began spontaneously promoting and recommending DNF.
......
Renrenwang also went all out for DNF's launch.
In addition to the press conference held at the exhibition center on the launch day.
On January 8th, print advertisements were placed in all first-tier and major second-tier cities.
Not content with spending heavily offline, Renrenwang was equally aggressive online.
They invested heavily in promotion on gaming information websites like YeziZhu and 17173, and also purchased a stack of advertorials.
Renrenwang spent money on virtually every imaginable channel, all to reach the player base faster and more broadly.
Having just completed financing, Renrenwang was not short on cash!
Spend big, spend hard!
Renrenwang even deployed nuclear-level weapons for its friendly forces.
Pop-ups!
In fact, after Renrenwang became popular, it had long stopped using such advertising methods, as they greatly affected user experience.
This time, to support DNF, they even pulled out their ace in the hole.
In addition, Renrenwang, Renren Farm, and Renren Parking Rush simultaneously launched events.
As long as you downloaded DNF and reached level ten in the game, you could receive a three-option gift package.
The Renrenwang gift package was a personal space skin.
Renren Farm offered three red plots of land and several plant seeds.
Renren Parking Rush offered a top-tier sports car.
Don't underestimate these gift packages; they were very attractive to users playing Renrenwang or Renren Farm.
With a massive user base, even if only ten percent of people eventually downloaded and played DNF, it would still be a terrifying amount of traffic.
Even if only half of those who reached level ten continued to play, it would be enough to make DNF eat until it burst.
When huge traffic surged into DNF, the previously prepared massive servers came into play.
Back then, DNF had a nickname: Disconnect City.
Tencent itself hadn't expected DNF to become so popular after it became their agent.
At that time, disconnecting was painful in DNF, but the most painful thing was queueing to log in.
Because most people couldn't even enter the game, they weren't even qualified to enjoy the "fun" of disconnecting...
If two friends wanted to enter the same channel, it was basically impossible to achieve in less than an hour.
There was even a so-called "queue-busting trick": you repeatedly refreshed until you saw a crowded channel, didn't enter immediately, waited two minutes, then entered, and you would definitely get in (back then, if you found a crowded channel and clicked on it, there was a high chance it would tell you it was full and you couldn't enter).
Seeing the backend download volume and online player data rapidly increase, Tian Hongrui finally felt a weight lifted from his mind.
Currently, the hottest game in China was Shi Yuzhu's Zhengtu, a true money-making monster.
In comparison, DNF was little known, with even its two beta tests having only mediocre popularity.
Even Tian Ruiguo himself believed that 3D was mainstream, 2D games were about to be eliminated, and DNF was a game that went completely against market trends.
Furthermore, although DNF was called "the national game" in Korea, strangely, its market share was not high, only ranking eighth domestically, behind games like "StarCraft," "World of Warcraft," and "Lineage."
Tian Ruiguo analyzed the reasons himself: people who liked DNF really liked it, while those who didn't couldn't get into it, easily put off by its 2D nature, poor graphics, and extremely high difficulty.
However, the big boss above, Chen Pingjiang, was particularly optimistic about DNF, willing to spend heavily to poach him for Renrenwang, and promote it regardless of cost, so Tian Hongrui could only work his hardest.
Fortunately, luck was on their side.
On January 8, 2008, the day of DNF's open beta, it set a record of 300,000 concurrent online users.
This stunned the entire industry!
While Renrenwang's no-holds-barred promotion was certainly a factor, it also indirectly proved the game's quality.
This left many people scratching their heads:
"Who the hell said 2D games were outdated?"
This achievement made Tencent grit its teeth in frustration, and companies like Shanda and The9 furious, banging their tables.
Five days later, the online player count surpassed 500,000.
Accompanying the exaggerated data was positive feedback from players across various channels.
"Compared to other games, the classes in this game are too diverse: Ghostblade, Gunner, Fighter, etc."
"I advise everyone not to play; it's too addictive, and you won't be able to keep your wallet safe."
"Once you touch it, you'll be completely hooked and unable to extricate yourself. It's like knowing there's a tiger in the mountain but still heading towards it, like your mind says 'don't go, don't go,' but your legs don't listen, moving forward as if possessed."
"It's a damn battle all the way. Put on headphones, and with the shocking sound effects, it's so exhilarating it gets to your head."
"Only those who completely don't understand say DNF is just 2D with mosaic graphics. DNF's strongest point is its game design. You can ignore its social system, or that its skills aren't cool enough, not even reaching the average level of other games. But DNF's strength lies in its skill system, dungeon crawling mechanics, and class design."
"..."
Players express their love or dislike for games very directly.
This is like "World of Warcraft"; the game is so good that you rarely hear anyone criticize it online.
And DNF currently showed similar signs.
This baffled people.
"World of Warcraft"'s awesomeness was universally recognized, with its grand worldview, realistic combat system, and thrilling dungeon system.
But what gave a mere 2D mosaic game the right to be so good?
Many mid-to-high-level employees of game companies downloaded DNF to find out, and unexpectedly couldn't stop playing once they started.
To some extent, DNF is truly an indelible presence in China's gaming history.
With its own strength, it saved Tencent from dire straits back then.
Before DNF's open beta, Tencent's situation was very bad.
In the self-developed MMOG field, games like Three Kingdoms and Fantasy began to decline after market changes from time-based billing to item-based billing, completely unable to compete with the newly rising Giant Zhengtu and NetEase's Journey to the West, let alone challenge Shanda.
The casual game QQ Speed stopped updating due to copyright issues.
Self-developed casual games like QQ Tang and QQ Game showed no improvement; the older game QQ Tang couldn't even get a piece of the casual competitive market, and QQ Speed, which would later have 4 million global concurrent players, had not yet surpassed 400,000 concurrent players at this time.
At that time, Tencent literally did not have a single strong product.
But after DNF's launch, in just three months, revenue increased by 50%, and not long after, it even surpassed Shanda.
If someone had told Chen Tianqiao and Ding Sanshi back then that Tencent would surpass Shanda and NetEase a year later, both of them would probably have thought you were crazy.
Even enduring disconnections, account hacking, cheats, unstable servers, and bugs, players still loved to play it.
It was truly DNF abusing you a thousand times, yet players treated it like first love.
Even more interestingly, at the 315 Gala in 2009, there were 31,546 complaints specifically against DNF, accounting for over 60% of all online game complaints.
This precisely explains why a game with so many flaws could still be such a money-maker.
Simply because it was too much fun.
......
The success of DNF made many investment institutions that had been squeezed out of Renrenwang's Series B financing pound their chests in regret, wishing they had been bolder and more aggressive back then.
It also brought smiles to the faces of IDG and Singapore's Temasek, who had gotten on board.
Everyone knew the power of online games in the domestic market at that time, a pure wealth-creation machine.
There was Chen Tianqiao, then Shi Yuzhu, with Ding Sanshi in between.
In the near future, Chen Pingjiang would certainly have his place, even though Chen Pingjiang was already quite wealthy.
Rumors began to spread from unknown sources:
"Chen Pingjiang possesses exceptionally sharp vision, has never met his match, and has never failed."
Initially, people laughed, as the business world is like a battlefield, and even the most brilliant general wouldn't claim never to fail.
But when people thought about it carefully, they felt a chill down their spines.
This young man, only twenty years old, succeeded in everything he undertook.
Renrenwang, Renren Parking Rush, Renren Farm, DNF.
It was rumored he had several other formidable projects under his name...
Even more busybodies posted online about the inside story of Renrenwang's acquisition of DNF's agency rights.
"At that time, nearly thirty various game companies in China rushed to compete for DNF, and it was even said that Tencent had reached a preliminary agreement.
But then, Chen Pingjiang burst onto the scene, directly creating a miracle through various unknown operations to secure DNF's agency rights. What's more exaggerated is that only a week passed from start to finish."
"Yes, yes, there's another thing that's extremely terrifying to think about. Has anyone noticed that any game or website related to Chen Pingjiang, no matter how many people are online concurrently, seems not to lag at all?
Anyway, when I played Legend and Zhengtu back then, it would get terribly laggy when there were many people, but Renren Farm and DNF never lagged at all. This is a bit too unreasonable.
Normal people know that a company wouldn't just invest so many servers without seeing results, they're usually added urgently afterwards. But at Renrenwang, Chen Pingjiang seemed to have accurately predicted that the game would explode in popularity..."
Suddenly, various grand revelations and conspiracy theories were rampant, even gaining considerable market traction.
This undoubtedly cast a veil of mystery over Chen Pingjiang.
He was labeled with many tags.
Twenty years old, super wealthy, sharp vision, domineering, powerful...
Meanwhile, Chen Pingjiang paid no attention to the outside noise and was leading the entire online gaming division in a celebratory meeting.
DNF's success deserved an unprecedented celebration.
Even the Renren Farm department participated.
"I want to thank everyone here for your hard work over the past few months. It is because of your efforts that DNF achieved its success today, and the company will not let down your efforts; you deserve better treatment."
"But whether it's Renren Farm or DNF, they are both still very young, just setting sail. I hope they can grow vigorously and become the company's new growth engines."
"Finally, let's raise our glasses together to the future!"
Chen Pingjiang held the microphone in his left hand and raised a glass of champagne in his right to toast with the staff and the entire audience.
Immediately, various shouts erupted.
"Long live the boss!"
"Renrenwang is awesome!"
"Renren Farm is awesome!"
"DNF is awesome!"
Many newcomers who had joined Renrenwang later were moved by the atmosphere, feeling a surge of pride and enthusiasm in their chests, and then joined the shouts.
They felt very lucky to have joined such a powerful company.
Tian Hongrui sighed, reflecting that he never expected that jumping from his old company to Renrenwang would bring him a second spring in his career, and an even better one at that.
In just half a month, DNF demonstrated such strong vitality and money-making ability that it left him dumbfounded, far surpassing new games launched by his former employer during the same period.
"Haha, I won't lie to you, boss. When Shen Nanpeng recruited me, he talked a lot about future visions, which I actually wasn't interested in. I valued compensation, stock options, and control more. Now I'm convinced, I'm very fortunate that I didn't refuse Shen Nanpeng back then, otherwise, it would be the biggest regret of my life, bar none,"
Tian Hongrui, already slightly tipsy, remarked with emotion.
(End of Chapter)