Huang Xitong was born in 1976 and was only 30 years old this year.
It was hard to imagine that at age 30, the QQ Zone project team he was currently leading at Tencent was already his eighth job.
From university graduation until he joined Tencent last year, he had been either changing jobs or on his way to changing them. It was difficult to fathom that a college-educated member of the "post-70s" generation would behave this way.
Even though the state-assigned job system had been abolished by the turn of the century when he graduated, college graduates in those days were still held in incredibly high regard.
Perhaps it was because he had endured so many hardships; at 30, Huang Xitong looked closer to 40, his face aged well beyond his actual years.
Tan Jincheng actually really wanted to ask Huang how he came to work as a carpenter—how a high-achieving graduate from Sichuan University ended up doing such manual labor, especially since that kind of work wasn't exactly lucrative back then.
Tan actually had a cousin who worked as a carpenter; he only had a junior high school education. If he contracted the work himself, he could make a bit more, but working for others only paid 50 or 60 yuan a day.
Forget it, forget it, Tan thought. Asking about that during a first meeting would be a bit tactless.
Huang was accompanied by a Tencent investment manager. While Huang primarily discussed technical interfacing issues with Cheng Hao, the investment manager took charge of the cooperation terms.
It seemed Huang's leadership knew this guy wasn't exactly gifted at communication.
"The success of 'Happy Farm' has pioneered a new model for social network gaming profitability. That is something that deserves recognition,"
The investment manager, a man named Wang Xuesong, began with a polite opening.
They had meticulously analyzed Happy Farm. The game's development cycle was extremely short, and the costs were likely only around 100,000 yuan.
Unlike massive games that required tens of millions in capital and years of labor, a small amount of money paired with creativity could achieve massive success.
If one looked purely at development costs, Happy Farm had already broken even the moment it launched its first batch of cosmetic items.
This gave industry insiders quite a wake-up call: it turned out game development could be played like this, keeping risks at such a miniscule level.
"Mr. Wang, there's a 'but' coming, isn't there?"
Tan Jincheng smiled, ignoring the empty flattery.
Wang Xuesong chuckled.
"Indeed, there is a 'but'."
"Although Happy Farm has succeeded and is growing rapidly, it suffers from being extremely easy to imitate, and its lifecycle is highly questionable."
"Currently, we have discovered seven or eight 'copycat' versions of Happy Farm on the market alone. I believe there are even more in development. Some of them have simply modified your client slightly and put it straight into use."
Tan nodded. He didn't deny this. In just two months since launch, seven or eight imitators had emerged; the speed was undeniably rapid.
The sustainability of social gaming was indeed suspect; many games had lifecycles as short as one or two weeks—take, for example, the future phenomenon Yang Le Ge Yang.
Furthermore, while almost every player in a large-scale MMORPG would have payment history, social games were dominated by free-to-play users. Determining exactly how much profit they could generate for developers remained an open question.
Good ideas were important, but whether those ideas could generate sustainable profits was a question every developer had to confront.
There was a thinly veiled threat in Wang's words. It went without saying that Tencent was likely secretly developing a Happy Farm clone—which was perfectly understandable and entirely consistent with Tencent's corporate culture.
"Mr. Wang is right. There are indeed many imitators out there, and I believe as our game becomes more popular, there will only be more. If I'm not mistaken, your team at Tencent likely has plans in this direction as well."
Tan noticed the expression of Huang Xitong, who had been whispering with Cheng Hao, shift. Having been at Tencent for only a year, Huang wasn't yet a jaded veteran and clearly hadn't mastered his poker face.
Wang Xuesong, however, remained unmoved.
"No, no, President Tan, you've misunderstood. We are a large corporation; we wouldn't engage in such things. We have come to negotiate this cooperation in good faith."
Save it, Tan thought. I know your corporate culture better than your bosses do. It wasn't just Tencent; platforms like Wang Xing's Xiaonei were definitely working on this stuff, too.
Xiaonei had actually sent a partnership invite, hoping to bring Happy Farm into their fold. If Tan could finalize the deal with QQ Zone, he would likely follow up by engaging with Xiaonei as well.
Why turn down easy money?
"The fact that people are imitating us proves our model is successful. That's a good thing. Besides, Mr. Wang must be aware that the most successful imitator currently on the market has already changed its name, correct?"
"You mean 'Kai Kai Farm'?"
"Right. Actually, I also know they were planning to change it to 'Sunshine Farm' or 'Sunshine Ranch,' but unfortunately, we registered those trademarks as well. So, imitating is fine, but the hype will always be with us. By distinguishing ourselves, we remain the only original."
"On the other hand, every game has a lifecycle. To extend that lifecycle, you have to focus on updates. That is why we maintain a rapid, once-a-month update schedule to keep the game fresh."
"As for the 'free-to-play' model, Mr. Wang should be aware of Zhengtu, which launched this year, right? I don't think I need to elaborate further on that."
"Free" was always the most expensive option; anyone who had built games knew this.
The guy who sold NaoBaiJin had launched Zhengtu this year, scrapping the subscription-time card model in favor of in-game item microtransactions, and the money it raked in was absolutely staggering.
The traditional time-card game model was no longer suitable for most games.
Wang couldn't gain any ground in the verbal sparring match. He knew that Orange Technology had sent a lawyer's letter to Kai Kai Farm, forcing them to change their name; Kai Kai Farm had even leveraged that letter to grab some free publicity.
But helplessly, the opponent had registered official trademarks.
Wang had checked at the Trademark Office before coming, and Tan had indeed registered and applied for a series of surrounding domain names and trademarks related to Happy Farm, leaving copycats with nowhere to maneuver.
He had even found the trademarks for "QQ Farm" and "QQ Ranch" registered at the bureau, which had shocked him deeply.
Fortunately, those weren't registered under internet-related classifications. However, upon investigating further, he discovered the registrant was a businessman from Yiwu named Gu Hongshun—which, coincidentally, was the father of Orange Technology's CEO, Gu Qingqing.
These guys are absolutely ruthless, Wang thought, feeling a flare of frustration.
Did he not understand what Tan was saying? No, he understood perfectly.
The previous statements certainly contained elements of threats, but Orange Technology was backed by the Shanchi Group and investment institutions; aside from verbal threats, the QQ Zone team truly couldn't do anything else.
In terms of raw group strength, Tencent could crush a tiny company like Orange Technology with ease. But no matter how much importance the QQ Zone project held internally, it couldn't simply mobilize the entire group's resources for a small squabble.
In terms of cash, Orange Technology was backed by two major entities and wasn't short on capital. In terms of innovation, the opponent maintained a once-a-month update cycle, and you never knew what they might roll out next.
Furthermore, the opponent had built such a dense perimeter of defensive patents that even the "QQ Farm" trademarks were in their hands. If Tencent really tried to launch something, they would inevitably end up in court.
And in a lawsuit, regardless of the outcome, Tencent would be the one losing face.
Since the verbal jabs weren't working, it was time to negotiate concrete cooperation. Tencent offered three models:
The first was a buyout, purchasing the ownership of Happy Farm outright.
The second was revenue sharing based on a percentage of the game's income.
The third was a minimum-guarantee model, with a revenue cap after reaching a certain level.
Buyout, share, or guarantee—each had its pros and cons. A one-time buyout would certainly involve a huge lump sum. If this were a year ago, Tan would have chosen that model, cashed out, and walked away easily.
He could have taken the money to do something else. But those were thoughts from a year ago; nowadays, Tan wasn't strictly fixated on money.
The user resources accumulated by Happy Network and Happy Farm were a customer base far more valuable than cash. In the future, these individuals could become the consumer base for Shanchi electric vehicles and new energy automobiles.
At the same time, this user data could be used to train big data models—a major trend for future development.
Why could the internet giants break through so easily in the big data space? Because they possessed massive user pools.
Take Douyin, for example; if they hadn't accumulated the user base from earlier products like Toutiao and Neihan Duanzi, they wouldn't have achieved that level of success.
A buyout was off the table, and a minimum guarantee was even more laughable; minimum guarantees were the most brain-dead tactic in the industry.
If the power dynamic were skewed heavily toward Tencent, Orange Technology might have been forced to accept them, but that wasn't the case here.
QQ Zone—or even Tencent as a whole—couldn't strong-arm Orange Technology.
"Let's talk about the revenue-sharing model, then,"
Tan said with a smile.
Tan didn't particularly care about the exact percentage. Pure game revenue was pocket change; it wasn't a massive game like Zhengtu.
The most important thing was if they could implement a "one-click QQ login" mode to harvest a certain number of QQ user profiles. User data was what Orange Technology really valued.
With more user resources, they could secure a higher valuation for their Series B financing. Wasn't that far easier than just relying on game earnings?
Revenue sharing was naturally the option Tencent was least willing to accept; they preferred buyouts, but they knew that was impossible.
With investment institutional backing, only a fool would sell the goose that laid the golden eggs.
As for the minimum guarantee, that was a trap clause used to deal with small, unfunded, unconnected startup teams. Wang brought it up just to see if Tan was naive enough to bite.
Wang, however, hadn't expected Orange Technology's appetite to be this large. Revenue sharing was one thing, but they also wanted access to QQ user data? That was a tricky request.
Tan wasn't in a hurry. He let Wang mull it over slowly. Every day that passed, the data for Happy Farm only looked better, and by tomorrow, the asking price would be higher than it was today.
Tan hadn't interacted much with Huang Xitong today. The guy really seemed to have communication barriers, with his eyes only lighting up when the conversation turned to technology.
But that was fine. Tan hadn't intended to poach him right this second; rushing it would be a waste of talent. He would focus on building the relationship first.
(End of Chapter)