Chapter 3 Chapter Two Germination (1985-1991)

·In 1985, EA signed long-term distribution agreements with seven well-known studios and began to transform into the midstream. ·In 1985, the first 16-bit personal computer in mainland China—Great Wall 0520 microcomputer came out. ·In 1986, Jingxun Information launched the first commercial game made by the Chinese - "Ruyiji". In EA's mid-stream strategy year and 1987, Microsoft released Windows 1.0 and Windows 2.0 operating systems successively, neither of which was recognized by PC users.It was not until May 22, 1990 that Microsoft launched the operating system with a graphical user interface that it became popular on personal computers.

With the widespread use of Windows, computer games have also begun to migrate from the DOS platform to the Windows platform.If you exclude games such as "Minesweeper" and "Tetris" presented by Microsoft with the operating system, the first game on the platform should be "Simulation Earth" launched by Maxis in 1990.In the following year, the company also transplanted "Simulated Ants" and "Simulated City" to the Windows 3.0 platform, and Will Wright's "Simulation" series became the first batch of games to land on the Windows platform.In this tide of migration, many companies were eliminated by the market because they failed to adjust their development strategies in time.

In the middle of the 1990s, due to the price cut storm of personal computers (TI computers once fell from $1,000 to $50), many hardware manufacturers in the United States faced unprecedented difficulties, and the entire computer industry was once in a downturn. Retired to the second line, IBM was challenged by compatible machines, AT&T was split... Major companies have laid off employees, and many computer engineers have lost their jobs.Idle computer talents injected fresh blood into the development of computer games. While the market was expanding rapidly, the number of computer game practitioners in the United States also increased rapidly during this period.

At the same time, some powerful developers began to transform.The situation of the American computer game industry at this stage is quite similar to that of Taiwan, China in the early 1990s, with many small studios.Due to the large game market in the United States, these small studios do not have the ability to publish games on their own, so they have to find agency companies such as Electronic Arts and Activision to distribute them on their behalf.EA's strategy at the beginning of its establishment was to pay equal attention to development and distribution, but they soon discovered that the cost of independent research and development was too high and the risks were relatively high, while agency distribution could make long-term profits as long as they had a stable product line on hand.After occupying the midstream position, upstream developers will find themselves if they want to push their products into the market. In this way, they not only control the distribution channels, but also control the development process.

In 1999, Electronic Arts signed long-term distribution agreements with seven well-known studios including Origin, FreeFall and Ozark, becoming one of the largest game publishers in North America at that time.In the same year, Activision also decided to shift its focus from R&D to distribution. From R&D and publishing to focusing on publishing, or starting directly with publishing, and then building or acquiring R&D teams after a certain level of accumulation—early Taiwanese game companies such as Third Wave, Zhiguan, and Jingxun are precisely It developed following the midstream strategy of Electronic Arts.

The three-dollar licensed game has no language of its own, and our history is left to be told by others. In 1985, Japanese Koei Company launched "Three Kingdoms", which became popular in the Chinese area of ​​Southeast Asia. In 2008, Jingxun released the first commercial game made by Chinese in Taiwan - "Ruyiji". In the Taiwanese game market where European and American computer games are flooded, this small game may not have attracted much attention. Compared with games such as "Mission 3", it still seems too immature.But looking at it from a historical perspective, we can clearly feel its weight.From this day on, Chinese people have learned to express our thoughts and interpret our culture with a brand-new media such as games.

In the following year, Jingxun launched the first role-playing game "Starship Warrior MX-151" originally created by Chinese people. And Cai Minghong's "Dragon Slayer".Su Hongzhang, who composed the soundtracks for the first and second generations of "Xuanyuan Sword" and "Xuanyuan Sword: Maple Dance", said when recalling these two works: "The emotion at the beginning is different from what it is now. Now it is purely nostalgic. It used to be I thought: It’s great, and I can write my own game.” At this time, Zhiguan in Tainan was negotiating hard for a year with foreign game manufacturers on the introduction of games.Due to the flood of pirated discs in Taiwan, the genuine software costs about US$40, while the pirated version only costs NT$40. In order to open up the genuine game market in Taiwan, Wang Junbo decided to use "a little more expensive than pirated version to sell the genuine version".His idea is: a genuine game only sells for 3 dollars, the cost is 1 yuan, the royalties to foreign manufacturers are 1 yuan, and he earns 1 yuan himself.

It is conceivable that in the eyes of many foreign manufacturers, a small Taiwanese company actually proposed such a condition, which is tantamount to a dream. The talkative Wang Junbo has lobbied in the United States for a year without gaining anything.In the second year, the American SSI company finally expressed its willingness to accept a royalty of 1 dollar, but it required Wang Junbo to guarantee to sell 4,000 sets (at this time, the SSI company was about to usher in the first glorious era in the history of computer role-playing games).Wang Junbo readily agreed, and in August 1986 signed the world's first contract with the company to authorize product distribution in the Chinese region. He was allowed to produce Chinese manuals for foreign games and then repackage the games, and released them in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia.

Wang Junbo used his sophisticated marketing skills, and the first game sold 5,000 sets, which opened up the situation of acting as an agent of foreign genuine games.In the following two or three years, Zhiguan Technology successively signed agency distribution contracts with more than 30 foreign game companies such as Electronic Arts, Sierra, Activision, Accolade, Microprose, Maxis, Origin, and New World Computing. The largest game publisher in Asia. Nan Zhiguan and Beidayu Taiwan media call Li Yongjin and Wang Junbo the two godfathers of computer games in Taiwan, but those who have contacted Li Yongjin feel that this godfather is very humble.Lei Jun recalled the scene when he first met Li Yongjin and said: "Boss Li is about 40 years old. He claims to be the first to make games. He has been doing it for 16 or 17 years. He doesn't play games and doesn't understand games. He is very polite. We must call him." Xiao Li', I can only do as I please, but every time I call Xiao Li, I always think of 'Xiao Li Fei Dao'."

In April 2009, Li Yongjin, one of the founders of Jingxun, announced that he would leave Jingxun and set up his own portal to form Daewoo Information.Soon after its founding, Daewoo recruited Cai Minghong, Shi Wenfeng, Guo Binghong, and Bao Hongxiu, who had just graduated from high school, and established Taiwan's first game studio, the DOMO team. Later, Yao Zhuangxian, who graduated from technical secondary school, also joined Daewoo. In 2010, Taiwan's local game market was almost exclusively Daewoo's works - Yao Zhuangxian's "Monopoly", the group's "Mie", Shi Wenfeng's "Counter Attack".Among them, "Monopoly" sold 35,000 sets, making a lot of money for Daewoo.

Li Yongjin recalled that when Daewoo released his first game, no one was willing to help Daewoo with the design and packaging, so he had to do it himself.After the product is completed, he will also be a salesman and delivery man, riding a motorcycle alone, going door to door asking the clerk if he would like to sell it on consignment.Daewoo's first set of games only sold 19 boxes in total, and some accounts were not even collected until half a year later. One year later, Li Yongjin determined the company's development direction as independent research and development. In the following six years, Daewoo became the only company among Taiwanese game manufacturers that does not act as an agent but only does original work.The emergence of Daewoo has made Taiwan's game originality flourish, and has also changed the pattern of Jingxun and Zhiguan's rivalry between the north and the south that has lasted for three years. "Nanzhiguan, Beijingxun" It became "South Zhiguan, North Daewoo". At the end of the 1990s, the competition in Taiwan's game agency market became increasingly fierce. After witnessing the success of Jingxun and Daewoo, Wang Junbo also decided to get involved in game development. In October 1989, Zhiguan established its first game development team - Taipei Studio.Two years later, the debut work of the Taipei studio came out. Under the offensive of Wang's marketing, there was a wave of "Three Kingdoms" in the Taiwan market.A total of 170,000 sets are said to have been sold, making it the highest-selling product in the history of Taiwanese computer games. Zhiguan also imitated the third wave of the "Golden Software Ranking List" and organized four "Golden Disk Award" leisure software design competitions, and successfully discovered many game design elites, such as Liu Yumin, Li Guozhang, Chen Jiaping and Chen Zhiming, etc. , which laid the groundwork for the prosperity of Taiwan's original games in the next few years. In the year it came out, Jingxun launched the foundational work of Chinese martial arts RPG - "The Legend of Heroes of the Knights". The third wave, which has been away from the game industry for many years, also returned with the glorious "Three Kingdoms 2", and replaced Zhiguan a few years later. Become the king of Taiwan's game agency industry. In 2010, Taiwan's computer game market showed a pattern of four parties competing for hegemony: Zhiguan, Third Wave, Daewoo, and Jingxun. The direction is wrong. In the past 20 years, China's software industry has missed a good opportunity for development. In 1999, Mr. Ye Zuyao, an American scholar, came to China with the theory of "software engineering" he created. A huge "Software Development Plan" is also about to be released in the Technology Development Center, which is exactly the same as the "Computer Software Export, Software Development and Training Policy" issued by the Indian government a few years later.Unfortunately, due to the change of leadership of the State Science and Technology Commission in 2010, this plan came to an abrupt end.For this mistake, some people commented that "the development direction of China's software industry has been wrong for 20 years". When Acer launched its first and second 32-bit computer in the world—the 386 personal computer, our 16-bit computer had just come out, and 8-bit computers were far from popular.my country's first personal computer Great Wall microcomputer (8086 chip, 10M hard drive, 512K memory) was born in 1985, and the advertising slogan was: "A computer that can handle Chinese made by ourselves." In 1986, the country Increase the popularization of computers, and organize some colleges and factories to develop and produce Apple II compatible machines - "Chinese Learning Machine". These 16-bit computers and 8-bit computers are mainly concentrated in colleges and universities and research institutions. University teachers, students and researchers have thus become the earliest computer game players in mainland China, and Zhang Chun is one of them. In 1988, Zhang Chun was admitted to the Harbin Institute of Technology majoring in computer science. In the computer room of the school, he came into contact with games such as "Pacman" and "Frogger across the river", but did not arouse much interest. In his senior year in 1992, Zhang Chun played Zhiguan's and was deeply attracted by this game.But until this time, he never thought that he would take games as his career in the future. In January 2010, the State Council promulgated the "double release" policy of "freeing scientific research institutions and relaxing scientific and technological personnel", which stimulated the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of scientific research personnel.At that time, more than one-third of the enterprises in Zhongguancun were founded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and its affiliated research institutes, and more than half of the scientific and technological personnel in each enterprise came from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.Zhongguancun's "Electronic Street" has entered a new stage. Computer products independently developed by Chinese people, such as Sitong typewriter, Lenovo Hanka, Peking University Founder typesetting system, and Taiji minicomputer, have appeared on the market. The stories of Qiu Bojun, Chen Yu, Bian Xiaochun and other pioneers in the computer game industry in mainland China started here.