Chapter 4 Chapter Three Growth (1992-1995)

·In 1994, the first commercial game self-produced in mainland China - "Condor Commando" came out. ·In 1995, Daewoo Information launched the pinnacle of Chinese games - "Legend of Sword and Fairy". · In 1995, 3dfx launched the Voodoo graphics card, triggering a 3D revolution. At the beginning of the revolutionary era, the hardware and software technology of personal computers, especially multimedia technology, developed rapidly. In November 2010, the first-generation MPC (Multimedia Personal Computer) specification was released, confirming that the capacity of a disc is 640MB, the data transfer rate of the disc drive is 150KB/S (single speed), and the average search time is 1 second.

When the third-generation MPC specification was announced last summer, the speed of the optical drive had been increased to four times faster. In March 2010, Intel launched the Pentium processor, which greatly improved the running speed of computers. In November, Voodoo graphics card was born.In March of the following year, 15 Voodoo games were exhibited on the Internet, and the unprecedented visual experience shocked the whole world. The breakthrough of hardware technology at this stage has brought one revolution after another to computer games. In 1994, it came out and caused a sensation, and the sales volume has exceeded five million so far. The success of "God" largely depends on the aesthetic style of its pictures and music, and this aesthetic is built on the basis of multimedia technology. "God" is the first game to use CD as a carrier. The large storage space of CD allows game developers to add a large number of exquisite pictures, animations and beautiful music to the game, which is beyond the reach of previous disk games.

After solving the cost and production problems, 3dfx began to promote the application and popularization of Voodoo.The first game written with Voodoo's dedicated API - Glide was "Tomb Raider" launched by Core in 1996. In the game, Laura vividly expressed the dazzling effect of Voodoo.Later, the guys from id also wrote the OpenGL driver for "Quake" to run on Voodoo, which greatly improved the picture quality. Many players fell at the feet of Voodoo after being exposed to the OpenGL version of "Quake". The marketing model of computer games is also pregnant with a revolution. In 1992, id company adopted the "try before you buy"

ways to distribute shareable versions of Wolfenstein 3D for free.This shared version was circulated on the Internet for a while, and thousands of BBS rushed to reproduce it, and game fans all over the world copied it on disk and sent it to each other. Wolfenstein 3D finally sold 250,000 copies, which is an astronomical figure for a little-known company. After several years of accumulation, a large number of small and medium-sized game studios in the United States have grown up, and excellent talents and works emerge in endlessly: Jean Gilbert ("The Secret of Monkey Island"), John Romero ("Wolfenstein 3D") and Doom), John Carmack (Quake), Will Wright (Simcity), Sid Meier (Civilization), Brett Sperry ( Dune 2"), Chris Roberts ("Galaxy Commander"), brothers Rand and Robin Miller (), Alan Eldheim (Blizzard founder) ... the American The computer game industry entered its first golden age in the early 1990s.

We want to be an anti-Japanese hero. Shi Zhenrong loves computers and chess. Acer's "燕" character is equivalent to the character "chess". Acer held a computer chess match in 2010, and the winner was a young man.This young man is Yu Xishun, the founder of Spectrum Information in the future. Yu Xishun had a strong interest in chess since he was a child. In 1987, Acer and the Taiwan Chess Association jointly held the first computer chess competition. Yu Xishun was very excited when he heard the news. He spent four months designing the software "Chess Master" in assembly language .Although there were as many as 16 competing softwares at the time, "Chess Master" still won the championship and became the first computer software to defeat a human opponent in public. The chess strength of "Chess Master" was evaluated as a first-class at that time. Professor Xu Shunqin, known as the "father of computer chess", also spoke highly of this software in the article "Review and Prospect of Computer Chess and Computer Chess".

"Chess Master" was finally released by the third wave, and this competition also changed Yu Xishun's life. After that, Yu Xishun launched an improved version of "Grand Master", which won many awards in different levels of competition. In July 1991, Yu Xishun founded Spectrum Information as a sole proprietorship, specializing in artificial intelligence game software. Spectrum's "General Family" launched in 1992 was based on "Grand Master" and added a storyline. With its exquisite VGA screen, powerful computer and challenge-based game mode, "General Family" made Spectrum become a new star in Taiwan's game industry overnight.

The year "The Generals" came out, Hantang was also established in Taiwan.Han Tang's first original work "Heroes of the Sui and Tang Dynasties" was criticized by players for its poor quality, but the second work released later changed everyone's impression. "Story", a strategy game set in the background of warlord melee in the Republic of China and the War of Resistance Against Japan.Zhao Haomin, the boss of Hantang, said when talking about the creative motivation of this game: "We want to be anti-Japanese heroes and not let Japanese games be exclusively beautiful."

After the success of "The Story of the Great Era", Hantang's game development was on the right track, and in the following years, it launched classics such as "The Record of the Sword Saint", "The Flame Dragon Knights", and "Heaven and Earth Tribulation". Five or six years after the brilliant birth of two and a half years, Taiwan's computer games were still dominated by DOS; and these five or six years were also the most glorious period for Taiwan's original games. In 2010, with the addition of new companies such as Spectrum and Hantang, the situation of "Romance of the Four Kingdoms" in Taiwan's game industry was broken, and the scene of "a hundred flowers contending" appeared in the market. A certain level.

2019 was a bumper year for Taiwanese original games.First, Quan Wei Company launched the fighting game "Kai Fighting Supreme" in February, which was well received.Then Zhiguan appeared as the spokesperson of Jin Yong's works by virtue of He.Daewoo launched eight games in one go, including "Monopoly 2", the first domestic war chess game "Empire of Angels", the action game "Madaozi" and the vertical version of the shooting game "Phantom Raiden".Hantang has also successively released four martial arts RPGs with different styles - "Legend of Wulin Qixia", "Golden Arrow Messenger", "Decisive Battle of the Imperial Tomb" and "The Record of the Sword Saint".Jingxun launched "Strange Tales from a Liaozhai Studio: Legend of the Valley" and "Crazy Hospital". The development team of "Kai Fighting Supreme" left Quanwei and established Panda Information. Its pioneering work "Three Kingdoms: Warriors for Hegemony" can be regarded as the best fighting game on the computer platform at that time.

The third wave, which has always been an agent of glorious games, has also decided to get involved in research and development. Their first self-made game is the fantasy RPG "Three Realms: The Mystery of Bangpei" produced by the second "Golden Disk Award" champion Li Chaojun brothers 》, the third wave became an instant hit in the original game market with this product. In 2010, the protagonists of Taiwan's game market were Daewoo and Zhiguan.During the Spring Festival, DOMO Group’s “Xuanyuan Sword” was released first; in March, Zhiguan counterattacked; after that, Daewoo launched “The Way of Demons” and “The Deer and Ding Tale: Battle for the Imperial City”.This year, Hantang's "Yanlong Knights", Jingxun's war chess game "Jungle War", Daewoo's "Angel Empire 2" and Panda's horizontal version of the action game are all excellent works.

In 2010, Daewoo's "Madman Creation Group" launched the milestone work "Legend of Sword and Fairy", which sold nearly 10,000 sets within five days of its release, and Taiwan's original computer games reached their peak. At this time, the mainland's computer game industry has just kicked off. Establish more foreign-funded enterprises At the beginning of the year, Comrade Deng Xiaoping made it clear in his speech on the southern tour that "foreign-funded" enterprises "are beneficial to socialism in the final analysis" and should "establish more 'foreign-funded' enterprises. Don't be afraid." The speech on the southern tour set off a new wave of foreign investment in China. In September of that year, Zhiguan established a branch in Guangzhou, becoming the first Taiwanese game company to enter the mainland market.After General Manager Wei Yongnian took office, he began to recruit local game developers, set up a research and development studio, and launched "Da Ming Heroes" the following year. In May 2010, Zhiguan Beijing Branch was established; in November, the first game after the establishment of Beijing Zhiguan - "Great Galaxy Story" was completed by Red Ant Studio, and the sales volume exceeded 20,000 sets.Since the planning and distribution of "Heroes of Ming Dynasty" and "Galaxy Story" were all carried out in Taiwan, they cannot be counted as original games in the mainland. The reason why Taiwanese game manufacturers chose the mainland to set up R&D centers was not because they were interested in the market potential of the mainland, but to obtain cheap labor costs and corresponding preferential policies. The salary of developers in the mainland is less than one-third of that in Taiwan.In terms of division of labor, Taiwan is usually responsible for the planning of the game, as well as the design of advanced animation, scenes and characters, while the mainland branch is responsible for the detailed design and carving. Zeng Baozhong, the person in charge of Beijing Zhiguan, once described the buyer's market in mainland China as "admission is like drawing a lottery". As an admission party, he is not worried about finding suitable candidates; Will come to make games, because it is considered to have no future." The first batch of professional game development talents in the mainland grew up in the foundry. Through the foundry, these production teams accumulated the experience and funds necessary for development and became the backbone of the future. In the year of playing games with soy sauce, Chen Yu resigned from the World Knowledge Publishing House of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and became the first editor-in-chief of Beijing Jinpan Electronics Co., Ltd., thus stepping into the IT circle. This year, Jinpan represented an educational game called "Where is Carmen Sandiego?" (Where is Carmen Santiago?), which was the first foreign computer game introduced by mainland China through formal channels.Many people in Jinpan Company gathered around it to study the gameplay, but in the end it was Chen Yu who figured it out with his knowledge of foreign languages.The general idea of ​​the game is that the police station sends you to track Carmen Sandiego and his men all over the world. You have to find out these villains through clues. According to your performance, your police rank will continue to increase.The foreign publisher of this game is Broderbund, the creator of "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Prince of Persia" and the three classic series. On a rest day in the summer of 2010, Chen Yu went to the canteen of the Academy of Military Sciences at the foot of the mountain to change soy sauce, and accidentally saw a small advertisement posted illegally on a telegraph pole, to the effect that: "I invented a game of war, and I passed it on to the wishes for free. Student dolls who learn military knowledge in the form of entertainment." It was Yang Nanzheng who posted this small advertisement.Yang Nanzheng is a descendant of Yangzao, a well-known reporter in my country. Yangzao is famous for writing international military commentaries. Yang Nanzheng is also an outstanding military scholar. He wrote many books such as "Intelligent Army" when he was in the army. come out.During his stay at the Academy of Military Sciences, Yang Nanzheng was engaged in the research of combat simulation. He was keen on using games for military education, so there was this advertisement on the telegraph pole.Chen Yu said: "This bait failed to catch fish, but it caught me, Bole." After some twists and turns, he found Yang Nanzheng and persuaded him to join Jinpan and take charge of the company's game department. In this way, Soy Sauce played the first original commercial game in China. In October 1994, "Condor Commando" came out. Chen Yu said: "For many years, I have always had two major wishes: one is to write the story of the multimedia industry into a book, and the other is to make a good cultural game. Later, I added the idea of ​​making a personal homepage. Nowadays, the personal homepage has begun I have moved, and the matter of writing a storybook has also started to be published in the newspaper to recruit assistants. Only this desire to make games may still haunt my dreams. I hope that one day it will be dumped from the memory to the hard disk, so that I can sleep Have a restful sleep." Goal: Beijing After graduating from Harbin Institute of Technology, Zhang Chun was assigned to the computer group of a research institute of the Ministry of Aeronautics and Space in Shanghai, and spent three months in a state of doing nothing. In October 1992, Zhang Chun participated in a local job fair and was unexpectedly hired by Guangzhou Zhiguan.Zhang Chun couldn't decide whether he should quit his job and go to Guangzhou to play games, so he asked his family members.Fortunately, the game had not yet formed a climate in China at that time, and the public opinion did not have any negative reports on the game, so Zhang Chun was able to make the trip. Zhang Chun, like the others who were recruited, knew nothing about game development.Zhiguan did not send anyone to train them, but just gave some simple guidance, Zhang Chun and the others divided into three groups to start the project.After ten months of exploration, Zhang Chun's team completed a shooting game, which was not released due to its poor quality. In August 2008, Zhang Chun left Guangzhou Zhiguan and joined DTMC in the United States, where he got in touch with some American game development teams and felt the great potential of the game industry. DTMC is a company specializing in the distribution of Super Nintendo games. Among the more famous products it represents, in addition to Epyx's main brand "California Games", there is also a fighting game "Ranma 1/2" adapted from the Japanese comic of the same name. . Half a year later, DTMC announced its disintegration, and Zhang Chun persuaded investors to come to China for development.The initial investors were a British Chinese and a Shanghainese. The two jointly funded and registered an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands—British Chinese Software, and then returned to the mainland to set up in Zhuhai through this offshore company. established a foreign company.After operating for a period of time, Zhang Chun decided to move the company to Beijing. In May 1995, Target Software was formally established and its registered place was changed to Hong Kong. In the first two years, Target Software's main business was developing educational software and foundry games.They successively manufactured two games for American game companies——"Thunder Hoof" and "Sports Pinball". The task was to port the games from the platform to the Windows platform. did. The background of foreign capital and the early foreign OEM business have laid a solid foundation for the future development of the target software. Xishan Layman Qiu Bojun’s hometown Xishan is an offshoot of Siming Mountain, a famous mountain in eastern Zhejiang. It is only a few tens of miles away from Xuedou Mountain at Xikou, the hometown of Chiang Kai-shek.Qiu Bojun has a deep affection for Xishan. When he was studying at the National University of Defense Technology, he called himself "Xishan Jushi". He named the first print driver "Xishan Super Text Printing System", and the first Chinese disk operation The system was named "Xishan DOS". In 2010, Qiu Bojun single-handedly wrote WPS with hundreds of thousands of lines of code in Room 501 of Shenzhen Caiwuwei Hotel, setting up an important milestone in the development history of my country's national software industry. The early 1990s was a glorious era. It defeated WordStar, which had been dominating the word processing software market before, and won the above market share in one fell swoop. At that time, the annual software sales in mainland China were only 4.4 billion RMB, and the market was very small. Many foreign manufacturers thought it was not worth developing here.Bill Gates didn't think so. He personally inspected the Asian market and economic conditions and believed that China's software market has great potential. At the end of 1992, Microsoft set up a small office in Beijing and started its road to China. In 2010, Microsoft launched Office 95 in China. The word processing software Word, with its powerful functions, beautiful interface and good support for Windows 95, was quickly accepted by the market. WPS was strongly impacted, and sales plummeted. In 1995, Qiu Bojun failed to challenge Microsoft's Pangu component, and Jinshan fell into a low ebb.In the following two years, WPS almost disappeared in the domestic market.Qiu Bojun had to find a new way out for the company while struggling to carry the national banner. Xishanju was born under such a background. In May 2009, Xishanju Creation Studio, which focuses on game research and development, was established in Zhuhai.Naming it "Xishanju" also shows Qiu Bojun's love for games.Qiu Bojun has mentioned many times that games are his third major hobby after surfing the Internet and aviation activities. Beijing Leading Software Co., Ltd., which was established by Unlimited Scenery in March of Xianfeng, was the first software company in my country to rely on venture capital. At that time, most people were still unfamiliar with the concept of "venture investment", but Bian Xiaochun believed that "getting risk Investing, I don’t think it’s too difficult.” In 2010, Bian Xiaochun's first venture in Beijing Pioneer Cartoon Company ended in failure.Although Pioneer once possessed a number of advanced technologies, due to the wide range of technology development, relatively backward company system, and vague property right structure, the company soon encountered financial crisis and faced dissolution.Bian Xiaochun and others decided to change the direction of operation, give up investment in the original business, and concentrate on seeking the development of game software and new sources of funds. At this time, international venture capital companies have just entered China. In 1992, the International Data Group (IDG) established the first venture capital fund in China, the Pacific Technology Venture Capital Fund (PIV-China), which mainly invests in high-tech enterprises such as computer hardware and software, network engineering, and communications. In May 1994, Bian Xiaochun and others met Zhou Quan, the person in charge of PIV-China at a friend's place. Zhou Quan was cooperating with Youlian Company, a subsidiary of the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, to develop learning software and game software for game console platforms. It coincides with Bian Xiaochun's thoughts. The negotiation between Pioneer and PIV-China went smoothly. On November 15, the two parties formally signed a contract. Youlian provided 1 million, Youlian contributed 1 million, Pioneer contributed 2 million (including 1 million intangible assets), and the registered capital was set at 4 million yuan. . In March 1995, Beijing Leading Software Company was formally established, and Bian Xiaochun started his second venture. The first game of the leading company is "Guan Du", which is the first Windows 95-based game in China and the first export game with independent intellectual property rights.Since no one had experience in game development, many mistakes occurred in the middle, such as a major flaw in the data structure, a major module was found to be unusable one month before the product was launched, and the test version could not read data normally on a mainstream optical drive at the time. When Bian Xiaochun recalled the development process of "Guandu", he sighed: "After "Guandu" was successfully launched, my feeling was: We climbed up the cliff by picking at the cracks in the rocks. Too many dangers are connected in series, and falling That’s normal. ——I think this may be the characteristic of venture companies. Others dare not or fail to do it, but if you do it and you succeed in rock climbing, the opportunity belongs to you, exactly: the infinite scenery lies on the dangerous peak. "