452. No choice

"This principle should be easy to understand, right?" Cao Yang said to the two people who were confused, "If you want previous players to play new games, then the best way is to give them no choice."

Human habits are forced to change by not providing soil for habits.

In the past life, the number of DOTA2 people did not rise fast enough. In fact, one of the important reasons is that DOTA1 is still being updated continuously, so the conversion rate of old players of dota is relatively low.

However, there are some statements that because Ice Frog is a passionate author, he does not want to give up updating on the dota1 map. And there is another advantage of continuous updates that it can generate continuous influence and allow more dota1 players to play dota2.

In fact, according to the market survey conducted by Cao Yang during Penguin in his previous life, you will find that for Chinese players, as long as dota1 exists for one day, they are unlikely to switch to dota2.

This is not just a habit. Once your picture changes and is not something that players are familiar with, they will instinctively feel that the threshold for learning and getting started with this new dota has been raised.

As long as the products that were continuously provided to them were still there, players will continue to play the original game.

Therefore, according to Cao Yang's idea, the best way is to directly cut off the players' back-to-back path. It is the same as the Three Kingdoms Online 1 will be suspended after the Three Kingdoms Online 2 is launched. Only in this way can players truly give up the old game and enter new games.

After living in China for a year, Ice Frog's Chinese level is already quite good. At least there is no problem with the daily conversation content, so there is no need to translate it on the spot. Unless it is certain sentences that are really difficult to understand, Cao Yang will say it again in English.

"But I don't think this is a very wise, or emotional approach." Bingfrog said with a discomfort, "If we stop the dota on war3, players do not choose our new dota, but go to other similar games, wouldn't it be worth the money?"

Cao Yang tsk his lips, and Ice Frog even said the idiom [Get Not Worthy of Loss], which is amazing.

"Yes," Meng Xiao said in agreement, "I heard that a company is already developing a game map like dota called True Three Kingdoms Wushuang. Moreover, Jiuyou.com has bought relevant copyrights for agent development. Competitive products may appear soon. If our dota map does not continue to be updated and the map of True Three Kingdoms Wushuang continues to be updated, will many players switch to other game platforms instead of our new dota?

This is a very important issue.”

Cao Yang smiled. Meng Xiao and Bingwu's concerns were correct, which made him feel very pleased. However, he did not agree with the two people's statement. "It is precisely because of these uncertain factors that we have to make a decision earlier and shut down the old dota."

Meng Xiao and Bingfrog stared at each other, and neither of them understood what Boss Cao meant.

"No competitor has been developed on the market yet," Cao Yang said with a smile, "and we are genuine. The IP of Warcraft is originally operated by Bomi, and dota is also a product based on war3. We use our own things to make a brand new game. The bloodline is very pure, and it can be said to be legitimate. This alone has already won other competitor games in terms of momentum.

What's more, our current development speed is the fastest in China. While the competitors have not yet come out, or they have not yet snowballed to an exaggerated level, we need to stop the old dota during this gap and let players enter our new dota game."

This is very different from the situation faced by V Club in the past.

It was already 2011 when DOTA2 came out. At that time, the domestic MOBA games were at its peak. In addition to DOTA itself, there were also the True Three Kingdoms Unparalleled, Tianyi Jue, and even NetEase's "Heroes Three Kingdoms". Players can choose from a lot of options, but the one with the greatest influence is still dota itself.

Now it has just entered 2009. Due to the butterfly effect, the development speed of dota games in this life is slightly slower than in the previous life. From the development of dota to the snowball, it has had far-reaching influence around the world and accumulated more than hundreds of thousands of players. This process took about 5 years.

So far, the number of dota players has reached a relatively large order of magnitude, and some game developers with a more sensitive sense of smell have just smelled business opportunities, so competitors will naturally be released more slowly.

So Cao Yang was not worried at all that players would lose their problems in other games when the old dota stopped updating.

Although some players will inevitably be lost in the process of their turn to the new dota, Cao Yang also believes that the new player group will be cultivated, otherwise there would not be such a hot League of Legends in the previous life.

Dota2 has a high influence in China not as high as League of Legends. In addition to the differences in the game itself, another important reason is that League of Legends has such a big backer as Penguin. Through Penguin's push ability and influence, League of Legends became the fastest-growing e-sports game from 2009 to 2011.

When the number of users accumulates to a certain level, it will trigger a group effect. When people around you hear that a certain game is particularly fun, many players will naturally be attracted.

If more than half of the people in a college dormitory are playing League of Legends, then naturally this dormitory will eventually play League of Legends.

Now Bomi Company has an influence that is even better than the Penguin in his previous life. As long as Cao Yang wants to promote it, he will naturally be able to promote the new dota. Even if he washes all the players of the entire new dota, it is not impossible. Even the number of new player groups is many orders of magnitude higher than that of the old dota.

Cao Yang is still very confident in this regard.

However, it would be even better if the old dota players could be converted. Under the leadership of core players and the influence of various major events held every year, it would have a positive impact on the entry of new players and the creation of game momentum.

Moreover, long pain is not as good as short pain. The earlier you give up, the better the effect. After the delay is long, not only will the competitors appear, but more importantly, it is difficult for players to get out of the dota to enter a new game.

This is not only a sunk cost, but also nostalgia.

Taking advantage of the fact that the influence of the old DOTA has not reached a very large level, it is wise to stop it in time and let players turn to the new dota.

In addition to the current game environment is very different from the previous life, there is another important point that is-

The V club in the previous life was not authorized by Blizzard, so they had to abandon all the settings related to Warcraft. So you will see that in dota 2, although the skills of the heroes are exactly the same as the original one, the title and name of the hero, the image of the hero, the entire worldview and story background have undergone great changes.

These changes are also one of the reasons why dota1 players have difficulty getting started with dota2. You are no longer the dog I knew before. Your background has changed. How could I still recognize you?

But now the copyright of Warcraft is completely in Bomi's hands, and Bingfrog works in Bomi. The new DOTA does not need to make any changes to the story background and character settings.

This transition is extremely silky and the game screen has been improved a lot. Players only need to re-recognize what they are already familiar with.

As for the cognitive threshold and the threshold for getting started, Cao Yang dares to guarantee that the new dota will definitely be easier for players to get started than the real Three Kingdoms, the Tianyi Jue and the Hero Three Kingdoms.

...

After Boss Cao's explanation, Meng Xiao and Bingwa were successfully convinced by him.

Boss Cao is always able to easily convince them, not only because he is the boss, but more importantly, he has a reasonable and comprehensive and far-reaching opinion.

Meng Xiao Momo took notes in his heart, feeling that there were still many things to learn from Boss Cao in the future.

"By the way, I'm not worried that competitors will grab our users, and there is another important reason." Cao Yang looked at them with a smile and asked, "Do you know what it is?"

Meng Xiao and Bingwu looked at each other, and they read the words "confused" in each other's eyes.

Cao Yang had already said many reasons just now, and they really couldn't think of any other reason besides these.

"Because the game DOTA has not yet had a good way to monetize it." Cao Yang smiled happily, "So you don't have to worry about competitors appearing too early."

Yes, there is no way to monetize it, which is a fatal and headache.

DOTA appeared very early in the previous life. There was already an initial map of DOTA before the Frozen Throne came out. By 2005, DOTA emerged and had gained a considerable number of loyal users.

The True Three Kingdoms Warriors were developed immediately afterwards and became a very popular confrontational game among players.

But at that time, all developers who made MOBA games had to face a serious problem-

How to sell this game?

Although there is a large user group and everyone knows that the potential market is very large, no one knows how to make money with this kind of game. Could it be that it is sold as a stand-alone game?

The stand-alone game market was so sluggish that when people mentioned stand-alone, they would think of the word "loss".

But it has never been charged, and it is open to players for free and has to bear the pressure of server and bandwidth costs. No matter how you look at it, it is a loss-making transaction.

So although this area has a large market and users, game giants like NetEase have been delayed until 2011 before making up their minds to enter the MOBA market and developed a game like "The Three Kingdoms of Heroes".

At that time, NetEase's planners still failed to solve the problem of monetization of MOBA games, but instead used a combination of MOBA and MMORPG to commercialize it.

To put it bluntly, they develop two different game mechanisms among the Three Kingdoms of Heroes. One is MOBA battle and the other is a traditional World of Warcraft online game. Their only thing in common is [Hero].

You can fight by obtaining more heroes, and you can also use these heroes to fight PVE and copy. In the traditional RPG mode, NetEase uses a series of ways to sell game values, such as upgrading to fight monsters, manufacturing equipment, fighting gems and strengthening, etc.

The battle side charges the hero usage fee and related skin fees.

These two models were not particularly well combined, but in the environment at that time, it was already the best monetization method that giant manufacturers like NetEase could think of.

Not to mention other game companies, they have no way to solve the problem of making money in MOBA games.

Tianyi Jue later embarked on the road of selling numerical values, directly allowing soft girl coins to crush their opponents by obtaining better and stronger heroes and better numerical values, which caused very unfair phenomena. So when it collapsed to the end, the game completely died.

A very important core of MOBA games is fairness. If you do not make players feel fair and the numerical balance is not done well, but differentiates, then the game is not far from death.

Although NetEase does this by separating numerical values ​​and turning it into two game systems, fairness is still guaranteed in the battle, which also allows the heroes to survive longer.

It was not until Penguin operated League of Legends that game dealers fully understood how to commercialize MOBA games—

On the premise of ensuring fairness, selling skins can make small profits and quick turnovers. This is the correct way to open MOBA games.

This commercial model is actually quite similar to selling clothes in reality. Players do not only pursue numerical values ​​in the game. Although the pursuit of numerical values ​​is simpler and more crude, selling numerical values ​​will cause great damage to competitive games.

Players have more [differentiation] needs, that is, Penguin’s traditional skills, allowing players to pursue personality and more cool fashions and skins, thus making themselves unique.

In addition to skins, you can also sell runes, game effects, UI skins, etc.

As long as it does not affect the fairness of the game.

It is very difficult to figure this out. Even when Cao Yang proposed this business model during the process of making the new dota, Meng Xiao and Li Lanyun were not very understanding.

Why can you make money by selling skins?

How many players have the need to buy skins?

How much benefit does this thing really bring to the game?

So far, it is still unknown. Even if they completed the entire commercialization according to Cao Yang's idea, everyone still had no idea.

...

But this is not their fault, because this is the case with the big market environment, and it is relatively difficult to change people's traditional thinking.

People in the past have figured out this point, and the entire skin commercial operation model has become mature, and they have taken a lot of detours and spent a lot of time and market verification.

But now, Cao Yang can completely avoid all this because he has experience and memories from his previous life.

So he is very confident about it.

As long as other game companies do not understand this business operation model, they will not be willing to spend manpower and financial resources to develop MOBA games.

In other words, when the new DOTA comes out, players really [no choice]

...

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