Zijie Wang, the founder of Jiuyou.com, now has (or has to face) enough media exposure. The good thing is that now even people who had no interest in Audition are now trying to figure out what it is, and he no longer has to sell his new ideas. Correspondingly, I wonder in which direction public opinion will develop? Wang Zijie was born in 1963. His household registration is Ningbo, Zhejiang, but he was born in Shanghai.

In 1981, Wang Zijie entered the Department of Mathematics at Fudan University in Shanghai. Fudan University was founded in 1905. The two words "Fudan" are selected from "The Sun and the Moon are shining brightly, and Fudan is coming" in "The Legend of Shangshu - The Biography of Yu Xia". The famous mathematician Su Buqing served as the head of the Department of Mathematics at Fudan University in the 1950s.

After graduation, he was assigned to the Shanghai Institute of Computing Technology as an intern researcher. At that time, the Institute of Computing Technology and the American ITDC jointly established Sino-US Shanghai Kester Software Co., Ltd. with a registered capital of US$500,000. The Institute of Computing Technology held 75% of the shares. It was also the first Sino-foreign joint venture software company. He also became an employee of the company.

In May 1987, Wang Zijie went to ITDC Company in San Francisco, USA as a software R&D engineer to engage in computer game software development business for one year. That year, it was the time when the computer game "Nobunaga's Ambition" was selling well in Japan. I wonder if there was any inspiration for Prince Jie.

In the late 1980s, there was a craze for studying in Japan in Shanghai. On the one hand, the Chinese were full of curiosity about Japan’s industrialization process. On the other hand, Japan also used Chinese characters, so the cultural barriers seemed smaller. . In February 1990, Wang Zijie went to Japan to study at the Graduate School of Doshisha University, focusing on robots and automatic control systems.

Doshisha University, founded in 1875 by the famous Japanese thinker Niijima Sho, is a famous private university located in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It is a Christian school and is the top private university in Western Japan. , the first of the four famous schools in Kansai "Kan-Kan Tongli" and one of the 13 key universities in the international base development project of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. It enjoys a high reputation in Japan.

After receiving a bachelor's degree in engineering, or a master's degree, Wang Zijie entered the Technical Research Institute of Japan's KONAMI Corporation in April 1993 to lead the research and development of walking-control business game consoles, and was later promoted to deputy director of the research institute. The specific working location is Kobe.

KONAMI was established in Osaka in 1969 and is headquartered in Tokyo. It is also called "Konami" in Taiwan. KONAMI's game products cover many fields such as arcades, home game consoles, and handheld consoles. In 1992, KONAMI became Japan's largest third-party game manufacturer. KONAMI was listed in London in 1999, and its revenue in 2002 exceeded 250 billion yen.

Since August 1996, Wang Zijie has taken on a new challenge, serving as the director of the Arcade Business Department of the KONAMI Group's Arcade Business Headquarters, in charge of overseas market business. There is a transition here, from developers to business people. During this period, Konami was under great pressure in business. In the process of transferring arcade games to home platforms, it lacked technical reserves, resulting in a loss of US$4 per share in 1995.

Wang Zijie later introduced works such as "Heartbeat Memories" to the Chinese market. The content of the game "Heartbeat Memories" is about the uncertain relationship between a transfer boy "Oga Riku" who has no characteristics, and the beautiful girl Amamiya Sayuri, and the sister-type swimming girl Yayoi Minna and other girls. Since March 1998, Wang Zijie has served as the Asian Marketing Director of KONAMI's Home Software Business Division, and has also become a member of the KONAMI Group's Executive Officer team.

Since April 2000, Wang Zijie has been responsible for the establishment of Konami Software (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. in China. This is the second overseas game development subsidiary established by the KONAMI Group after the United States. Appointed as acting general manager, the specific location is on the 15th floor of Jinmao Building, Pudong New Area.

Wang Zijie mentioned in his introduction that he founded Shanghai Yixing Software Co., Ltd. in 1999, which is mainly engaged in the distribution of game software, involving stand-alone games and 2 online games, and has become the largest domestic agent publisher of Japanese and Korean stand-alone games. . Another way of saying it is that it was one of the top entertainment software publishing companies in the country at the time.

At this stage, the domestic game market has obviously shifted to online games. Wang Zijie founded Shanghai Runxing Network Technology Co., Ltd., also known as Jiuyou.com, in early 2003.

At this time, the mainstream of domestic online games is MMORPG, that is, Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, the so-called "massively multiplayer online role playing game". Although this type of game has proven to be very sticky, "killing monsters and upgrading" is indeed not the favorite of every game fan.

As an expert in the game industry, Wang Zijie certainly knows that there are other opportunities, namely large-scale casual games. Although it can also be classified as MMORPG, the content is very different.

In 2003, Zhongke Yinghua (600110. SH) invested 24 million yuan in Jiuyou.com through its subsidiary Shanghai Kerun Investment Group. The controlling shareholder of Zhongke Yinghua is Shanshan Group, and this matter is undoubtedly the decision made by Zheng Yonggang. In an interview with "Yingcai" in 2007, he said, "We are very discerning when investing in listed companies... My right to speak is absolute, not relative. I am the controlling shareholder, and I have this influence."

24 million yuan is certainly nothing to an online game company, and the money was quickly spent. Next, the Carlyle Group of the United States, China Merchants Fuxin Asset Management Co., Ltd. and the "China-Korea Wireless Venture Capital Fund" with the background of the Ministry of Information Industry of South Korea injected US$14 million. After financing, the company was reorganized and Jiuzhiyou Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. was established as the new business entity of Jiuyou.com.

Later, Dragon Groove invested US$5 million in the first phase. Dragon Groove is an investment fund management company established in China by Japan's Aison Groove, managing approximately US$200 million in funds. Son Taizo, the head of Aison Groove, is the younger brother of SoftBank Group President Masayoshi Son.

Operating Korean games to achieve rapid growth is already a mature path. After obtaining a large amount of funds, the results can almost be expected. However, the development of Jiuyou.com since then still surprised everyone.

In 2005, Jiuyou.com also introduced O2Media Game Company’s “Audition” and T3 Entertainment Company’s “Audition”. The English name of "Jin Band" O2JAM is O2 (oxygen) JAM (improvisation). It is considered to be the world's first casual music online game using MP3 music as the game platform. It started operations on February 24, 2005 and quickly gained popularity. In June, the number of people online at the same time exceeded 300,000.

As for "Audition", it is even more promising. "Audition" is based on a scene: there is a group of cartoon characters living in "Audition City". They live for dancing and become friends with each other... They use the town's fashionable clothes to create unique images and enjoy every day happily.

Sales of props are obviously the key to the business model of this online game. In June 2008, Wu Jun, vice president of Jiuyou.com, was interviewed by the media. When asked, a prop in the game cost two or three dollars. 100 yuan, which is more expensive than clothes in the real world. Shi said that this price range is aimed at a very small number of high-end consumers in the game. The average monthly consumption of game players is about 50 yuan.

There are some restrictions on the promotion of online games. On April 12, 2004, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued a document requiring radio and television broadcasting agencies at all levels not to broadcast computer online game programs. However, Jiuyou.com found another way and cooperated with Dragon TV on "Dancing Forest Conference". This program quickly became popular. According to its promotional release, it "created a new model of integrated marketing in the online game industry."

After the operation of "Audition", the number of users increased linearly. In May 2005, there were 80,000 online users at the same time. A year later, in March 2007, the number exceeded 800,000. It is known as the highest number of online users in China. casual games.

During this period, Jiuyou.com received widespread attention. In January 2006, Jiuyou.com was selected as one of the "Coolest Companies" in the Chinese version of Fortune. In August, it was selected into the 2006 Red Herring "Top 100 Best Growth Companies in Asia". Wang Zijie himself also won the "2006 Shanghai Magnolia Memorial Award". This award mainly honors foreigners who have contributed to Shanghai's economic and social development. On June 15, 2007, Jiuyou.com confirmed its IPO financing. It plans to log on to the Osaka Exchange in Japan on July 12 and sell 106,700 shares for the first time. The issue price is 200,000 yen per share (approximately US$1,632). It is expected to raise funds 21.34 billion yen (approximately US$174 million).

But at this juncture, T3 Entertainment suddenly sent a letter to the Chinese media on July 3, saying that "Jiuyou.com has betrayed us" and said it would sue Jiuyou.com. T3 CEO Kiyoung Kim said: In the past few weeks, we have repeatedly expressed our sincerity and hope to reach an agreement with Jiuyou.com to return a large amount of arrears of payables. It's a pity...

After the success of "Audition", Jiuyou.com independently developed "Super Dancer" and "Super Musician" in order to solve its "worries", which were introduced on its official website : "Super Dancer" and others have been signed and exported to 41 countries and regions around the world, including North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and India.

Changes still occurred. On May 21, 2007, The9 announced that it had obtained the exclusive operating authorization for "Audition 2" in mainland China. Audition 2 adds community-oriented features.

Although Jiuyou has made efforts in promoting "Super Dancer" and "Super Musician", it still cannot replace "Audition"'s position in revenue. In July 2007, Dadu Consulting pointed out in its online game enterprise report: The number of online users of "Super Dancer" and "Super Musician" currently remains at around 100,000, which is not the same order of magnitude as the 800,000 online users of "Audition."

On July 30, the situation developed further. T3 and publisher Yedang unilaterally announced that they would terminate their cooperation with Jiuyou.com. Yedang is Korea Yitang Entertainment Industry Co., Ltd., which was established in 1984 and listed on KOSDAQ in South Korea in 2001. Its business covers record production and distribution, online game development and investment agency, online music and music portals, etc.

The9 subsequently announced that it had reached an agreement with Yedang and T3 and obtained the exclusive license to operate the online game "Audition" in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.

Jiuyou.com immediately announced that it has the right to register the Chinese trademark for "Audition" and emphasized that it is currently the only legal user in mainland China. At the same time, it said it would file a lawsuit against T3 and Yedang for unauthorized use of the trademark in Taiwan, China. The9 responded that no company has the right to register the Chinese trademark "Audition". The Ninth City is currently in the application process.

On August 21, Zhongke Yinghua announced that Jiuyou.com, in which the company holds a 16.97 stake, submitted an application document for delisting to the Osaka Stock Exchange in Japan on August 16, and has received approval from the Osaka Stock Exchange. approved.

However, things have taken a turn for the worse since then. On September 12, Jiuyou.com announced that it had reconciled with T3 Company and obtained the agency operating rights for "Audition". The cooperation period will end in August 2010. It is said that the reason was that The9 failed to pay the first contract payment within the specified time, thus losing the agency operating rights of "Audition".

Money is another important aspect. On September 13, Wu Jun, vice president of Jiuyou.com, revealed in an interview with Tencent Technology: Jiuyou paid a higher guarantee of US$45 million, which was higher than the US$38.2 million The9 promised to pay. Jiuyou will pay the fee within two years. “We gave in and they gave in.

We make concessions on price, and they must promise not to do anything detrimental to our listing for any reason. "

The settlement agreement between Jiuyou and Yedang stipulates that both parties will jointly own the trademark ownership of "Audition". In order to prevent recurrence of disputes, the agreement also stipulates that both parties will dispatch consultants to work together Make the "opaque problems encountered in operations transparent"

Wang Le, an industry insider in the game industry, pointed out: Jiuyou.com's settlement with South Korea's T3 and Yedang is the two major interests represented by IDG and SoftBank. The result of the group's game; this dispute hindered the respective listing plans of Jiuyou.com and G10 Group. G10 Group is a company established by IDG in South Korea, and the final settlement was expected.

After a dramatic year in 2007, Wang Zijie reviewed the business results at the company's Spring Festival Gala: the number of registered users exceeded 280 million, operating income and net profit increased by more than 100% compared with 2006, and the number of employees has reached 1,200, which is estimated in the industry. Revenue is nearly 900 million yuan. Cultural products not only have commercial attributes, but also have social attributes. Based on the scale of users, it is inevitable that society will pay attention to online games.

It is the eve of ChinaJoy, which means "China International Digital." "Interactive Entertainment Products and Technology Application Expo", the most important exhibition in the domestic gaming industry, was blocked from going public in 2007. In 2008, Wang Zijie and his Jiuyou.com once again attracted much attention due to the "vulgarity scandal".

The cause of this incident is as follows:

On July 14, 2008, at the "Briefing Meeting on Strengthening the Supervision of Online Games" held by the Department of Culture and Market of the Ministry of Culture and the Internet Bureau of the State Council Information Office, several typical issues were reported: Currently, in the operation process of some online game products such as "Audition", there are problems such as incomplete shielding of harmful information, vulgar game design orientation, and game promotion activities that have undesirable inducements for players. These problems violate laws and policies, and violate social ethics. These phenomena have harmed the healthy growth of game players, especially teenagers.

Two days later, Wang Zijie said during the 6th ChinaJoy Exhibition: Audition is an open platform. What do you talk about in online games? They are all open, so there may be situations where the Ministry of Culture says that naming and criticizing us this time also serves as a wake-up call for us to improve.

“It’s completely true that Audition is marketing through one-night stands. Rumors, which are slander, do not exclude malicious competition from competitors. "

In fact, since this year, related controversies surrounding Jiuyou.com and "Audition" have continued to arise. Jiuyou.com has its own weaknesses because its large-scale casual online games have a clear target customer group. They are teenagers.

Although Shi Yuzhu and the games "Zhengtu" and "Giant" have been surrounded by the media because of Shi Yuzhu's extroverted characteristics, his excessive promotion has not been similarly questioned because, Shi Yuzhu emphasized that the adult characteristics of online games and concepts such as classification also neutralized the social impact of Giant Network's excess profits.

Some media summarized the "Seven Deadly Sins" of "Audition." : It flaunts non-mainstream culture, is full of obscene language in games, encourages underage romance, is a breeding ground for "one-night stands", promotes comparison among players, disrupts young people's values ??on marriage and love, and is the "birthplace" of Internet cafe noise.

Wu Jun, the vice president of Jiuyou.com, responded one by one in an interview with Shanghai Business Daily: He said that he should respect the ideas of the young people born in the 1990s. Jiuyou.com will first warn and then ban the accounts of malicious players who use obscene language. , very few cases have been over-amplified, and the consumption of Dance Dance players is in the middle and lower reaches of the industry.

He further pointed out: The interaction of some young players in the game may have a certain impact on the shaping of their values. Compared with the subtle influence from various internal and external factors from school, family, and friends, most players receive less than 10% of the influence from entertainment channels.

On June 18, 2008, "Guangzhou Daily" published an article written by Zhang Qiang entitled "Online games are making money every day because they are "very pornographic and very violent"". The article wrote: ""Audition" The program of the game: get to know - long chat - get married - meet - go to bed - break up - goodbye." "The main function of the loudspeaker has become a 'very pornographic and violent' bulletin board for openly recruiting 'one-night stands' partners."

Jiuyou.com subsequently responded fiercely, stating that the article "distorted facts and maliciously slandered", and emphasized that "Audition" had been banned by Chongqing Animation and Game Expo and "Classroom and Outside Magazine" as early as October 2006. Selected as "Top Ten Green Online Games Award". The Guangzhou Daily is required to publicly admit that the article is inaccurate on its front page and in major domestic news media. We seem to be talking about an online game company. It should be said that online games are a business of Jiuyou.com and cannot fully cover Wang Zijie’s vision. In fact, from the beginning, Jiuyou.com has been engaged in more than just online games. It defines itself as the first interactive entertainment portal in China.

If you open Jiuyou.com, you will find that in addition to online games, it also provides blogs, videos, music, email, photo albums, movies, and even dating services.

As for the concept of "community online games", Jiuyou.com has already been put into practice. Its benefits are obvious: first, it can attract a large number of users through the community. If users establish connections with each other based on the network, then there is a cost for leaving, so a specific game may have a life cycle, but Jiuyou.com has the opportunity to provide new games. In fact, living in the same community requires the same topics, so the same online games will be accepted.

At the 6th Chinajoy "China Digital Interactive Entertainment Industry Summit Forum", Wang Zijie proposed that virtual communities will become the core trend of the next stage of development of the interactive entertainment industry. He further pointed out: In the next stage of development, only by developing a community-based mechanism that can realize the unified compatibility and sharing of social, economic and service relationships among online game users can we truly own users.

This explanation is relatively rigorous and does not express the essence more vividly. In July 2003, Linden Research, a company in San Francisco, USA, released the online game "Second Life". The idea is that you can create your own "Second Life" and play a specific role in the virtual society. You can do business, work, or even go to nightclubs in the game.

With the growth of registered users and the improvement of rules, people have discovered that the boundaries between virtual society and the real world have become blurred. Now that Linden Dollars in the game can also be exchanged for U.S. dollars, earning money in Second Life becomes realistic.

In February 2008, Jiuyou.com announced its formal comprehensive strategic transformation into an "Interactive Entertainment Community 2.0 Operator".

Jiuyou.com announced that the first phase of research and development of its independently developed 3D Internet virtual community "Jiuyou GT" is nearing completion. GTOWN, or Jiuyou Ji Tang. In an interview with 21st Century Business Herald, Wang Zijie explained: Second Life is a world with the same dimensions, but Jiuyou GT contains internal online games in a unified space through interconnection functions. These internal games Each of them constitutes an independent space.

That is, "users first, community tools later", which corresponds to "community tools first, users joining later" in "Second Life". Of course, Jiuyoujitang has a larger user base, and users belong to Gradually adapt to another virtual life.

Other online game operators have difficulties in entering. Industry insiders point out that: MMORPG games place more emphasis on plot and story background, and users focus on the final results of the game, so it is difficult for various games to interconnect.

Jiuyou.com officially released "Jiuyou GT" on ChinaJoy. Wang Zijie told the media that there are currently more than 400 R&D personnel developing leisure online game products around the Jiuyou Jitang application, and 5-6 models will be launched in the near future.

Of course, Wang Zijie now has enough funds to realize his wish.

On March 20, Jiuyou.com announced that it had successfully obtained investment of US$100 million from internationally renowned investment institutions such as Singapore's Temasek, and all investment-related procedures have been completed. Wu Jun later revealed that the investment mainly came from Temasek and another investor, and the shareholding ratio of both parties was roughly between ten and twenty percent. On July 14, 2009, Jiuyou announced six major games: "GT Audition 2", "Rogue King Kong", "Legend of Magic", "Blue Ocean War", "Warriors OL", and "Madden Basketball". became the focus of media attention. At that time, Wang Zijie was convinced that with the R&D talents cultivated by his company, he would be able to push Jiuyou to a new milestone again. As the saying goes: Do your best and obey fate, but before you finish your life, Jiu You ushered in the most difficult stage of his life.

First of all, in 2009, "GT Audition 2" and "Madden Basketball" were released. Due to insufficient research and development, both semi-finished games were launched on the market and received a cold reception; in early 2010, the semi-finished "Warriors OL" 》 once again became the focus of negative reports, making Jiuyou.com famous for a while; in April 2010, "Legend of the Divine Weapons" began its first test. Due to the hot copy market, everyone began to pay attention to this game. Jiuyou's The company's brand once reached the highest level (on the Baidu rankings, "Legend of Shenbing" ranked in the top three for one consecutive month, and "Jiuyou.com" ranked among the top three for one consecutive month). With such an advantage, in September 2010, "Shenbing Legend" ranked among the top three. "Legend of Soldiers" was open for testing, but it did not become as popular as people imagined. The reasons are:

1. The game is still a semi-finished product, with too many bugs and too many things that players think are unreasonable. Many players don't even know how to play the game.

2. The game mall is unreasonable. Before it has officially entered the commercial stage, there are too many props in the game mall, and even mounts have usage times.

3. The balance of the game is too poor, and various power-ups are flooded in the game, making the game become a "Renminbi warriors conquer the world" situation.

4. Players are unable to enter the game. According to Jiuyou insiders, 60% of the problems reported by players for a consecutive week were unable to log in to the game.

On November 28, 2010, this online game company was abandoned by its largest shareholder - Zhongke Yinghua (Shanshan Group Holdings), which held 16.97 shares, sold all its shares for US$15 million. shares.