Blizzard And NetEase Divorce, Who Suffers?

Everyone has seen the news that Blizzard and NetEase are divorcing.

As a Blizzard gamer 20 years ago, and I wrote a cover letter to Blizzard at that time, of course, a former hardcore player who has disappeared into the sea, some readers would like to know what I think.

I’ll put what I think of it later, and let’s see what others think of it first.

Unlike many years ago when Blizzard was at the height of its fame and NetEase was criticized by gamers, this time the public opinion is almost overwhelmingly in favor of NetEase.

I think this is not due to how well NetEase's games are done, but more likely because Blizzard is no longer the Blizzard it used to be.

In the era when I was playing games, Blizzard's StarCraft, Diablo, and Warcraft could be said to be the most competitive ones.

When I started playing games, it was probably with StarCraft. When I stopped playing games, it was probably with World of Warcraft. Such a golden period for Blizzard.

In those days, you could say that certain games were good at certain areas, such as Fairy Sword, which told a good story; Jin Yong's Legend of Heroes, which had a novel entry point; Final Fantasy, which had a strong visual sense; and the Glory series, which was very good at grasping the details. theme.

But when it comes to games, no one can compare with Blizzard.

We used to talk about this in our bedroom talks. What is a game?

What is the most important thing about the game? Is it a game engine? Is it the subject matter of the story? In fact, it is not the case. The most important thing in the game is balance.

Chess is a very good game, and Go is a very good game. The reason why Blizzard has established itself as the king since the interstellar period is based on its game balance.

To put it bluntly, you can think that StarCraft is not a computer game, it is a chess game, even if it is not as good as chess, it is not far behind.

This evaluation is very high. Ask the companies that have developed various games. Who has developed a new game with as good balance as chess?

It is precisely because of the excellent balance that StarCraft, Diablo, and Warcraft have conquered the hearts of players all over the world. Blizzard in those days was a holy place for gamers.

You note, there are conditions, that year.

Just like the apple when Gang Leader Qiao was alive and the apple after Gang Leader Qiao is gone are not the same apple.

When Gang Leader Qiao was still alive, apples were the apples in the story of Adam and Eve.

After Gang Leader Qiao was gone, he really became an apple sold for a few dollars a piece on the street stalls.

Of course, Apple is better than Blizzard. Apple is at least trying to rest on its laurels, while Blizzard's performance is even worse than that of Party A's operators.

Operators sometimes also set up a research and development team to try to write some industry standards themselves. It is questionable whether Blizzard still has its own game development team now.

Today, Blizzard has actually become a licensee. That is to say, it is only responsible for eating the character names in the past game IP, and the development is outsourced, and then it wants to get the largest share of the pie.

This is like if Jin Yong said that he would not write novels, and asked Jin Yongxin to ghostwrite, allowing Jin Yongxin to use the names of characters in his stories, such as Zhang Wuji and so on. Most of the profits will be turned over to Jin Yong.

As a martial arts fan, do you think you can accept it? If you can't accept it, then as a gamer, you are bound to be disappointed with Blizzard.

Blizzard and NetEase broke down on this basis. This is why the guns are almost unanimously pointed at Blizzard.

In the final analysis, it is not that NetEase has done anything satisfactory, nor is it that Blizzard is charging sky-high prices for domestic players' data to stimulate the patriotic sentiments of public opinion. In the final analysis, it is today's Blizzard that is too disappointing.

Is this the point of today? No, in this divorce battle between two game manufacturers, I am not paying attention to them, but to a special group of professional gamers.

The so-called prosperity means the people suffer; when it dies, the people suffer. In my opinion, the real hardship is the group of professional gamers who rely on Blizzard.

Blizzard and NetEase divorced, and the data on the game platform was cleared. As an individual player, it is not a big loss. At most, it is equivalent to raising a dog that was very affectionate and lost it.

You are in pain, and I understand your pain, but this pain will not affect the material world other than your emotions, at least it will not affect your survival.

But for the professional gamers group, this blow is really inexplicable. It is said that if people sit at home, their jobs will be smashed from the sky.

Many professional players rely on Blizzard games to make a living, and playing games may be their entire source of income.

If you say to close the server, then close the server. If you say to clear the data, then clear the data. This is like someone who worked hard to open a store on Taobao, and then Taobao disappears. Who can he ask to reason?

Some people say, why not just change the game?

It sounds easy, but in fact it is very difficult.

For gamers, changing games is not that easy. A lot of the niche is built around the game itself.

Just like a Taobao store owner, the reason why he does well may be that he intervened early, or he may be familiar with Taobao's ecological environment. Gamers are the same way.

Many professional players are deeply involved in a game. Even if they cross borders, they are crossing borders between different games within the same game company. Just like Texas Hold'em players, they can't just switch to Go.

For a professional gamer, how to make money, sales channels, research on games, and research on equipment are all accumulated over many years.

What is really hurt by this divorce war is the countless small vendors and countless professional players in the Blizzard ecosystem.

Some people may not be familiar with it, so let me briefly introduce this group.

More than 20 years ago, there were actually professional players, and I was one of the earliest ones.

There are many ways to make money. The first was to release guides for a fee, and later to sell equipment, level up accounts, and write plug-ins. Ecosystems around the game were established one after another.

Slowly, these people began to stratify. Some people go directly to developing games; some people scale up and set up specialized companies.

Then there are still many low-level professional gamers who have become power levelers, or make a profit by dumping equipment.

The income of these people has hardly changed in the past 20 years. At that time, they earned several thousand yuan a month, but today they still earn several thousand yuan a month. Labor income cannot outperform capital income, which is still very common in the field of professional game playing.

So you can imagine that if a person, he is a professional gamer. After more than ten years, the income has not increased. That means there is no savings.

Tens of thousands of yuan a year, one hundred thousand yuan is probably enough for one person to live.

This group is very numerous in a game ecological chain like Blizzard that spans a long time.

In other words, a person who has played Blizzard games professionally more than ten years ago can only earn tens of thousands of dollars a year. This is still the case today. His skills have been solidified and his income has been tied.

He looks like a freelancer on the Internet, but in fact he is no different from a worker in a state-owned enterprise in Northeast China in the 1990s.

In the 1990s, when state-owned enterprise workers were laid off, the factories gave them tens of thousands of yuan in return. In those days, tens of thousands of yuan could be used to buy a house in first- and second-tier cities.

Today, these professional players who rely on the Blizzard ecological chain to survive, where is their future? How to make a living in the future? How to solve the social problems caused?

I think this is something the two big game manufacturers should negotiate.

This is the social responsibility that enterprises should have.