Chapter 510: Victory in defeat

Hailed the most influential new game of 2006 by many media entities in Xu Tingsheng's previous life, <<Crazyracing Kartrider>> demonstrated its immense potential within a short period of time. On the night Xu Tingsheng returned to Yanzhou, the highest amount of players simultaneously online had reached 300000.

One of the most popular racetracks was called 'Mount Haruna'.

This track was unique to the Chinese version of the game. After much communication with the developers in Korea, Xingchen had independently developed and added it to the game.

The reason behind this decision of Xu Tingsheng's was a movie released in 2005: <<Initial D>>.

The popular Jay Chou, Edison Chen in his prime before he had fixed his computer...the invigorating visuals, the legendary racetrack and the godly car and racer had caused racing to become something that virtually all youngsters aspired towards.

Even if they could not do it in reality, they could still do it in the game.

More importantly, this movie had created a coolest phrase of the year: Drift.

Xingchen had borrowed and further emphasised this concept as the advertisement wording for <<Crazyracing Kartrider>> had been: A nation drifts.

The game had provided a chance for these youngsters who had only been able to experience this frenziedness and stimulation in the movies to do it themselves. Everyone could drift, even drift infinitely, just that they differed in terms of skill and quality.

That aside, as per Xingchen's usual style, the game department recognised the importance of the 'showing off' mentality as the development team even implemented a unique ranking system for the game.

This ranking system was only for the mightiest.

For example, the record holder for Mount Haruna in each server would possess the unique title: Racer God of Mount Haruna.

It was the same for the other tracks.

These show-offy titles would appear above the cars of the racers, who would also be able to choose to let them appear above their Weibo and Weixin profile icons, infinitely showing off.

One would feel so much prouder of themselves than being ranked first on the server of another game.

Such a lofty ambition, such an honour to strive towards to would make players more invested in the game, causing it to be more popular and more long-lasting.

Xu Tingsheng deliberately entered an internet cafe to scout the situation. In the end, the entire bar was filled with people. He had no choice but to stand by the side and wait for someone to complete their session. In the meantime, he quietly watched a row of kids who looked around ten frantically mashing buttons on the keyboard while swaying entirely left and right alongside the images on screen.

They were yelling stuff like:

"This old man will drift you to death! This old man will drift you to death, drift till even your Mum can't recognise you...the heck, I lost."

"Mistake...just you wait, next time...next time, I'll definitely drift you to death. This old man is the true Racer God of Mount Haruna."

"..."

Xu Tingsheng stood and watched for almost an hour. He could not help but think to himself now: Things like games are really: Those who obtain the primary school students obtain the heavens! The things that Mr Ma taught me are correct indeed as I thought."

As he was about to leave, a parent rushed into the bar and caught her kid, dragging him outside by the ear.

This kid was crying and causing a scene even as he furiously rebuked, "Hey, don't you want money? At the end of August, I'm going to compete in Shenghai and win you a few hundred thousand, okay? I'm going to buy us all a flat, okay?..."

"Buy a flat, is it? Go home and do your homework first!" That mother shouted furiously back.

And so an aspiring Racer God was destroyed by homework just like that.

Xu Tingsheng turned on the computer left behind by the aspiring Racer God and looked at the online discussion on both the games. <<Drifting Strategy>>, <<How To Turn Corners>>...as well as <<Huge-Bosomed Zombie-The Perfect Strategy>>.

Xu Tingsheng clicked on it. The purpose of this post wasn't to teach others how to pass levels at all.

Instead, it taught the time difference between planting the cabbages and the positions to place the cherry bombs.

As for the reason…

Xingchen's development team had called their boss perverted, but they themselves were really even more perverted. Its stature aside, they had designed this big-bosomed zombie to have these characteristics specific to zombies: full of holes in their clothes, pale features, sharp, pointy teeth with blood dripping from the corners of their mouths and mottled stripes on their skin that looked very much like tattoos…

Besides all these, this was completely Angelina Jolie.

People could basically view this as either a bigger, exaggerated zombie version of Angelina Jolie or a beautiful beggar vampire.

Even more untoward were the movements of the big-bosomed zombie.

Facing the attacks of the pea shooters, it would simply trudge on like any other zombie. There was no problem here. Still, when attacked by the firing arcs of the cabbages, they would...raise their clothes to protect their heads…

When the cherry bombs exploded, they would be sent flying by the ensuing explosion, the hem of their skirts flipping as they spun a full round in the air before landing on the ground.

Actually, one could see nothing even when their clothes were raised or their skirts were flipped after being sent flying by the explosion. Really, why would one look at zombies for this anyway? Wouldn't watching romantic action films be better and more direct?

Yet, the gamers just enjoyed this process and never tired of it for some reason.

The post detailedly analysed the time difference between planting the cabbages down to the second. It even planned for how to accumulate sunlight and leave enough space to engineer a seven-consecutive cherry bomb explosion. Then there was the distance between explosions, how to ensure that they would not fall to the siege and how to better observe in close proximity.

The author of the post guaranteed: If you do as I say, her hand will definitely hurt from all that flashing. Also, she'll be flipping non-stop in the air all the way till she's right before your eyes.

So, stay-home men had infinite powers of creation in some matters-even if the target was a zombie.

Xu Tingsheng was not worried that this little bit of mischief might affect Xingchen negatively or break some law.

Female characters in games were already more defined and wearing less and less. Their combat cries were becoming more and more like in romantic action movies. The design, big-bosomed zombie, did not amount to anything in front of that. It was truthfully minor, especially when there was nothing much besides mere pixels beneath those clothes.

……

At the end of March, the court proceedings for Xingchen versus Tencent were held.

Xingchen's complaint of destructive competition against Tencent-dismissed.

Xingchen's complaint of monopoly against Tencent-dismissed.

There were those who mocked Xingchen and those who felt indignant on their behalf. Whatever the case, as most people outside the industry saw it, Xingchen had lost in this confrontation with Tencent. Their defeat was set in stone.

Still, someone suddenly discovered the next day: After logging into Tencent's QQ, one would no longer be logged out from Xingchen's Weixin.

What did this entail?

At face value, entailed that people could resume their original habit of having both QQ and Weixin running on their computers at the same time.

On a deeper level, it entailed that Xingchen Technologies had ultimately succeeded in sticking their own flag in the domain of instant communication. Weixin had survived. Even if it currently only had a tenth of QQ's traffic, QQ's previous exclusiveness had thereby been broken.

Those in the know all understood that this was victory in defeat for Xingchen, and a massive victory at that.

The Ministry of Industry and Information had dealt Xingchen two sticks before feeding it a carrot. Meanwhile, it had given Tencent two warm hugs and asked for a tiny favour: We've ruled in your favour already. It's not destructive competition anymore. So, do us a favour. That forcibly logging offline...please stop with that already.

So Xingchen had never thought of winning in the first place. Those with insight grasped now that Xingchen had actually attained their desired result from this defeat. Weixin had gained stable footing in this domain of instant communication where QQ had once been that sole hegemon.

There was now another fish inside the big pond. Someone could begin to compete with Tencent for their user base.

That day, as Weixin gained stable footing, the valuation of Xingchen by the public...increased manifold.

A great many would-be investors swooped over, enthusiastically waving big wads of cash.