hunt hollywood

Prior to this, the detailed plan of Qintex Group's acquisition of MGM has been announced in the media.

In recent years, although the boss of MGM has been recognized as casino tycoon Kirk Kerkorian, in fact, this one of the seven film companies has always been a listed company.Kirk Kerkorian only owns 70% of MGM.

Kirk Kerkorian's several "capital operations" around MGM were also carried out on this 70% stake.

Qintex Group will acquire a 10% stake in MGM United Artists from Kirk Kerkorian with US$70 billion in cash this time, becoming the absolute controlling shareholder of this established film company.The transaction also means that Qintex Group will undertake MGM's total debt of more than 7 million US dollars.

The business situation of Qintex Group itself is in jeopardy. This matter has been fully unearthed by the powerful North American media recently. The outside world is generally not optimistic about this transaction. At the same time, some people cannot help but think of Simon.It is believed that with Simon's close connection with Australian capital, Daenerys Entertainment is likely to help MGM recover.

You must know that behind the acquisition of MGM, not only the Qintex Group, but also many other Australian capitals who hope to get involved in the Hollywood media field are involved behind the scenes.Otherwise, with the strength of Qintex Group itself, it would be impossible to complete this transaction.

Although Simon accepted that Christopher Scars, chairman of Qintex Group, participated in the signing luncheon for the acquisition of MGM at noon, he actually had no intention of helping MGM.

At least, he has no intention of interfering until he achieves control of the company.

Back on the West Coast, Simon left LAX and headed straight to Daenerys Entertainment headquarters in Santa Monica.

There is already a meeting waiting for him here.

Last Wednesday, Daenerys Entertainment officially completed the acquisition of EA shares, and finally took over 5000% of the shares of this PC game production and distribution company from several major shareholders of EA at a price of 35 million US dollars, becoming EA's No. A major shareholder.

Compared with the original acquisition budget of as high as 3.5 million US dollars, 5000 million US dollars won 35% of EA's equity, which is equivalent to only valuing the company at 1.4 million US dollars, which is lower than EA's market value of about 1.7 million US dollars before the transaction was concluded. much lower.

The shareholders of EA are interested in Daenerys Entertainment's content development capabilities.

After Daenerys Entertainment became a shareholder, as long as it can help EA develop a hit game similar to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", the business of selling 5000% of the company's shares for 35 million US dollars will definitely not lose money.Moreover, because of the revival of console games in recent years, EA originally planned to enter the field of console games, but it was somewhat discouraged by Nintendo's harsh royalty system.

EA was originally considering cooperating with Sega to port its games to the Sega game console platform. Since Sega game consoles have less than 10% market share in North America and Japan, it is not a wise choice to do so.

Now, according to the preferential agreement reached between Blizzard Studios and Nintendo and the special negotiations between the two parties on this matter, after this investment, games produced by EA can also enjoy the same royalties as Blizzard Studios. The reason why Daenerys Entertainment reached a stock sale agreement.

After the news of the transaction was made public last Wednesday, EA's stock price continued to rise sharply in the next three trading days, with a cumulative increase of more than 70% in three days, and its market value had reached $2.9 million at the close of last Friday.So, in just three days, Daenerys Entertainment's $5000 million investment in EA has realized more than 100% of the book profit.

Obviously, EA's original shareholders have also benefited greatly from this stock price surge.

This morning's meeting was also a tacit intention of both parties to push forward and continue to stimulate EA's stock price through some good news.

During the negotiation process with EA, Simon had already told Nancy to contact and purchase some copyrights suitable for game adaptation. This meeting, everyone will discuss and announce this matter later.

Chapter 314 Sand Dunes (Revised)

Santa Monica.

In the meeting room of Daenerys Entertainment Headquarters, after listening to the EA management's report on the company's operations, everyone began the topic of today's meeting.

The secretary handed out a document, and everyone in the conference room couldn't help recalling all aspects of the novel "Dune" in the document.

"Dune" is not a novel, but a general term for a series of science fiction novels surrounding the planet 'Dune'.

After the famous North American science fiction writer Frank Herbert released his first novel "Dune" in 1965, he continued to perfect the "Dune Universe" until his death in 1986. ", "Dune Savior" and many other science fiction works around the planet 'Dune'.

However, these novels basically revolve around a dune-strewn planet called Arakis.

In the distant future, people discovered something called 'spice' on the planet Arakis. Spices have multiple functions such as prolonging human life and assisting space jumps, which can help humans realize space travel.Moreover, humans have only discovered that spices are produced on the planet Arakis for many years, so too many stories have happened around this planet full of sand dunes.

Because of the complete story background and grand narrative structure of the "Dune" series, this sci-fi series has quickly become popular since its birth, and has been rated as the space version of "Lord of the Rings" by some media.

Again, like the Lord of the Rings franchise, there have been hopes for a big-screen adaptation of the story for years.

In 1984, De Laurentiis Entertainment, with David Lynch as the director, finally burned 4000 million US dollars, and finally put this story on the big screen.It just didn't turn out very well. With an investment of 4000 million U.S. dollars, the North American box office after the film was released was only a little over 3000 million U.S. dollars.

In the conference room at this time, Simon was also very curious, how did the boss of De Laurentiis Entertainment come up with the idea of ​​letting David Lynch, a director who is too artistic to be literary, shoot a commercial sci-fi masterpiece, and dare to Invest $4000 million.

That was $1984 million in 4000.

De Laurentiis Entertainment is now bankrupt, and Simon quickly retracted his thoughts, walked to the whiteboard in front of the meeting room, picked up a pen and wrote a few words on the whiteboard: Real Time Strategy Game (real-time strategy game).

Speaking of which, EA's current strengths are sports games, and Simon has no idea of ​​​​reversing this trend.

While maintaining EA's advantages in sports games, he intends to let EA focus on developing the most popular real-time strategy games in the 90s in the original time and space.Because of the mode of real-time strategy games, this type of game is also more suitable for the PC platform.

Although it plans to port a large number of EA's games to the TV game console platform, Simon will also allow EA to maintain its dominant position in the PC field.

For today's meeting, Simon has done a lot of homework in advance, and personally sorted out the information in everyone's hands based on the information in his memory.

Real-time strategy games have sprouted in the early 80s, and only reached their peak in the 90s with the appearance of games such as "Warcraft" and "StarCraft". The concept of real-time strategy games was finally perfected in the 90s.Now, various types of real-time strategy games are actually just a prototype mode, and usually do not have the elements of resource collection, troop production, and real-time combat that mature real-time strategy games should have.

On the other hand, Simon did not directly take out the peak-level real-time strategy games such as "Warcraft" and "StarCraft" that he had played. In order to allow EA to practice first to accumulate experience.

The real-time strategy game in the original space-time finally matured after more than ten years of continuous exploration and accumulation. EA has no experience in this area. If you start it immediately, it is likely to destroy several classics in Simon's memory.

Speaking of which, the real-time strategy games adapted from the "Dune" series are also quite successful in the original time and space, which is why Simon told Nancy to win the right to adapt the "Dune" series of games at a high price.

Daenerys Entertainment promised that the price tag of the copyright owner of "Dune" is similar to that of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", the basic adaptation fee of 50 US dollars and a 5% net profit share of all "Dune" related video games.During the process of Nancy's contact with the copyright owner of "Dune", the news had already spread. During this period, there were many other competitors who tried to bid, but the copyright finally fell into the hands of Daenerys Entertainment.

After all, the $50 cost of the adaptation is only secondary, and if "Dune" can achieve the success of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game, just 5% of the net profit share will be a big deal.

The failure of David Lynch's "Dune" movie in 1984 made this series project, which was originally coveted by many studios, suddenly become an existence that no one cares about. Naturally, he would not make such a mistake in game adaptation.

Compared with the failure of the "Dune" movie, the video games based on "Dune" have been very successful.

"Warcraft" developed by the original space-time Blizzard studio is also recognized as a follow-up imitation of the 1992 real-time strategy game "Dune Castle 2".

Simon told everyone in the meeting room about the development points of the resource collection system, real-time battle system and force production system of real-time strategy games in detail, and briefly described the prospects of this type of game in online battles, and finally Said: "That's about it. The detailed plan still needs to be explored by yourself. Personally, I am very optimistic about the development prospects of real-time strategy games. This type of game can also make EA's advantages in the PC field develop to the extreme. Therefore, I hope everyone Can take this project very seriously.”

The current chairman and CEO of EA and the founder of the company, Trip Hawkins, said after Simon finished his speech: "Simon, according to your statement, the development of this game is similar to the "Sim City" we launched this summer. "There are a lot of similarities."

Simon nodded and said: "I have also read the information of "Sim City" and tried it. The first generation of this game was not considered a success. I think it is mainly due to the limitation of the hardware platform. If it can be further improved into a 3D version, it will This game will definitely be very popular. However, "Sim City" does not have a battle system, it is two concepts from the real-time strategy game I just mentioned."

Another EA executive said at this time: "So, Mr. Westeros, you mean, the core of this game is combat?"

"Of course not. If it's just a battle, it becomes another game concept. I think the main point of this game development is the mutual cooperation of the real-time battle system, resource collection system and troop production system. During the development process, I hope you In the early stage, it is best to spend a few months to perfect the settings of this game, and don’t be impatient. Because this is the first attempt, the most important thing is to accumulate experience.”

As the topic unfolded, other people in the conference room also began to ask various questions.

So until noon, the meeting finally came to an end.

Simon had to rush to the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel to attend the signing lunch hosted by Qintex Group. As soon as he left the meeting room, Nancy chased him out and whispered to Simon, "I didn't talk to the development team of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". After negotiating the next salary plan, about half of the people will resign, and they plan to set up their own studio."

Blizzard Studios' first game has achieved phenomenal success, and the development team has naturally grown.

The game development in this era has not had the coordination and cooperation of a team of hundreds of people many years later, and even one or two people can complete it.Because of the expected huge revenue of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", the development team has also proposed salary increases, and Nancy has been dealing with this matter recently.

In the end, it still failed.

However, Simon didn't care too much.

These developers probably only saw that a "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game brought hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to Daenerys Entertainment, but they didn't see Daenerys Entertainment's series of spare no effort in the game release process.

After leaving Blizzard Studios and without Daenerys Entertainment's financial and channel support, these people wishful thinking that they can replicate the miracle of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" by mastering some key points of game development. Said it was naive.

Moreover, with the advent of the 32-bit console era and the further development of the PC platform, the era when one or two people can develop a game will also come to an end.

Entering the 90s, the development of video games is destined to develop into multi-person teamwork. A team of dozens or hundreds of people develops a game together, and the risks involved are simply not something that only a few people can bear.Even if these people find some other financial backers to support them, the possibility of replicating the phenomenal success of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is very slim.

After all, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" may not reach the heights of "Super Mario", but it is still a phenomenal game enough to sell millions of cartridges.

Simon is able to judge the success of this game based on his own prophetic advantage, and a lot of manpower and material resources have been invested in it. Even if those people have mastered some game development know-how, they can only try their luck on various games in the future.

Luck is obviously the most unreliable thing.

"Leave as soon as you leave. There is never a shortage of technical talents in this industry."

As Simon said, he noticed that Nancy didn't have much worry on her face, and her female executives obviously understood that Daenerys Entertainment has many more advantages than a simple game development team. A batch of technical The departure of personnel will only affect the development progress of the sequel of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". It is impossible for Daenerys Entertainment to grant the studio equity requested by these people because of the success of a game.

Hearing what Simon said, Nancy said: "I will conduct a new round of recruitment as soon as possible. If necessary, I can also borrow some technical personnel from EA."

"Actually, I've also been thinking about the game studio recently..." Simon had just started, and the two had already arrived downstairs. He simply said, "Why don't you go to Beverly Hills with me for a banquet, By the way?"

Nancy didn't think too much, she simply nodded and followed Simon into his luxurious car.

The car drove out of the parking lot of Daenerys Entertainment Headquarters, and Simon continued: "I think it is difficult for a game studio to maintain a long and vigorous vitality. A game studio can develop one or two successful games in its life cycle. Video games are already very rare. Therefore, Daenerys Entertainment can adopt a development model similar to movie projects in this regard. Form a team, invest in a project, and if there is a need to develop a sequel after the project ends, the team will continue to maintain . If not, the development team will be disbanded directly.”

In fact, what Simon was thinking at this time was the rapid decline of good game studios in memory that usually follow the acquisition.

However, this situation has not yet happened, and EA is still far away from the title of 'Studio Terminator'.

Originally, as a bystander, Simon was also very uncomfortable with EA's behavior of "breaking down" each studio. Now, standing in the position of a boss, Simon's thinking mode will inevitably change.

The decline of those studios that were acquired by large game developers in memory may be due to the constraints of the parent company. However, another possibility is that the game team gradually lost creativity.Game companies want to make a profit. It is impossible for a studio to support the studio to develop their own imaginary works regardless of cost or return just because they have developed a phenomenal game.

Moreover, to be honest, the acquisition of these studios by game companies is more likely to be the successful game copyrights in the hands of these studios.

That being the case, it is better to follow the model of film production and invest in some game projects with good ideas from scratch, so that the cost will be greatly reduced.

For example, it may cost billions of dollars to acquire Blizzard Studios, which owns the copyrights of popular games such as "Warcraft" and "StarCraft", but if it is only invested in the development of game projects such as "Warcraft" and "StarCraft", perhaps It only needs a few million dollars, and there must be a lot of failed works, but as long as one or two phenomenal works appear in ten projects, it is a success.

After all, video games usually have a long life cycle. If a game is successful, many generations of sequels can often be produced.

After listening to Simon's thoughts, Nancy agreed: "You can really try it. In addition, in order to promote the enthusiasm of the development team, we can also promise them a profit share. This can also properly reduce the cost in the early development."

Considering the long-term benefits, most people are often willing to accept a lower salary in the early stage.

The current video game development may not be able to see it. In the future, when tens of hundreds of people develop a game, labor cost will become the most important factor affecting a project budget.

"Take some time to think about this matter carefully, and come up with a plan," Simon said, and smiled again: "Also, speaking of salary, do you want a salary increase?"

Nancy squinted at Simon: "Are you going to give me a raise?"

"It depends on the situation. If you threaten me to quit immediately without a salary increase, I will definitely give you a salary increase."

"And then I'm going to end up in Rem's situation."

"It's very possible that I'm actually a very generous person, but I'm not used to others taking the initiative to ask me for something."

"It's a very unreasonable way of thinking."

"I'm so busy, I don't have time to reason with you."

"..."

Chapter 315 "Batman" Premiere (Revised)

Simon and Nancy chatted all the way, and soon arrived at the Hilton Hotel near Century City in Beverly Hills.

The car stopped in front of the hotel building. Because of the signing ceremony between the Qintex Group and MGM, many reporters who had purposely squatted outside the Hilton Hotel today found Simon Westeros' car and quickly surrounded him.

The hotel waiter graciously stepped forward to open the car door, and the two bodyguards in the front row quickly got out of the car.

Ignoring the rush of questions from the surrounding reporters, Simon patiently waited for Nancy, who got off the bus on the other side, to turn around and come to him before walking into the hotel together.

The news of Simon's engagement to Janet has been raging during this time. The reporters found that he brought another woman to the Qintex Group's luncheon today, and they obviously cheered up and raised their cameras.

However, to the disappointment of the reporters, Nancy and Simon did not hold the man's arm after standing side by side, but kept an appropriate distance.The standard OL look of the woman in a black suit, trousers and blond hair made her not at all like a female companion accompanying a man to a luncheon.

Moreover, because of the dispute between Daenerys Entertainment Consumer Products Department and Alista Records in recent months and Nancy's frequent appearance in the media during the hot sale of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game, the surrounding reporters are not unfamiliar with her identity.

It seems to be a very common thing for the boss to take his senior executives to a business banquet.

However, because of Simon's identity and Nancy's good looks, the reporters were still unwilling to try to dig out or create some 'crazy information'.Therefore, in the short distance between the two of Simon getting off the car and entering the hotel, all kinds of ambiguous, misleading and even provocative questions kept ringing around.

Side by side with Simon and entered the hotel lobby expressionlessly, Nancy felt the flashing spotlights behind her, and noticed that the man next to him looked indifferent and seemed to be completely unaffected by the questions just now. Hold your arm, will the newspapers be very lively tomorrow?"

Simon looked at Nancy in surprise, and said with a smile, "Don't wait for tomorrow, it will be very lively right away."

"Then..." Nancy recalled that her boss always had a lot of little lace but had never been caught by the tabloids, so she asked curiously in a low voice: "How do you steal food?"

Simon shook his head without hesitation and said, "I can't tell you that."

Nancy asked relentlessly, "Why?"

Simon didn't explain, and said: "In short, I can't tell you."

Just as he was talking, a group of men and women had already greeted him.Nancy recognized that the middle-aged man in his 40s with neat black hair who was in the lead was Christopher Scars from Qintex Group, so she stopped asking questions.

Looking at Simon, who was skillfully chatting with several people, he suddenly understood why he refused to talk about his lace experience.

Perhaps, this is a kind of protection.

No woman would like a man who often shows off his hunting experience, especially when he is the heroine in it.

If he had just unabashedly confided to himself how he cheated on a certain actress, even if she asked about it, she would definitely have a bad impression of him afterwards, and even stay away from him.

just now……

"Chris, this is Nancy Brill, the manager of our consumer products division. Nancy, hello, are you still there? This is Christopher Scars, you meet."

The voice in her ear interrupted Nancy's distraction. She quickly withdrew her thoughts and greeted Christopher Scars and the others politely.

A total of five people came out to welcome them.