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The Author Of "Zombies" Tells You How To Make $100 Million From 0.

2010/10/27 15:53:00 401

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Plant Vs Zombie Popcap Founder John Vechey

Famous game " Plants V.S. Zombies "Yes. PopCap The works of software company.

The company's revenue this year is expected to reach $100 million. But 10 years ago, when it was founded, it was just a software studio for dropouts and two friends.

How did it make a leap from 0 to 100 million dollars? The following is the sincere account of the founder. After I saw it, it was unforgettable and translated it.

　 PopCap Founder John Vechey Self description

I grew up in Wisconsin. My father is a steelworker. He is deeply influenced by the hippie movement. He regards friends, family and women as more important than money. So he never accepts full time jobs and only works part-time when he needs money.

When I was very young, my parents divorced. I followed my mother, and then there were 7 stepfathers. At that time, the family was very poor. I envy others when they see something delicious. I worked in my spare time, so I had little extracurricular activities in my youth.

In 1996, I entered Purdue University. Although I didn't have my own computer, I wanted to be a programmer, so I took a course in the programming class. The first of all examinations in that class was always called Brian Fiete. I asked him if he would like to make a game together. This is the origin of our first game, ARC.

ARC is a paintball game. After putting it on the Internet, it attracts many people to play. It takes a lot of time to develop games, and my university GPA is only 1.67, so I quit school and devoted myself to development. There was an online chat. A man called Jason Kapalka asked to join us. He later became the third founder of PopCap. It was 1997.

Jason Kapalka persuaded a game company to buy us ARC operation license at a price of US $45000. That year, I was only 19 years old, and suddenly I felt like a millionaire with such a sum of money. Later, we sold the ownership of ARC to Sierra game company and got $100 thousand, and we started our own company in three.

At first, we only wanted to develop games for others, but we didn't want to launch Games directly to our players. The first game we developed was rejected by the agent. Then we made Bejeweled. The birth of the game was purely accidental. When I went back to my hometown, I saw people playing a card game on the Internet. It was very interesting. Email told Brian Fiete that he wrote the prototype of the game in second days, while Jason Kapalka found many diamond patterns in third days, and the first version of the fourth day Bejeweled was formed.

We took Bejeweled to find the game website. Yahoo said she wasn't interested in acting. Microsoft said she could put it on MSN, but the conditions were very harsh, but we had to accept it. As a result, it is very popular on MSN. There are 60 thousand people playing in a day, but our reward is only 1500 dollars per month. {page_break}

By 2000, users were required to get the downloadable version of Bejeweled, because at that time everyone was dialing the Internet, and the cost of the Internet was very high, and the telephone could not be entered on the Internet. So I had to convince Yahoo (it also started acting Bejeweled) and MSN, while continuing to provide free online versions, allowed us to launch a more powerful downloadable version of $20, which we earned half of our profit from the sales website. We have a new business model since then.

In 2001, Bejeweled sold us $35000 in the first month, and $40000 in second months. We know that this situation will not last long, but that money is enough. Brian and I took the money to Argentina for a holiday. We drank there every day for 4 months. It wasn't until Yahoo hired us to develop new games that we came back to the United States.

We decided that the game we developed must be very interesting, easy to use and attract family members. Sure enough, the 35 games developed later earned money. In 2004, we had 15 employees who were willing to buy US $60 million, and we refused. We found David Roberts as CEO, who worked for Apple and Adobe. We told him that his mission was to do big sales, game creativity, he did not need to manage.

After David Roberts took office, the first thing that changed was to allow the same game to generate revenue over a long period of time, instead of earning revenue through developing new games as we did before. Today, Bejeweled alone accounts for more than 30% of total revenue, because we allow it to run on all platforms: PC/Mac, Xbox, PlayStation, Wii, DS, PalmPilot, iPhone, iPad, and so on.

In 2006, we spent three years perfecting the new plant zombie game, and it was a great success. We always have a belief that we must make top games so that we can earn a lot of money. If a game is barely able to play, it will not earn a penny.