Chapter 245 Game Culture

Standing in the headquarters of Blizzard is a bronze orc statue, Ad Khan said that in order to install this statue, the company called a crane to move. Underneath the statue is a sign that reads "Gameplay First".

"This wolf-riding orc statue is the iconic symbol of Blizzard, and every employee of the company will receive a scaled-down version of it after accumulating a certain number of years of service!"

Following in Ad Khan's footsteps, Lin Mingyang stepped into Blizzard's headquarters for the first part, and the results did not disappoint Lin Mingyang. Blizzard's headquarters was a magical place, they had a one-story building that supported the company's culture and its own gaming technology, and the houses were covered in statues, murals, and all sorts of creative drawings just like one would imagine a game production place to be. The headquarters even contains a theater, museum, library, and gym.

In the front lobby of Blizzard's headquarters, rows of hanging computers allow visitors to log into World of Warcraft at any time.

Walking here Ad Khan purposely stopped in his tracks, "I wonder if Mr. Felix has come across the online game World of Warcraft?"

Lin Ming Yang shook his head regretfully, "When this game was launched, I had just entered Hollywood, and at that time I had to attend classes and act, so I really didn't have much time to play the game, although my passion for the game didn't cut down as I grew older, but nowadays I'm more exposed to standalone games, whether it's from the quality of the picture or the playability, I think that the standalone games far than online games...That said, although I have not played World of Warcraft, I have long been looking forward to Diablo 3, which is under development by your company, for a long time."

As a game enthusiast, Lin Ming Yang so actually out of his own selfishness, in fact, he also knew that the games produced by Blizzard, in addition to the superior quality, the most important feature was that it took an incredible amount of time. It is estimated that when the first Warcraft movie is completed, whether Diablo 3 can be successfully launched is still an unknown.

Ad Khan obviously also thought that was a rather distant issue, so he still brought the topic back to the present: ''World of Warcraft was developed on the basis of the previous 3 generations of the single-player game, and I don't think it would be difficult for Mr. Felix to gain an in-depth understanding of the game... What I mean is that it would be best for the movie version of Warcraft to be based on World of Warcraft 's game as the background, with the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance on the continent of Azeroth unfolding as the main line of conflict."

"This doesn't matter!" Lin Mingyang smiled at Ad Khan, "I know that Blizzard has put a lot of effort into the background of Warcraft's game, and there are a lot of wonderful plots in it that can even be directly put to use in the movie, so this time, my idea is that the plot aspect will be based on the framework provided by Blizzard, and I'll only be responsible for carrying out the process of adapting it into a movie script!"

This answer of his made Ad Khan secretly breathe a sigh of relief in his heart, Ad Khan knew that Lin Ming Yang, the Oscar-winning best screenwriter's name was very loud, and what he was most worried about was that Lin Ming Yang would be so self-righteous that he would end up changing the plot of the Warcraft to a completely different one. With Lin Mingyang's promise of sincerity, Ad Khan immediately felt that the prospects of this cooperation had become brighter.

Putting down the biggest stone in his heart, Ad Khan felt more relaxed, the smile on his face also became more and more bright, he began to take Lin Mingyang around the first floor of the headquarters. The first stop is naturally Blizzard's game museum, at the entrance, a large dwarf statue of equal size attracted Lin Mingyang's attention, this and the door of the orc belongs to a high level of sculpture, not at all the kind of props that randomly act as a decoration.

In other people's eyes this is a fine statue, but Lin Mingyang from the blizzard company for their own game culture, and those collections in the museum more and more firmly his judgment. This museum stores some of the "World of Warcraft" early conceptual oil paintings, as well as Blizzard's WOW original paintings, although Ade Khan did not tell Lin Mingyang who painted these paintings, but it is certain that they are all from the hands of Blizzard employees.

These World of Warcraft original paintings alone are worth 1.5 million dollars, and has a full-time employee to be responsible for archiving and storing all the new original paintings that are being completed. Blizzard is a newcomer to the scene compared to older studios like MGM, but in terms of its cultural legacy, Blizzard's approach puts many companies that think they've been around for a long time to shame.

Of course, in addition to these commemorative works, Ad Khan also made a special effort to introduce two collectibles to Lin Mingyang, one of which was a gift to Blizzard from the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. Blizzard had helped the U.S. Army stationed in the capital of Afghanistan link on WOW, these things are the U.S. Army to Blizzard back to the gift, the upper left corner of the certificate and the U.S. flag are proof of the weight of this return gift.

"This military cap and this mug were both gifts from a senior player in the US Army, and that flag used to fly over the US military base in Kandahar!"

Lin Mingyang obviously wasn't too keen on that gift from the US military, instead pointing to another collectible next to him, he asked, "And what about this box of Starcraft game disks?"

The box of CD-ROMs framed together with what Lin Mingyang said was also a certificate issued by NASA, which made him think of the so-and-so for Chinese astronauts' special products that often appeared in domestic title advertisements in the latter days, did the Americans like to play with this set too?

Ad Khan gave the answer and Lin Mingyang's guess is basically the opposite, this is not the Blizzard company sponsored NASA's title ads, but a U.S. astronaut's personal belongings, it is said that the astronaut was in training homesickness, will go to bed before and in the faraway son of the network to kill a game of interstellar, and this box of game disks is once taken to space, so it seems to be particularly monumental.

After visiting the museum, Ad Khan brought Lin Ming Yang back to the hall, he pointed to a large electronic screen hanging in mid-air and said, "This is the global posture map of WOW, the density of light dots on the map is directly proportional to the number of active players!"

Lin Mingyang looked in the direction of his finger, and saw a huge electronic map with light dots, the densest area was actually the eastern coast of China, followed by North America and Europe, which made Lin Mingyang very surprised.

While Lin Mingyang was looking up to watch those game data, Ad Khan said without missing a beat, "The number of global users of World of Warcraft has already exceeded 10 million, according to the calculation of $20 per movie ticket, gamers alone will be able to contribute $200 million to the box office revenue of the movie adaptation, and if the 3D or IMAX movie, the revenue brought in will be even more sizable."

Lin Mingyang shrugged noncommittally, "The novel Harry Potter has close to 50 million readers worldwide, and according to your calculations, the box office of every Harry Potter movie should be over 1 billion dollars, but in fact, that's not the case... I'm sure that die-hard Warcraft players will definitely spend money to walk into the movie, but a a portion of the players might watch the movie through other channels, such as the most convenient internet."

Lin Mingyang's saying this smacked of pouring cold water on the movie, but Ad Khan wasn't discouraged.

"Mr. Felix should have already thought of other ways to attract viewers by saying that?"

Ad Khan's question inevitably carried a hint of examination, and at this time, Lin Ming Yang naturally couldn't show any shyness.

"Back then, when I watched Mr. Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings series, I had the idea of making a magic movie of the same type. There are many other magical fiction novels that are always classic with The Lord of the Rings, but those novels are either too old to stir up people's empathy, or the ideas are too heavenly to be realized through a movie... Thinking about it, instead, some excellent games provide more sources of material for the movie to be altered, and as a classic work in magical fiction games, Warcraft naturally became my first choice."

"So Mr. Felix had the idea of wanting to work with us a long time ago?" Ad Khan said with some emotion, "In fact, some years ago we also had the idea of making a movie based on Warcraft, but in the end, it didn't work out, if you could have come to us at that time Felix, maybe what we're discussing right now should be the shooting of a sequel!"

Lin Ming Yang shook his head, "In fact, the game of Warcraft will be adapted into a movie, a few years earlier to shoot may not be able to compare to now!"

"Oh?" Ad Khan looked at Lin Ming Yang with a curious expression.

"Shooting such a movie requires very abundant funds, and at that time, whether it's me personally or Hollywood's overall investment environment, it can't support the film."

Ad Khan laughed, he thought that Lin Ming Yang was exaggerating when he said that, Hollywood was able to invest in the late 90's to make such a masterpiece as Titanic, and which of those so-called blockbusters that appeared afterward were not piled up with money.

Of course, he would not say such words directly, just asked from the side: "Mr. Felix is prepared to invest how much for this film?"

Lin Mingyang stretched out his palm all the way.

Ad Khan frowned, "50 million dollars?"

"Half a billion!"

Lin Mingyang's answer made Ad Khan draw a breath of cold air, if it was usual he would probably recognize that Lin Mingyang was joking, but on the contrary, at this moment, the expression on Lin Mingyang's face was incredibly serious, so he couldn't help but not believe it.

"Are you sure that a movie really needs to spend that much money?"

Looking at the unconfident Ad Khan, Lin Ming Yang patted him on the shoulder, "Mr. James Cameron is making a new film, and MGM is one of the investors, I can reveal a little bit of insider information to you, the cost of that film won't be lower than the figure I just gave... I'm talking to you like this, it's hard to have an intuitive feel for it, but when you've seen the film, you'll be able to see it. When you've seen the movie, you'll feel that in order to make the Warcraft into the effect of that movie, 500 million dollars is not enough!"