After arranging the acquisition of Hutchison Group's shares, Lin Yanming, who was in charge of legal business, also came to Chen Zhiwen's office.
"Sheng Chen, I got the photos. Take a look." Lin Yanming handed over a stack of photos.
"Yes, this is good news, right? I heard that the management of Hilton Hotel has taken us to court?" Chen Zhiwen said with a smile as he took the photo. In the photo, there are two men at the rear of two cars, with the doors covered When I opened it, there were some photos of moving cardboard boxes. It was obvious that there were tobacco and alcohol inside. The environment of the photo was in the woods on the roadside, which looked unusual.
"We filed a lawsuit, and the court also contacted me and said that unless we have enough evidence to prove that Hilton committed a major breach of contract, it will be difficult to win the lawsuit. A friend of mine in the court advised us to just pay the money and forget it. Otherwise, if we really go to court, we will have to pay the other party's legal fees and various losses." Lin Yanming said with some embarrassment. Although it was due to the previous overbearing contract, as the company's legal person in charge, he lost this first lawsuit. He is so cowardly, but there is nothing he can do about it. Hilton's overbearing contract was clearly signed, and even if he invited the ten most powerful lawyers in Hong Kong, he could not win.
"So the core is the evidence. This photo seems not enough, right?" Chen Zhiwen asked.
"It's not enough, but combined with the internal reports from Yuele Company and our promotion, it was enough for the Independent Commission Against Corruption to open a case." Lin Yanming said.
"I remember, wasn't that person unwilling to be a whistleblower?" Chen Zhiwen asked.
"As long as the money is in place," Lin Yanming said with a smile.
"Okay, I'm waiting to see the show." Chen Zhiwen nodded and said.
Hong Kong, Hilton Hotel:
In a conference room, a dozen Chinese people and two blond ghost guys were sitting together.
"Mr. Silas, the above is all the room occupancy data last month. Judging from the previous six consecutive months of data, more and more people are coming to Hong Kong from overseas. We have successfully achieved nine consecutive months of profitability. I I think next year, this data will increase by at least 20%." Du Guoming explained the data of his department in front of a mobile blackboard with high spirits.
"Very good, the U.S. headquarters will be very surprised when they get this data. I think each of us can get a generous bonus for Christmas this year." Silas, the head of Hilton Hotels in Hong Kong, said with a smile.
"Last quarter, the owner's compensation was not paid to us, right? What's the situation with the court?" Another blond ghost suddenly asked, he is the financial director of Hilton Hotel.
Hilton Hotels generally does not send many Americans to its business outside the United States, but first of all, the boss must be an American, and the same is true for finance. One person controls the money and the other controls the money.
"No, the court seems to want to mediate, and the owner seems to be a little softer." A Chinese said.
Silas smiled and said, "I thought how tough he could be. If I ask him to be more generous next time, I really thought he would be able to make the decision after acquiring the property."
"Dong dong dong" At this moment, there was a knock on the door. Everyone was a little strange. Usually no one would disturb high-level meetings unless there was something important.
The door was opened quickly, and it was another assistant of Silas. Behind her were several men wearing suits and tags.
"Who are you?" Silas asked in unsophisticated Cantonese.
The leader of the men in suits ignored the ghost guy and led people directly towards Du Guoming and said: "Du Guoming, Mr. Du?"
"Yes, I am." Du Guoming looked at the hair of several people.
"Mr. Du, we are the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption. You are suspected of a commercial bribery case. Please come back with us to assist in the investigation." The leader, the man in a suit, said.
"Wait a minute, I'm Hilton's legal manager. What's going on?" A man with glasses stood up and asked.
"We received a report that Du Guoming was suspected of receiving bribes from a company called Yuele, thereby subcontracting the business under his authority to this company." Although the man in the suit is arrogant, he still gives face to such a large company.
"Our hotel and Yule Company are not government departments. If the relevant stakeholders are not held accountable, you have no right to litigate?" the legal manager responded. What issues should be handled internally and must not be managed by outsiders? , let alone allow the Independent Commission Against Corruption, which has just been established and has exterminated a large number of government officials, to investigate. Du Guoming is a small matter, but if the investigation is really deep, who in this conference room dares to say that he has no problem?
"Of course we have the right. This is authorized by Hilton Hotel owner Chen Zhiwen and Chen Sheng. You can take a look." The man in the suit said calmly: "He is the actual owner of the hotel, not a relevant stakeholder?"
"This" legal manager was stunned. The hotel owner is of course a relevant stakeholder. Even though he does not have any rights to manage the hotel, he has the right to share dividends from the hotel operation. If there is something wrong with the hotel management, it naturally violates the owner's legal rights.
An interpreter was translating the conversation for Silas. After listening, he also remained silent and just watched the ICAC people take away Du Guoming, whose legs were shaking with fear.
Seeing everyone's unkind expressions, the assistant who led the way quickly backed out and closed the door.
The scene was quiet. No one should know what to say at this time. This kind of thing has never happened in Hong Kong for so many years. If it was a few years ago, they would have dared to go up and nag, but now they dare not. This has just been established. The Independent Commission Against Corruption is very famous in Hong Kong. I don’t know how many high-level people in the government and police have fallen into the hands of the Independent Commission Against Corruption. They either went in or fled. Even many British people who are high-level government officials are the same. Even Silas Americans like this don’t dare to be arrogant.
After a while, Silas said: "Carol, go to the police station and find out what's going on with Manager Du?"
"Okay." The assistant on the side agreed quickly, then said goodbye and hurriedly followed.
"Okay, that's it for the meeting, everyone does their own thing." Silas said with an unchanged expression.
Others at the scene seemed not to be well, and they were all in a heavy mood. No one knew that the Independent Commission Against Corruption suddenly took action against Du Guoming, but it was just an exception and it started an investigation into a Hong Kong company. In the past six months, the ICAC's reputation has become so great that they usually watch the show, but they didn't expect that it would be their turn today.
After everyone left, Silas said to the financial manager: "Alan, what do you think is going on?"
"Perhaps we have gone too far." Allen frowned and said, "Then Eric Chen is someone who can spend tens of millions of dollars to buy our hotel property. We all think he is very young, but Now it seems that his counterattack has begun."
"Relying on attacking our men? Even if one person has a problem and is found out, so what if we want to recover the losses, our hotel will still take the lion's share." Silas still said disdainfully.
"I just suggest that you don't look down on anyone." Allen frowned and said, "We broke the rules first this time. If it really gets bigger, we won't be able to explain it to the head office."
Although the Hilton Hotel's contract is very strong and excludes many disadvantageous factors from the contract, why can such a strong contract attract people to cooperate with them?
It is nothing more than the entire hotel group’s global travel agency partnerships and experienced hotel management capabilities, which together reduce hotel operating costs a lot. In this way, Hilton Hotels can directly make profits without investing in huge properties, and owners can also After investing, you will get a stable rate of return. Even if Hilton is overbearing, as long as it can guarantee profits, most owners will not care. Even if they are a little frustrated, the money will be enough.
But if the money is not available, no matter how good your contract is, the owner will still be dissatisfied.
After the property owner of the Hilton Hotel in Hong Kong changed this time, Silas conducted an investigation and found that the new owner did not have a strong background, so he decided to make more profits for the "hotel" to improve his KPI. This was already a violation of Hilton Hotels' policy. regulations, at least on the surface.
Silas thought for a while and said: "Let's see what's going on first? Maybe it's nothing. If it doesn't work, talk to Eric again and share a little profit with him at most."
"I hope so," Allen said.
Naturally, Chen Zhiwen was always paying attention to the affairs at the Hilton Hotel, but the Independent Commission Against Corruption also had procedures for doing things, so Chen Zhiwen just had to wait.
On the 23rd, Chen Zhiwen attracted an unexpected guest, Woz came to Hong Kong.
"Sit down." Chen Zhiwen led Woz to the sofa in the reception area and said with a smile, "I thought you would come over after New Year's Day. Why did you come before Christmas?"
Christmas in Europe and the United States is just like New Year in China. Almost everyone has to stay at home.
"I spent Christmas alone in Los Angeles last year, so it doesn't matter. I can also take a trip to Hong Kong, which is also very good." Woz replied with a smile.
"OK, the company will reimburse all expenses in Hong Kong. You have a good time." Chen Zhiwen said politely.
"Thank you, Mr. Chen." Woz is also very casual, and is very calm when facing his boss. He is an IT technician and can be successful wherever he goes. In addition, he only likes technology and does not understand the messy workplace rules.
"Then let's get to the point?" Chen Zhiwen asked.
"Okay." Woz nodded and said.
"Then take a look first. This is my simple description of the game content. I have registered patents for this game in major countries around the world. You are responsible for electronically converting it." Chen Zhiwen handed over a document.
Atari's first game Ping Pong forgot to register a patent. As a result, the game that could have made millions of dollars a year only made 150,000 dollars. Later, it was forced to stop because the market was full of similar games, resulting in losses. Very big.
Of course, Chen Zhiwen would not make such a mistake. In 1972-73, when the electronic game market just emerged, piracy could cost millions of dollars. Today, when the market is more mature, if a mistake is made, the loss may be tens of millions of dollars, let alone , the current arcade is an important foundation for his start.
"Okay." Woz took the file, which was described in both Chinese and English. He could only understand English. The name of the game was GREEDY SNAKE.
The setting of the game is very simple. Use the game handle to control the direction of the snake up, down, left, and right, and look for something to eat. You will get certain points for each bite you take, and the snake's body will grow longer as it eats. The longer the body, the harder it is to play. The bigger you get, you can't touch the wall, bite your own body, and you can't bite your own tail. When you reach a certain score, you can pass the level and then continue to play the next level.
"This setting is a bit interesting." Woz said after reading it.
"Isn't it more interesting than Steve Jobs' brick-laying game?" Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.
"It's different. The back of Brick Breaker is not much different from the front. It's just that there are fewer bricks. This greedy snake will get longer and longer in the back, and the difficulty will increase significantly." Woz looked at it again. Look at the game introduction document and say.
This document not only describes the settings, gameplay and rules of the game, but also describes the difficulty behind it. It also uses graphics to describe it. Woz has such a long body in a small box and cannot touch the surroundings. Touching yourself is not that difficult.
"This is how you can challenge yourself, isn't it? In fact, Atari's Ping Pong and Brick Breaking are not very difficult. They just rely on the back to speed up the ball, causing the user to have no time to react. If you play this way many times, the user will Generally, I have no interest." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.
Woz asked: "So, this greedy snake will not speed up in the later stage?"
"No, it's always just a speed. Let the players use their brains to see how to choose the direction. This will be more interesting." Chen Zhiwen nodded and said.
The biggest fun point of Snake is how to avoid collisions as the body grows in the later stage. This depends not only on reaction speed, but also on brains. When turning, you have to think clearly about how to turn in the next few steps. Otherwise, one mistake would be suicide.
When this kind of error occurs, the user will also reflect on which step he went wrong before, and will have more desire to play another round. This is the attraction that an arcade should have, rather than adding more balls like table tennis. Speed to eliminate players.
"That's true, but the algorithm here is more complicated. It's not difficult to design a game like this, but to design it so that users fail within the time we set, we need to coordinate the algorithm." Woz thought for a while. said.
"In fact, you don't have to worry too much about this. When the snake's body is too long, it will easily fail no matter what. As long as we try to put the food near the snake's body, it will be too easy to hit." Chen Zhiwen said calmly, although in later generations, I rarely play Snake, but I have played a lot of similar games. It is a normal operation to use bait to induce players to fail. In this way, if the player succeeds, the satisfaction will be greatly improved. If the player fails, , you are very likely to be in a hurry to play another round.
Of course, this is more suitable for level-breaking games, such as games like Mario, Contra, and even Tetris. The gameplay and screen settings of Snake are destined to be far less attractive than the former. However, for people in the 1970s who have never seen the world, such new games are enough to make them have a lot of fun. Who can imagine that a 6-year-old child in the future will not be able to play Brick Arkan. In this era, it will be a great success for Atari. Net profit exceeds US$10 million a year.
"That's okay, it's much simpler." Woz nodded. Placing food near the snake's body can greatly increase the risk of collision. In this way, the algorithm required for the game is much simpler, which can reduce the risk of collision. His workload can also save a lot of chip costs.
"When will the design be ready, the first version?" Chen Zhiwen asked.
"It is estimated that it will take about half a month. I need to design the game first, and then find a way to design the control motherboard with the lowest number of chips." Woz thought for a while and said.
"Okay, there is no need to be so urgent. Reducing the number of chips is the most important." Chen Zhiwen nodded and said. Arcade machines are very important, but you can still afford to wait for half a month. At present, the most important thing is to ensure the quality of the game and the cost of the chips. It must be between the two. Find a balance between.
"OK, I will get this done as soon as possible." Woz promised.
PS: That’s just one chapter today! Everyone remember to read it!
(End of chapter)
