Text/Repair&Lin Zhi

After seeing the second PV of "Showa Rice Story" become popular again, producer Luo Xiangyu (known as the cat boss) finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Since the game's stunning debut two years ago, it has fallen silent. Time can change many things, including a person's confidence.

The cat boss told Grape Jun that in fact, many people think that the game can be an instant hit, and luck accounts for a large part. When he promotes the follow-up cooperation of the project, he is always questioned: "Is this game outdated?" Even a while ago, there were rumors on the Internet that "the project is gone".

Therefore, this game has won the attention of players again after two years, which is of great significance to the cat boss. First, it proves that the popularity of the game is not due to luck, but that players just love it; Second, it proved that it was right in its judgment of the market, and even after a few years, games like Showa Rice Country Story are still scarce in today's game market.

Because few people dare to do something like this - jumping sideways from side to side on sensitive lines, going back and forth between offense and funny, and the slightest carelessness can fall into the whirlpool of public opinion.

But the cat boss said that he came out to start a business in order to be able to do whatever he wanted and let it fly completely. "The PV released now is very convergent, otherwise I'm afraid the video won't be released."

The following is a transcript of the conversation, which has been deleted and adjusted for ease of reading:

01

became popular again after two years,

Prove that the game is not about chance

Grape King: The two PV games are a bit interesting, and I feel like you're really good at this.

Cat Boss: This time it's the same content structure as last time, but with new materials. I'll come up with the PV script, choose the BGM, lines, and content to show.

This time, the new BGM is actually useful, but I think that since "それが Event" (Li Keqin's "Red Sun" original) is the theme song of the game that we signed, I still hope that it can appear in the second PV to strengthen everyone's impression.

Grape Jun: After you saw the film go viral this time, what is the difference between how you feel and two years ago?

Cat Boss: After the first PV became popular, many people said that there was an element of accident and luck, including after we got the financing, during the development process, when I wanted to promote some follow-up cooperation, everyone was also a little hesitant about this, thinking that after such a long time, can this game reawaken the expectations of players? Will it be outdated?

Some people will worry about whether my judgment of players is accurate, thinking that PV2 cannot be as popular as PV1, and it is estimated that players have already run out, how many people can be left to pay attention? There are even rumors on the Internet that the game is gone and the team has run away.

These things have really shaken a lot of people's confidence in the project, and I can feel it myself. So, I'm curious to know what it's like for players to see Showa Mykoku Story again, two years after the last exposure.

As a result, the data of PV2 is much better than that of PV1, especially overseas, and basically all the top anchors have done Reaction. We didn't spend money to buy volume, or bring two cartons of milk to the anchor.

Source Youtube@ Asmongold TV

Grape: Have you ever wavered in your faith?

Cat Boss: I've always been very confident. I've always had a lot of confidence in what players are looking forward to seeing and what kind of games they want to play. I just can't be completely sure how much luck accounted for the last PV popularity.

Grape-kun: So what is the conclusion you have now?

Cat Boss: At least from the perspective of the game concept, I think the appeal of "Showa Rice Country Story" is undoubted, and the popularity of PV cannot be said to be due to luck.

And games can catch the player's eye, which is a very difficult thing to do nowadays. All we have to do now is get the game done solidly. It can't be said that we did the hard thing, but we ended up overturning on the part that we could do well, which is definitely not allowed.

Grape Jun: This time it became popular, did you cool down the team like last time?

Cat Boss: I think everyone is calm this time, as if they have adapted to it. Because the team knows what kind of level they usually make and what they will end up doing.

Some time ago, when we were rumored on the Internet, many people in the team were very angry, thinking that the project had been unreasonably accused, and some people even had the urge to argue on the Internet, which I finally stopped. Because I don't think it's necessary to go to the line with people, we just need to report the progress of the project on time.

Grape-kun: Some people will worry that "Showa Rice Story" has more gimmick than substance, what do you think?

Cat Boss: I think every game needs to have its own strengths, as long as it can do well in other aspects. Our team will feel that although this game is not up to the top level in the industry in terms of gameplay, and it is not the type of "full gameplay", it still feels very good to play.

The people in the team also play a lot of games, and I am a little more relieved when they say that. Next year, we will most likely do a trial to see how players react.

But what I have a headache now is that a lot of the content of "Showa Rice Country Story" relies on the shock of first sight, and because there are a lot of whole jobs or memes, familiar players may know the development of the plot at a glance. I didn't take it out for user testing before, mainly for this reason. So I'm thinking of splitting some of the content into slices, so players can experience the story flow, combat gameplay, and mini-games, but without too many spoilers.

02

PV is already very convergent,

The really energetic ones don't dare to release it

Grape: What have you been doing in the past two years?

Cat Boss: At PV1, the project was developed to the penultimate stage of the project cycle, which is the mass production period of art assets. We went to finance a lot of money at that time, mainly for the mass production of art resources.

But at that time, it was just in time for the blowout period of PS5 games, and many triple-A masterpieces ate up high-quality outsourcing resources, and we couldn't grab them at all. This is something I didn't expect before, because for a long time before PV1 was released, these outsourcing companies were not working, and the industry was not very prosperous.

And we can't grab other people's commercial masterpieces, they offer high prices, and they also lock in some high-quality developers, so we can only queue up honestly. This has had a big impact on the progress of our project.

We also tried some outsourcing companies that we didn't work with before, but the results were not good, rework was frequent, and the finished product was not satisfactory.

Grape-kun: Why don't you wait?

Cat Boss: When we were queuing, we continued to polish the functions that had not been done before, and wrote some development tools for the engine to facilitate the subsequent rapid production. For example, some NPC editing tools, a visual custom mission system, the position adjustment of the battle camera, etc. We have made some reserves in advance for this kind of functional plugin, so that we can speed up a little bit in the final integration stage.

Now that the rollout phase of the game is over, we are now following the standards of the official version to integrate these things into the actual experience of the player.

Grape: What kind of producer do you play on the team?

Cat Boss: I have a clear division of labor with Jensen, I mainly control the content design, such as the composition of the world view, the writing of the script, the specific lines of the characters, the storyboard of the cutscenes, etc., I will do everything in detail in terms of content, including some small props, I will also participate in the design.

Grape: Curious how free you are in terms of content this time?

Boss Cat: The reason why I came out of a big company to start my own business is not because only in this way can I do whatever I want.

For creation, its best state is to avoid considering various other factors as much as possible, without considering how many values to add to the game, what kind of concepts to output, and without referring to market data, taking into account a certain part of the population, and struggling with how to get high media scores. I don't think about any of these things, I just need to make something that I think is fun.

Of course, this is only the ideal state, and I don't dare to fly 100% of the time. When I talk to the team, they also get worried, "Is this really the right thing to do?" Or, "Can this be done?"

So there are some things I don't do, I can't say exactly what this thing is, and it won't be good if someone leads me to the rhythm. All I can say is that since it hasn't been done, it's only a little more exaggerated than what exists.

Grape-kun: And how much content did you end up putting into the game, and how much did you let go?

Cat Boss: I can't say that, but the first experience is still very important for our game. The few scenes that really make me feel excited, or more satisfying, are not presented in the PV.

The PV content that is currently being released is very restrained and restrained material, because I'm quite worried about whether the video won't be broadcast or limited by streaming if "those contents" are really released.

However, there are some things in the PV that are not so recognized by some people in the team when they are being made, such as the general who rides a black giraffe. Everyone will think that such a character appears in the game is outrageous, more than 6 meters tall, and he has to ride a giraffe, and he can't see it at all when he is placed in the same screen as the protagonist.

Would anyone else say that giraffes can be ridden by humans? How exactly is the character going to fight while riding it? How should players interact with it? During the development of the game, similar discussions often arise.

Grape: How do you tell "to do or not to do"? Is it all up to you?

Cat Boss: I'm not a tyrant type of producer, and when I make things, I also pay a lot of attention to the opinions of the rest of the team, and it's not that what I say is what they have to do.

When I write a game story, I divide the team into groups of three according to different preferences and genres, and then break the story into many chapters and tell them separately to gauge how everyone reacts to the story.

There are those who love to read hot-blooded comics, those who follow American dramas, and those who only watch domestic dramas. At the end of each paragraph, I asked them to rate it, and they couldn't communicate with each other. This rating scale is out of 10 points, and I will prepare a detailed scoring criteria, for example, 6 points is not bad, which can attract them to continue reading; 8 points is too much to look forward to, and I'm going to finish tonight. Each person is scored according to their true feelings, and the last three people score together.

Then everybody came to me and told me why he gave such a score and what his considerations were. I just tested it over and over again, communicated over and over again, and watched their reactions, and then decided if I needed to change the story and in what direction.

Although many people may not be good at creating, everyone's aesthetics are still there. Is a story good? He was able to tell when he heard it. Every time they participate in this kind of test, they are quite motivated.

Grape-kun: In addition to the plot, are the other parts judged in a similar way? For example, some content that may involve sensitive elements.

Cat Boss: It's similar. For example, there are individual episodes, I know this thing is interesting, but I can't be sure how well people will accept it, so I will ask different types of people.

I said, there is such a character now, he has done such a thing in the background of such a story, can you accept it? Do you have some emotions like anger, disgust, and disgust because of this, or because of this incident, this character has been blocked in your heart?

Grape Jun: But this kind of extreme bridge may be the characteristic of the game?

Cat Boss: It's true that there are some people on the team who have a lot of taste, and he thinks I'm not crazy enough and can be a little bolder. I think if something is really interesting, then everyone should find it interesting, but it may go against one of your values. Then I'm going to find a few more people to test whether it's because your values are too sensitive, or if there are many people like you.

If a lot of people think it's not going to work, then I'm probably going to back down, because if I insist on doing this kind of thing, it's going to be risky. For example, there was a bridge section where the employee in charge of marketing in the U.S. branch broke out in a cold sweat on the spot, and he strongly advised me not to put this thing, so I seriously re-evaluated.

But there is one situation that I will insist on, that is, when I tell them the bridge, everyone can burst out laughing, and after laughing, it may not be appropriate to say that again. Then I don't think it's malicious, and it won't offend anyone.

Grape: It sounds like the boundary is still very vague, and it still depends on your judgment.

Boss Cat: The so-called run-in of a development team is actually the trust and tacit understanding between people. I trust your judgment, which is why I use your opinions as an important reference. People also trust me in making decisions, so they will give me the decision-making power. This kind of trust needs to be built up after working together for many years, and many of the people in this team have been with me for more than 7~10 years. To have such a team is something that many people dream of.

And when I make decisions, it means that the ultimate responsibility for the project is borne by me, and the success or failure of the game will be counted on my head. I'm more impressed with the Japanese producer system in the past, where they wanted a work to have a distinct character, and a few people had to make the final decision, and someone had to take on the responsibility.

03

Watching a movie for the outsourcing team,

Learn "The Ultimate Money-Saving Method for Japanese Games"

Grape Jun: The art style of the project is not very common in China, how do you make the outsourcing style unified?

Cat Boss: We will try to design everything well, such as the characters have concept art and detailed design documents, and the cutscenes and actions will be storyboarded first. However, it took us a lot of time to find the right outsourcing company, because even with a clear style approach, many outsourcing teams still struggle to achieve what we are satisfied with.

Grape-kun: What then?

Cat Boss: If you can express it through the picture, we will first prepare the visual materials. If the final result is not achieved, add some text descriptions, find reference pictures, and even designate some movies for them to show them, so that they can refer to the rhythm and feel of those movies. Later, after changing the supplier that I have cooperated with for a long time, the other party has a very high level, and even if I don't find the right feeling the first time, they can adjust it immediately after giving feedback, so the overall situation is quite smooth.

Grape: You said that the team spent a lot of time building pipelines to facilitate the serialization of IP?

Boss Cat: The pipeline was built from the beginning of the project, which took two or three years. To be honest, it was quite difficult, and I did pay some tuition, and some features were eliminated during the development process, but I still accumulated a lot of experience.

Now that it is basically run through, the reuse degree of the pipeline is already very high, and it is foreseeable that when new projects are done on this basis, the cycle can be shortened to about two years.

Grape Jun: Your game is not small, but objectively speaking, you are a small team, how to solve the problem of content scale?

Cat Boss: Once you've played a lot of Japanese games, you'll find that they're really good at saving money. For example, in a relatively limited number of scenes, they will fill up the gameplay content and present a variety of gameplay through different designs to enrich the player's experience, but in fact, the program logic functions behind this are highly reusable.

Another example is the scene art, "NieR: Automata" through the coordination of the overall visual style, so that players will not feel that the background is simple when playing, but think that the look and feel are in place. But if you look at it from the developer's point of view, you will find that the background of the picture is very simple, maybe some large stone stacks.

European and American games like to pile up urban details, which makes people feel that a lot of money has been invested. But sometimes, the difference between the two is actually not that big for players.

In terms of gameplay mechanics, some Japanese games have a rich numerical system and rules, but the core gameplay is actually the same. For example, the "Like a Dragon" series often does this, and even reuses mini-game mechanics in the execution of main or side quests.

Grape: How do you use this technique?

Cat Boss: The Chinese team is definitely more cost-effective than Europe and the United States in doing similar things, but compared to those "Japanese games are the ultimate money-saving method", we are still a little "stunned" in this regard, because we are not so experienced, and the development pipeline and energy allocation are not so in place.

So we're probably somewhere in between, there are some places where you can sav, but there are also places that are more luxurious and not so cost-effective.

Grape: After using this technique, can players still feel that the project cost $20 million?

Cat Boss: You can compare the PV1 and PV2 of the game, and you can see that we are not the type where the first trailer has full art specifications, like CG, and then the closer to release, the more the graphics shrink. We started with temporary assets to make the game, and then gradually replaced and integrated them, and this work is still in progress.

What I can be sure of is that when the official version of the game comes out, the graphics will be better than PV2. If players can experience "Showa Rice Country Story" with a certain volume and better graphics than the current PV2, then they should think it will be worth it.

04

Chinese players know us best,

It is the best match for the radio waves

Grape Jun: The game has been in business for several years, has your perception of the market changed?

Cat Boss: One of the obvious changes is that I'm putting more emphasis on the PC gaming market than before. When the game was conceived many years ago, we were still thinking about consoles. At the time, I played more consoles and didn't have many games on my Steam account.

But in the past few years, as more and more games have appeared on Steam that are more suitable for PC play, I have also equipped myself with a high-performance computer, and I have also bought a Windows handheld to play on business trips. The experience is actually good, as long as it doesn't freeze and crash, it's not much different from console games.

The popularity of "Black Myth: Wukong" also made me realize that the domestic PC market is actually very large, and now I feel that the PC market and Steam players are something we must take care of.

Grape King: What impact did Black Myth: Wukong have on you?

Cat Boss: Black Myth is a very scarce combination of Journey to the West and 3A, it is difficult to have a second IP in China that can compare with Journey to the West, and the industrial difficulty of 3A is not something that any team can control. Therefore, Black Myth has certain particularities, and the standard of Black Myth cannot be used to require domestic stand-alone games to be launched in the short term in the future.

Despite this, the huge scale of the domestic single-player game market has been shown in front of everyone, and the next few high-quality domestic single-player games will get more attention and opportunities, such as Shadow Blade, Lost Soul, Late Ming Dynasty and other works.

Our team is still confident in our own products, because we are not at the same track as Black Myth: Wukong, and we don't have much influence in this regard.

Grape: Have you ever thought about how much the game can sell for the first time?

Cat Boss: I didn't have a detailed forecast for specific sales, but I think we can control our costs well, and it shouldn't be difficult to recover costs. Maybe it will sell a little more on PC, after all, most domestic players are still on PC.

Grape Jun: Will there be more opportunities in overseas markets?

Cat Boss: From the market feedback we have monitored, the proportion of domestic and overseas is 55 open. But I've also read a lot of comments, and I think it's the Chinese players who know us best and are the most worthy of the airwaves. But this is also normal, because I am Chinese myself. Just like when I went to a restaurant in Tokyo before, people asked me if I was from China as soon as I sat in, and I didn't even open my mouth, so they could see that I was Chinese.

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This difference can also be felt from some player feedback after the release of PV2, Chinese players can quickly get the stalk of the game, but some of the new generation of Japanese and American players will have some difficulties in understanding.

Grape Jun: Judging from this result, does it mean that you are betting in the right direction?

Cat Boss: To make a stand-alone game, especially a large-scale stand-alone game, you must think about the future trend a few years in advance, otherwise when you find out that there is a problem after a few years, the time and resources invested in the past will be wasted, which is really a cruel thing.

So I didn't bet too much, but took into account the stability of feelings and retro themes. Because this kind of content, which carries a lot of memories, is not easy to go out of style in itself, and players' love for classic elements will continue forever. Moreover, there are basically not too many competitors in this genre, because large companies will find it too sensitive and commercially risky, and even if they see the success of our work after its first exposure, it is unlikely that they will follow up and set up a project.

At the same time, I see that mainstream manufacturers in Europe and the United States have been making triple-A games, desperately stuffing various mainstream elements into it, but the personality is getting weaker and weaker, and the homogenization problem is serious, and this business model is almost impossible to change in the short term. So from the trend point of view, our differentiated theme will be scarce in the market for a long time, and there is a place for it, and there is no need to worry about obsolescence.

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