2024/11/18 17:28
was handpicked by Guo Weiwei to set up the project, but almost lost 10 million, producer: I was too stupid at the time
2024/11/18 17:28
Text/Liang Lotte
When I heard that Xishanju had made a new stand-alone machine, the first reaction of Grape Jun was: What year is it?
After all, since 2002, except for "Xie Yun Biography", they have never developed other stand-alone machines.
Xishan Ju has a stand-alone "Heavenly King",
It's been 22 years
On October 24, the game, titled "Oriental: Lonely Hung in the Plains", received a lot of attention as soon as it was launched. The reason is very simple: at a time when 3A is often priced at 70 US dollars (about 506 yuan), and independent games are at least a few tens of yuan smaller, the price of 36G works is only 9 yuan 9.
What? You say it's poorly optimized and plays with cards, but it's only 9 pieces of 9; You say that its UI is old, cheap, and doesn't match the architectural style, but it only costs 9 pieces of 9; You say that its opening text is awkward and confusing, but it is still only 9 pieces of 9...... All problems are not a problem in the face of "make a friend" pricing, and even if there is a problem, it is my problem.
At the time of writing, the game has 1,569 user reviews on Steam, with an 81% exceptional rating.
In fact, this isn't the first time that Touhoust: Lonely Horizon has appeared in front of players. As early as November 2022, this work has been launched overseas, and it has become a small hit with a PV that "makes people doubt the mental state of the project team".
In this 8-minute video, the first 2 minutes are "Horse Riding Simulator", the background of the sunset West Mountain, and the "Farewell" BGM of "The End of the Sky ~ The Corner of the Sea ~", which makes people feel quite a sense of warmth of "everything is over, and Xishanju will say goodbye to everyone at the end".
And about 5 minutes in the middle, from the market to the field, from the flat to the high-rise building, in addition to hugging, or hugging, I don't know, I thought this was what a "psychological counseling public welfare propaganda film".
According to the statistics of the count in the comment area,
There are a total of 157 hugs in the PV
Comparing the current game with the version two years ago, you will find that they are not only different in the way they get out of the circle, but also in the gameplay.
Two years ago, "Oriental: Plain Solitary Hung" was a national style simulation management and construction game, the key word is "management", and the experience is a bit like a game. Players need to complete specific economic goals within a limited amount of time in order to successfully pass the level.
And now "Oriental: Plains Lonely Hung" is a national style landscaping game, focusing on "landscaping". Players can use the map editing menu to freely place buildings with Chinese characteristics and build their own ancient world.
The difference in the gameplay between the two is also directly reflected in the praise rate, compared to the 81% special praise of the current version mentioned above, "Touhou: Plain Lonely Hung" two years ago was mixed when it was launched overseas, with a positive rating of only 58%.
The changes in the gameplay level, the differences in player evaluations, and the big manufacturers and stand-alone labels of the game itself make me very curious about this game: why did Xishanju decide to make a stand-alone game? In 2022, why did the game suddenly disappear after the release of PV? What prompted the game to change its core gameplay? And how is the pricing of 9 blocks 9 determined?
To answer these questions, I approached the village chief, the producer of "Oriental: Lonely Hung in the Plains". He told me that the story began 16 years ago at a bus stop in Zhuhai.
01
After graduating from university, the village chief did not immediately devote himself to the game industry, but first mixed up for two years, during which he did nothing.
One day in 2008, when the village chief was waiting for the bus at the station, he found that the old classmate standing next to him was actually an old classmate who he hadn't seen for a long time. After some pleasantries, the other party told him that he was playing a game in Xishanju. Interestingly, this station is located near Zhuhai Xishanju. Even the village chief couldn't remember why he had passed by by by a ghost.
At that time, Xishanju announced "Sword Network 3" to the public, "Chinese can also use their own developed engine to make their own games", which greatly touched the village head. But as a layman in the industry, he subconsciously felt that it should be difficult to enter Xishan Residence.
"I thought to myself, you're all playing games in Xishanju? So why can't I? ”
However, ideas are ideas, and actions are actions. If you want to make games in a big company, you have to have something in your hands first.
Therefore, the village chief pulled another friend and prepared to get a work out first. Because they had no money, they only rented a small single room of a few dozen square meters; Without a computer, the two of them could only stay overnight in an Internet café. Others play games in Internet cafes, they play games in Internet cafes. People passing by often look at them with strange eyes.
At that time, they used the map editor of Warcraft 3 to make a new map, incorporating a lot of Chinese-style architectural elements. From design to art, the workload is not small, and they have to do a lot of things by themselves, such as skinning, animation, scenes, etc., "It's like making a game." ”
They originally planned to make a map as a stepping stone, but they didn't expect that this brick would take half a year to make. What they didn't expect was that when they went to Xishanju for an interview with their works, the village chief went in, but his friend didn't.
At that time, because of the attraction of the self-developed engine and national style art, the village chief interviewed the project team of "Sword Network 3".
He remembered that the last round of interviews was "Boss Zou", that is, he was met by Zou Tao, the current CEO of Jinshan Group. Zou Tao asked him, in addition to "Sword Network 3", the company has many other projects, do you have to do "Sword Network 3"? He replied yes. Zou Tao asked again, what if the company doesn't let you do "Sword Network 3"?
"I said, then I won't watch it, I'll only do "Sword Network 3"."
From 2009 to 2013, the village chief has been planning in the "Sword Network 3" project team until the "Great Light Gong Version" is launched.
According to the words of the village chief, after completing the "Great Light Gong Version", "Sword Network 3" has a strong development momentum and a good profitability. In his opinion, the project no longer requires him to do anything. As a result, he "started to think a little bit about himself."
At this time, the village chief noticed that due to the low configuration and poor graphics, the mobile game market that he used to be not very optimistic about suddenly ushered in an explosive period in 2013. It just so happened that a friend of his had just taken the 2.5 million angel wheel and developed a demo of an action stand-alone mobile game, which contains about 10 levels, which feels quite good. Therefore, the village chief decided to leave Xishanju and join the project.
At that time, he talked to Kris several times, and finally Kris agreed to let him go out and have a look, and if the situation was not ideal, he could come back. When he left, he "really cried and left" because when he first joined the company, his workstation was next to Kris, and Kris and other seniors took good care of him, and they brought him out.
After the village chief went out, as the main planner of the project, he participated in the development of this mobile game called "Requiem". After the game was launched on the App Store in October 2015, it jumped to the top of the paid game list on the first day, received a feature recommendation, and won the 2015 IndiePlay Best Art Award.
The village chief recalled: "I remember that we didn't spend a penny on advertising, and the game had more than 40,000 device activations per day, and it dominated the list for two weeks in a row. ”
As a vampire-themed action game, Requiem is known for its hardcore and high difficulty.
The little monster has rough skin and thick meat, and the boss is a blood cow; The core mechanics such as "Sharpness", "Fleshiness" and "Blade" are borrowed from the Monster Hunter series; The combat system is similar to the complex move confrontation settings in the Devil May Cry series, pursuing the thrill of combos.
Later, due to disagreements with the production team on the direction of subsequent game development, the village chief left the project after completing the development of Requiem.
Recalling that experience, he sighed: "Thinking about it now, I was too young to think too far ahead, and I just wanted to make games. Because I like it, I want to make that thing happen. ”
In 2017, because "comrades-in-arms, teachers, and friends are all here", the village chief returned to Xishanju through old acquaintances.
He first temporarily participated in the preparation of the online version of the mobile game "Swordsman World 2", and helped with the productization, such as the construction of the novice level, and the interface interaction in the game.
Just when everyone was discussing whether to do "Swordsman World 3", the company suddenly transferred him to the "Sword Network 3: Fingertip Jianghu" project team as a product manager. The work content is more complicated, not only to design functions and gameplay, but also to help other groups make interfaces.
In 2019, after the launch of "Sword Network 3: Fingertip Rivers and Lakes", the village chief continued to stay in the project team for two years until the project of "East: Plains and Lonely Hung Stars" was established.
02
In 2021, the Polish game studio "President Studio" launched a simulation game called "The Kingdom of the Celestial Empire".
In the game, players will take on the role of a governor, leading the people to start from scratch, cultivate wasteland, resist natural disasters, and gradually build an ancient Chinese city.
Although the developers collected relevant materials about Chinese history and architecture during the development process, because they are from Eastern Europe, the game still inevitably carries some development inertia and some stereotypes about China.
Taking architecture as an example, although the city built in the game is dressed in Chinese style, it sometimes reveals a medieval flavor; And inventors' workshops, lumberjacks' homes, sawmills...... These names, which don't match ancient China, sound like a special drama.
An early version of The Celestial Empire
After Kris saw "Heavenly Empire", he felt that Xishanju had made games for so many years and accumulated so many art resources, why didn't they make one themselves? So, he told the village chief his idea. When the village chief heard it, what? Foreigners have come to our door to do national style simulation business, how can this work? He immediately said that he would do it too.
As a result, the village chief went from product manager to producer, and he began to think about who to benchmark the game against. How to sell? How many sets are sold? Learn to look at the whole project from a macro perspective.
"Looking back now, I was stupid. There are some things that you haven't stepped on before, and you're going to have blind spots. I didn't even think through the two most basic questions: Who is the game for? How would players recommend this game to others? It's just a game of instinct and brain supplementation. ”
His idea is very simple, through reverse extrapolation, first pick out the faults of works such as "Anno 1800" and "City: Skyline", and then avoid these pitfalls in his own games, and finally add national style features.
For example, after playing, the village chief believes that the experience of the simulation game is procrastinating, there are no emotional ups and downs, and players are all building their own goals and then moving forward flatly. He wondered if he could make a game that didn't drag on so much.
Later, the village chief realized that he felt that the experience was not good, and these "procrastination" that needed to be changed were exactly what the core users of the simulation game liked.
Anno 1800, which was released in April 2019,
is a city building game owned by Ubisoft
This also led to the fact that at the "Oriental: Plain Lonely Hung" project review meeting, in the face of the doubts of the company's management, the village chief, who thought he had understood it, but actually didn't understand it at all, behaved extremely confidently and "fought with his tongue" in the office. Looking back now, he felt a little embarrassed.
At that time, someone asked the village chief if he had thought clearly about whether the gameplay was based on simulated operation or national style landscaping. The village chief glanced at him before replying, "Of course, it's a simulated operation." Landscaping is something I can make casually, and I don't need to put my head into it. "Remember this answer, and it will turn into a boomerang that will hit the village chief 3 years later.
In March 2021, "The East: Plains and Lonely Hung" was approved; In June of the same year, the development of the game was officially launched.
03
The development process of "Oriental: Plain Lonely Hung" can be described in one word: urgent.
In Xishanju, product development is usually carried out in accordance with key milestones such as M0, M1, and M2; However, since "Oriental: Plain Solitude" only has one year of development time, in order to be launched on time, the entire project can be said to be in a hurry from beginning to end, and it is not clear at all about the key nodes. In every meeting, the most common things they hear are "hurry up" and "hurry up". Despite this, the game was eventually delayed for almost half a year before its release.
Lack of manpower is a major contributor to the strained development process.
The team initially consisted of only 5 people, including 4 planners and 1 artist. Even at the largest group, there were only about a dozen people. In addition, everyone, including the village chief, was doing simulated business for the first time, and they lacked relevant experience.
Therefore, the village chief often has to go to other project teams to "ask for food", relying on the contacts accumulated in the "Sword Network 3" project team in the past, and go out every day to grind his face.
Speaking of which, he also performed different time periods of asking for food for me: at the beginning of the project, it was generally a begging type, "Brother, I'm going to do this, can you give me something?" ”； And when he was in the middle of catching up with the schedule, he chose to directly start "grabbing food", such as "I just want it, you have to give it if you don't give it; Eventually, he even started to play a scoundrel, and when asked why, the village chief would reply, "No, I'm sitting here anyway." ”
This tension, in turn, makes optimization and testing more difficult.
Optimization is one of the challenges teams face from start to finish. Until now, the negative reviews given due to optimization problems in the Steam player review section are estimated to still account for a large part of the total number of negative reviews.
"Touhou: Plain Lonely Hung" uses the engine of "Sword Network 3". When developing MMORPGs, developers can reduce the burden of operation by cropping and occlusion within the visual range. But in city-building games, all the elements are visible at a glance because the player is God's perspective, which makes many of the optimization techniques they were familiar with in the past no longer applicable.
Faced with this challenge, the project team came up with some strategies to deal with it.
For example, in terms of textures. Eighty percent of the art resources in "Oriental: Plain Solitary Hung" are from "Sword Network 3", but the quality of the original resources' buildings and character textures is relatively high.
In the actual game, some small objects don't need to be too detailed with textures. As a result, the team assigns someone to inspect these textures and test them after compression to ensure visual effectiveness.
Another example is the issue of lens cropping. The key is to determine the maximum distance that the player can accept for the character to disappear.
It's like aerial photography, the drone flies too high, and people can't see clearly. If you can't see people 10 meters above the ground, then it definitely won't work; But if you fly to a height of 1,000 meters, the figure is properly occluded, which is in line with the normal visual perception of people. There will always be a tipping point that is acceptable to the player.
At the same time, the pre-launch testing also seemed a bit sloppy and inadequate.
On the one hand, the number and cardinality of tests are insufficient. Before the overseas version was launched, the game was tested three or four times. Initially, in Beijing, they invited dozens of foreign players to participate, and later through some demos to attract more people to participate in the test, there were only a few hundred people in total.
The village chief later realized that the foreign market needed a larger test base, because in his opinion, the feedback given by foreign players was often polite, which to a certain extent contributed to his "arrogance"; In a small-scale test in China, the feedback from players was "spicy" and made it clear to developers what the problem was right away.
On the other hand, the quality of the tests is on the low side. Due to the tight development timeline, many testing activities could not be carried out. Normally, they should run some long tests to gather the problems that players are experiencing and then adjust accordingly.
However, the village chief also half-jokingly said, "Fortunately, I didn't do it." I guess if I did, I might want to give up on the project. After all, I have worked so hard for so long, and suddenly tell you, this is not and that is not either. How are you going to save it at this time? At the level of the company, you should stop your losses in time! Maybe that's what fate has arranged. ”
In November 2022, with the expectation of 100,000 units sold, they released "Touhou: Plains Solitary Hung" on Steam, priced at 68 yuan. However, the actual sales situation gave them a slap in the face.
The game only sold a few thousand sets on the first day, and in the end, a total of "10,000 sets" were sold, of which thousands of sets were purchased by Chinese players with Steam out-of-region accounts.
Players have mixed reviews of Touhould: Lonely Wilderness. Some players find the game experience novel and the art is very good; However, some players feel that this game is "four different", and there are optimization problems, resulting in a stuck game experience.
In the words of the village chief, the overseas version is a "monster with strategy and no strategy, meat pigeon and not meat pigeon, simulation and not simulation, and operation and non-operation". It only has a challenge mode, and due to its high difficulty, players often encounter character deaths and mission failures. Therefore, at the time, players jokingly referred to it as "Lonely Grave in the Plain" and "Four Missions a Year".
Although the psychological gap is super large, and some of the players' bad comments are ugly, the village chief feels really sorry for everyone. "Because there is no version number, players see the news from China and want to get an overseas account over the wall to play this game. Why do people climb over the wall to play a, what qualifications do you have to waste other people's lives? At the time, I thought it wouldn't work, it was too stupid. ”
As a result, he also self-deprecatingly designed a hotel gameplay in the game that included a customer review system. After the player clicks in, they can see that there are four big words written in the review: mixed reviews.
04
The village chief revealed to me that by the time the overseas version was launched, the development cost of the game was "almost 10 million". Obviously, 10,000 sets were sold at a price of 68 yuan, which is still a long way from recovering the cost.
Have they reviewed the situation since then? The village chief said that they did do a review, but it didn't feel useful. Because they have been summarizing how to do a better job in simulated operation, they have become more and more mired in the word "simulated operation".
"We knew in our hearts that the game wouldn't be like Anno 1800, after all, it was the result of generations of people; The game doesn't make Metropolis: Skylines either, because it's not as hardcore. But we still keep struggling, constantly reinforcing the existing elements of simulated management, and not thinking fundamentally about the problem. ”
Having said that, at that time, even in the face of Kris's "small steps" advice to hurry up and test the idea through the test, the good results were left, and the bad ones still had time to be withdrawn to reposition and land, the village chief still insisted on going his own way. "I thought I was holding back a big one, but in fact, I was holding back a big one."
It wasn't until this year, when the village chief reported to Kris, that he suddenly realized that the team should redefine the user circle of "Oriental: Lonely Hung in the Plains". The boomerang, which has been flying for 3 years, finally hits the village chief at this moment.
After research, they found that:
The core player group of "Toutou: Plain Solitary Hung", the highest evaluation of the game is often those players who love the national style and are heavy landscaping enthusiasts, and they will support the game unconditionally; The next layer is for players who like the national style and can also accept the basic simulation management gameplay; After these two parts are done, you don't need to think too much about the outermost pan-user circle.
So, they reoriented the project and decided to make a light national style landscaping game.
The team even updated the store page introduction for this. Initially, they tell the player "who they are"; Now, they tell everyone that "they are not who they are", emphasizing the difference from works such as "Anno 1800" and "Metropolis: Skylines".
Time came to November 2023, and "Oriental: Lonely Hung in the Plains" finally received the edition number.
The village chief felt that although he didn't get the version number at first, judging from the results, it might be a blessing in disguise. Because of this, they have the opportunity to present a different face of the game to domestic players. If you got the version number at that time, "it's really a mistake overseas and domestic." ”
Compared with the overseas version, the newly launched version puts the challenge mode "Hurricane" at the end, and promotes the "cornucopia" mode that focuses on the regular landscaping and placement gameplay with light management elements. In addition, there is the sandbox mode "Peach Blossom Spring", where players can freely change the terrain, move mountains and reclaim the sea, and place buildings at will.
At this point, I also asked the village chief a question that everyone may be curious about: Why is the price of the game 9 yuan 9?
He told me that first of all, due to the failure to get the version number in time, the game was released abroad first, and the domestic publicity was cut off, resulting in players who wanted to experience the game had to buy it in other areas.
In order to express his apology, the village chief finally thought about it, and he felt that the price of 9 yuan and 9 should be able to reflect greater sincerity.
Secondly, the game in the country is jointly published by Nishiyamaju and Gamera. Gamera has a game linkage program, and participating games will link up with characters from other titles, and promote each other in the form of event announcements on Steam.
They believe that such an event is very structured, and the price of the 9-block 9 game should be able to attract the attention of players, thereby enhancing the impact of the crossover plan, "and make a modest contribution to China's independent games." ”
Some of the games that are linked to "Touhou: Lonely Horizon".
Finally, and most realistically, the pricing strategy of 9 blocks of 9 will undoubtedly help to increase sales.
Of course, this 9 pieces of 9 is the real deal. They don't plan to use low prices to entice players to enter and then launch in-app purchases, but plan to further increase game sales through continuous content updates and free DLC.
Every time I go on Steam, I feel it
"East: Lonely Hung in the Plains" is being updated
The day before the game was launched, they released the 2022 hug PV again.
The village chief told me that the title of the PV was "I hope that all the farewells we have experienced will usher in the warmest reunion!" This sentence is what they said to themselves two years ago, implying that even if "we can't come back this year, we can 'kill' it back next year, you wait." ”
After the last PV was "ridiculed by the group", the village chief also played his own stalk and recorded a hugging video with the people in the project team
In October 2024, "Vostok: Plains Lonely Hung" will be officially launched on Steam in China. If you're looking closely, you'll notice that the game's English name has the subtitle "REBORN".
At present, this work has received 81% of the special praise, according to the village chief, the sales are very good, far exceeding expectations.
05
In 1996, Xishanju launched the mainland's first commercial game, "Zhongguancun Apocalypse". More than 20 years ago, in the field of domestic stand-alone machines, players would not discuss "who is the first college student in the village", Xishanju had already been the most beautiful boy in the village.
In 2024, after "fully turning to online games", Xishanju will once again launch a stand-alone "Oriental: Plains Lonely Hung". History seems to have gone through a cycle.
The village chief said with emotion that when he was a child, he played a single-player game in Xishanju, and when he grew up, he joined Xishanju to work, and now he is here again, making a work similar to their earliest single-player game. "History is always strikingly similar, and hopefully that will bring us good luck."
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