In August 2015, Hanjia Squirrel Studios, which had just released "The Legend of Jin Yongqun X" on the App Store, was subject to a letter of rights protection because the game quickly became on the hot search list, and even if the game was released in purely free form, they quickly removed it from the shelves. However, CG and Zi Yin could not foresee that this takedown would become a turning point in their lives.
Before the formal transformation and establishment of the game company, CG and Zi Yin were only developers who made "doujinshi games" in their spare time. The two had no previous experience in professional game development and operation.
Because "making games is addictive", CG and Ziyin began to organize their friends to develop a new work full-time - a year after the removal of "Jin Yongqun Hero X", "Jianghu X" was launched.
It was such an experimental work that has now been successfully operated for five years. In the past five years, "Jianghu X" has undergone several major version updates, and the name has been changed to "Hanjia Jianghu", which is still a stable source of income for the team.
What's more interesting is that the chain reaction that Hanjia Jianghu has brought to Hanjia Squirrel Studio and its players does not stop there.
It was demolished and turned into a 2.0 expansion pack
"Hanjia Jianghu" seems to have always been related to the number "2", from the founder is 2 non-professionals, to the cost of only 20,000 yuan before launching, to the second generation of sequels being split into 2.0 expansion packs and a new project code-named DR22.
It can be said that "Hanjia Jianghu" runs through the development process of Hanjia Squirrel Studio in the past 5 years, and also allows players to intuitively understand how this team has grown from a cross-border newcomer to a big guy. On the other hand, "Hanjia Jianghu" still has a high score of 9.0 on the TapTap platform, which also confirms that it has maintained a good reputation in the long-term operation process.
Players familiar with tapTap scoring rules know that most long-term mobile games tend to have the highest scores in the internal beta stage. At that time, the players who participated in the test would have the expectation of improving the product, which would decrease with version updates and operational adjustments, or the users who rated the high score would no longer be active. However, the viscosity and praise rate of the players of "Hanjia Jianghu" are basically the opposite of the TapTap scoring law, and you can also see player groups with different styles such as game duration of more than 1,000 hours, long-term kryptonite gold, and years of bitterness.
It is precisely because "Hanjia Jianghu" has a large number of hardcore fans support, so that CG and the entire team are more cautious about the sequels behind, and the attitude and positioning have changed from "even if we fail to bear" at the beginning of creation to "we can't let players down".
Therefore, the "Hanjia Jianghu 2", which was established in 2018, was split into two after internal discussions by the team in 2020. Some of the technologies and materials have become the nourishment for the comprehensive upgrade of the art and gameplay of the "Hanjia Jianghu" 2.0 expansion pack. The other part is the foundation of a new cross-platform online game, and the code name of the new project is DBGRPG2022, or DR22 for short.
It is obviously not so easy to make up one's mind about the project that has been suppressed for so long, but the programmer-turned-CG behaves very rationally, bluntly saying that "if the original project is sold as a new game, the height is not enough." For CG, I did not expect to devote myself to the game industry in order to do "Hanjia Jianghu", and what I did not expect was that the game continued to operate for 5 years, and the team also developed from the initial 2 people to more than 40 people.
Original "Hanjia Jianghu 2" material
Therefore, the expectations and positioning of CG and the whole team for "Hanjia Jianghu" have also changed a lot, and creating a comprehensively upgraded 2.0 expansion pack is an attempt to make the game longer and more dynamic. "If you can, we hope that Hanjia Jianghu can be done for a long time, just like the games of those well-known companies for more than 10 years, and become our most valuable asset in the future."
More projects, jump tickets come with ambition
In the early days of entrepreneurship, the dilemma of eating instant noodles every day and nibbling on the old book per person, Hanjia Squirrel Studio quickly turned over after the game was launched that year. Less than a year cycle, very low compressed costs, in exchange for good reputation and sales are good results, this kind of experience in the domestic game industry is rare, so that the team is a little inflated.
According to CG's recollection, at that time, everyone was really wild,000, and opened 4 projects at the same time. In addition to "Hanjia Jianghu" and "Hanjia Jianghu 2", there is also the later "Tribe and Machete", and the "Simulated Jianghu" that the player has waited for too long.
Strictly speaking, including "Hanjia Jianghu" 2.0, these 4 new and old projects have not been completed for the time being.
The official version of Tribe and Machete, which has been in development for more than three years, is scheduled to be launched in mid-December, with follow-up preparations for the Switch and mobile versions. This single-player game, known as the "domestic version of riding slash", won 200,000 copies in the first month of the EA version landing on Steam. After nearly a year of high-frequency updates, continuous sales have been very high, and it is believed that it can easily exceed 1 million after the official version is released.
Another new project, DR22, which inherits the legacy of "Hanjia Jianghu 2", further highlights the ambitions of Hanjia Squirrel Studio. It is not difficult to see from the project code name that this will be an innovative work that combines the two major types of gameplay of DBG and RPG. DBG (Deck Building Game) is a relatively young board game card category, and unlike the Collective Card (TCG) represented by Magic and King of Games, dbG rules are to obtain cards from the central card library and constantly interact with the card library to strengthen and build the deck.
CG revealed that the new game has been in development for more than a year now, and is still a narrative-oriented RPG by and large. In addition, on the basis of DBG, the game has a variety of stand-alone and online gameplay, and some characters of "Hanjia Jianghu" will have the opportunity to appear in the game. If it goes well, we will be able to meet with players by the end of next year and release the platform for mobile phones and PCs.
When CG mentions the word "smooth", it naturally has to mention the not too smooth "Simulation Of Jianghu". When asked when he would be able to meet with everyone, CG covered his face in silence for a while, and could only say that he had worked hard.
"Simulation of Jianghu" is a game with the longest development cycle of Hanjia Squirrel Studio, after 4 years of polishing and a version of the demolition and redo, it has now entered the late stage of development. Somewhat similar to the "World Hegemony Map" at the beginning of 2000, "Simulated Jianghu" is also set in the martial arts world, where players conduct simulated management as the leader of a faction, and by the way, they must also cultivate and operate the crowd well, and start a fire with hostile forces.
After the redo, the game's graphics changed from vertical to horizontal, and the game is planned to be released on both mobile and PC
It should be pointed out that although this kind of martial arts simulation management class has existed for a long time, the reason why its classic and unpopular is that it is too difficult to develop. "Simulation of Jianghu" is a game with the longest development cycle of Hanjia Squirrel Studio, and it is also the one that has been scolded the most. CG said that it launched a beta version in the first half of 2020 and also received praise and expectations from players. But as the development progressed, and the feedback from players received after several tests, the studio members realized that the previous version was stuck in a bottleneck. Without a massive remake, there's a good chance that you won't be able to make a game that meets expectations and visions — and a massive remake means skipping tickets.
"The greater the ambition, the harder it is to land... Skipping tickets is really a big killer for word of mouth! "This is an increasingly mature and professional CG, the most profound understanding of itself after the transformation of the game industry." But with the idea of not disappointing players, CG once again made up his mind.
epilogue
On the one hand, limited by the lack of manpower to bring the production capacity can not keep up, on the other hand, the game industry in 2021 high-paying digging people in the internal volume environment, "has not been able to roll" CG moved the Han family squirrel studio from Shenzhen to Chengdu, and even brought the family with them.
The reason for choosing Chengdu, CG said that after a screening comparison, it believes that the city has the highest comprehensive score. Both the talent base, the recruitment cost is still lower than the north, Shanghai, Guangzhou, shenzhen, very suitable for the han family squirrel who is now tight on the progress of the project to expand the team size. And this situation is not a sporadic case, from large-name manufacturers to small and medium-sized manufacturers, to independent game teams, more and more practitioners will migrate their eyes to Chengdu. For example, in addition to the Han family squirrel, the development team of "My Kung Fu Special Cow" also came to Chengdu from Shenzhen.
After moving to Chengdu, the work of hanjia squirrels also began to be busier, in addition to being responsible for team management and staring at projects, in addition to the external announcement of information on platforms such as Tieba and Zhihu, the studio also imitated the model of self-media, produced R&D logs and product preview videos posted on the B station.
It can be said that the workload of hanjia squirrel studio is very intensive, and multiple parallel projects at the same time not only face great pressure on the development team, but also make the CG that communicates on the network often receive questions from players. I quipped to CG, there are so many things to worry about, why haven't you lost your hair yet?
Hearing this, CG put down his hand covering his face and smiled triumphantly, saying, "Because we don't work much overtime." ”