On January 31, 2022, the indie game documentary "Where Does the Money Come From" exclusively produced by TapTap was officially broadcast.
According to the official introduction, the documentary production team visited independent game studios at home and abroad, including "well-known studios that have achieved fame, there are college student groups that have just emerged, and there are also depressed and struggling gamers" in order to "show the current situation of independent game development and thinking at different levels in an all-round way." ”
As of February 11, "Where Does the Money Come From" has aired three episodes, and the cameras are aimed at Luozhou Studio, the developer of "Taiwu Scroll", the developer of "Ancient Mirror" Fat Pudding Game, and the "Hu Cang" studio of "I in Chengtu City", which is still in the entrepreneurial stage.
Although only three episodes were released, the documentary answered the mysteries that many players cared about. For example, why does "Taiwu Painted Scroll", which sold more than 2 million, look like a "pigeon"? Why does Fat Pudding have a "skinny boss"? And a newborn team, how much sweat and effort does it take to make a game?
First story: There was no way out
Surprisingly, unlike the remote and poor environment of the independent game studio in the usual imagination, although Luozhou Studio is located in the suburbs, the local area is quite prosperous and high-rise buildings, which once made director BK wonder "whether we are in the wrong place."
Producer Eggplant also admitted that the location of Luozhou Studio is already a relatively good office building in Kunming, he explained: "It is quite difficult to do stand-alone games, and the team members are from other places, so I hope to give them a better living and working environment." ”
Not only that, Eggplant also said that the salary standard of the team's employees is also benchmarked against the salary of first-tier cities.
In 2014, with only 3 members on the team, producer Eggplant, together with two other colleagues, spent four years to produce "Taiwu Scroll" and launched a rescue experience on the Steam platform. In the first month, the sales of "Taiwu Painted Scroll" exceeded 800,000 sets, and in the first anniversary of EA in 2019, the official sales of "Taiwu Painted Scroll" exceeded 2 million sets.
In the face of director BK's claim that the sales volume is 1.5 million yuan and the income is more than 30 million yuan, Eggplant said that it is "almost", but due to Steam sharing, domestic and AMERICAN taxes, "there is not much in the end to the team". Eggplant estimates that all the income of Luozhou Studio may not be as good as the expenses of some mobile game teams for half a year.
More importantly, due to the serious piracy in 2018 (according to Eggplant, the ratio of genuine piracy is 1:1), Taiwu Painted Scrolls has lost a lot of potential revenue.
Of course, considering that "Taiwu Painted Scroll" has remained independent and has not been promoted in any form, the income of almost 30 million yuan can still support Luozhou Studio to operate according to the standards of first-tier cities.
Since the actual content has only been 10% of the target for a long time, from April 2020, "Taiwu Scroll" has entered a closed development state, and it is expected to provide an official version to players in 2021. As 2021 passes, the expectations of Luozhou Studio and players have been disappointed. In order to concentrate on development, the understaffed Luozhou Studio decided to reduce the production and exposure of development sharing videos, "Running away? "It has become the biggest worry of many Taigo Painted Scrolls players.
One of the earliest trio, the art "barrel", said that recruiting people was the main difficulty faced by the team. Even so, the size of the team at Luozhou Studio is still expanding.
The animation "Pippi", who drove 2,700 kilometers and spent 3 days with his wife and cat to Kunming, explained his reason for following Luozhou Studio, because he felt that Eggplant was "a real game maker". In his opinion, eggplant is the kind of person who "lives for the game and will die for the game", which is commonly known as the "weirdo".
Based on the experience of past architectural design, eggplant uses CAD to manage the progress of the project, in order to make the best use of time, eggplant simply lives in the company, and even in order to reduce the number of walks, eggplant water cup is called water bottle level.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is that although the team members have been paid and the name is higher and bigger, "Luozhou Interactive Entertainment", Luozhou Studio still seems to maintain its original mental outlook, as the music production "Tyrannosaurus" said: "I want to make a good game, but I don't think much about how much income." ”
Second story: Money doesn't matter
For players who love puzzle games, the name of fat pudding games must be familiar. "Mr. Pumpkin Adventure", "Lost Island", "Ancient Mirror" and so on, almost every work under the fat pudding has won high praise, tapTap 9 points or more is the norm of fat pudding games.
Fat Pudding in Shanghai is mainly based on mobile games, the business model is mostly a buyout system, when asked by director BK about the income, fat pudding founder Xiao Cotton frankly said "I don't know much", and explained "not to lie to you", but "I don't care much about this".
Little Cotton said that Fat Pudding did not expect the company to achieve a large amount of revenue, as long as it can maintain the team "OK", but compared with Luozhou Studio, Fat Pudding is not resistant to financing. This is indeed the case, and public information shows that Fat Pudding accepted investment from three companies in 2015, 2017 and 2021, respectively.
Inside the fat pudding, there is also a sub-brand called "Skinny Jelly Games" that aims to explore new categories. But take Little Cotton's own words, more reasons are that Little Cotton thinks it is "fun" and "wants to design a logo".
In the eyes of some players, the emaciated, three-dimensional small cotton looks a bit like director Xu Ke. As the founder of Fat Pudding, Little Cotton is indeed a person with a great desire to create, and he also believes that the most important thing in making games is the impulse to create. Interestingly, Little Cotton doesn't care about money, but doesn't shy away from discussing money.
Whenever a new project is proposed, Little Cotton will pay for the team members to "rub a meal", but if the game is not done well, the next guest will be the project team. In fat pudding, the game project can be very simple, the producer of "Sunset Hill" said that he was at home and his girlfriend discussed it, and after having an idea, he found Xiao Cotton and carried out several times of "brainwashing", and finally successfully set up the project.
In the eyes of the team members, the little cotton who is happy to tell cold jokes every day is like an uncle, like an old naughty boy, just not like the boss. Perhaps it is not difficult to set up a project, Fat Pudding currently has a team size of about 70 people, which is not small for an independent game team, but it is developing more than 10 projects at the same time.
The fat pudding entrepreneurial process is not a secret, and Little Cotton has talked publicly about his entrepreneurial history several times. As early as 2013, Little Cotton began to start a game business, but the sales of the products it made were not good, the 500,000 start-up funds put together by relatives and friends were also lost, and the follow-up launch of "Mr. Pumpkin Adventure" also began to rise to fame.
The psychological pressure caused by past experiences, although it has caused some physical problems in Little Cotton, he remains optimistic, in his own words, "with tears in his eyes to tell you that I am sunny." The founder's temperament deeply influenced fat pudding, and he still laughs at himself, and the style of fat pudding is "where it should be serious has never been serious, and where it should not be serious is very serious".
At TGDC in 2020, Little Cotton once said that the significance of making games lies in the creators themselves think that making games has meaning. In the documentary, Little Cotton expresses a similar view, arguing that everyone should "do their best to live their lives better." And making games is obviously the way everyone in little cotton and fat pudding does their best.
The third story: like-mindedness
In the indie game circle, successful teams like Luo Zhou and Fat Pudding are ultimately in the minority, and most developers are still in the initial stage of unknowns.
Fang Fang, the executive producer of "I in Chengtu City", is the founder of the UGDAP University Student Game Development Alliance, and he is the glue character of Hu Cang Studio, before which Fang Fang also taught at the China Academy of Art and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, teaching game design. In fact, many of the members of the Hu cang studio are Fang Fang's students.
"Chengtu City I" was born from the graduation design of gome game students, at that time, "I in Chengtu City" stayed in the art stage with ideas and art (only programmers), under the leadership of the tutor Fang Fang and two other teachers of Jiaotong University, the art was born by Guomei, and jiaotong university students chose to develop a new game. Later, the team also participated in the 2021 Tencent College Game Creation and Production Competition and the First China College Game Development and Creation Competition with their works.
Fang Fang revealed that like many independent studios, the initial 100,000 yuan of project funds for "I in Chengtu City" were "jointly raised" by the team members, and the support team spent the first year in peace. As the team grew, the initial 100,000 yuan was no longer sustainable, and now it relies on hundreds of thousands of advance payments from publishers to maintain its operation.
Located in a place like Shanghai, where there is little land, Hu Cang is not only pouring into one project of "I in Chengtu City", but is doing 3 to 4 projects at the same time. Hu Cang has a strong independent studio color, one of the main programs is serious "Panda Eye" seems to tell the intensity of work, the female programmer who is also a planner, and the only artist and main beauty represents the tension of the small team.
Fang Fang believes that the members of the Hu cang team are all classmates, and the advantage of similar age is that there are not too many bad habits, but the disadvantage is not in experience, but in the lack of "head" to lead everyone forward, and need outsiders to help communicate.
"I am in The City of Nachichi" is a puzzle game with a healing style but a hardcore gameplay. The main program "Black Black" feels that the difficulty of college students doing independent games is that there is no learning channel, and they and their studio classmates still have course guidance, but more people can only grope through online open resources, resulting in the first step to retreat, of course, it is more important to find like-minded people.
Fang Fang feels that the two most difficult words for making games in China, especially for students, are "persistence", because there are too many places to quarrel in the middle, and Fang Fang has also seen a team of 20 people yesterday and four teams the next day.
But the Members of the Hu Cang team believe that there has been almost no quarrel between the team members. Similarly, the members of the Hucang team are not so concerned about the remuneration, some are not high in their own consumption, some are Shanghai natives, and some simply do not work as screws in large factories.
In front of the camera, they almost unanimously decided that working in a large factory is unlikely to produce innovative content, and their ideas may not be recognized. So it's actually very lucky for a like-minded group of people to get together to play games today.
Fang Fang analysis, all kinds of game competitions are actually the export of developers to release creativity, like to play games, although can not be confused with making games, but like to play games must be the premise of making games. In fact, there is no shortage of people with ideas and talents, and what is missing may only be to let them fully display their stage.
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