Ignition Dimension (ID: chaintruth) original
Produced by Burning Finance
Author | Kong Yuexin
Edit | Rao Xiafei
On February 24, NetEase released its 2021 Q4 and annual financial reports, and its net revenue from online gaming services was 62.8 billion yuan, an increase of 29.8% year-on-year. In a conference call on the day of the earnings report, NetEase CEO Ding Lei said that the main reason for the company's success in the field of games is "one is focus, the second is talent, and the third is quality and quality." But the most important of these is talent. ”
In the case of the temporary stagnation of the issuance of domestic game version numbers and the continuous "industry shock" caused by true and false news, major game companies have begun to set their sights on the research and development of high-quality games and the development of overseas markets, all of which require game companies to strengthen the reserve of talents in all aspects.
The "Special Analysis of Talent Supply and Demand in China's Game Industry 2021" released by Analysys also pointed out that talent has become one of the core of the competitiveness of the game market.
While major head game companies are actively recruiting or recruiting people with high salaries, the embarrassment of talent disconnection has also become a common problem they face. In particular, some small and medium-sized game companies or startups have no advantage in talent recruitment, and they cannot "compete" with large manufacturers.
Zheng Yingxiong, founder of Qiuzhiyu Game Academy, said that the main reason for the failure of his first game company to start a business was that he could not recruit suitable talents, resulting in the project not being able to continue. The producer of the game "Dream Mansion" Khumbu Mushroom has the same confusion, in the early stages of entrepreneurship, they are also forced to personally take care of most of the work such as copywriting, drawing, music production, and business negotiations because they cannot recruit suitable employees.
According to Game Grapes, more and more game companies are saying that it is becoming more and more difficult to recruit people, especially those located in Guangshen. Bi Changheng, deputy general manager of Xinyuan Interactive, the developer of "Zhen Soul Street: Born to Be King", said that excluding options and bonuses, their average salary has doubled from last year to the beginning of this year, and employee benefits and training plans are constantly improving. ”
The game company's excavation of talents is even more "spared no effort", after the domestic stand-alone "God Work" "Black Myth Goku" trailer appeared, the next day there was news that some companies wanted to poach team members. It is not only small and medium-sized game companies that are embarrassed, but also head companies such as NetEase and Tencent are also facing difficulties in recruiting people, or the middle level is poached.
The "2021 China Online Game Industry Talent Development Report" also shows that from the perspective of talent turnover rate, the talent flow rate of the game industry is 1.92, which is in a high flow frequency. Online game head enterprises and capital have increased investment in the industry, prompting frequent talent flows. However, objectively speaking, the talent characteristics of the game industry also limit the size of the talent pool, one is because there is no counterpart major in colleges and universities, and the talents are cross-professional; second, the talent training cycle is long, making the industry talent always in a state of shortage.
On the one hand, it is difficult for game companies to recruit talents; on the other hand, many game companies are still laying off employees on a large scale. According to the Red Star Capital Bureau, insiders have confirmed that well-known game companies such as NetEase, Lilith, and IGG have cut self-developed projects or laid off employees.
In this regard, game planner Li Qi told Burning Finance: "Before many domestic game companies, they designed the game or held the idea of 'fast return to the original', as long as they can get the version number online, they will quickly make the next skin version according to the game on the market, polish it a little, add 'krypton' methods such as drawing cards, most of the funds can be quickly returned, and no one cares about the reputation of the game and the length of time retained." ”
Not only small and medium-sized game companies, but also many large companies will choose to create some "fast money" projects to quickly withdraw funds and fill the pits of other failed projects. Nowadays, this method does not work, and practitioners such as game planning of these companies/projects not only face the fate of job transfer or layoff; many people also have difficulty in dealing with the ability to develop high-quality game research and development because of long-term mixing in such low-quality projects.
Li Qi told Burning Finance: "Game planning is actually a profession with a relatively low entry threshold, and most people enter the industry with zero foundation and accumulate experience by work. At present, the judgment of game planning ability in China mainly depends on his qualifications. ”
A planner with three or four years of work experience can meet the basic work requirements; the projects he has worked on are the "biggest proof" of his ability. "If you are fortunate enough to participate in several large projects or more profitable projects, then this person's resume will be very good, his role in the project will not be deeply studied, and the job matching degree will not be measured." Li Qi said.
And whether you can participate in this kind of "big project", Su Han, a copywriter who works in the game department of a large Internet manufacturer, said, "Look at luck, there are many games out of the year, and no one can guarantee which one can 'explode'." ”
This has also led to a large number of misalignments in the demand and supply of jobs in the game industry. Su Han first entered the game industry because he liked martial arts, and thus entered the martial arts game project group. But after last year's job hopping, the new company arranged for her to go to the overseas department to do beautiful girl card games.
In Li Qi's view, future games can only rely on quality to win, "just like "The Original God" and "After Tomorrow" are called 'the light of domestic games', high-quality games are the main way for future game manufacturers to develop, which also puts forward higher requirements for game practitioners." ”
In Zheng Yingxiong's view, China's game industry does need some high-level talents, especially if you want to go to sea with games and realize the overseas dissemination of Chinese culture, talents are a very necessary foundation. At the same time, practitioners such as game planning will also face more difficult job search and entrepreneurial paths.
The game "Little White" started a business, still "to one as ten"
In 2018, the producer of the game "Dream Building" Khumbu Mushroom, under the "encouragement" of his former partner (former investor), had the idea of starting a business to make games, "I have loved to play games since I was a child, and I heard that I can change the novel i wrote into a game outline, which I think is quite interesting." At that time, I had just finished my PhD, thinking that the time outside of my studies was relatively free, so I decided to try it. ”
Pre-determined game type, Khumbu bacteria they thought about for a long time. "From April 2018, when we started talking about starting a business, until September, we didn't fully decide what we were going to do. Because I'm better at hardcore subjects, we initially tried to write scripts for military themes, but later we found that it seemed more feasible for women to work towards the subject. ”
Umbu bacteria also noticed the market prospects for women to the game and the strong spending power of female players at the time; and the relatively low cost of project development, they were able to feed the team early in the project. "I also played Japan's "Dream Kingdom and the Sleeping 100 Princes" (women's game) before, considered whether I could write a daily script of love, and finally set the direction of women's game, but I wrote that my thinking began to diverge, and finally developed into a suspense direction."
After setting the direction of research and development, when it came to actually starting to build a team to make games, difficulties followed. Khumbu and her former partners were initially only game enthusiasts and had no experience in the game industry.
"Our first few founders did not do games at all, coupled with the lack of manpower in the early stages of entrepreneurship, many things had to be learned from scratch and done by hand, including how to write a plan, how to implement it, establish a process, and the management involved in the project, even art and some simple technical design... Everyone has multiple hats. ”
At the same time, Lambu bacteria also encountered many difficulties in recruiting people in the early stage of entrepreneurship. Lack of funds and unclear prospects are the first obstacles they face, "It is very difficult to find people with the same concept to start a business together, and most of them face many challenges such as giving up their original careers, such as Jumei jumping from a Fortune 500 company to start a business..."
In addition to being difficult to recruit, according to Khumbu bacteria, they also stepped on the pit of "unladylike encounters". "People who have spent time fishing around, people who only want to make money but do nothing, people who need to spend a lot of energy to appease, and so on."
After the initial preparations ended, at the end of 2019, the Khumbu bacteria team finally knocked down the first code of the game and really entered the production stage. "We stopped working part-time in the online office at that time, and most of us decided to quit and invest full-time, because the funds were limited, and the initial partners' monthly salaries were only two or three thousand, and everyone was posting money to do this game."
During this period, Khumbu mushroom also from the original idea of copywriting script design, gradually covered the UI art design, music production and other aspects of the work, from the game industry xiaobai to the "all-round" producer, "some of the materials in the game that have been used until now may be what I made at the beginning, including part of the soundtrack." ”
6 months later, the first round of testing of "Dream Building" was carried out, and the user response was good, and the "Dream Building" team also gave birth to the confidence to continue to do it.
Source/Official Weibo of Dream Building
The game gradually took shape, and the ensuing negotiation of commercial cooperation to expand funds and communicate with the copyright department to obtain the game version number also became the top priority outside the game development.
In order not to distract other technical partners and focus on game production, Umbu mushroom almost contracted investment, distribution and other external business negotiations. "From the end of the second test, I had to go out to see investors to talk about the project almost every week, and at the peak of the period, I hardly stayed in the studio for 2 months, and I communicated with more than 60 companies."
Fortunately, the effort finally paid off. Three months ago, the production team was taken over by Blueport Group. "Just wait for the game to be officially launched after it's completed."
"Although there is hope, it is not easy to start a business in the game industry, and 'lack of people' is almost a common feature of this industry." For Lambu bacteria, the early stage of entrepreneurship is far more difficult than imagined, and the lack of talents has become the primary problem restricting the development of the company. "At that time, I not only had to learn business negotiation skills to attract investment; as a game producer, I also had to write copywriting every night, build executive layers such as game architecture, and learn about the management of the whole company."
"Lack of people" entrepreneurship was blocked, and they changed careers to training
To a certain extent, Zheng Yingxiong's entrepreneurial experience and umbu bacteria have common factors, and the reason why he founded the Qiuzhi Fish Game Academy is because Zheng Yingxiong was affected by the lack of talents in the previous entrepreneurial process.
Although the college major was not related to games, out of his love for games, Zheng Yingxiong switched careers to a game company the year after graduation. "At that time, the news was not so well-informed, and after graduation, I went to find a professional job without understanding." Later, I happened to see an advertisement for game planning training enrollment on the bus, and I learned that there was such a position. ”
In 2005, Zheng Yingxiong successfully entered the game industry. Since he had no relevant work experience before, he started from the most basic game customer service and gradually shifted to the operation post and then to the planning post. Within the first month of his transfer, he received the honor of Outstanding Employee in Game Planning.
In 2010, Zheng Yingxiong's company was acquired by Tencent, "Outside the project, my biggest feeling at that time was that Tencent's internal process standardization was doing a good job, there was already a prototype of 'game industrialization', and its staff training and management also made me learn a lot of things." ”
This also laid the foundation for Zheng Yingxiong's two subsequent ventures. After completing his last project at Tencent, "The National Aircraft War", Zheng Yingxiong began to plan his own business.
"The ceiling of the workplace is a problem that most people with work experience and rank will face. Especially under the framework of large companies, it is generally difficult to win autonomy for many things they want to do, because investors are more willing to do micro-innovation on the basis of existing successful cases, although this kind of business behavior can be understood, but this is very different from many people, including the game dream in my heart, so many producers and masters of large factories want to start their own businesses. ”
However, compared with the relatively smooth experience in the industry, Zheng Yingxiong's entrepreneurship has experienced many ups and downs. In 2014, Zheng Yingxiong began to start his first business and develop a mobile game. "Before starting a business, I thought I was mentally prepared, but in fact, I was still in a mess."
One of the most typical situations is that the talent structure of the team cannot be built. "I knew what kind of talent I needed, and I started to recruit people, but I couldn't recruit the right staff."
The mismatch between the abilities and positions of the team members affects the output of the entire project. Zheng Yingxiong revealed, "The lack of talents directly leads to the progress of the project being pushed back and forth, and the products have not reached the expected quality." In order to speed up the progress, we quickly pushed several times internally, such as copywriting, models, and UI may be repeated three times, and unqualified action effects were overturned and redone, which led to us losing a whole year of time, and by 2016, the product that should have been launched only made a relatively complete version. ”
It's almost a fatal blow for a new team. On the one hand, the postponement of the launch time has made the game miss the market window period, and when the game is launched, the industry wind direction and the pattern of channel distribution have changed significantly, although the user reputation is good, it is also difficult to splash. On the other hand, doubling the game's development time also put the company in financial trouble, and Zheng Yingxiong's game company had to close in 2018.
However, after the initial entrepreneurial setback, Zheng Yingxiong did not fall into a negative, after the reflection, Zheng Yingxiong and others found that the biggest reason for the failure of entrepreneurship was "lack of people", "If we were more decisive at that time, we could invest more in recruiting talents, and the game would be produced half a year earlier, which may be a completely different result." This also gave him the idea of cultivating gaming talent.
"In fact, not only is our company short of people, after I communicated with other colleagues who came out to start a business, everyone thought that recruiting people was a big trouble." But in fact, for young people, their willingness to enter the game industry is still very strong, but the lack of opportunities for them to understand and learn about the game industry in China, I thought at that time, it is possible to rely on their own experience for so many years, the game industry training to do. With this idea, Zheng Yingxiong started his second venture and registered with the Qiuzhi fish game academy.
Since then, Zheng Yingxiong's team has gradually moved from the early MOOC platform to release online courses related to game planning, to cooperate with Shenzhen University and other institutions to open relevant courses, and then to hold offline salons in 2019 for peer exchanges, gradually moving towards the right track.
In 2020, affected by the epidemic, Zheng Yingxiong's sharing channels shifted to online, and in July of that year, he registered a B station account to share game planning & operation workplace experience, and gradually shifted to job search counseling training with user needs. Talking about the future, Zheng Yingxiong said, "In the future, training and counseling will not only face game planning & operation, but also we want to run the course counseling of core game positions such as art and programming to make a comprehensive and professional game academy to cultivate game talents." ”
The supply and demand of talents are not equal, and the "inner volume" is accelerating
The problem of "lack of counterpart talents" faced by Khumbu bacteria and Zheng Yingxiong in the entrepreneurial stage is also a long-standing problem that has plagued the game industry.
Although with the rise of fresh graduates' enthusiasm for the game industry, the competition for positions in head game companies is fierce, and it is not uncommon to pick one out of a thousand, but due to the lack of domestic game education, there are very few job seekers with high job matching.
Therefore, even if game companies can receive a lot of resumes, the phenomenon of "lack of people" is still common. "Our students have the highest degree of education, but for the role of game planning, it is more important to be able. From player thinking to planning thinking, from consumer to product designer role, is the key to entering the industry, now many game enthusiasts, they are too shallow to see some game design. Zheng Yingxiong said.
In addition, in the eyes of most people, game planning is a job with a relatively low threshold for entry. Li Qi believes that there is no relatively perfect evaluation standard in China at present, and it does not require the accumulation of time and experience like art, procedures and other work, and the success of a creative or gameplay requires the advantages of time and place at many times, and it is not completely dependent on ability to win.
"For game planning, in addition to the basic ability, the outside world may pay more attention to his qualifications, that is, the success of the projects he participated in, and the details of the execution work are difficult to investigate."
The work pressure in the game industry is also very large, when Su Han is still an intern as an executive, it is common to stay up in the studio until the turning clock, "It was the eve of the little Chinese New Year's Eve, because I was worried that the task would not be completed in the studio all night, and then I had to catch up with the DDL of the graduation thesis, and my hair fell a lot. ”
In the case of the increasing proportion of game quality in the market competition, the ability of game practitioners has also become the key to not being eliminated in the industry. Especially in the game industry, where the "inner volume" has a long history, this phenomenon is bound to intensify.
Although he has only been employed for two years, Su Han has already fallen into professional anxiety. Just doing copywriting planning, she feels that her accumulation is not enough, "there is a feeling that the book is used when it is used. ”
The world view of the game project is set in an alternate world similar to the Song Dynasty, and she always has at hand ancient books that reflect the customs of the Song Dynasty, such as "Tokyo Dream Hualu" and "Dream Creek Pen Talk", and strives to restore the customs and customs of the time from the language and writing. The new project is set by Western fantasy, and she began to accumulate knowledge background such as Western mythology, Su Han told Burning Finance, "There is already a shelf of books in the house, ancient books of poetry, Western mythology, and many books on demons and ghosts, anyway, there is everything." ”
In addition to improving the basics of copywriting in daily life, in Su Han's view, the most important thing is to understand the game, and without in-depth experience of 100 games, I dare not say that I am a game planner.
In addition to learning with the teachers in the group, Su Han has always had a sense of urgency, the game industry is not a place to raise idle people, the professional life of game people is generally not long, game planning needs deep game accumulation, novel design inspiration, and execution, if you can't rush the main policy in five years and eight years, after getting older, physical strength and brain power are declining, and you can't fight others. "But a project has only one main strategy, and the difficulty is still too great."
This kind of anxiety, Zheng Yingxiong said that he and his friends and colleagues around him have experienced it. Most of them are now over 35 years old, and they are already "old guys" in the game industry, and whether they can stay in the industry depends on their ability and pattern. "Simply put, you can be a master or producer until you are 30 years old." But the reality is still that a game has only one master, and the final result can only be the "inner volume" of the employees.
And even if you are directly a mastermind or producer, it does not mean that you can sit back and relax. Although he is the main producer of the company's game, he learns everything and does everything. "What impressed me most was that there was a time in 2019 when I was alone at home, in order to catch up with the schedule, I closed the curtains and wrote plans in black and white, and when I was sleepy, I lay on the table and slept for a while, completely without the concept of time, and finally found myself working for 7 consecutive days."
The tightening of the version number has further intensified the all-round "survival of the fittest" in the game industry.
Li Qi said, "Some large companies such as Heartbeat and Perfect are laying off employees, because the habit of everyone before may be that the company directly launched more than a dozen projects, and then bet on one project to make money." Nowadays, the quality of products is more and more fighting, and large factories also need to concentrate their heads on the state of a product or several products, which also makes the investment of a product become very high, and the project or personnel redundancy is difficult to survive. In the same way, small and medium-sized companies that cannot make high-quality products naturally face the problem of layoffs or even bankruptcy. ”
In addition to going to sea, in Li Qi's view, the growth point of the game needs to improve the quality of the game itself. Khumbu also said, "In November 2020, we got the version number, but our game has been internally tested and polished." Because it was a very poor project in the early days, the funds and experience limited the production level of the game, so now there are many hidden dangers to be solved. ”
Resources:
"Guangshen Game Circle 2021 Talent Dilemma: How Painful Is the Fault? Source: Game Grapes;
"The online game industry has laid off employees and cut off self-research projects, confirmed by Lilith, NetEase and other insiders", source: Red Star Capital Bureau;
*The caption and some of the inner text illustrations are from Visual China.
*In the text, Li Qi and Khumbu mushrooms are pseudonyms.
*Disclaimer: In no event shall the information herein or the opinions expressed herein constitute investment advice to any person.