"All is well", everything will be fine.
This mantra almost became Yu Zhou's life creed. As the Summoning Network's profile on TapTap says, they are trying to survive through northwestern winds and photosynthesis.
"Summoning and Synthesis" (hereinafter referred to as "Summoning 1"), which has maintained a high score of 9.7 since its launch in 2018, only allows Yu Zhou and the team to "finally survive".
After surviving, Yu Zhou began to step on the pit and hit the wall.
From "Summoning 1" with a research and development cost of 1.6 million yuan to "Summoning and Crafting 2" (hereinafter referred to as "Summoning 2") with a research and development cost of nearly 20 million, the difficulty of game development has increased geometrically. Almost every design challenged the limits of the entire team, but in the course of the conversation, we could clearly feel that Yu Washu was tireless in these challenges.
"We need to do our best to challenge a piece, even if it's just the same level that the mountain was a few years ago, but that's the way a small team has to go." Where there are so many corners to overtake, there are not so many shortcuts to be found. It is more valuable not to use your own shortcomings to compete with others' longboards, to find a path that suits you or that you can do better. ”
Walk in the middle
In the earliest days, I was in charge of a work on the theme of the gods, and "Burning Lamp" was a character in it, and I used this name. It used to be called burning lamp big wet, and then because of "big wet" was given some social significance that it did not have, it sounded a bit obscene, so these two words were removed.
The lamp said it was his selfie
When the People's Daily reported on Zhang Guimei, the principal of Huaping Girls' High School, it gave her the evaluation of "Principal of Burning Lights". I thought it was a great word, and that's what I aspired to—to illuminate others. Although I feel more and more that I have no ability to "burn myself and illuminate others", it is better to simply light a small lamp and warm a small circle of people.
My "Buddhahood" is not that I have experienced the beatings of society, in fact, since I was a child, I have not cared so much about things outside my body, I don't care about many things, and I am willing to give up many things, but I can't describe where this trait comes from.
Maybe I'm more empathetic and I'm going to bring myself into other people's misery, so I don't want to see bad things happen. There was a picture in my mind when I was a child, when I was in kindergarten. The Virgo Saint Sega asked in front of the Buddha: Do people come to this world for the sake of suffering? Six-year-old Sagar was worried every day, and this memory stayed in my head and touched me very much.
Sharjah's dialogue with the Buddha
I really like history and study some of the things of my ancestors. There is a middle way in Confucianism, which I understand as the way of tolerance. There are two sides to everything, and human beings living in this society will inevitably have all kinds of desires, driven by desires to do something. But personally, he doesn't have to do it just for himself, he might be able to push tech or something else. Even if he is an enemy of the whole world, he may be good to the people around him.
So as long as you insist on some things that you are willing to pass on, believe in those things, and let yourself walk in the middle without being biased and humble. Just like the path our company takes: indie games on one side, commercial games on the other, we are on the middle side. We want to make fun things and we want to be able to stand and earn money. After all, being a company is responsible for many people.
Therefore, there is no fixed standard for good and evil at different stages and in different environments, we just need to know that everything has two sides, and many problems will be solved.
For a long time, I wondered what an indie game really was. Many industries, such as the tech industry, often use conceptual things to promote, to redefine something that is taken for granted, trying to bring a refreshing feeling to everyone, and the term indie game may be a product of this process. Back to the essence of the game, interesting, playful, satisfying the user, showing their own development concept, is a broad sense of the independent game.
But indie games and commercial games are definitely not two concepts that are inseparable. In my conversations with many developers, I also remind them that they should have some business thinking. Because my father was an artist, I grew up in a lot of artists' gathering places, and some people were poor all their lives and even had difficulty eating.
So I have always understood a truth very well: no matter what you want to pursue, what dream you want to achieve, you must live in the moment, to put it bluntly, it is to make money. Without this thinking, it is easy to have no then. Those well-known developers and products have certain commercial attributes, so I think the two can be taken into account.
It would be nice to walk in the middle.
Finding "context" in art
My father was an artist, an artist with great purity and perseverance. He did only one thing for forty or fifty years of his life, which is very remarkable.
When I was a child, my father would take me to all kinds of art exhibitions, and every time I watched it, I said that I didn't feel anything, and I didn't know why. But my father told me that the infection of this thing is subtle. I'm still impressed. As we often mention the subconscious mind, it is actually determined by one's experience and cognition.
I always have all kinds of weird art, decorations, all kinds of art magazines in my house. I flip through it when I'm fine, and this atmosphere is really subtly affecting me. How does the idea come about? What is an artist? How is art expressed? As you get older, you will slowly get some insights in it, which are very valuable.
Artwork in the home
Creation does not come out of thin air, it needs to contact all the fields in the world, all industries, all the history, and then go back to what you do, you can integrate what meaningful things are in it, and slowly you will get some new creativity. Because the expression of any art form, whether it is painting, sculpture, music, film and television, or even games, is extracted by the author from his observation of the world, and then some emotions and empathy are integrated into it. But every way of expression needs to follow the most basic industrial theory or design theory to be able to do a good job, such as the interaction, technology, experience of the game, and there is still a big difference between good and bad.
I went to Venice with an artist to attend a biennale and had a lot of conversations with them. In the art world, I find that every artist tries to tell a story as best they can, to convey the idea of their own work. Using a story to take you into that atmosphere, I call it context. Whether others will believe the context you express is the key to the success of the work.
Therefore, why does the game industry have the distinction between true and false two-dimensional, those developers and painters who really do two-dimensional games, the context they create for users is not only achieved through plot dialogue, it also includes art, music, game UI, game interaction, and even the naming of a prop, all the time to remind users, you are in my context. The creation of such an overall sense of atmosphere can make the work more believable, and it will naturally become a good work.
On the cover of the fourth issue of the X-Men comic in 1964, Magneto and his allies proudly proclaimed themselves the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants." But in the 2006 X-Men: Battle of the Bulge movie, when Magneto's gathered villains were introduced to moviegoers, they made a lot of changes, including the group's name — they just called themselves "Brotherhood," and the days of calling themselves villains were gone.
Evil Mutant Brotherhood
Now, 40 years later, the audience and players are well-informed, no one is keen to advertise themselves as "bad people", and no one will think of themselves as evil. Although only five words have been changed, it is a clear indication that the organization is looking at itself in a positive and bright way, as if it were a big family. In the villain's cognition, the villain himself is the hero, and what the villain does is justice, so that the credibility of their group will be multiplied in an instant. As for whether they are good or bad, this is what each audience and player need to decide for themselves, and everyone has a different scale in their hearts.
In the past, narrating this matter may be more of a film and television drama, literary field to do, games may pay more attention to how to have fun. In our game, for example, although our story skills are weak, we will try to write the story well, even if no one reads it. It is not an exaggeration to consider the plot or character development as the soul of a work, because it determines whether the world you create will be believed by others and believe in the existence of such a world. The plot of our previous "Summoning 1" is very simple, that is, the princess is captured by the demon king, and the prince wants to save him, which is very cheesy. But now that we have Summons 2, with this opportunity to recreate it, we will try to write the story as much as possible in more detail and full, so that the characters in it are more real and more attractive.
Daily Call 2
But the implementation of the above things requires very strong technical strength and ability, which we do not have for the time being, and we cannot create this context that users believe. That can only be another direction: we talk to users through the game, to chat, to share, so that the summoned players do not need to believe that the world we have created is real, but let the user directly and truly feel our whole, in the real world to be closer to the user. This is what we are really doing in "Summons 1", and as a result, we can chat with users and have fun and sorrow together, which is a very good thing.
Summoning players from Treasure Island Taiwan handwriting letters
All is well
After doing "Summoning 1", the team finally survived, but it was too far from success. We have gone from a grassroots team to the present, and then to challenge more difficult works, in the process of stepping on countless pits, paying countless tuition, so the word "suffering" has been running through the life of our company. We just wanted to play in the river pond with a small bamboo raft, but we didn't expect to rush into the sea at once, surrounded by aircraft carriers, and we were walking on thin ice.
I had been in great pain for a while before, and the pain stemmed from the mismatch between ability and dreams, and the mountain in front of me was too high. I can only continue to seek ways to reconcile with myself.
I once made a memorial sculpture of the Shanghai Tunnel Group in my father's company, a shield machine. At that time, I went to study the history of shield machines, how it was blocked from technology to slowly replace them with some accessories made by ourselves, and finally had our own shield machines. The Chinese of that era, they also faced countless mountains, but they were not discouraged. This may be the characteristic of our nation: what to be afraid of, to go away and then say. Because no matter how anxious and entangled, it is not helpful to solve the problem, it is better to challenge your limits again and again under the condition of self-knowledge, and accumulate some things that you can accumulate.
China Tunnel Monument - Source Point
The development cost of "Zhaohe 1" is 1.6 million, but the development cost of "Zhaohe 2" is close to 20 million yuan, and the difficulty of this is geometrically increasing. That's why this project has been delayed for so long, because the limits of our capabilities need to be broken a little bit. Whether it's game design or quality requirements, we're trying our best to achieve the level we want. Our technical strength can not compete with the mountain in the short term, then do not use our own shortcomings to compete with others' long boards, to find a path suitable for ourselves, we can do a better road may be more valuable.
When a start-up game team survives the first piece, what is the second step? In this situation of not being up and down, how should a small boat in the sea think of itself?
I can share my feelings with you.
There is a concept in China called suffering. However, there is actually a difference between "active suffering" and "passive suffering", and many people are passively suffering. The real hardship lies in planning for a thing for a long time, preparing for a long time, training for a long time, and slowly building your own goals.
Before entering the gaming industry, I worked for a while at my father's company. That experience was invaluable to me. When I started making sculptures, I needed to start with a plaster model, from a small model to a large model, and then make a sculpture out of large mud. Every day you need to climb up and down to do clay sculpture, frosting. Because my father was extremely strict about art and could not tolerate sand in his eyes, it also made me understand that the same small thing to do the ultimate can also exceed expectations, and my persistent character probably comes from this.
On my first day in the game industry, I thought about starting my own game company and changing things. But I understand that if you want to change, you have to adapt to the rules of the game. So when I first started working, I was constantly preparing. The process is definitely not going to happen overnight, most people are confused in the beginning, and I don't know what I will do in three or five years. So we can only continue to reconcile with ourselves, to continue to dig out what we are good at, what our strengths are, and to continue to recognize ourselves.
Summoning the words of the developer in 1
It's like when we dig a canal in a field, and we dig a long canal, but before we dig it, it's dry. Only at the last moment of swinging the hoe will there be water, and the water will be irrigated into the fields. Until then, you will be very miserable. This trait is probably a strength I learned from my father. One thing is either not done or persisted to the end, and if there is no good result, it means that it is not over yet. Because as long as you stick to the end, you will definitely have good results.
Three years, five years, ten years
When chatting with people, I often ask a question: What are you going to live in three years? Five years from now, ten years from now? What to do?
I think after a person can see how long it takes, they can slowly reverse a path to decide what you are going to do at this moment.
"So what are your three, five, ten years from now?"
This question has been simulated countless times in my mind.
After three years, we can enter a relatively safe zone and not worry about things that can't survive, only about how we can do better things. At that time, my children were also older, I will definitely take time to spend more time with my children and family, I don't want to miss the most fun moments for my children, and it is a wonderful thing to accompany them to understand the world from an early age.
Five years from now, that's probably the time to make me do a series of games that I want to start.
Ten years later, I'll still be on the front lines developing games, writing emails, and playing games with players. By then our players may have been at work and had kids, and they might have had a lot of the same problems as me. If that ability is there, I'd encourage our own employees to do something they want to do, they want to play.
"Will making games be your life's pursuit?"
Of course, there is no problem in making a game, and you can continue to go down the road. But it's also possible to change with the timing, and if there are some better opportunities, you may be able to go a little outside a little.
"Just go a little bit."