"The knife is bloody, and the audience is full."
"Sacrifice one person, happy all."
"Since the patient has chosen to come to heal, he must also be ready to see God."
These few words are not spoken by P Society players, but from the comment area of "Doctor Shen" - every player who has experienced it has more or less considered whether to fool customers with expensive spices, or to directly cut the patient to please the audience.
In the 21st century, it's a joke, but the game's rigorous quotes will tell you that this is a real thing that happened in history.
Doctor Shen is a game about medieval Western medicine, and in addition to popular science entries, the developers have also badly let you play the role of "villain" - standing opposite the group of "unprofessional" new medical schools, traditional medicine schools that like to use astrology, leech, amputation and other methods of treatment from generation to generation.
So, even though You know from God's perspective that you will eventually be shot dead by your opponent on the beach of the torrent of history, you still have to fight between your affectionate mentor and conscience. While learning interesting historical knowledge, while personally experiencing the difficulty of medical reform, is the reason why "Divine Doctor" makes everyone like it so much.
As one player summed up in the comments section of developer Muccy Games:
Here online Amway has not played Doctor God and Other Games of Muccy Games, go and download it!
So what kind of studio is Music Games, which makes such a work, and what new works will be brought next?
"What do you make money on?"
In early 2021, Lapin, who was originally working as a product manager at Orange Light, founded some friends and founded Muccy Games, a game studio. "This group of friends who don't do their job and do battle cards on orange light have been recruited by me because no players have bought it." Lapin joked.
The time at the beginning of the establishment was not all smooth sailing, and the staff of Muxi Studio was constantly changing, mainly because the staff did not understand what Lapin was doing — she wanted to make a popular science game.
The incomprehension of the staff is probably one of the biggest concerns of players: What do you rely on to make money?
The "profitability" issue is the most common question in the TapTap comment section, and everyone is worried that Muxi Studio will fall without making money. Since there is no version number, Muxi's game adopts the mode of free download + advertisement, players can watch some advertisements about orange light in "Doctor Shen" to get powerful props, but after watching 50 times, they can permanently eliminate ads, and they can successfully pass the level without watching. In Muxi's other game, "The Blessing of the Social Animal", the content of the advertisement was simply replaced by various workplace trivia.
We were the first to ask Lapin about this question of life and death.
"I believe everyone can see that Orange Light is our 'gold lord (investor)'." Orange light liu general people are easier to talk, agree that we make a free game, plus some orange light ads on the line. ”
Putting aside the most realistic factor of money, there are several important reasons: as gamers, Lapins have a vision of the full gaming experience of old-fashioned RPGs, and disdain for the ads of the dancing demons. Also, most of the people in the studio aren't from the game industry, and they're a little worried about whether players will buy it.
Coupled with the fact that Orange Light CEO Liu personally wrote the script of "The Blessing of the Social Animal", "Do people still care about advertising fees!" ”
However, out of a responsible attitude towards investors, Lapin is also considering that "after the game lands on the Steam platform or goes to sea, you can't always burn other people's money." ”
One core, two supplements
Muxi Studios' game has a core and two complementary principles:
The core is popular science - so that players can get a little gain in the game.
As for the two supplements, I personally summed it up according to the interview: First, the game should have a story, don't make it into a rote XX simulator.
First, after setting the knowledge points, go to build the game framework. Members will first have a free time for discussion and research, spend up to a month watching a large number of papers and videos, and then decide what form to make.
According to this process, they first groped and did "Young Song Ci". What should be said here is that Song Ci is actually a masterpiece of the ancestor of Chinese forensic medicine and the founder of forensic science in the world, and the "Collection of Washed Injustices" compiled by him is still specially purchased by law students as a reference.
Song Ci's commemorative stamps
The core of "Young Song Ci" is to tell the deeds and autopsy skills of this ancient forensic doctor, using the ancient style of ink with more "orange light", in which players can learn about forensic trivia such as "signs of being burned by fire before death" and the struggle between Song Ci and the cult.
"At that time, it was relatively young, so it was not so popular to do so..."Lapin commented.
During this time, one of the studio's planners read a book called "The History of Absurd Medicine", which was about the medieval time when the treatment was treated by amputation and bloodletting, and when the amputation was amputated, tickets could be sold to the audience... Everyone thought it was so interesting that they decided to make it a game.
Seven months later, Doctor Shen was released. They didn't expect too much at first, "There are 200,000 players, and the score is 8 points to 9 points, right?" As a result, as you can see, Doctor Shen has now surpassed 1 million downloads, and the score is still stable at 9.4.
This incident made them have more confidence - it turns out that popular science games will also be liked!
At the same time, they are also preparing to do "The Blessing of social animals". This is a simulation of the business type of game, in which only the big boss is in human form, the "directors" are all animal-like, and the player can substitute these directors to experience various moments of Internet company entrepreneurship.
After my colleagues played it, they expressed their inner emo in the group in different ways: this game is also too real on the Internet! Playing like going through a workplace wreck... If you are interested, you can also go to our article "The Blessing of social animals: a guide to self-help for 996 social animals".
"The Blessing of the Social Animals" was originally a project of a producer of Orange Light, but because of the lack of manpower, it was transferred to Mu Xi to do. At the beginning, everyone made a version, and when Orange Light CEO Liu Xiaoyu accepted it, he felt a bit wasteful - for an experienced old Internet person, the story was not profound enough, so he decided to personally take over the script. (The result is real emo for colleagues)
Surrounded by all kinds of workers, the industry's well-known sudden death incidents, ten years of entrepreneurial experience... Liu Xiaoyu added a proper adaptation of what he had really experienced into the game, and also referred to the financial reports of some real companies.
In the game, players will serve as senior executives of the company to experience a round of financing, user growth pressure, the difficulty of paying employees, as managers, will gradually understand why some capitalists prefer 996 - what to do if the performance does not grow, the player who is frustrated by the frustration has to use the infamous 996, and then find that it is called "immediate, especially effective!" ”
The price is very heavy
Liu Xiaoyu spent a long time in the closing part to discuss business ethics issues, which is also some of his insights, but also for entrepreneurs who want to get involved in the Internet industry, they have summed up their own experience over the years.
Another purpose of "The Blessing of social animals" is to "record this era": when others see the game decades later, they can also understand what the situation of startups is in this era in 2020.
The three games that Muxi made herself have all been introduced, and as for the last one, "Perjury of the Maiden", it is somewhat special, it is the work of a friend who represents it.
"Can you put a one-sentence ad for 'Perjury of a Girl'?"
"Produced by orange light pictures personnel, the campus reasoning theme made by true reversal loyal fans with reverse style is welcome to players who like reversals to try."
Bleeding, amputating, watching the little people "Chacachaka" staged the history of blood and tears in medieval medicine, and really want people to laugh all the time...
The particularly cute "Chakachaka" in "Doctor Who" is unexpectedly not the voice of the Muxi members themselves, but comes from a professional dubbing studio. And it sounds like every sentence is similar, in fact, there are more than 20 kinds of timbres, as well as a variety of emotional long and short sentences, if you don't believe it, you can feel the difference between Chatley and the teacher and Andrei.
Hearing such a demand, professional studios were stunned
As for the reason for dubbing with "Chakachaka" instead of human words, "We wanted to highlight a feeling of 'small theater', including the curtain at the turn of the plot and the realistic and handsome stand-up painting that suddenly appeared in the later stages, which were all designs that were determined when the project was established." In that era, the protagonist Chatley has always followed the path paved by the teacher and has no subjective cognition of his own. And when Li e becomes a formal character, it means that he awakens his self-consciousness at this moment and begins to think and understand what everyone is saying. ”
When the protagonist begins to accept the ideas of the new school of medicine, the standing painting will become a realistic style
"And the player-controlled Chatley is a traditional medicine school, how can everyone feel that they are villains!" So be sure to let the protagonist wake up in the later stages..."
Speaking of which, the camp playing of "decent" and "villain" has always been a particularly interesting thing in Muxi's works.
In Doctor Healer, the player is a class of vested interests who are not thinking of making progress, and in "The Blessing of the Social Animal" is the top management of ordinary employees. From God's point of view, these people are all obstacles to the progress of history; but when the player himself plays the protagonist, he will find that the behavior of his relatives and friends and teachers is not unreasonable, but the reform guys (that is, Andrea) have a sharp and mean personality...
This choice becomes particularly difficult for players to settle for the status quo or to stick to morality, and the difficulties of medieval medicine and workplace change are understood more deeply.
There was a lot of debate about Andrea
Everyone in Muxi is very grateful to tapTap players for their analysis of the various plots and character designs in the game, and seeing so many people write such long reviews, including the debate around Andre, they are very touched and decided not to change it - which shows that their designs have indeed been discovered and recognized by players.
In the latest work "Journey of Masterpieces", you can see the paintings
In the process of research, muxi's members went through a large number of famous paintings, and in these paintings, they felt a sense of sublimation that was difficult to express in words. So the next work", "Journey of Masterpieces", was set and is expected to be released in June this year.
Lapin also shared the character design of Journey of masterpieces, but since it is still in the middle stages of development, there is not much suitable for publication.
The character design of "Masterpiece Journey" is subject to change after that
There is a sentence at the beginning of "The Blessing of the Social Animal": "I just want to change the world." Don't talk about changing the world, just say that you can change the world a little bit. ”
During the interview, Lapin summed up his achievements over the past year in a similar sentence:
"It's really fun to pass on the knowledge to everyone and make a work that will be remembered by someone more than a decade later."