On April 18, the 2022 N.GAME Game Developer Summit held by NetEase Interactive Entertainment Learning and Development officially kicked off. This year's Game Developer Summit is cooperated by NetEase Fuxi Yaotai to create a virtual online venue, and every participant who lands in can use virtual characters to enter the online virtual venue to watch the live broadcast of the summit, and the experience is quite fresh.
On the first day of the summit, Jiang Yuyuan, producer of "Ace Racing", gave a speech on the theme of "Racing Journey from Scratch". At present, the number of players in "Ace Racing" has exceeded 30 million, of which 80% is the first contact with NetEase Games, which has been online for half a year, bringing new increments to NetEase Games.
In this mature track with more than 40 years of development and quite solidified core experience, as a new product of the old track, how does Ace Racing analyze the basic experience of racing, how to disassemble player pain points, and how to find innovative differences?
The following is the original text of the speech (with deletions):
Hello everyone, my name is Jiang Yuyuan, and I am the producer of Ace Racing.
"Ace Racing" is the first racing game developed by NetEase, and the content I share today is mainly based on the research and development process of "Ace Racing", combing through the product establishment, to the core experience, to product innovation and content expansion.
Starting a racing game from scratch is like starting an engine from scratch, hanging up the gear and stepping on the oil, and driving on the road, so I will use "driving" later in the article to compare the different stages of the project' research and development.
Ignition phase
First of all, it is the ignition stage, or the project establishment stage.
About starting from scratch, I would like to talk about my own story first. I studied mathematics as an undergraduate, a standard science major, and chose economics when I was in graduate school. For me, this is the first time I've started from scratch.
After graduating with a Ph.D. in 2015, the right job for me might be to work in a university, or to go to some research institute or financial institution. But at that time, I especially liked to play games, so I came to NetEase to do game planning as a new recruit. This career change for me is the second time I've started from scratch.
After entering NetEase, the first project I came into contact with was an MMO, and three years later, in 2018, I began to set up a project to do "Ace Racing". Going from the traditional MMO category to the racing category that the company has never done before, it is the third time for me to start from scratch.
Why talk about this? We found that when interviewing students, a question that is often asked is that although some students like games very much, they are not learning game design, have no foundation, and are a little worried about whether they are suitable for this position in the future. I think my experience is the best answer to this question, as long as you like it enough, you will always have the courage to try from scratch.
Back to the project. In a results-oriented market, it doesn't really make much sense to start from scratch. More often, doing this thing from scratch means that the starting point and progress are lagging behind.
But in NetEase's open and free R&D environment, we can more easily explore new projects. I remember in 2018, I went to ask the leader if he could do a racing game. On the one hand, there are no market opportunities for racing games like this realistic picture, multiplayer racing as the gameplay; on the other hand, the team is also willing to invest. The leader's reply was: "You can try it, and it is best to try it seriously", so we have the earliest demo small team.
Therefore, regarding the project establishment, a thousand words are summed up in one sentence, which is to thank the company for allowing us to start a research and development journey from 0 to 1.
The initial stage
The next step is the initial phase, which I think is the process of polishing the basic experience.
Everything is difficult at the beginning, and it is naturally challenging to get involved in a new category that has not been developed at all, not to mention the racing category with a relatively high entry threshold.
First of all, we need to carry out a series of art technology pre-research, including pre-research for vehicle materials, pre-research for physical systems, and pre-research for some algorithms for lighting such as PBR, which are inseparable from the support of NetEase's technical and artistic teams.
In addition, we need to understand and get close to users as much as possible, which in turn benefits from NetEase's research team, who have organized dozens of user surveys and neighborhoods with the product to help us understand users, narrow user distance, understand user demands, and test our DEMO or products.
And as planners, what we're going to do is gain insight into and analyze the underlying experience of racing. I think this can be divided into three steps:
The first step is to play the game from the player's point of view, to have an in-depth experience of racing and racing games;
The second step is to disassemble and sort out our experience from the perspective of planning;
The third step is to discover the player's demand scenario from the perspective of the user.
I think the first step is to figure out what we're going to do; the second step is to figure out what we're doing, how it works, what kind of mechanism it's like; and the third is a process of inquiry into why we're doing it.
Below I will illustrate our process with the "drift" behavior common in racing games.
First, we need to familiarize ourselves with the drift experience. When it comes to racing drift, our feeling is that pulling the handbrake, hitting the direction, the car is over, this level of familiarity is not enough.
We need to combine a lot of games with frame-by-frame viewing of real-world videos, and we need thousands of game experiences to understand this fast movement process. Of course, the best thing to do was to try it myself, so I went to get a drift driver's license and learned how to drift, how to circle, how to control the throttle, and so on.
Not only myself, but since the project was established, our project team will choose car-related projects, such as going to the karting stadium to race, go to the real car experience hall to test drive or watch the car show, etc., I think this is also a valuable opportunity to cultivate the interest of the team and familiarize themselves with the experience.
Then, after full experience and understanding, we can sort out the essential rules of drift, and then find that the essence of drift is actually the movement of the front of the car and the direction of the speed is not consistent, this core variable is the angle between the front direction and the speed direction, we call it the drift angle.
The front direction of the car represents the driver's intention to turn, is he going to go left or right? Does he want to expand the drift angle or reduce the drift angle? The direction and size of the speed represent the hysteresis feedback of the physical system.
After dismantling the process, we can also have a better understanding of the steps of drift.
As can be seen from the following figure, the first is the drifting stage, the front direction of the car is rapidly rotating, and the direction of the speed changes very little or simply does not change, the size of the speed will be rapidly reduced, and the drift angle will expand at a relatively fast speed.
The second is the stable fixed circle stage, the front and speed are basically in the same direction, the drift angle remains basically unchanged, and the speed is attenuated at a relatively low rate.
Finally, there is the rewinding stage of the front of the car, the reduction of the drift angle, and the increase of the speed.
Therefore, a drift can be divided into three stages: drift, circle and drift.
What's the use of disassembling down to these three levels? We're better able to spot some of the player's needs for drift skills — the next step we're going to design for the user.
For example, in some gentle bends where the road is wider, the player may need to turn at a faster speed and a smaller drift angle. This is reflected in the variable we disassembled earlier, that is, in the fixed circle stage, the drift angle is stabilized at a smaller angle, allowing the drift to be faster.
Based on such an appeal, we designed the technique of inertia drift. As can be seen from the following figure, in the entire process of cornering, the drift attitude of the vehicle is relatively small, and the speed is relatively fast, which is an operation method for slow bending and cornering.
Inertia drift
For example, in some occasions where the road is relatively narrow and the curve is very urgent, the player needs to quickly turn the front of the car and quickly slow down to complete the corner and avoid collision. That is to say, in the drifting stage, the drift angle expands faster than normal drift, so that the speed of the car also decays faster, which has the skill of brake drift in the game.
As you can see from the figure below, in a very fast time into the corner, through the brake drift can achieve the inner bend drift.
Brake drift
For example, sometimes the player will find that the drift is early, or drifting halfway and finding an obstacle or other vehicle in front of them, then you need to do some emergency evasion actions to adjust the drift route. That is to say, we can temporarily stop the rotation of the front and speed of the car during the fixed circle stage of the drift, which is the technique of straight line drift.
As you can see from the figure below, during the drift, the collision of the inner bend can be avoided by pressing the brakes.
Straight line drift
With in-depth experience and meticulous disassembly, we can observe the existence of more needs of players, so as to give players a better feel and basic experience framework through multi-link and multi-level skill design.
Of course, the whole process is not easy. In order to meet our design expectations, a total of 4 versions of racing physics were iterated back and forth, from the most common commercial physics engine, to the increasing involvement of scripts, to the complete rewriting of the entire physical environment, our program students invested a lot, and polished the basic experience with our planning.
Overtaking phase
The third part is the stage of overtaking.
Although as mentioned earlier, we can learn in art performance and basic experience to catch up quickly, one thing that needs to be mentioned is that racing games are a mature category that has developed for more than 40 years, and the core experience is quite solidified. As a new product of an old track, we must have some innovation to attract players, and innovation is quite necessary for us.
This is like the domestic car industry, although it can actively learn car-making technology from abroad, or introduce joint ventures, etc., but it is more necessary to keenly grasp the opportunity of overtaking in curves like electric vehicles, in order to achieve overtaking.
Fortunately, if we look at racing games from the perspective of online games that we are familiar with, such as mobile games, we can find some innovative entry points. We've tried a lot, and here are three innovative ideas that I find useful:
First, you can introduce a multiplayer cooperative confrontation experience.
We have observed that with the networking of games, mainstream game categories have found multiplayer cooperative confrontation gameplay that is strongly integrated with networking mechanisms, such as shooting games finding tactical competitive mode, action games finding MOBA mode... These modes are characterized by both confrontation and cooperation between players.
However, the multiplayer experience of racing games still exists only on the confrontational side, always a single-player kernel game, and players do not need each other. When we were playing racing, those who ran faster than me would think that he was hanging up; those who ran slower than me would hate him for being too good to play with him.
Based on such pain points, we have some thinking.
First of all, in the real racing race, because the situation of a team's drivers and cars is different, there will be a division of labor between teams, such as some drivers to protect our teammates through the wake, or through the card slot to hinder the other party's overtaking route.
In addition, in games such as MMOs, we often use the method of class design to establish mutual needs between players, such as tanks, DPS and healing, and classes need each other, and everyone can team up to play a copy.
Therefore, we also do multi-person cooperation confrontation in "Ace Racing", design vehicle positioning, and let vehicles with different positioning divide and cooperate and perform their duties. They have race positions that are suitable for rushing to the first place, interference positions that can hinder the opponent's vehicle, and auxiliary positions that provide buffs for the entire team of vehicles.
After we introduced vehicle positioning in the test, the retention of the entire test increased by about 10%. This 10% is an absolute value not a relative value.
From the data in the current game, it can also be seen that the player's vehicle selection is basically a three-point trend, that is to say, the number of players who play racing, interference, and auxiliary is generally the same. This changes the traditional experience of racing only competition without cooperation. From the feedback of players, it can also be seen that the introduction of more vehicle positioning has increased the possibilities of this game.
Second, lower the threshold, more easy to get started.
Racing gameplay, if viewed from the perspective of a mobile game, is a game that is easy to be frustrated and difficult to get started. After all, mobile games are a way of entertainment that lowers the threshold, and pursues the pursuit of allowing more people to feel the fun of the game.
However, in the racing game, everyone is staring at the finish line, and there may be many people who can't run the finish line, will be disliked by their teammates or dislike themselves, so we often use "one person is happy, five people are frustrated" to describe the experience of racing games. In the popular words of the moment, it is "very strongly coiled inside".
Therefore, even if we push the team mode in the game, in such a play environment, the player may not necessarily accept it. Our thinking about this is that the frustration of not running to the finish line is too strong, can we give the player an easier goal to achieve?
The solution that came to mind was the field horse racing. In the story of Tian Ji's horse racing, Tian Ji and Qi Wang do not put all the horses in one race to run, but are divided into three catches and fights.
Inspired by this story, we designed a counterpoint-loss system - in a 3v3 duel, our first and the other side's first, our second and the other side's second, our third and the other side's third. We don't look at the absolute ranking or whether he finishes the game or not.
Why does matching win or loss lower the threshold for getting started? Because in this format, even if I am the slowest in the team, as long as I can beat the slowest on the other side, I can provide a very full contribution to the team.
Obviously, this format provides an easier goal for players of different levels to achieve, and also allows players with certain levels to play together, which encourages team racing.
From the data point of view, before the introduction of counter-match wins and losses in the test, the proportion of team matches was about 32%; after the first introduction of counterpoint wins and losses in the test, the proportion immediately increased to 60%; with the launch of the game, players further understood the rules of the event, the proportion increased to 86%.
So, even looking at the entire racing category, the gameplay of Ace Racing is still unique, we are a team racing game.
Third, the depth of gameplay.
Racing games are a category where speed is paramount, pursuing relatively singleness and only pursuing speed. However, the faster the speed, the easier it is to collide, and the blind pursuit of speed will bring about such a bad experience as bumper cars.
In addition, when the player only wants to play the fastest car, it will lead to serious homogenization of the vehicles in the game, and many other vehicles will become useless waste cars. In this case, the depth of the game is relatively insufficient.
Our thinking about this is that in the earliest combat games, in fact, there is only one dimension of attack power, and later through the expansion of countless works, the introduction of moves, martial arts, magic and other settings, the depth of battle is expanded little by little. So, can we improve the racing game in a similar way, such as adding skills to the vehicle?
The idea sounds crazy. Can you find some reference support in real life? Actually, there is.
We found that many works about vehicles, films and televisions, are often impressive and often the vehicles use some bizarre moves and stunts in the course of the race to reverse the tide of battle. For example, the drainage channel bend in "Head Text D", the whirlwind charge tornado in "Four Wheel Drive Brothers", the hook claw weapon and rocket car in "Fast and Furious" and so on.
On the one hand, these things break through the imagination of the audience and make the game more watchable, on the other hand, they make the game itself more suspenseful.
With the design underpinnings and realistic endorsements in place, we boldly designed vehicle moves for every car – there are currently more than 50 vehicle moves in the game.
The introduction of racing moves, on the one hand, can achieve the progression of the threshold for getting started in the game, for example, vehicles that can avoid collisions will be easier to get started. Like the car in the figure below, when zooming in, when the vehicle collides, it will jump forward briefly, turning the negative feedback brought by the collision into positive feedback. This allows players to run with great confidence when faced with unfamiliar maps.
Avoid collision moves
The following figure is a big move that can change the steering radius of the vehicle, which puts forward higher operational requirements for the player's track line routing control.
Change the vehicle's steering radius big move
On the other hand, it revitalizes the player's demand for multiple vehicles. Some big moves are suitable for certain specific tracks, some big moves have a restrained relationship, and some big moves are very challenging to the player's release timing... These make it useful to have more vehicles in the game.
In terms of effect, the introduction of vehicle moves is fresh and intuitive, and it also strengthens the playability and depth of the game, which has obvious appeal to users.
It can be seen that the vehicles in "Ace Racing" are more similar to a hero or a character, each has its own stunts, and can be combined with different lineups to get a rich game experience. This is also a unique feature that distinguishes it from all other racing games.
Drive on the road
With the basic experience and the elements of innovation in place, we can drive on the road.
Racing games are relatively long-lived, can operate for a long time, and we also hope that Ace Racing can go a long way and make the road wider and wider, so this part I want to talk about some of the things we are already doing or want to do.
First, make your own car.
At the beginning of the project, we mainly did foreign licensed cars, and in the process we found that if the game was full of licensed vehicles, then the player remembered the car itself, not our game.
What's more, there are a lot of vehicle styles and designs that players like so much that we can't find licensing or vehicles that aren't real at all, such as sci-fi, concept, retro, and so on.
So, we started experimenting with designing our own original vehicles, calling real-world vehicles fantasy vehicles in the game.
How were these vehicles designed?
Our students in charge of vehicle design, there are graduate students graduated from well-known automotive design colleges at home and abroad, and there are also big guys who have done the actual design of real vehicles in the depot, they will use the design language and tools of the automotive industry to make fantasy vehicles, and the vehicles and skins produced are very popular with players.
Fantasy vehicles and real vehicles are about five to five times more important. The coexistence of real vehicles and fantasy vehicles allows us to meet the preferences of more players, and also makes the vehicle styles in the game more colorful and colorful.
Second, tell our story.
"Ace Racing" is NetEase's first self-developed racing game, and it is also one of the few self-developed racing games in China, compared to foreign racing works, we want to tell our own stories. We have ushered in the era of vigorous development of the automobile industry and overtaking in curves, our domestic cars are rising, our new energy vehicles are leading the world, and we also want to record this historic moment through games.
"Ace Racing" has been cooperating with a number of domestic car manufacturers, including Wuling, BYD, Lynk & Co, Xiaopeng, etc., we can not only experience the most domestic vehicles in the game, but also in the intelligent central control platform of some new energy vehicles, through the steering wheel and foot pedals to experience "Ace Racing".
That's true of racing, and it's the same with the track. In recent years, the country has made very brilliant achievements in road and bridge infrastructure, such as the world's tallest bridge - Guizhou Beipanjiang Bridge, the Tianmen Mountain 99th Bend, which is known as the most dangerous winding mountain highway, the historically significant Xinjiang Duku Highway, the 318 Sichuan-Tibet Line, which is known as the most American road, and the beautiful Alishan in Taiwan Province, etc., all of which are reflected in the scene of "Ace Racing".
I have a selfish heart, hoping that the track of "Ace Racing" can cover every province in our country, so that when the future products go to sea, they can achieve cultural output, so that more people in the world can see the scenery of our country and the achievements of modernization.
Finally, since the launch of the project for more than half a year, our number of players has exceeded 30 million, and this number is still growing, and we sincerely thank every player for their support. Of the 30 million riders, 80% are the first to contact NetEase Games, so Ace Racing has also brought an incremental market to the company.
More than half a year of online operation is both intense and exciting, and the whole team has been given a chance to grow rapidly. In 2022, we will not only work hard to introduce better content and gameplay to players, but also expand overseas. We are confident of achieving better results on this track.
Apparently, this race journey from scratch is not over, in fact, it has just begun.
That's all I've shared, thank you.