Recently, the game daily Yu Yu was swept away by a co-construction document called "Independent Game Knowledge Encyclopedia".
This document is divided into 8 sections, ranging from game books to tool resources. Among them, there are more than 100 game books, more than 200 product knowledge articles, and more than 200 practical tool resources, which basically include the knowledge required for each stage of making games.
After being surprised, Yu Yu found the initiator of this document, Xiao Lan, tencent GWB independent game incubator, and asked her to talk about the story behind this document.
Indie players struggle, so a "naïve" idea is born
"The idea of making an indie game knowledge encyclopedia was established as early as February this year, and after more than a month of co-construction, it was officially opened to the public on April 15."
When talking about the "Independent Game Co-construction Knowledge Encyclopedia", Xiaolan also said with excitement that this is not the main business of her work: "My usual job is to be responsible for the support and incubation of Tencent GWB independent game products, and helping developers solve problems is an important part of the work." In the process of communicating with developers, people often discuss and consult various game production issues. While the atmosphere of community discussion is good, it is relatively inefficient. For example, some questions can be answered, and some questions are like a stone sinking into the sea. Therefore, there is also such an idea: the knowledge content scattered throughout the network can be more convenient for everyone to find information, so that many people will not even touch the door of independent games and be dissuaded. ”
Since entering the game industry, Yu Yu has found that many independent gamers need to make themselves "all-rounders" - from planning, art, programming, to publishing and operations - all aspects of knowledge and skills must be involved.
Camel, the producer of "No Regret Huaxia", told Yu Yu: "I entered the game industry as a planner, a person has to know everything, in order to make a game, he taught himself programs and art, and later a person also made an independent game with a very simple art, called "I want to make a game". ”
For indie players, there are too many things to learn in the early stages.
At first, Xiaolan's idea was actually very "naïve", or "pure" - that is, he wanted to invite everyone to share the knowledge that was helpful to his game development process, comb and aggregate it into a knowledge base, and facilitate independent gamers to find and learn. "In the process of doing GameJam activities this year, I had some exchanges with the small partners on the other side of Tencent Documents, and found that the documents have the convenience of tools and the openness of the platform, and the idea of using online documents as a knowledge base carrier was born." Later, after being proposed within the GWB, it received strong support from everyone. ”
Tencent GWB Game Incubator is responsible for coordinating resources such as funds, research and development, publishing, and promotion to help potential independent game teams and organizations that feed back the industry ecosystem. Therefore, Xiaolan's idea actually coincides with the team's big goal.
It lasted more than a month and more than 260 volunteers participated
"Independent Game Encyclopedia" was officially launched from the beginning of March, and the content filled at the beginning of the construction was mainly the "dry goods" included in Tencent Game Academy, but as the invited cooperative communities and volunteers continued to add new content to it, the scale of the document became more and more large - the work of coordinating the entire document and refining each section became less and less simple.
Fortunately, the cause of co-building documents has been recognized and strongly supported by many practitioners. "As soon as the news was sent, almost 200 volunteers were recruited," Xiaolan said, "We can even let everyone play their own expertise, please plan to plan the plate, the art to plan the art plate, so that this document is closer to the real needs of practitioners." ”
Although it was a free work, everyone was enthusiastic: "At that time, there was a volunteer in the group who shared all the game books he had collected, and there were dozens of copies. Now the game book section is basically shared by volunteers. ”
In addition to the problems at the level of collation and coordination, with the expansion of the scale of the document, Xiaolan also encountered problems in terms of page readability. "After more content, how to accurately find the resources they need in many content has become a big problem."
In order to facilitate the consultation, the volunteers began to classify the resources, adding categories, forms, tags and other items that could be screened, and also wrote exquisite recommendations for the resources.
After the official opening of the document on April 15, the effect far exceeded Xiaolan's expectations. "I didn't expect that so many people would take the initiative to forward it, and many of them were big men in the circle that they admired." After reading everyone's testimonials, I know that this document has such a big role. "A time of ten passes, ten passes a hundred, an idea that was originally very pure, with the joint efforts of volunteers, has aroused widespread concern in the game circle."
Today, hundreds of people view the co-construction document online every day after the opening of the co-construction document. Many gamers are also actively helping to contribute to this co-construction document, or provide suggestions or share resources.
After receiving many feedback suggestions, Xiaolan's planning is also very clear: "In the future, this knowledge encyclopedia will be improved, and new topics will be launched in the future for common problems in the development process of independent games." What is done in the early days is only knowledge aggregation, and the follow-up is to improve the readability of the content, sort out the knowledge content of the system, and help developers at different stages learn the content more conveniently in the document. ”
Under the difficulties, independent game practitioners need to work together to help each other
In this interview, Xiaolan also mentioned: "The difficulties faced by independent game makers are often not one-sided. Generally speaking, indie games have small teams, or even one-person teams. From product establishment, research and development polishing to distribution publicity, each link is difficult to do on its own. ”
Recently, a good domestic game "Too Desolate" by Steam was launched on April 15, with a maximum number of people online at the same time as 36,000 people, but only 6 days after the launch, it was announced that it was temporarily removed, and all players were fully refunded. Speaking of the reasons for the removal, it is emotional, because there are too many players leading to frequent bombings.
In addition to the problem of insufficient game server load, there are also problems such as lack of funds and suitable personnel in the development process, which are difficult to produce, and they encounter ddos attacks after difficult going online. These problems happen all the time in places that everyone doesn't know.
From the communication with Xiaolan, Yu Yu also learned that Tencent GWB Independent Game Incubator has been holding various activities to promote exchanges non-stop, and will also hold offline activities with the theme of "Peers" in May to help independent gamers pull through cooperation and resources to solve various problems.
So in the end, Xiaolan also talked about his expectations: "I hope that more people will share the content that will help him in the "Independent Game Knowledge Encyclopedia" and contribute to the knowledge development of the industry together." I also hope that China's independent games will be recognized by more people, and independent gamers will realize their ideals. ”
Not just indie games, but the entire game industry as well. In the "Game Production 100 People" column launched by Game Daily, the story behind many game producers is recorded, there are failures, some people have failed for more than 10 years, only to make a game that they think is good, there are also successes, and a game made by college students in their spare time can also be a big fire. If you want to see more of the stories behind game producers, stay tuned to our column.