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| Novels dare not write like that |
About 1 and a half years ago, I interviewed a very special game producer, his name is Xiaoming, his work is called "The Legend of Seven Stars", a two-dimensional mobile game with a unique understanding of astringency and a girlish historical figure as the core selling point. The effect of that interview was unexpectedly good, just looking at the data and communication, looking at all the past interview articles in the teahouse, it can be ranked at the top, and the bizarre but inspirational life experience in this must have resonated with many people.
And later things everyone knows that "The Legend of Seven Stars" failed online, and it was a historical fiasco that may be "difficult to find opponents" throughout 2022. As a good friend of Xiaoming, of course, I know what "The Legend of Seven Stars" and Xiaoming himself have experienced in the past year or so, and even I myself have been regarded as the "sixth person of illusion" of the "Legend of Seven Stars" project team, which has left me some "unique" memories.
Of course, today's article is not for sentiment. "The Legend of Seven Stars" will officially end its operation on the Qoo platform on March 9, that is, this Thursday, and the story of "The Legend of Seven Stars" will also temporarily come to an end, so it is time to explain some things clearly, and as the person who introduced "The Legend of Seven Stars" and Xiaoming to everyone, this matter should be done by me.
Prepare your wine or drink and treat the rest of the day as a "dream bubble".
01
The root of all evil
The core reason for the explosion of "The Legend of Seven Stars" is that Xiaoming himself lacks project management/asset control capabilities as a game producer.
Take a very simple example. After the launch of "Legend of Seven Stars", the product background directly collapsed, and later after investigation, it was not a server problem but a huge vulnerability in the code of the product itself, but the technical team of "Legend of Seven Stars" failed to find the problem before going online, and even failed to solve it 4 weeks after the bombing, which directly led to the game having to close the newcomer registration entrance in advance, missing the game's most golden server opening stage.
Every day is constant maintenance
Under normal circumstances, these technicians should have run away with a bucket or took the initiative to leave, but the funny thing is that despite such a serious operational accident, Xiaoming, as the owner and producer of the company, could not directly interfere with the technical team of "Legend of Seven Stars", and Xiaoming told me that he could not recruit people.
Yes, the "Legend of Seven Stars" project team has a very strange setting. The producers and core management are in the Japanese studio, while the technical, program and other personnel are concentrated in a provincial capital city in Chinese mainland, and the usual communication mainly relies on online tools, unless necessary, they will rarely return to China, and many management rights are directly delegated to the person in charge of the technical side.
Information obstacles, deception, slack of work, in the first few days of "The Legend of Seven Stars", I can be regarded as witnessing a serious annual drama, Xiaoming's powerlessness and struggle I can see in my eyes, he can only watch "Legend of Seven Stars" getting worse and worse day by day. At this time, Xiaoming's company was running out of money, so when the situation of "Legend of Seven Stars" had not yet reached an irreversible step, I suggested that Xiaoming cut the mainland team and form a new team in Shanghai.
Xiaoming agreed to my suggestion, but he himself could not be stationed in China for a long time, and it was more difficult to build a technical team in Japan. To put it bluntly, he lacks an agent in the country. It just so happened that a friend of mine, Kiro, happened to leave his last company, and although I knew that the future of the project "The Legend of Seven Stars" might be uncertain, I introduced him to Xiaoming.
With the entry of Kiro, "The Legend of Seven Stars" has officially entered a new stage that seems to have "hope". But obviously, the story will not be so simple.
02
Hope is dim
Kiro joined last October as head of operations. Soon, Kiro won Xiaoming's recognition for his strong work ability, and after communicating with Xiaoming many times, Kiro naturally became the Shanghai leader of the "Legend of the Seven Stars" project, and Kiro began to form a new technical team in Shanghai.
Kiro is indeed capable, under his arrangement, the Shanghai branch of "Legend of Seven Stars" was quickly formed, and the new workplace was also settled, and several core members were also from the head factory in Shanghai, which was not known how many times stronger than the previous "grass team", and their first task was to "redo" "Legend of Seven Stars", and Kiro hoped to use the "redo" of "Legend of Seven Stars" to run some effective test data, and then look for distribution and investment.
Of course, the "redo" here did not reach the level of recuperation. It's just that according to the assessment of kiro and the Shanghai team, the code of "Legend of Seven Stars" is a mess, there are a lot of system problems, the workload is quite large, and there is not much time left for the project team. 4 months, Kiro decided to use 4 months as the deadline, if 4 months "Legend of the Seven Stars" has not made some substantial progress, then admit failure.
History is always strikingly similar, the only difference is that this time "The Legend of the Seven Stars" is standing to death. The project saw a little hope through the efforts of Kiro and the Shanghai team, but it was still far from the real dawn, and the early pits buried were more difficult to fill than they imagined. Kiro tells Xiaoming that he has decided to quit, and Kiro's withdrawal also means that the short-lived "resurrection" plan of "The Legend of the Seven Stars" has failed.
Xiaoming returned to Shanghai to have a hasty meal with the new members at the Shunfeng Hotel, and he did not want to admit defeat. After that, Xiaoming thought of many ways, even finding family connections to ask acquaintances to invest, but they all ended in failure. In the first two weeks of this article, Xiaoming had even started the idea of crowdfunding, and I told him that crowdfunding did not play much role, and this unreliable idea was completely dispelled.
Now, Xiaoming has returned to Japan alone, and "The Legend of the Seven Stars" has no possibility of relaunching for the time being.
03
Ott Spirit
If you have read the previous interview article, you should remember to some extent that Xiaoming ran a maid café in Japan before doing "The Legend of the Seven Stars", but in fact, before doing "The Legend of the Seven Stars", Xiaoming also did one thing that continues to this day, that is, doing peripheral business.
Xiaoming has cooperative factories in China, and he receives peripheral production needs from some Japanese game and animation companies, produces his own production plans, and then hands them over to domestic cooperative foundries for mass production according to specification data.
Xiaoming said that every year, many entertainment companies in Japan do offline performances and events in China, and live costumes are frequently used during performances and events, and a small part of this is provided by Xiaoming's factory. Speaking of this, I suddenly recalled that Xiaoming was on the news hot search because he was walking on the streets of Tokyo, Japan in a homemade Severn Cos suit. Looking back now, it turns out that everything has a origin.
The surrounding business can probably have a turnover of several million yuan a year, in addition to maintaining the daily expenses of the factory, Xiaoming can still earn a lot. After the closure of the maid café, the savings saved from running the café and the stable peripheral business income of the factory became the economic lifeblood supporting "The Legend of the Seven Stars".
But the goddess of fate always likes to joke with people, and Xiaoming is especially "taken care of". The impact of the new crown epidemic on the offline real economy has devastated and devastated, and the factories that Xiaoming cooperated with have been completely shut down since the first half of 21, and have only slowly begun to recover recently, and Xiaoming has lost the most stable source of income for nearly 2 years in the middle, and it just so happens that in the past two years, Xiaoming has "wasted" a lot of funds on "Legend of Seven Stars" due to personal decision-making.
The company lacks funds - the project urgently needs money - the project rushes to the duck on the shelves - the results of the service explode - the team falls apart - the follow-up gap cannot be made up, the worst things happen one after another, the capital chain is broken in response, and finally drags down the last hope of Xiaoming and "The Legend of the Seven Stars".
"Many people's first reaction when they see "The Legend of Seven Stars" is that this game makes money by playing the edges, but in fact, in my imagination, the plot, world view and core story of "The Legend of Seven Stars" are the soul of the entire project. My idea has always been to do "The Legend of Seven Stars" from the perspective of IP, even if the game is discontinued one day, the story of "The Legend of Seven Stars" will continue in various carriers, comics, novels, fandoms, series and even CosPlay, these are memory symbols, and even some of them I have already been doing at the same time."
The above paragraph is his answer to the business plan of "Legend of Seven Stars" when I interviewed Xiaoming in 21 years. Now it seems that if Lady Luck may be a little less naughty, then maybe there will really be a new ending route to be lit.
It is March 7, 2023, and there are still 2 days left before "The Legend of Seven Stars" is suspended. Xiaoming rushed to the streets of Japan, trying to find a sum of money to revitalize his business, including "The Legend of the Seven Stars". As for what form "The Legend of the Seven Stars" will survive, it depends on the destiny of heaven.
"After a few years of gaming, investing tens of millions, not earning a penny, and owing a debt," Xiaoming ridiculed that if he didn't make games, he should have driven a Rolls-Royce in Japan. "Do you regret it then?" , I asked this question that had been held in my heart for a long time without thinking, "In fact, it is still time, at least the epidemic has passed, and an experienced businessman knows how to seize this precious opportunity." ”
Xiaoming on the other end of the screen was silent for a long time, and I knew that this was a signal to continue the head iron.
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