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Many people may have forgotten "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes".
At the beginning of 2021, it was once called "domestic light" by players: with the theme gameplay of sandbox Xiuxian, "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" won 1.8 million copies of sales in the first month of EA's beta, when the highest number of Steam online users reached 180,000, ranking 33rd in global history, setting a new record for domestic games.
At the beginning of 2022, it was pushed into the whirlpool of public opinion: because many players were dissatisfied with third-party creative workshops, thinking that producer Zhang San was fooling them with "copycat goods", they directly poured into the game review area to brush tens of thousands of bad reviews - from "domestic light" to tens of thousands of bad reviews, "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" took just over a week.
In April alone, there were 43,000 more negative reviews
Unfortunately, after experiencing big ups and downs, "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" and its developer Oniya Studios seem to have also fallen silent, and there have been no more actions except for updating the game version - until recently, the two-year Early Access period of "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" is nearing its end, and the official version of the game is about to be launched. Taking this opportunity, Grape Jun visited game producer Zhang San and game publisher Lightning Games to learn about what the game has iterated in the past two years and how the mentality of the lagging team has changed. The following is a compiled transcript of the interview:
01
Two-year EA: Content doubled, the future will
Explore non-GPT AI
Grape-kun: I heard that "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" is completely different from when it was launched, where is it reflected?
Zhang San: First, the amount of content has really increased several times. At present, the game has been iterated by EA for more than two years, and the game package body has been expanded from 2G to 19G, and the text content alone has exceeded 1 million words.
Second, the game experience is more open and free. For example, cultivating gameplay no longer stops at brushing and brushing; The AI of NPCs is no longer limited to playing the small ones out of the old, we have enhanced the sense of existence of NPCs such as parents and brothers, and also set up a lot of special NPCs to interact with players; Now the total number of mods in the workshop also exceeds 10,000... Overall, players currently have a varied gaming experience with everything.
Grape-kun: Let's talk about the plot content first, I heard that the main story has ended, what is the feedback from players?
Zhang San: "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" recently opened the final version of the game "Tianyuan Mountain", and we took back all the previous myths and legends, plot foreshadowing, etc. to make the finale. At present, players are still relatively satisfied, many people will play all five endings, and there is more discussion about the ending plot. We also specially set up an automatic save at the foot of Tianyuan Mountain for players to experience the story of SL (save file reading).
Grape Jun: In the two years of EA, what did the game do from 2G to 19G?
Zhang San: Compared with the first launch, "Ghost Valley Eight Wilderness" has added 7 major versions and 215 small versions, including the Transformation God Enlightenment Dao, Instrument Spirit, Hao Tianyan, Zongmen, Demon Refining Pot, Feather Ascending Immortal, and Tianyuan Mountain, among which the Instrument Spirit and Sect versions, and mysterious organizations are all additions to EA's plan.
Especially in the Zongmen version, we refactored the bottom layer of the game. It turns out that the sect of "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" is equivalent to a store, and the experience of which sect players join is similar. After that, we expanded a lot of sect gameplay and content, and added the "Tianjiao" setting, players can rise from outer disciples to sect masters step by step, lead the development of the sect, and compete with other sects.
The battlefield of the sect needs to occupy points, kill enemies, and defend
Grape-Lord: Will there be similar major changes or updates in future games?
Zhang San: The work we are doing recently is mainly to fix bugs, performance optimization, experience and art optimization, and prepare for the final official version.
In fact, the content we provided has exceeded the EA plan at that time, thanks to the ideas and opinions of players, sometimes we see that their ideas are really good, but a lot of things have to be torn down and refactored, it is difficult to implement, and our game has been able to do it now.
Grape-kun: What does it mean to not move?
Zhang San: Just like building a house, there are some things that you may imagine very well, and we want to do them, but the foundation can no longer be moved, or the load-bearing is already difficult to support. And the world of immortal cultivation in everyone's heart is also different, and it is unlikely that all the whims of the immortal cultivation world will be installed in one game, and more brain holes and famous scenes can only wait until the next generation of works build a better framework to realize.
Grape-kun: So how do you choose the content?
Zhang San: It mainly depends on the interest of content and user acceptance. For example, in the scope test, we found that this gameplay was not fun and did not achieve the purpose of the original design, so we cut it; We also selected some players' brain holes to implement, such as adding a new form of the high-demand dragon girl and its backstory and corresponding gameplay, and later they also used this to explore the genre gameplay of "Dragonlance Opening" - for us, the latter is an effective design.
Grape-kun: Let's talk about the experience again, why is the current "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" more free?
Lightning Games: First of all, the Hachira of Oniya is not as brushed as before.
Nowadays, there are more ways to obtain game development materials, including quests, pet dispatches, sect shops, and so on. There will even be adventures to help players break through, such as accepting the mantle of a master, directly breaking through a realm, and helping him revive within the specified time.
Legend Adventures and player feedback, source watermark
Zhang San: There are many strange adventures, there are more than 2,000 illustrations alone, and many times there will be players who share their adventures publicly, and others return because of curiosity. Because many adventures are added with the release, players may have a different experience in each game.
At the same time, we also discussed what the world of immortal cultivation is like. For example, there will be special cattle people, they have a certain protagonist aura, called Tianjiao. We have done some differentiated resource planning to make the behavior and decision-making of Tianjiao monks more intelligent, and the player's experience more diverse.
Grape-kun: NPCs are smarter... It just so happens that the content of AIGC is quite hot recently, does "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" have a corresponding exploration?
Zhang San: Coincidentally, before GPT caught fire, many domestic AI companies came to talk to me about AI.
But in fact, we are not on the same path with GPT, they are neural network learning, which is equivalent to science; We are an exploration of the social humanities, a liberal arts. In terms of technical depth, GPT is more powerful, and the required server performance consumption is also particularly large.
Our AI is a macro-level rule design, which sets some basic social rules for the entire "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" game world, and the AI operates according to this basic rule, so that each NPC with different personalities has different motivations and emotional performances.
Of course, we are not gods, and our understanding of the rules is still very limited, so there are often outrageous and funny things in the game. Ghost Valley still has a lot of exploration work to do in the AI block.
Grape-kun: What new exploration will Ghost Valley have in AI?
Zhang San: We have many directions we want to try in AI, such as how to make AI lie.
You think, what will the world look like when AI can lie? Lying seems to be a simple logic, but behind it requires the exploration of various principles and rules such as structural sociology, emotional sociology, and identity sociology. If it can be done well, it will be a phased breakthrough in the development of Ghost Valley AI in subsequent works.
Grape Jun: Is there a chance that the new work will use AI to achieve the above?
Zhang San: There will be more in-depth exploration. If I expect the AI level to be 10 points, "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" only achieved 3 or 4 points due to the bottom reason, and the second part will strive to reach 6 or 7 points.
Now Xiaobao (the main program of "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes") expects that the underlying performance of the second generation will be more than 5 times that of the previous generation, and then we will have space to deepen the relationship network of game AI, make the game rules more detailed, and each NPC more intelligent, and finally reach the level of "we make rules and let players create their own stories" in the future.
A story written by the Oniya Yachibara Bar friend himself
Grape-Jun: What is the current feedback on the Workshop?
Lightning Games: Now the number of creative workshop mods in "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" has exceeded 10,000, and the operation is more convenient, players can directly access various mods in the game with one click, and they are very enthusiastic about the discussion of game mods on various platforms.
Grape Jun: How do you feel after last year's workshop incident?
Lightning Games: The decision to choose a workshop is more a consideration for the publisher. Looking back now, we're thankful for the attention that players paid to this matter and provided us with a valuable publishing experience.
In general, this was a decision error caused by survivorship bias during the testing phase and not delving into user feedback, and after the problem, we tried various solutions as soon as possible, but fortunately we got help from Steam, which was considered to be the answer. Although it is difficult to save word of mouth in a short time, we must do a good job of what should be done, this is the principle.
Zhang San: This is the number one uncomfortable thing in my life, I have no experience and have made a lot of wrong decisions. Originally, our game was 89% praised on STEAM, and a wave directly dried up to 50%, which is extremely rare in single-player history.
Of course, in the end, after the hard communication with V Company N rounds, they helped us develop a reviewable ready-to-use creative workshop and solve the problem. This can be regarded as barely finding a balance between the current relevant regulations and user experience.
In any case, I think this disaster is also a good thing for us. Let us learn a lot of things soberly, so that the team's mind becomes more mature, and we will be more pragmatic to do our part in the future.
02
2023 is really the best solo tour
Is it time to develop
Grape-Jun: How do you understand the concept of indie games?
Zhang San: I prefer to call "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" a domestic single-player game, because the concept of independent games is difficult to define: some people feel that it is spiritual independence, some people say that you must be poor to be independent, and so on. Independence itself is a relative problem, and for the player it may be a fine and beautiful thing; For research and development, there is no too much interference, and you can make the products you want to express.
Lightning Games: Actually, the concept of indie games first came from abroad, and at that time it did emphasize small people, poverty and niche products, but as the market develops, these things will become more and more difficult to define. If you insist on saying it, it depends on the spirit of independence, as for poverty and few people, it is an external form and cannot be used as the only criterion.
Of course, over-touting independence can also fall into the other extreme – being too hardcore and away from the player. After all, the spirit of independent games lies in the expression of ideas, and the actual game content should serve the players. If you make an independent game, but the UI and guidance are too hardcore, most players can't even find the back button, don't know how to experience, this is also not appropriate.
Grape Jun: So how do you understand the role of solo publishers?
Lightning Games: Many people will feel that the content quality of independent games is more important, and the release is dispensable, after all, the meaning of distribution is nothing more than publicity, so who to find to announce is different? How effective can propaganda be? What is the conversion rate? No one can accurately estimate these figures.
But on the other hand, no matter what game is afraid of the deep alley, how likely can the developer ensure that the game will explode in the first place? Do you have the ability to solve the problems of go-live and localization?
Therefore, I have two opinions: first, don't expect too much from the release, they are not explosive manufacturers; Second, the value of the issuance cannot be denied, at least they have done everything that needs to be done.
Zhang San: I think that in the independent game, the product accounts for 70%, the distribution accounts for 30%, and you achieve the full score of the product is 70 points, but as the total score rises, the sales of the product increase exponentially. For example, if the sales of a 50-point game are dozens, a 70-point game can sell thousands of copies, an 80-point game can sell hundreds of thousands of copies, and a 90-point game directly has millions of copies - even if the publisher only helps the game by 10 points, it is very important.
Grape Jun: Is the high sales related to the theme of cultivating immortals? I see that in the past two years, there have been more and more immortal cultivation explosions.
Lightning Games: It's about perception and quality, not subject matter. One reason for the success of "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" is that the start-up team likes and is good at cultivating immortals - you say that the sci-fi theme is also popular, but why didn't Ghost Valley Studio make it? Because they still don't know enough
In other words, when you really understand the essence of Xiuxian content, then make it into any theme and genre, make it into SLG, RPG, simulation management, meat pigeons and even any weird gameplay.
Zhang San: There is no clear competition in the single-player game market. First, the market is large enough and there are enough users; Second, single-player games are not looking at DAU products, you can play one and play another. Therefore, I think that solo play, whether it is the Xiuxian theme or other games, as long as we make something fun, everyone should be willing to pay for it.
Lightning Games: After all, if the player does not like it and is not fun, the publicity will only be rootless driftwood, and the game can only continue to maintain vitality if it captures the underlying needs of users. Just like "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes", it can indeed resonate with some players and stimulate their creative enthusiasm, and most of the current mods, game external copywriting stories, strategy materials, plot summaries, etc. are written by players themselves.
Some game guides for the Steam platform
Grape Jun: Will this year be a good time for indie games?
Zhang San: The market environment is always changing, and it is something you can never grasp - there should only be something that is not easy to change, such as "user demand for excellent content". I don't know if it's a good year or not, so leave this to God.
Lightning Games: I think the indie game market is always an emerging market, a blue ocean market, as long as you can come up with a game that is differentiated, unique, and do it well in your conscience, you can get more than it expects.
As for whether this year is the best time, I can only say that it has just reached a spiraling middle position, and I believe that there will be more and more opportunities for the development of indie games in the future.
Grape Jun: So how can solo developers seize this development opportunity?
Zhang San: First, do what you know. No one knows where the next outlet is, if a developer who thinks that the second dimension makes money, but is not the core user of the second dimension, then he will definitely not be able to do it.
Second, get closer to the user, not behind closed doors. This user refers to the concept of large users, not just the dozens and hundreds of individuals built by the developers themselves. Developers should understand the real needs of players from various channels, platforms, and media, and really go to players, listen to the good and bad, and study and analyze.
Grape Jun: So how can you be closer to the user?
Zhang San: I think this is a two-way process, developers should not brush up on news and public development in the group every day, it is better to see, think and accept the opinions of players.
Like "Ghost Valley Eight Wastes" most of the game text comes from player co-creation, our game has been tied to the user group, we will support their opinions, they will also help with ideas, new ideas, active promotion... This ecology is very precious to us.
Lightning Games: As I said before, indie games require an independent spirit, but other aspects must rely on the support and understanding of players, after all, only players recognize excellent independent games, not games with an unconventional design, you feel that you are independent enough, awesome enough, and in the end you may not be able to get the expected results.
Game Grape Recruitment Content Editor,
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