It has to be said that this year's game tide has flooded a lot of products that are not so much attention from the market. If you don't keep an eye on industry dynamics, chances are you haven't noticed that "My Royal Sword Diary" has been online for almost a month.
Frankly speaking, the game's results are not bad, with a turnover of more than 50 million in the first week, the highest rushing to the 21st place on the best-selling list, and is currently stable in the Top50.
The developer behind the product, Lefu Interactive Entertainment, is also a star entrepreneurial team, composed of the core members of the Young Three Kingdoms series (the cumulative turnover of the game exceeds 2 billion US dollars), and the founder is also an old wolf (Cheng Liangqi) who has a good reputation in the card track. In just two years since its establishment, the company has received hundreds of millions of yuan of investment from Tencent and CMGE.
The reason why the attention of products in the industry is not very high, I guess is related to the post-Genshin era - everyone's interest in values and cards is not as great as it was then, and attention is paid to more "grand" narratives such as content volume, open world, high specifications, and industrialization. Previously, Grape Jun also talked about how unpopular the game industry is with numerical systems in the past two years.
But in fact, Old Wolf, as one of the representatives of numerical cards, has undergone some changes in his entrepreneurial debut "My Royal Sword Diary". For example, a lot of story content has been added to the game, and the volume of copy has tripled compared to the previous test version; For example, the game also does a map exploration for players to explore. He told me that the project cost tens of millions more in order to explore this big world.
During the interview, he also acknowledged the huge impact Mihayou has had on the industry: "Genshin" elevates players' pursuit of game quality and content, while "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" rolls this year's purchase volume to a new difficulty.
The results of "My Royal Sword Diary" may not seem impressive, but considering that this is the first self-developed and spontaneous product of the entrepreneurial team, it can actually be called a performance above the level. And this basically meets his expectations: "We are not very demanding, we can achieve the top 50 best-selling." If you have to rush to the top ten, then the profit is low, there is no need."
Here's a collated transcript of the interview:
01 It's all Miha
Grape-kun: Has this achieved your expectations now?
Old Wolf: It basically meets expectations, because we are not very demanding, and the product can reach the top 50 bestsellers. If you must rush to the top ten, then the profit is low, there is no need.
This year's schedule is really too tight, I know that a product was originally released in May, but it was directly scared by various schedules to June. Before the public beta of "My Royal Sword Diary" was launched, I felt that the entire product scored at most sixty points, but there was no way, it had to be on, because the market environment behind was more volatile.
Grape-kun: How about retention?
Old Wolf: Not bad. iOS left 55% and 7 left above 25%. When Android was first tested, the second stay was only 36%, after getting the version number, it was adjusted to 40%, and the common test was 46-48%.
Station B, Haoyou Fastburst, TapTap and other platforms have more young people and better retention performance, with 59%, 60%, and 52% respectively. Double-ended DAUs can have more than 200,000.
Grape-kun: Did you come for this release?
Old Wolf: Mostly yes. We have more than 40 people in optical operation, marketing, business, investment and other positions. But even if you add manpower, your own profit margin is still larger, in the past may have to achieve 90 million turnover to earn, but now 30 million will do.
In addition, CMGE has also given us a lot of help in publishing, especially the channel part. However, in order to improve profit margins, we also invested more restrained, investing several million on the first day of the public test, adding up to a total of 20 or 30 million.
Of course, there is a reason for the open beta of "Honkai: Star Dome Railway". It took this year's buying volume to a new level of difficulty, which had a great impact on our appointment placement. We also dare not let go.
Grape Jun: Does Star Iron overlap with your users?
Old Wolf: It's not a question of overlapping or not, but it's that it affects all acquisition channels.
Mihayou's buying model is different from ours, they don't look at the conversion effect, they only look at the exposure, and they don't even need to optimize the delivery, as long as they set a consumption data to put it. And even if there is a conversion task, they do not need the user to download the game, but direct the user to the official website of the game and jump to Miyou Club.
Grape-kun: I didn't expect it to affect you all.
Old Wolf: I used to stay in several card game player groups, and each group eventually became the Genshin group, the Star Iron Group. This is the most terrifying.
Genshin has increased players' requirements for the quality of the game and the amount of content, which is why this project will add so much content - story, art, maps... If it weren't for these, we might have gone online a long time ago, all forced by Miha.
Grape-kun: Some people think this game is like One Thought.
Old Wolf: I don't care about this at all. People who really understand will come in and find that these are completely two products.
I WENT TO CUT MY HAIR LAST NIGHT AND MR. TONY HAPPENED TO BE PLAYING OUR GAME. He said that he has played a lot of immortal cultivation games, and there are three reasons why he chose "My Royal Sword Diary", the first picture is better, the second battle scene is much better than the text, or the ball collides, and the third running picture has a sense of exploration and plot interpretation.
Grape-kun: So did he top up the money?
Old Wolf: After charging a few hundred dollars, I feel like I can already look at me.
02 Content exploration cost tens of millions
Grape Jun: How long has this product been made?
Old Wolf: The earliest project was established in May 2020, according to our normal research and development speed, we will definitely be able to do paid testing in one year. As a result, the version number was stopped, and the development rhythm was completely disrupted. After waiting 14 months, how much pressure do you have on costs?
And our playing style also relies on paid test data, under normal circumstances, the team has to adjust it for 6~8 months after getting the data.
For example, if the benefits are paid more, the retention is better, but the payment may go down a little; If the payment is heavy, the retention may go down again. I will repeatedly adjust these parameters to a state that I think is the best, and then I can test them.
And there is another problem with not getting the test data, which is also a common situation, that is, you make 10 versions in advance, and only 3 versions may be effective in the end, because they are all done by imagination.
Grape Jun: So what have you been doing for the past two years?
Old Wolf: The first year we came out to solve the problem of "art is not ugly", now this level is more than 70 points, big Viagra said that it is not ugly, can watch it; The second year was about map exploration, that is, differentiated things.
But the results of the two years did not feel that enough to achieve a market breakthrough, so later we still picked up the numerical part that we were best at, otherwise we might have lost money now.
Now that we think about it, we should first play what we are good at, and then do new explorations, the first two years can be regarded as a crooked road.
Grape-Jun: How much did these explorations cost?
Old Wolf: This piece cost tens of millions. The open beta version of the game has at least three times more content than when tested.
Because the map needs to be equipped with various random events, copywriting, and art materials. And because the art standards are constantly being refreshed, every time a new version of the map is made, 30% of the previous art materials will be iterated out, and the rest will be phased out in subsequent versions.
Now, after two years of working on the project, I have a good enough and clear art standard. Maybe the first version of the art assets is not so different from the third version, but it is to cross that boundary - let's say the player requires 70 points, you do 68 points equals difference, 73 points equals good, but for these 5 points, the team has to pay a big price.
Grape-kun: At what cost?
Old Wolf: For example, our combat is relatively simple, because our development efforts are focused on the mini open world part. On the day the product went live, many friends from my colleagues sent me messages saying that they were disappointed after seeing the first battle when they entered the game.
But this just shows that we are clear-headed. Because we are not trying to make a product with high texture, but how to be different from others. After the player came in, he said that this was a picture from a few years ago, but he felt that we were different from other immortal cultivation products, and there was a sense of freshness, even if it was successful.
Someone on the halfway team mentioned adding special effects to the combat part, but it honestly didn't work. Because 2D products have already deducted points at the general direction level, there is no 3D model by nature, and no matter how much you mention it at the small level, the space is also very limited. So I focused on the map and it works very well now.
Grape Jun: So the main selling point of the product is this map?
Old Wolf: Not only, but two points. First, youthful, joyful cultivation of immortals; The second is the monster cultivation of immortals. In fact, it is not easy to integrate the elements of the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" into the theme of cultivating immortals, if you do more, it seems that you will not cultivate immortals, and if you do less, you will not be able to do card draws. Later, I also thought of many ways to get to this state.
Grape-kun: How young are your users?
Old Wolf: Our large-market users are 19~29 years old, and core users are almost 25~33 years old. What surprised us the most this time was the love of young users on station B and TapTap for the product, which may also be related to the product name and two-dimensional painting style. Before the product was finally launched, I also asked the team to change the kind of one-size-fits-all immortal cultivation dialogue to spit on joy.
Grape-kun: Why change?
Old Wolf: Because similar immortal cultivation products are piled up this year, and then most of them are orthodox immortal cultivators, and there are many black words in them. So we've got to go a different way. At the beginning, we set the tone of easy cultivation, but later found that the easy direction was too broad, some people referred to novels, some people referred to TV series, and everyone could not agree on it.
But if you are happy, everyone can quickly reach a consensus on how to amuse. For example, after the player's first battle is over, the protagonist will say "Finally won, we are really good 5 (I am the best)." When the player receives the hang up experience, the following will display "In the few hours you left the game to fish, you got..."
Then I found that players found this interesting, and a TapTap review called three stars, saying "One star is respect, why give you three stars?" Because there is a plot that makes the grandfather laugh."
Once everyone has reached a consensus, it is very simple, and I asked the copywriter to write it three times in the following order.
The first time, whether what you write is smooth, whether there are typos, and whether everyone can understand it.
The second time, whether the copywriting has a realistic atmosphere, whether there is a black talk on themes such as damage to the Yuan God and lack of energy. If this passage can also be used in the martial arts theme, it has to be changed.
The third time, see if it is joyful, whether the user can have realistic resonance, and whether there is such a taste as "it is better to step on a flying sword and go to Zibo to eat barbecue".
After the product tone changed to Happy Xiuxian, the copywriting work group was chatting all day, and it was 99+ at every turn. What does this mean? It means that you should be happy, talk about those god-nagging immortal cultivation black words, who wants to talk to you?
Grape Lord: Numerical cards rarely put so much effort into the content.
Old Wolf: But the main body of the product is actually a numerical value, but it is slowly piling up the amount of content to dilute the numerical experience. If the project starts by scaring about content and abandoning values, it can be a dead end for the team.
But when the product is safe enough, I'll start lowering the weight of the value. Now the game omnichannel ARPU is almost at 15 pieces, iOS is a little higher, 20 blocks. In the future, if we can raise DAU up, we can reduce the payment rate. So I spent all day thinking about how to break the ceiling of the DAU, not the ceiling of the paid one.
Grape-kun: Where do you think the ceiling of the numerical card DAU is?
Old Wolf: The junior achieved more than 1 million at that time, and now I don't know, but I always think that it should be no problem to triple to 3 million.
03 I don't look at the bestseller rankings now
Grape Jun: Have you been anxious over the years?
Old Wolf: Of course, I was anxious, especially when I first started a business and encountered the epidemic lockdown. I used to tell the team, don't spend so much energy fighting emotions, but in fact, I spent an hour or two a day fighting emotions during that time.
In the beginning, I ran at home, twice a day, once for twenty or thirty minutes. Then every time I finished eating, I would walk around the house like a neurotic, following the route of floor tiles. I couldn't stand it until the third month, so I went out to volunteer.
Grape-kun: That's an exaggeration.
Old Wolf: Because I'm a very insecure person. Just like now, although the company's books are enough to pay salaries for several years, I still don't have a strong sense of security. I always felt like I had a blood bar on my head and was bleeding all the time.
But my personality may have to change. If my margin of safety had been a little wider, maybe the product would have performed much better. Because I may dare to let more profits come out and expand the scale of project development, and the flow may be able to go up a lot.
Grape Jun: But the scale of the project is large, and the risk is too high.
Old Wolf: No way, the epidemic has accelerated the maturity of players. In the past, many people played games, and he may have played without a ride. But during the pandemic, he couldn't play anything else, so he had a lot of time to research.
It is equivalent to the domestic market being quickly ripened, and now the general product can not satisfy the players at all, not only to have high quality, more content, but also to do interesting.
When Lilith first launched the burning expedition mode of Dota Legends in 2014, you may think that this gameplay is so new that it can be studied for 10 days. But now, sorry, there is no novelty in 3 days, so what about the remaining 7 days? You'll have to make up two more gameplay of the same size, and the amount of development will triple in one fell swoop.
Grape Jun: So you have to rely on industrialization?
Old Wolf: We don't talk about industrialization anymore. Because the key to industrialization lies in setting standards, if the standards are not quantifiable, detailed enough, and enforceable enough, it will be a disaster later, and it will be changed repeatedly - everyone's standards are different, it is easy to quarrel, or who temporarily has the upper hand, but may be overturned by another person later.
And our technical strength is not reflected in the high-precision aspect, but in the improvement of efficiency. Dongge is our technical partner, I told him, your future direction is only 4 words - tool efficiency. So now AI is also his overall responsibility.
Grape-kun: Are you using AI?
Old Wolf: In the second quarter, the cost of art outsourcing has saved millions, and the AI effect is a little better than outsourcing. Conservatively, AI can probably improve the team's efficiency by 10%~20%. Today, a few people in the company who do AI sit at the door of my office and report to me twice a week.
If the product is stable, I want to set up an AI-AVG game and start working with 15 people. I love trying this new stuff.
Grape Jun: Are there many things in the project that need you to make a decision now?
Old Wolf: That's a lot, but I'll just take care of two. I will also check and accept the new version before it is done, but I will never interfere in the development process in the middle of the version. Because I think that even if it goes crooked, it is the price that needs to be paid for team growth.
Although sometimes I get annoyed and feel that the version is too slow or problematic, I can't do nothing and go to other people's workstations every day to point fingers. The company always has a reporting mechanism, and I just control the project through biweekly meetings.
If the boss often says that what I mention tonight will be seen tomorrow, then the project really can't go on.
Grape-kun: I feel that this management difficulty is much higher than when you were three years younger.
Old Wolf: It's much stricter now than before. Because I find that sometimes the company is too democratic, there are too many voices, and it is actually very problematic. This will seriously affect the development efficiency, imagine a version to do for a month, half of which everyone is arguing to set the standard, then the game really can't be developed.
In addition, I also found that if the boss is hands-on, employees are prone to passively fish, and they will come to you for advice whenever they encounter problems. Although this sounds like a good team atmosphere, even some bosses may like to be "diligent and inquisitive".
But it's a huge disservice to the team. Because after he forms a path dependency, the whole team will be a subordinate dragging the superior, and the superior will drag the superior. A large part of management's responsibility is to set standards and explain them to everyone. And not these specific execution details.
Grape Jun: What is the size of your company now?
Old Wolf: 200 people, three projects, "My Royal Sword Diary" has almost 60 people. Because the company wanted to do its own distribution, it had to be expanded.
Moreover, products like ours are very dependent on data, and if it is internal research and development and external distribution cooperation, the frequency and depth of communication will not meet the requirements.
Grape Jun: Which of these projects are you most optimistic about?
Old Wolf: R&D will always feel that the next product can do better. Because "My Royal Sword Diary" stepped on a lot of pits, these lessons will be used in the Douluo project. And how many resources the Douluo project will continue to invest in, whether it is offensive or defensive, depends on how stable "My Royal Sword Diary" can do in the future.
The official website of Lefu Interactive Entertainment
Grape-kun: How much do you expect to reach in the first month of My Sword Diary?
Old Wolf: There is hope that we will rush 100 million now, but we will not rush hard. Let's see to what extent the new products in these days will roll up the industry, and then adjust the strategy of the product when the time comes. Because I value profit, not turnover, I don't look at the best-selling ranking now.
Whether there is a profit, how much profit there is, whether it can be a positive cycle, I only recognize this now.
Grape Jun: If the product is ready, what will be the next step for the company?
Old Wolf: Let's go and play through the numerical cards first. What is penetration? I think a product or a series cannot be stable in the range of about 500 million US dollars per year. It's not called penetration.
To put it bluntly, I don't have any other hobbies. At that time, in addition to paying everyone's salary and sharing money, the rest of the money will be used to smash the product research and development behind, to snowball, and see what height we can achieve the product.