Continue to move towards the future
In Chinese tradition, the age of fifteen is called the "Year of Learning" and the beginning of the "Year of Elephant Dance". For a person, this symbolizes the transition to a new stage in life. And the same fifteen years, if put on a company or studio, also mean the same.
Just like today, it is difficult for us to introduce and define the photonic studio group with a single product or a certain track, and it is difficult to summarize its growth footprint in the past 15 years in one or two sentences. Do you say that Photon did "Peace Elite" and "Happy Landlord"? Of course, because they are one of Photon's most recognizable and popular works, and they are the benchmark in tactical competition and chess and card tracks.
It's just that the photons that are now standing at the intersection of the 15th anniversary have long been far more than that. In terms of game category exploration, Photon covers multiple fields such as tactical competition, chess and cards, MOBA, open world, auto chess, MMO, SOC, sports, SLG, and leisure. Among them, there are not only "Peace Elite" that has appeared on mainstream stages such as the Asian Games, but also "League of Legends Mobile Game" and "Battle of the Golden Shovel" and other top track products that you have played but may not know about photons, as well as "Last Sentinel" and "Sword in the Snow" and other masterpieces under research that point to 3A.
If we take a closer look, we will find that in fact, from terminal web games to mobile games and even next-generation consoles/tripleA, photon games imprinted in players' memories can be seen in almost every era. To a certain extent, it can even be said that the past 15 years of photon growth are like a microcosm of the rapid development stage of Chinese games. It's diverse, fast, and it's also building up strength for the future.
Photons are present in every era
Scientific studies have shown that the human brain processes complex and massive amounts of information all the time. In order to reduce power consumption, we will subconsciously label and classify the information.
The process of labelling is carried out all the time and is reinforced by repetition. Corresponding to the field of games, it seems that when we mention Nintendo, we will subconsciously think of Mario with bearded blue pants, and when we talk about photons, we will unconsciously pop up the image of a special soldier wearing a helmet and tie in "Peace Elite". It's fair to say that the more popular and successful a game is, the more stubborn its label impression becomes.
And this has also caused a strange phenomenon, that is, for a long time Photon has been equated with "Peace Elite". In the author's opinion, labeling first shows that players recognize the product and manufacturer, but it does not mean that it is the concept of equal sign. This is like a blind man touching an elephant with a thousand strange answers, and it is impossible for us to understand a three-dimensional and comprehensive photon with just one label and one hit. Even on the product side alone, photons have countless stories.
Let's go back to the beginning of everything and look back at the growth process of photons from the beginning. In 2008, Photon Studio was first established, and at that time, the game industry was dominated by terminal games. During that period, Tencent Games ushered in a product blowout period and achieved excellent commercialization performance by acting as an agent for mature overseas products. However, from the perspective of long-term value, Photon's self-developed products such as "QQ Huaxia" and "Free Fantasy" have laid a solid foundation for Tencent's follow-up game business to a certain extent, and have benefited a lot so far.
Take "Free Fantasy" as an example, at that time, the improvement of the visual performance of the work far exceeded that of the same period of production. For example, effects such as splashes and clouds that we are Xi to today were only available in games at that time with only a few products such as Free Fantasy. Or because of this, the game has captured the love of a large number of players after its launch, and has successfully broken through in the era of MMORPG, becoming one of the memories of many post-80s and 90s terminal games.
More importantly, the spirit of "pursuing technology precipitation and innovation" formed in the process of exploring self-developed games has become the background color of the photon studio group in the future. And this has also penetrated into almost every subsequent product of Photon, and even some products are still imprinted in the author's heart, such as "God of War".
As a game that players once called "the pinnacle of action MMORPG", the first time I learned about God of War was in a college class. At that time, the professional teacher brought its 7-minute epic opening animation to the classroom as a case study for professional classes. The plot script of Dark Journey to the West and the high-quality animation interpretation made the author feel somewhat shocked at the time, and eventually became the first player of the game.
What's more, this is not an isolated case, as it happens on almost every track. In the shooting track, Photon has the top stream "Peace Elite", in the MOBA track Photon came up with "League of Legends Mobile Game", and in the chess and card field, "Happy Landlord" and "Happy Mahjong" have become national series. In addition, products such as "Battle of the Golden Shovel", "Heroes of Might and Magic", "The Strongest NBA", "Dawn Awakening: Vitality" and other products are also among the best in auto chess, SLG, sports, SOC and other subdivisions.
If a single product explodes, we can say luck. But there are typical ones like Photon on every track, and it seems that good luck can no longer be fallacious.
Taking "Peace Elite" as an example, in 2017, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" triggered a craze for tactical competition, and later everyone knew that Photon decided that this track would explode, and devoted himself to the development of mobile tactical competitive games. It may not be understood that Photon has accumulated complete R&D experience and accurate category insights through "National Gun King" and "National Assault" before this. The team not only completed the development of "Peace Elite" with Unreal Engine 4 in four months, but also took the lead in making an 8×8 large map in the battle royale mobile game, achieving many new technological breakthroughs.
On the surface, Peace Elite is successful because Photon seized the opportunity of the mobile game era. But more importantly, because Photon has always been in a state of combat readiness, allowing it to quickly seize the market opportunities of mobile tactical competition, and has the ability to quickly and high-quality create products that meet the needs of players.
In short, in the author's opinion, the success of "Peace Elite" is inevitable, and it is the product of the ability of the Photonic team and the understanding of the industry. From the perspective of Photon's 15-year growth process, it is not difficult to find that it not only shows the path of photon game product iteration, but also the epitome of the rapid development of China's game industry.
The gray line of the grass snake is thousands of miles away. Photon's past efforts have become a footnote to the present, and its continued efforts today may also become the cornerstone of the next era of global boutiques.
Reacquaint yourself with photons, understand photons
So, what projects is Photon working on right now? The labeled memory of image reflection comes into play at this time, and the first thing that comes to my mind is "Last Sentinel" developed by Photon's LightSpeed LA studio, which debuted at the 2023 TGA.
Because this product is less than two minutes of PV video, the image left for players around the world is really shocking.
Cold rainy nights, shrine-like buildings, Japanese lanterns in the distance, and android soldiers with guns on guard, the PV of "Last Sentinel" makes people realize that this seems to be a science fiction story that takes place in Japan in just one shot. In the follow-up, through the protection of the child's android mother and the handsome heroine of drift fighting, the game uses just a few clips to create a Matrix-style suspense effect, as well as a dialectical reflection on technology and human nature.
In film terms, this effect can be achieved because of the high amount of information in a single screen and the guidance of the lens language in place, which is often the characteristic of good sci-fi suspense movies. And applying this kind of cinematic narrative technique to games is also the general trend of triple-A games.
On top of that, the game has a clear open-world gameplay, which is a challenging direction in terms of scale and detail. Looking at the scale, the game is likely to build a map of the whole of Tokyo or even larger, and the amount of work can be imagined. Looking down on the details, the global lighting, material effects, and liquid flow displayed in the PV are all amazing. It's even more challenging to extend these effects to the open world.
Based on the plot telling and visual performance alone, we can see that this new game from Photon LA Studio is aimed at 3A. To be honest, the author was quite shocked when I first saw that Photon LA was a sci-fi open world. Because in the author's opinion, this type of product requires the world's top technical capabilities, rich experience in large-scale project management, as well as long-term and huge resource investment, and requires the project team to have absolute determination and patience.
In other words, this may also indicate that moving closer to the 3A standard has become Photon's requirement for the next generation of products. It is reported that there are far more products under development with similar standards than "Last Sentinel", such as the open-world martial arts RPG "Sword in the Snow" directed by Photon's domestic studio, which has also been prepared and polished for many years.
It is worth mentioning that a similar concept is also mapped to photons at the level of team building. Taking LightSpeed LA as an example, it is the first triple-A game studio in the United States established by Photon in 2020, and it is a global sword built by Photon that has spent years of painstaking efforts to gather top talents from around the world.
Photon LA Studios is led by General Manager Steve C. Martin, who has more than 25 years of industry experience in the development of Grand Theft Auto 5, Red Dead Redemption, Need for Speed: Underground and other blockbusters. At the same time, the team has also brought together a large number of industry veterans from overseas 3A manufacturers such as R-star, Rebirth Studio, 2K games, and Insomniac, with rich experience in open world and console game development.
"Link" (Photon LA Studio)
Steve C. Martin said in a recent studio branding video, "One of the keys to building a team and enabling collaboration is to find the right people. It is reported that since its establishment three years ago, the studio has actively formed a team around 3A, original IP, and open world, and the current scale is about 200 people.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Mr. Chen Yu, president of Photon Studios, also admitted that they are recruiting talent around the world to help the team become a leader in open world, shooting, strategy and competitive games. At the same time, Photon is also actively recruiting in many cities around the world, looking for like-minded people from different countries and backgrounds who are passionate about making original games.
In recent years, many manufacturers are holding high the banner of globalization, how many of them are practicing seriously, and how many are just shouting slogans, we do not know. However, the game industry is ultimately a content industry, and the globalization strategy requires world-class triple-A products that can match it. Photon's ability to build and run in the team in three years is enough to prove its down-to-earth and perseverance to enter the world stage.
In other words, Photon's patience in product development, team building, and long-term operation is the key to becoming a global studio group.
Every encounter is a better photon
The development of games is inseparable from technological iteration, and it is closely related to the needs of users in different eras.
The iterative development of technologies such as communications, engines, and chips has enabled game companies to realize more scenarios, and players in different eras have higher and higher requirements for gameplay, graphics, and content, prompting game manufacturers to actively explore new fields. If these are external drivers, then I think Photon has been actively engaging with this force through its products.
From the terminal game "God of War" developed with the self-developed AGE engine, to the mobile game "Peace Elite", which directly aimed at the Unreal Engine 4 in the early stage of the development of tactical competition. It is not difficult to find that the growth path of photonic products is actually a manifestation and profile of its technology iteration path. Chen Yu has publicly stated that Photon is one of the few game development teams in the world to use Unreal Engine on a large scale, and has accumulated a lot of valuable experience in the process.
And this kind of technology precipitation and persistence does act on products at different stages of photons. Whether it is "Dawn Awakening: Vitality" and "High Energy Heroes" to be launched in 2023, or the triple-A products "Knives in the Snow" and "Last Sentinel" under development, they all represent Photon's hope to continue to provide players with a better experience through continuous technological breakthroughs.
At the same time, in recent years, with the gradual convergence of the Eastern and Western game industries, game cultures in different regions have been constantly colliding, and high-quality cross-terminal products have become one of the irreversible trends in the industry at this stage. In the face of the needs of players and the performance level of platforms in different countries and regions, game manufacturers need to master more sophisticated and multi-dimensional technical capabilities and talent reserves.
Perhaps it is precisely in consideration of this globalization trend that Photon has been actively carrying out technical practice and precipitation. For example, combined with self-developed RBF rigging, Unreal MetaHuman, FACEGOOD, AIGC and other technologies to create the "Peace Elite" digital human "Jili", through XPR models, photonic water systems, physical simulation solutions, etc., to help build a rich and realistic virtual world, and to explore the application of generative AI, strategic collaborative AI, Gvoice AI Codec, and haptic feedback technology in games.
At the same time, Photon is also trying to start from the global layout, reserve top talents in the industry, and establish a mature global collaborative development model. For example, Photon has successively set up LightSpeed LA Studio in the United States (focusing on original IP consoles and triple-A games) and Uncapped Gamse Studio (to create a new generation of RTS), and currently has studios and offices in the United States, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, France and other overseas countries and Hong Kong, China.
Just imagine, if the 3A technology and mobile game R&D technology can be integrated in this process, Photon is expected to gain enough advantages and moats in the global market in the future.
Looking back at the fifteen years of development of Photon, the author believes that it is not objective to look at this studio simply with a certain hit or category at this stage.
In the era of terminal games, when Photon put how to make projects in the first place, they launched a series of classic products such as "God of War" and "QQ Xianxia Biography", but more gains lie in the accumulation of technology and the formation of a team culture that focuses on technical research. In the era of mobile games, because of the advantages of technology and product research and development, they were able to quickly seize the market dividends, and successfully created multiple track benchmarks such as "Peace Elite", "League of Legends Mobile Game", and "Battle of the Golden Shovel", and gradually provided better services to players through technology and operation optimization.
At the same time, it is precisely because of the continuous exploration and precipitation of this technology and product spiral interweaving that Photon has gradually shown positive effects in the field of high-potential games such as 3A, open world, and cross-platform, making it more confident to compete in the next generation of global games.
It can be said that in every era, Photon is very clear about its product planning and strategic direction. And for players in each era, they also encounter better photons.