Nowadays, the attention of the gaming industry is increasingly focused on small and medium-sized products. Mini-games are hotly discussed in China, and ultra-casual categories have also become popular overseas.
For no other reason, in today's competitive market, these products are less expensive and have a good chance of success. This also means that even if there are many trial and error, as long as you succeed once, you can turn over.
But would you think it's a bit unbelievable if I said that a better game could be made at the same low cost?
Funovus is an American game studio dominated by Chinese. The studio, which has only 17 people so far, has four mobile game products since it formed its team in 2019, each of which can earn millions of dollars in revenue through the "advertising + in-app purchase" business model, and there are also multiple games in the development or testing stage. The total number of downloads of the game has exceeded 10 million.
And behind the data, their way of making games is even more special: half of Funovus' staff are planners. Not only that, but with the company's in-house editor, they only need one or two plans to quickly make a game — and, according to the founders, they didn't use 996 overtime to increase speed.
Now Funovus is also preparing to expand further and look for more suitable plans. To do this, they started looking for talent in China. At the bottom of this article, we have also attached relevant information.
Funovus产品《Merge War》
How can such a small team be able to make a great game so quickly?? Recently, we reached out to two of the studio's founders to try to understand the specific development story.
After the exchange, what impressed me the most about their company was not only the "easy-to-use editor" or "capable planning", but also the "passion" and "pessimism" that they repeatedly mentioned. These two ideas that sound completely opposite each other seem to have become a special force in them that has sustained the studio all the way to where it is today.
01 The most passionate thing
"Passion" is a key word that the two founders of Funovus have repeatedly mentioned at the beginning. Both founders had worked in Silicon Valley for many years before starting their businesses, but the life at the end of the day was not what they wanted. So I decided to start my own business. Starting a game company is what they consider to be "the most passionate thing".
The founder has always been a veteran player of Blizzard games, having been in the Warcraft 3 and StarCraft circles for many years. He repeatedly mentioned that when he was in school, he lamented that Blizzard had not been able to bring out the true value of the map editor. This startup project is to open this knot - make a real-time strategy engine and map editor like StarCraft 2, and then see if it can be commercialized. "Blizzard has told us what to do. If we can make our own editor, we can make an entire game with just one plan. 」
But it's not that easy. According to the CEO, in order to make such an editor, the first thing to do is to "do Star 2 from start to finish". It's a lot harder than just making a game with a commercial engine. In terms of time, money, and personnel, they couldn't get it done quickly.
So, they decided to develop their own engines and tools step by step against "Star 2". For example, multiplayer battles, battles, pathfinding and other functions, they don't need them, so don't do them yet. "Cut out the most troublesome modules first, as long as you can make a game. The rest is more on that later. 」
Funovus worked on the editor as he worked on the first game. At the beginning of 2019, they pulled up the team and started making the game. By the end of the year, the tower defense mobile game Wild Sky was completed, and this game is more similar to Royal Guard. As a result, the company began to generate revenue. At the time, their editor was just a tool within the Unity engine. All game content is produced in-editor by the curators.
《Wild Sky》
Less than half a year later, their second game, Wild Castle, was successfully launched.
According to Funovus, they made the game with the editor and it only took 1 person 3 months. "It was very successful and immediately made the company profitable. 」
《Wild Castle》
At the time, planning the process of making a game was as easy as using the Star 2 editor, and there was no need to download Unity. During that time, the company's self-developed engine, editor, and game went hand in hand, and basically formed the company's current form: each mobile game project only needs one or two planners to complete independently, and the art and program are mainly used as a middle platform to help each project.
"The three senior programmers in our company, including myself, have more than 10 years of experience in Silicon Valley. We will continue to provide guidance to the plan, which is the guarantee of the process and structure. As long as this can be done, the planner can avoid making a lot of mistakes when making the game, and the execution efficiency will be improved. In addition, our self-developed engine also ensures the efficiency of the game. The CEO said.
These efficiency guarantees are indeed feasible at the moment: they have released 4 successful mobile games in the past 4 years or so. There are also three games coming online this year, including one for PC.
"We still hope that one day we can bring the editor we made to the majority of players, and finally achieve what Blizzard didn't do back then. So we want to make PC games now and win more PC users. If a game doesn't achieve that, we'll do it again until the goal is achieved. 」
02 More speed, more opportunities
Is this story a little too smooth? It actually has something to do with the positioning of Funovus. In addition to passion, they have also done a lot of rational thinking about their own way out.
The first is category selection.
The CEO told me that they have been able to get all the way to where they are today because they follow one principle – to avoid the big factories. "There are a lot of users and a lot of volume, but what the big manufacturers don't do is our field. 」
Under this principle, they choose some categories that they are passionate about and insightful about. Therefore, as hardcore players, they did not go to games like "Warcraft" and "Interstellar", but to do casual mobile games born out of real-time strategy such as tower defense and idle RPG.
《Merge War》
In the eyes of the two founders, the most important thing is that the gameplay at the heart of the game is interesting. As long as you prototype as soon as possible and verify that the game is fun enough, you're close to success. "We have years of experience in casual real-time strategy, and we know what is fun and that Western players can understand. 」
A lot of mobile games have very deep mechanics and great strategy, but that makes them difficult to understand. According to Funovus, this is a huge obstacle for casual players. As long as the game is easy to understand and fun, early retention can be greatly improved. According to the founder, they don't focus on buying volume, but rely on players' high evaluation of the game to win the algorithm recommendation of the game store.
As for things like the economic system, the Funovus team's current choice is to "refer to the existing successful designs" and then explore their own system based on other people's principles.
Their explanation for this point is very straightforward: "If everything is deeply researched and innovated, we will definitely not be able to do anything. Invest resources in areas that need to be innovated, and other things, or problems that have been solved by predecessors, just use them as doctrines. 」
Only in this way can they achieve rapid product development and iteration. This is their second characteristic.
Due to the low cost of the project, Funovus has more opportunities for trial and error. Anywhere you don't do well, you can quickly report back and make changes, or you can simply start anew, and at the same time, because there are fewer people, they can communicate cheaper. The CEO said that there are often jokes in the industry that the plan dislikes the program and the program dislikes the plan. But here, there's no need for anyone to obey anyone – you have plenty of room to achieve what you want.
"In the tracks that these big manufacturers don't do, we can take greater innovation risks. As long as our quality is guaranteed and we innovate fast enough, we will be able to occupy a place in the market. Once we seize some opportunities in the future and make some hits, it is possible to achieve great success. 」
03 Pessimistic and strong people
"What was the most challenging moment for you?"
The founders told me that as their first venture, they spent a lot of time looking for investment. It is common to be rejected by dozens of institutions in a short period of time. At that time, there was an investment agency that made them feel that it was a joke and asked them to take the time to prepare more materials. So the two founders worked overnight to put out a business plan statement. However, after chatting for 5 minutes, the other party said that the fund's recent policy will not invest in the game industry. "They probably won't take your time for granted. But so what? You have to go on, as long as one person is willing. Success is to go from failure to failure, and still not change enthusiasm.
Later, it was in this constant search for investment that they found Tencent. And the form of their company coincided with the direction that the other party wanted to invest in at that time. As a result, Tencent decided to lead their seed round, and the matter was finally done.
Talking about this, they put forward a special point: entrepreneurs should be pessimistic but strong people.
"If you're always optimistic that you failed this time, but you should succeed after a few more attempts, you're going to get hit harder and harder. However, if you don't dwell too much on the success or failure of each success, and don't expect that every effort will be rewarded, you will persist until the day when you finally succeed. 」
But they also say that this pessimism is not about giving up on success, but about ignoring failure. "A lot of smart people don't succeed easily because they're afraid of failure, they're afraid that their investment won't be fruitful, and they'll avoid mistakes. For example, some people who have been working in large companies for a long time, if they want to be promoted, they have to avoid making mistakes. But entrepreneurs must be willing to do more things and try more, you do 100 things, do one thing right, and you can get a huge return. 」
"So all of our current planners were just graduates before they joined the company. We don't look at experience, we look at their qualifications and passion. These two traits are directly related to a candidate's desire to succeed and their ability to resist setbacks.
In the opinion of the two founders, whether a person has made a game in his spare time and whether the game he has made is in good condition is a specific manifestation of whether the person has passion and qualifications. With these foundations, combined with Funovus' experience in making mobile games, a single plan can make a million-dollar game – and they've proven this many times.
"If you add one more point, it's whether they agree with the pessimistic mindset we are talking about, and have enough self-motivation to stick to it. There are some people who think that if they have not achieved anything, their life is incomplete and they are uncomfortable. We're looking for people like that.
On the one hand, we love the gaming industry and want to leave something here that will be remembered for a long time. On the other hand, the process of starting a business is an unforgettable and exciting life experience. We've been in a big U.S. company for many years, and it's really boring to be able to predict what life will be like in 20 years.
Suppose Funovus fails today, and time goes back to where the dream began, will we still be doing this company? We enjoyed the process and it was a fun and exciting experience. 」
04 Funovus在招聘哪些职位?
●技术策划 (Technical Game Designer)
●资深程序员 (Senior Software Engineer)
●技术美术 (Technical Artist)
●3D美术 (3D Artist)
For specific requirements, please refer to:
https://www.funovus.com/careers
All positions are eligible for visas, including L visas for multinational workers relocating from China to the U.S., H1-B visas for U.S. residents, and green cards.
How do I apply for a position at Funovus?
In order to ensure that the email is processed in a timely manner, please submit your resume according to the following requirements:
Send your resume to the company email: [email protected]
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