Ali Games has lost another veteran: Yunfeng left because the engine project was shut down

Tech Planet

2024-05-12 17:20Posted on the official account of Hebei Tech Planet

Following Dingdang's resignation, another founder-level figure of Lingxi Interactive Entertainment also left the Ali system.

On the blog of gamer Wu Yunyang (screen name: Yunfeng), he posted an article titled "Restart", in which he wrote, "Today is my last day at the Guangzhou Ali Center", expressing the news of his imminent departure and the reason for his departure to those who follow his dynamics.

Wu Yunyang (screen name: Yunfeng)

This year's gamers may have rarely heard the name of Yunfeng; However, when the older generation of players mentioned the "Journey to the West" series, many of them had heard his name.

When the market of "Journey to the West Online" collapsed and NetEase was in a dilemma of internal and external difficulties, it was Dingdang and Yunfeng, as well as their teams, that turned the tide and led to the dynasty of NetEase's turn-based MMO in the future.

After leaving NetEase, Yunfeng and Dingdang founded Jianyue Technology together, and a few years later, Jian Yue of the two of them also became the backbone of Ali Games.

Perhaps at the beginning, Yunfeng and Dingdong are two types of people with very different personalities, Yunfeng has always been a "big boy" who is keen on technology, likes to discuss insights on game technology on blogs, and is willing to share life and small things, so that at two key nodes - the crisis of "Westward Journey Online", and Jian Yue was acquired by Ali - Yunfeng always behaves "light and light", and only sees himself as a technical person.

Ding Dong is different, compared to Yunfeng, he is more able to "provoke the beam", although compared to Yunfeng is a little less "pure", but this makes him a rare professional manager in the Chinese game circle.

Jian Yue was acquired by Alibaba, and Dingdang and Yunfeng took two completely different paths: Dingdang Torrent Bravely, carried the banner of Ali Games in one fell swoop, and withdrew from the production of specific projects, and dominated the situation as a "big factory executive".

In 2017, after being included in Alibaba, Yunfeng resigned from all management responsibilities, stepped back to the second line, and returned to the original intention of being a game engine, concentrating on a "3D engine designed for mobile devices" - Ant Engine.

Six years later, Ant Engine's project was shut down by Alibaba, and in a blog post, Yunfeng also wrote that this was the direct reason for his departure.

"I don't feel like the company wants to develop its own game client engine anymore, or at least I don't agree with my development plan for Ant Engine. Of course, these are personal inferences and only represent my personal opinions. Yunfeng wrote.

In order to keep Ant Engine, Yunfeng wrote in his blog that he found people from various project teams in the company for a long talk, including project producers, programmers, planners, artists, and so on, in order to bring some support to the engine project with the performance and graphics of the engine.

And Yunfeng's situation may also see the change in the attitude of large manufacturers towards games: the engine project belongs to technology research and development, and cannot directly bring benefits, even if you want to see the return, the cycle is not in the current few years.

"Maybe Ali Games has more urgent things to do now, and it can't wait for three or five years from now to bring benefits." At least in Yunfeng's view, it seems that the group has lost patience with Ant Engine.

As early as when Dingdang resigned, Leifeng had communicated with friends in the industry, and an investor said, "To maintain the stock price, the best action for Ali Games is to have no action - to operate the "Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition" well, and invest less money to open new projects, which is conducive to their stable profits in the medium term." ”

Perhaps Yunfeng leaves, and Ali puts more energy into the operation of existing projects, which is the most reasonable choice for the company.

Before leaving, one of the last things that Ding Dong helped the "old comrade" Yunfeng did was to promote the open source of Ant Engine at the company level, not only helping the project win the opportunity of open source, but also willing to donate the code and art assets of a project under development to make Ant Engine's road smoother.

In the next step, due to lack of manpower, Yunfeng has been unable to maintain the open source of Ant Engine full-time. His initial plan was to make a PC indie game based on the Windows platform, but what he wanted to do was still in the works.

Yunfeng's departure represents the exit of the older generation of gamers in Ali Games, and more young people will naturally take over the baton.

On the road of game development, Yunfeng is a veteran who has achieved fame, but he is also a "young man" - games have never been just a money-making tool for him to make a living, he still has faith in games, otherwise he would not choose to develop independent games and face the cold choice of the market again.

"Look up to the sky and laugh and go out, no one in the world knows you." A netizen wrote in the comment area. (Leifeng.com)

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