Shanghai Magic Sword Network is really not well-known in the industry, but its financing resume is quite good. In just six years since its establishment, they have received investment from miHoYo, Gigabit and Thunder Games.
The founder graduated from the School of Architecture of Tongji University, studied interior design that had nothing to do with the game, and after graduation, he entered Jiuyou and became a planner. Three years later, he started his first business and founded Shanghai Fangcun Technology with his partner.
During the Fangcun period, the main works of the fork were "Monster X Alliance" and "Demon Sky".
"Monster X League" is a pet development mobile game, and it is also the company's first work, which has received nearly 62 million turnover in nine months after its launch - Fang Cun has also won the favor of Aofei Entertainment with this.
After Aofei Entertainment wholly acquired Fangcun, he served as the producer of "Demon Sky", which is a turn-based RPG mobile game for cultivating immortals. The game was authorized by the top online IP "Demon Sky" at that time, and was operated by NetEase (it was also NetEase's first agent IP mobile game in 2015), which was unrivaled for a while.
However, after finishing "Demon Heaven", the fork was silent for a while. "I just want to make an action game", this idea became the starting point for a fresh start. Fork started his second venture - this time specifically for action games.
The first product of the new company, Shanghai Magic Sword Network, is Blade of the Abyss, a dark-style action roguelike mobile game published by Thunder Games. On the first day of its launch, the game ranked No. 2 on the iOS Free List and No. 36 on the best-selling list. Gigabit, the parent company of Thunder Games, mentioned "Demon Abyss Blade" as a representative of new games that contributed revenue in its financial report that year (2020).
"Blade of the Abyss" iOS free list + best-selling list results
For a magic sword network with only a dozen people at the time, it is very gratifying that the first work can get such results. Taking advantage of this momentum, Magic Sword Network soon set up a second product, "Blade Realm", which is also an action roguelike mobile game, which has now undergone several rounds of testing on TapTap, and the quality and feedback are not bad.
Looking at it now, the results of "Blade of the Abyss" do have some luck elements, however, it is not 2020, and many strong competitors have emerged in the action track. In such a market environment, what is the current situation of a small company such as Magic Sword Network? How should we adjust in the future? With these questions, the game news and the fork chatted.
"I thought I was a good boss and came out."
Q: Why did you enter the game industry in the first place?
A: First of all, I am a person who loves to play games, and I studied interior design at the School of Architecture of Tongji University. At that time, the teacher said that he was known as the future star of architectural design, and he was 55 years old when he was named the future star. I thought to myself that at the age of 55, I will have no future, forget it, I still choose the industry I like.
Since I love playing games, I design them. When I graduated, I invested in three big game companies in Shanghai, Jiuyou, Jiucheng and Shanda, and they all got offers, and Jiuyou was the first to get it, so I went to work for Jiuyou.
Q: Why did you start your own business?
A: It turned out that in Fangcun Technology, the company was wholly acquired by Alpha Entertainment. As for me, I was young and ignorant, and I thought I was good at being the boss and came out. But being a boss will have a lot of time to spend on things that have nothing to do with making games, and on the surface it seems that twenty or thirty percent of the time is taken, but in fact, the energy is taken up sixty or seventy.
Q: "Blade of the Demon Abyss" and "Blade Realm" are both action games + Roguelike, is it because you are good at it or do you like it?
A: Because I like action games. For example, "Elden Ring" and "Wolf", including the recent "Black Myth: Wukong", we (the team) are basically playing, and everyone still likes to play action games. Action games are a dream for our team.
The meat pigeon is an element that we think everyone likes more after we make it, it gives the game a random, (player) easy to get cool feeling, and it is a very good game experience.
Screen from "The Blade of the Abyss".
Q: I used to do immortal cultivation games, which seems to have little to do with entrepreneurial projects?
A: I actually like Xiuxian very much, and the most I usually read novels is to read Xiuxian novels, and the "Demon Heaven" I did before was actually innovative in terms of combat gameplay. In the game, players can put magic weapons to show their magical powers, and there is also a magic weapon to fight.
Our team likes to make products that are innovative in combat, taking into account the fit of combat and core expression. I have the highest rating of "Wolf", the player plays as a ninja, and the character and combat style are very suitable.
If we want to do immortal cultivation again, I have actually thought about it, but we also have to wait for a good idea.
Q: The company has three investments: miHoYo, Thunder and Gigabit, can you talk about how it was discussed?
A: miHoYo's investment was given when we had nothing at that time, which should be our initial idea and recognition of people. I knew Big Viagra very early, at that time, miHoYo was still doing "Honkai School 2", and I talked about it when I had the opportunity later, and the investment was in 2018, and then "Honkai Impact 3" was launched, and miHoYo was already very successful.
Gigabit was first contacted because of the Demo of "Abyss Blade", and the response of the demo on TapTap was also good. Thunder Games (note: the publisher of "Blade of the Abyss") is out of the importance of the product, and the track we chose is in line with the category they need.
Thunder is a strategic partner, and "Blade Realm" was expected to act as an agent for Thunder at the beginning.
Q: Did the results of "Blade of the Abyss" meet your expectations?
A: It is indeed much higher than expected, on the one hand, the publisher Thunder Games is helping us to make a magnification, and on the other hand, it may be that the luck is better and the market is in a better time period.
Q: In the previous interview before the launch of "Demon Abyss Blade", there was a program that said that he wanted to drive a Tesla, and another planner wanted to buy a house, have these been realized?
A: Tesla is open, and the house is bought, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with our company. (Game Update: Saved from your own salary?) Plus people are also married and have a partner, so let's work together.
Q: Did you get back the house you sold when you first started your business?
A: Don't mention this, but have faith in the future! If you don't earn it back now, it doesn't mean you can't earn it back in the future!
Q: How big is the studio now, and does it cost a million per month?
A: No, we're only about 30 people right now. Now everyone is also working hard, waiting for the launch of "Blade Realm".
In the middle, the number of people increased to almost 40 or more, but later it was adjusted. We had a small team to do a mini-game, but it turned out that it didn't really fit well.
Didn't you see that "Misty Continent" (a roguelike mini-game) was also very popular at that time? We always feel that we can't do it very quickly, but when we make a small game, we don't understand anything about finding a release and buying volume. I feel that no matter how I buy it, it is very expensive, and I can't get back the cost, there are too many things that are unknown to our R&D team.
On the way to the review, we encountered that this is not what we are good at, what we are good at may be to do gameplay, not to study ROI.
"All the money earned by the first generation has been invested in the second generation."
Q: Can you tell us about the cost of making Blade Realm?
A: In the beginning, there were more people than one generation. When I first started my business, there were very few people, seven or eight people, and then there were only 15 people online. There were already more than a dozen people when the second generation first started the project, and now there are nearly 20 people.
The development cost of the first generation is very simple, that is, it is about less than 8 million, and it should be so much cash in total, and it happens to be online when it is used up. The second generation has currently spent about 25 million. Basically, all the money earned by our team is invested in the second generation.
(Note: In the description of the fork, "Blade of the Demon Abyss" and "Blade Realm" are called the first and second generation products respectively, and in order to facilitate questions, the game Xinzhi used the same title in the interview.) ）
Q: Have you ever considered not doing "Blade Realm"?
A: This is not in line with the mentality at that time, we should have been quite successful at that time, thinking that we should be a second generation soon. At first, we felt that "Demon Abyss Blade" had a lot of regrets or mistakes, and we hoped that we could come up with a product as soon as possible to solve these problems.
For example, the value of the later generation is not well controlled, and the second generation wants to try to prove that it has the ability to solve the problem of this balanced value. There is also content that is consumed very quickly, resulting in many of our later decisions, which simply add some cultivation dimensions or systems to extend the player's online time, but this will bring a bad experience to the player.
Q: The plot of "Blade Realm" is relatively weak, is this the premise at the beginning?
A: Our product development cycle is still very long. The first generation of the product was launched in September 2020, and the second product is ready to be built nearly a year after the official launch. The development of "Blade Realm" started in June 2021, and it has been nearly 3 years now.
At that time, the ambition was a bit big, and I did a lot of things - such as the big map gameplay, with a rich plot and characters. But we are a little afraid that we won't be able to hold on to those contents, one is that the team is relatively small, and there is a lack of cost to do the plot, and the other is that our core users will feel that telling too much story will drag down the pace of the game. This effect is not ideal, and the progress is pulled back.
We were going back in October last year. Our expectations were quite high, but we found that we couldn't hold on to them, so we adjusted our expectations at that stage.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for the core mechanic of Bladeland, "Toughening and Hitting the Wall"?
A: Every time we make a game, we want to do a certain amount of innovation in the combat experience, and we set such a goal, and the first point we think of is that we want to make the combat experience more anime, because the art style we use this time is biased towards the style of comics or anime, but we are not in full 3D, which is difficult for us, (so) we have watched a lot of classic anime bridges.
For example, anime like One Piece will often knock you out with a punch or kick, crash into a tree and break it, and then crash you into a wall. Then we felt that this point had not been done in other games, and it was very anime, so we introduced this point into the battle and made it an important combat experience in the game.
"Blade Realm" toughens the mechanism of hitting the wall
In fact, the most suitable for our IP is "Death", which also has the concept of a blade. Originally, I thought about linking up with others, but we are a small company, so let's consider this later.
Q: The endless mode in the game takes about half an hour, why is it designed to take so long to play?
A: Actually, for us, we think it is a difficult point, and we ourselves understand that the shorter the time, the more in line with the habits of mobile phone users, but I went from not having equipment to collecting all the equipment, and then making my routine produce a change, and produce an in-game growth to bring a sense of coolness, (this process) The shorter the time, the more difficult it is.
Q: We observed that the boss room is designed with a limited time during the game, and the value of the character is actually linked to the payment point, which seems to give players a bad impression?
A: Yes, I think this is a relatively obvious problem exposed in this test, and we plan to have a meeting to discuss how to solve this problem. We think that the most intuitive and fastest way to increase damage is definitely not to recharge and let players know which cultivation points to tell players in the early stage that they don't pay.
Let the player fully understand that I should pass the equipment at this stage, collect the equipment and then level up the equipment, then collect the right entries, and then make up a better bond, and then come to beat the level, or improve their own operation.
Q: The operation is the biggest improvement, and then the value?
A: Yes. I think so.
For example, after the player gets the blade, he can play more different routines, which is one of our main charges. Whether it's a digital stuck point stuck with me, or is it just to improve the experience of this routine, players actually have a rod scale in their hearts.
And then the equipment part is the data dimension, in fact, we want players to know that this piece is not paid, and at the moment we just don't think it's particularly good. We may have to think about how to open this pool, or not, how to get this Horcrux, and redesign it.
Q: Will Blade Realm be a season?
A: Yes, but it won't clear things, and it will be redesigned, because the first generation of the season will clear all the equipment and everything, and it will be re-played and upgraded, and the player experience is really not good. Then this second generation will find a way to make some new dimensions, and then only these dimensions will play a role in the season, and through such a way to do the gameplay of the season.
Q: In the future, will the second generation have a union or mercenary gameplay to join?
A: The second generation first does a good job of this union play, and the first generation has a group book, at that time, there were actually some users who particularly liked the version, and then another part of the users because they couldn't get into the book, or no one to group him, they would think this was particularly bad, and the second generation hoped that this problem would be solved first.
Q: We see that AI seems to be used in art, what kind of work does AI do in it?
A: We once sent the game to some UP master experience, and there are also up masters who say that this is all drawn by AI, and our art is crit when he hears it, and he is still uncomfortable for several days, he thinks I just draw poorly, why do you say that it is drawn by AI.
Art is the shortcoming of our team, and we haven't recruited particularly powerful artists, so it's basically the same as the original art team. The first year was probably spent in the art learning process, we first made a version, then iterated, and then slowly improved to get to the current level.
Q: How many major versions have you iterated on?
A: The third one.
Q: So there is no AI mapping?
A: Most of the role of AI is in the early stage, providing us with an inspiration. We'll type in what kind of character we want, and then look at the AI-generated images to provide some material for the art, but we'll still draw according to our own ideas.
There was a character avatar selection in the game before.,We've been forgetting to draw it.,In order to be able to start using it.,We found some avatar pictures on the Internet and put them one by one.,And then people said that you guys are drawn by AI? When we looked at it, it was indeed oh, this part was missing, and then it was all replaced.
We don't resist AI, but if AI can draw better than us or fit our style, then I think it can be used.
Q: Will this game still be released for Thunder?
A: Our initial expectation for this product ("Blade Realm") was also to be represented by Thunder. Later, the game was changed back to a vertical product, and they also felt that the team could do the publishing on their own and accumulate experience.
The game is now planned for our own release. So now it is still a state of frugality, and we will find some cooperative partners to help us solve some problems in the distribution.
Q: Will the current market environment of action mobile games make our team more and more stressful?
A: That's for sure, we all think this market is easy to roll.
"We're working in that direction too."
Q: Is there an approximate release time for Blade Realm?
A: It's expected to be launched this year, so let's try it and see if we can do it.
Q: What are your expectations for the game's performance after launch?
A: It's hard to say specifically.
First, the current environment is also more competitive, and when the generation is launched, it is similar to a blank stage in the market, and everyone will have a lot of freshness. Now, it's hard to get players to think like that. The level of innovation in this product is also not to such a height. Therefore, it has to be combined with the player's experience feedback in the game.
Recently, it will be a little more difficult for the whole industry, and it may be a little anxious for us to feel. This kind of product is not as eye-catching as a big game, and it is not a good ROI for a small game. It can neither attract attention through the video of station B, nor can it be bought by volume.
We still want to cultivate a way to play, and then go to a certain part of the market to make the game you want to experience, you can't experience it in other games, then I will make such a product, it's just that it's more difficult for me to find where these users are.
Q: Do you have any divisions for the target audience of Blade Realm?
A: Our core players should be users who like to play challenging action games, and who like to have a certain level of development and build.
I think there will continue to emerge such users, and in this test, we can clearly see that the proportion of young people is actually the first.
Our own division of 16-25 years old is the first segment, which accounts for 45%, and almost all of them are men. This time the test was also 95% male, and I was surprised that there were 5% female gamers.
Q: What kind of player feedback is there that you didn't expect from this version of the test?
A: Most of our contradictions actually have some thoughts, and then just talk about what the extent of this amplitude is, this time I hope to confirm it in the test, after the test, we found that the amplitude on the cultivation system is not the same as what we thought before. It is difficult for players to perceive that the payment of the cultivation point is not particularly important, and this issue is still not well considered.
(Game News: So how to solve this problem?) We do a good job of guiding, and a lot of the game is a process of collecting slowly. Paying in this dimension doesn't need to be particularly large, just to make up for some urgently needed things, so that players can grow quickly and then follow the activity. The player knows that your payment point is not particularly deep, everyone is slowly accumulating, it is nothing more than I pay a little money to accumulate a little faster, and the experience is better.
Q: Is there anything you can share during the test?
A: Speaking of which, I have another story to tell, before the test, I asked our technical boss that our server would not blow up the server, right? Or I will go to worship tomorrow morning, and he said that it is better to worship the Bodhisattva than to worship me, and I said okay, then I will worship you, but the next day I still blew up. I said that it is useless to worship you, I still have to worship the Buddha next time. When I take the next test, I'm going to go to Longhua Temple to pay a respect.
Q: Do you have any interesting stories with players?
A: There are a lot of players in the group who are more enthusiastic, and then they give us a lot of opinions, and you can see that they talk every day, and then they spray all the time, but you can feel that they actually want the game to be better.
This vertical product is not very popular at present, after this test, it will be tested again in two months, hoping to be launched at the end of the year, and it is also unknown whether it can return to its original cost in the future. There were also a lot of questions about this test, such as paid bootstrapping and blow feedback.
Q: Did your previous experience make you take fewer detours on the road to entrepreneurship?
A: Yes. It's a feeling, I think I'm going less, I don't know if it's going less, I can only say that sometimes the previous experience may help me a little.
Q: Do you have any special views on the future in the action + meat pigeon mobile game track?
A: There may be products with large user types, but they can't be done by simply catering to the pan-user experience or reducing the difficulty. At some point, there may be a company that makes a very high-quality, high-user product, or even a product that has an out-of-the-circle effect. But I don't think anyone has done it yet, but there are already some signs of it, and although our capacity is limited, we are working in this direction.
epilogue
On the one hand, he will feel that "this market is easy to roll", but on the other hand, he can say from the bottom of his heart, "Have confidence in the future!"
However, in today's market environment, the products of the action track are no longer scarce, and even a large number of top-quality head products such as "Jeopardy Zero" and "Singing Tide" have emerged. Due to the constraints of capital and technology, small R&D teams are stuck in a situation where they are unable to compete with the top products, and second, although the quality is much better than that of Mini Games, the cost is higher than that of Mini Games. In the face of such a situation, it may be a feasible path for small companies to explore new ways to play, create unique experiences, and focus on core users.
Magic Sword Network did the same - adjusted its expectations in time and drastically changed "Blade Realm" back to a vertical product. However, today's gamers' expectations for vertical products have also been high. In terms of the quality of the game in this test alone, Magic Sword Network's "Blade Realm" has been finalized in terms of gameplay and core experience, and the completion of the game has reached a level sufficient to be launched, although there is still a gap with the products of first-tier manufacturers, it must be a good level in a small team of more than a dozen people.
What the future holds, no one can say. In this era, in this market, there is an original intention to see the results.