When I write a bug it becomes the core gameplay

Chapter 520 Excellent work "Nine Swords"

""Nine Swords"...

"I vaguely feel like I've heard something about it. Is this game still in operation?"

Lilith subconsciously opened the official platform to search, and found it.

But judging from the current data, it is quite bleak. It cannot even crack the top 100 on the best-selling list of mobile games. As for the specific profit data, it is naturally impossible to estimate.

"When did our old friend Shengjing Group come up with such a game? It was so quiet.

"But it's normal. Shengjing Group is also a big company. It has so many games. Some games have very little investment. They are all lottery-based. It's normal if you haven't heard of them." Lilith said while reading the game introduction.

Gu Fan shook his head slightly: "No, Mr. Li, this game is not a lottery game. It is said that the investment in it is as high as one billion."

Lilith was shocked: "What? Taking over the young master?

“One billion!

“It only took one billion to come up with something like this!

"Isn't this money laundering?"

Gu Fan was silent for a moment: "This...it's hard to say.

“In short, the project of this game was established very early, and the research and development started about ten years ago.

"It took more than seven years of research and development, and was officially launched about three years ago. Then it has been hanging around until now. Because no specific data has ever been disclosed, no one knows what the revenue level is.

"Anyway, it has never been on any best-selling list. Players all suspect that this game will not even be able to repay the operating expenses. However, Shengjing Group cannot accept that its one billion is wasted in any case, so it has been holding on. On, did not stop taking it.

"Oh, by the way, Shengjing Group launched a vigorous internal investigation two years ago and sent some corrupt elements to prison.

"So everyone has speculated that an insider may have embezzled half of the billion-dollar R&D and promotion funds for the game "Nine Swords". But there is no real evidence for this kind of thing, so it can only be talked about after dinner. .

"But putting aside things like money laundering and corruption, by just studying the game itself, we can learn some useful experiences from it."

At this time, Lilith has already found some promotional materials for this game, including CG and PV, as well as actual machine demonstrations.

In fact, it looks good at first glance.

"Hey, why is there another game called "Nine Swords"? Oh, it's called "Legend of Nine Swords", but this one is ranked 97th on the best-seller list!" Lilith asked curiously, "This is Did Shengjing Group redo it?”

Gu Fan explained: “No, no, no, this is the work of another company.

"Because the name "Nine Swords" comes from a very classic martial arts, or fairy novel. Its story background is a martial arts style with a high martial arts style, and it is a classic work that was well-known to every household decades ago. .

"Then the various copyrights of this book sold a lot, so it's not just Shengjing Group that is making the "Nine Swords" game, but other companies are also making it.

“But what’s a bit frustrating is that “Legend of Nine Swords” is a relatively old-fashioned mobile card game, and the production level is strictly speaking only the level of ten years ago.

"Nine Swords" by Shengjing Group is known as the top open world 3A masterpiece of the next era.

“In terms of investment, it’s hard to say whether the former has 10 million or not. Compared with one billion, there is definitely a gap of a hundred times.

"As a result, Shengjing Group's "Nine Swords" was outsold by the mobile card game "Legend of Nine Swords" in terms of revenue. This is enough to show that Shengjing Group must have done more than one thing right, otherwise it would not have caused the trouble it is now. so."

Lilith couldn't help but be in awe: "Well, what you said makes sense!"

Before, although Lilith knew that the game "Nine Swords" was very cool and failed, she did not have a particularly clear idea of ​​how cool and failed it was.

Now she has.

Being 100 times invested and killed by an opponent with the same name would seem outrageous even in a novel, but it happened in the real world.

All I can say is that the matching mechanism in this world is indeed amazing!

And this also shows one thing: the failure of "Nine Swords" cannot be explained by "corruption" alone.

No matter how greedy you are with that billion, you will only be greedy for 500 million at most.

You can't be blown away by a game with an investment of less than 10 million, right?

So I must have made a series of wrong decisions to achieve such a great achievement.

And what specific things did you do wrong? This is worth learning from Nitian Game.

Gu Fan continued: "And what's even more interesting is that within Shengjing Group, there is actually a very strict screening mechanism.

“When Shengjing Group was producing games, the competition between various projects was very fierce, and it could even be said that they were ‘raising worms’.

“At every stage of project development, a comprehensive evaluation will be conducted. If the evaluation does not meet expectations, it may be significantly modified or even directly axed.

"The game "Nine Swords" is interesting: it actually won the title within Shengjing Group. "During the development period, it went through many evaluations, but every evaluation passed.

"Even if the project team has certain project management problems, resulting in a waste of investment, in general, the money should be spent in real terms, otherwise the senior management of Shengjing Group will not realize it after the game is released. Found something wrong and started a thorough investigation.

"So I think analyzing the failure of this game is very important for our subsequent success."

Lilith nodded quickly: "Yeah, that's right!

"Gu Fan, you have successfully aroused my interest, so what is the problem with this game? I am so curious!"

Gu Fan said calmly: "Mr. Li, please listen to me slowly.

“First of all, let’s go back to when the Nine Swords project was first initiated.

"At that time, the "Nine Swords" project team was ambitious. Their idea was to use the standards of AAA masterpieces and open-world gameplay to create an epoch-making mobile game.

"Learning from the strengths of many companies, and combining it with the super IP of "Nine Swords" and the various accumulations of Shengjing Group's previous successful games, isn't it possible to have a super hit product at your fingertips?"

Lilith thought for a while: "Well, it does sound reasonable.

"Wait, this seems a bit similar to what you said before.

"A 3A masterpiece for mobile games?"

Gu Fan nodded: "Yes, the first reason for the failure of reviewing "Nine Swords" is that Shengjing Group decided to use 3A standards to develop mobile games, and a very important point in this is the choice of game engine. .

“We all know that Qianhuan Editor is cheap, easy to use and stable, so mobile games during that period were basically produced using Qianhuan Editor.

“However, at that time, the official beta version of Wanxiang Editor had just been launched, and it was not even open to general game developers.

"After all, Shengjing Group is a big company, first come first served, so of course it can be very simple to get Vientiane Editor from the official side.

Lilith thought carefully for a moment: "Wait! The Vientiane Editor has a lot of bugs when we use it!

“Then during the internal testing, wouldn’t it be even more of a disaster?

"Is Shengjing Group out of their minds? They don't want to collect players' negative emotions, so why do they use this editor!"

Gu Fan explained: "This is of course a hindsight view. In fact, there were many game companies that cheated on us back then, and Shengjing Group was just one of them.

“When Wanxiang Editor was first released, everyone knew that it would be unstable as a new engine, but to what extent would it be unstable? It’s hard to tell.

“It was only after a large number of game companies fell into the trap in the past three to five years that everyone gradually formed a consensus that ‘Wanxiang Editor is a scam’.

“At that time, there were many reasons why Shengjing Group chose Wanxiang Editor.

“Compared with Qianhuan Editor, Wanxiang Editor certainly has many advanced functions, which was also the highlight of the official promotion at the time.

“These include a fully automatic lighting system, which means that producers no longer need to adjust lights; an advanced scanning import system, which means that modeling costs are greatly reduced; and powerful AI generation functions, which can save many templates. ized dialogue action production time…

“In general, these new features have a common benefit, which is that they can reduce the cost in the development process of large-scale 3A masterpieces, and also give some small manufacturers the opportunity to overtake in corners.

“The price is that the stability of this engine is not good, there will be all kinds of wonderful bugs, the game will become more and more stuck after playing for a long time, and there will be all kinds of unexpected minor problems, etc.

“But how can I put it, from the perspective of Shengjing Group at the time, these were small problems that could be solved. Anyway, wouldn’t it be better to spend more time on optimization.

"In hindsight, Shengjing Group was indeed too optimistic, because until today, with the joint efforts of us and the authorities, these problems have been barely solved."

Lilith felt a little regretful: "Yes, it has been solved. What a pity."

Obviously, the first thing that came to her mind was "replicating the successful route."

Gu Fan continued: "But this success needs to be added with a qualifier, that is, it was successful on a high-end computer.

“On mobile phones, so far there has not been any successful game using Vientiane Editor.

"After all, the difference in configuration between mobile phones and computers lies here."

Lilith nodded suddenly: "What about that time? The game "Nine Swords" should also be known as three-terminal interoperability, right? So how does it perform on mobile phones?"

Gu Fan coughed twice: "At that time, the players at that time were teasing me like this:

"The graphics of this game are really good. It is "Nine Swords" on a high-end computer, "Five Swords" on a mid-to-low-end computer, and "One Sword" on a mobile phone.

"Because at that time, in order to ensure that the game could run on mobile phones, Shengjing Group had exhausted all conventional optimization methods and had no choice but to reduce the picture quality and special effects. Then, the originally lush hillsides turned green. The polygonal mounds and the number of cool fairy sword special effects around the character were cut to the ankles.

"But looking at it optimistically, this is not bad. After all, even if "One Sword" is cut off, these players' mobile phones can still barely run the game.

"There are still many players whose mobile phones are stuck in the compilation color palette or the loading interface. In the end, they can't even play "One Sword" and can only play "Zero Sword"."

(End of chapter)