Text: Isaac & Thomas's Skull

Recently, there has been a lot of buzz in the industry about high-quality games, and it's like a big deal.

How much will China's gaming industry be affected? Will high-quality stand-alone games and even triple-A products usher in a wave of craze? What do those cutting-edge gamers think? …… It is difficult to reach a definitive conclusion on these issues, and practitioners also have different opinions.

However, one thing is obvious: at this stage, manufacturers like Tencent will naturally receive more attention. Everyone will be curious whether Tencent, which theoretically has the most excellent technology and resources, will make up its mind to invest in the research and development of triple-A games, or continue to prioritize the sustainable development of evergreen games. Or ...... Do I want them all?

Recently at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, we joined several other colleagues to chat about these topics with Leo, head of Tencent's TiMi J3 studio, and Shadow, producer of Operation Delta.

Whether it is from the qualifications of these two people or the quality standards of their products, they may be quite suitable to answer these questions - "Delta Action" will not only be Tencent's first multi-terminal cross-platform product, but also a rare FPS that wrestles with top masters on the world stage with a quality close to the triple-A level.

Overseas, the testing of Operation Delta has also received a lot of attention. On Twitch, it was ranked No. 1 in terms of live streaming popularity for a while, and the ranking of the Steam wishlist also quickly soared to No. 8. To a certain extent, it can be said that it has a place in the hearts of the most core group of FPS players.

Both interviewees mentioned that one of the most important decisions for Operation Delta was the decision to devote a lot of development time to the PC version after attending Gamescom last year. Now that they've been doing this for a whole year, they're finally at the table, and "a lot of people who play the top PC games now play your game and keep it...... If you don't reach this level, no one else will look at you - 'Why should I scold a mobile game?' '…… For the shooting category, overseas, if the PC does not stand, the mobile game will not be used. "

The following is a transcript of the conversation, some of which have been compiled for ease of reading:

01

3A buyout game,

Probably more worth doing than evergreen games

Q: How has Operation Delta fared overseas since the beta? What do overseas players think of you, including this time in Cologne?

Leo: It's been a lot better than I expected, and now we're seeing 95% of the feedback that's positive, and they're really feeling good.

Q: Why?

Leo: First, they feel that the quality and content of the project have reached a certain level. Second, as an F2P product, the quality of Operation Delta also exceeded their psychological expectations; Thirdly, they have never seen our service attitude, openness and timeliness of communication.

Shadow: Yes, our attitude is very user-oriented, and we communicate very sincerely on X, which will make players feel different from other manufacturers. At the fair, another father came to us with his child to take a picture and said he had seen me on social media.

Q: Recently, the industry likes to discuss triple-A products, as a game with nearly triple-A quality, is there any important difference between your R&D and the former?

Shadow: For example, now that Operation Delta is being updated overseas, we may have to meet more than 200 requests a day, and if there is a bug, we will directly update it.

Why? Because we're data-sensitive, we lose a bit of data from day 10 to day 11, and we all think about where it comes from and why players don't like it. We will also do a lot of debugging, such as AI, matching algorithms, the delivery of games, whether to launch new activities or experiences...... Those overseas teams will be a little surprised to hear this.

Leo: We often talk about "impulse + scientism" internally, and many people feel bad when they hear the word scientism. But if you only rely on creative impulse to make evergreen games, you will have all kinds of problems, because content creation is sometimes out of control.

If you can't validate all the decisions that come with self-expression in a very scientific way, you must not be a qualified manager. It looks very cold, but it must be important.

Q: But does this also mean that Tencent will almost only choose to make evergreen games, and it is difficult to develop triple-A games within the company?

Leo: Actually, after coming to Cologne, I have some new thoughts - although the threshold of 3A products is extremely high, correspondingly, there are not many teams that have reached the threshold, which means that its stability and return rate will be relatively higher.

Q: If the evergreen game is successful, the return rate is more than a little higher, right?

Leo: People only see the success of evergreen games, but what if it fails?

First of all, there are very few people who can cross the threshold; Secondly, on the premise that everyone enters the door, the evergreen game is winner-takes-all, and the rest are all deflated, and even on a vertical track where shooting, there can be dozens of corpses. And doing triple-A games can at least ensure that many teams will return to their original costs.

Shadow: For example, if you have worked for four or five years as a producer and done a mature project, you may be confident that you can recruit a lot of people, make a popular genre game with a formula, and add some design. This formula is not so difficult to set, so there will be countless manufacturers who will follow suit. But a game defined by what you think is a framework and inertial thinking, the market may not need it at all.

However, there may be no more than 5 game teams that can meet the 3A standard in the country. To be able to make such a high-standard game, no matter what cultural theme or design is used, this specification will make you rare in the market, have unique competitiveness in all aspects, and can also ensure a good sales volume and user scale. And users will feel that I am buying a real work of art and it will resonate.

However, perhaps in another 10 or 20 years, the standards set by these five teams will become formulas. At this point, 5 teams will become 20, 30, and users will have some fatigue. At that time, manufacturers may return to giving you better service through some new designs, or some new second curves will appear.

Q: And the term evergreen game itself has a bit of a survivor bias.

Leo: Yes, in an era, there are theoretically no more evergreen games than a few evergreen games. It can only be said that Tencent has indeed stepped on the point of all evergreen games in the past.

But even if "Operation Delta" seizes the opportunity of this era to be evergreen, we have chosen the right strategic choice, it does not mean that we can still choose the right one in the case of another attempt.

To make an evergreen game, the failure rate is very high, and it will be very painful to fail. As long as 3A can be made, it does have a stable rate of return.

Q: Will the triple-A games we are talking about be different from those of European and American manufacturers, for example, will more GaaS content be added?

Leo: This matter still needs to be clarified - triple-A games must be bought out. "Operation Delta" has some elements of the 3A's, but fundamentally, it is still going evergreen.

Shadow: Its potential energy, its technical strength, and the feeling it gives to users have all touched the threshold of 3A. But it's not a triple-A game, it's an evergreen game of a higher standard.

02

Overseas, join

The battlefield of the world's best titles

Q: On a global scale, what level do you think "Operation Delta" is at?

Leo: Tencent has invested in a lot of overseas companies, and we get together every year. When I talked about Delta Force last year, almost no one knew what it was all about. But at least everyone knows you this year, and that's a good start. They also feel that Tencent's approach is new to them in terms of update speed and daring to invest.

Because many European and American games, if they are not top developers, they can't invest so much manpower and resources, and they can't do real GaaS. For example, we can start making new maps 6~8 months in advance, and update two maps every two months. The only companies in the world that can do this may be those large factories, at least with a team of more than three or four hundred people.

Q: When did you put Operation Delta on the top level of the game?

Shadow: When we first started making mobile games, we thought that if the game had good data retention and was in line with what everyone thought of as a "next-generation triple-A mobile game", it might be very successful. But when we came to Cologne last year, Leo had a prediction that we would only play games, not PC, and it seemed that we would not be able to play at all the tables here.

After that, I made a PC, and today we have found that all the people who play the top terminal games will play your game, keep it, and give you a lot of advice. If you don't reach this level, no one else will look at you - "Why should I scold a mobile game?" "

Q: If you hadn't decided to go to PC last year......

Leo: It's dead. If we can't stand on the PC side, the mobile game can be discontinued, and the logic of the overseas shooting category must be like this, after all, its IP is not strong enough. I don't know where it came from, it's impossible for anyone to want to play it.

Q: Why is the PC side so important, and has your perception of the PC market changed?

Leo: A lot of the changes are hindsight. You can cite countless data and market research to prove the success of our products. But honestly, it doesn't really matter, because sometimes the decision is very simple, and when you get to this scenario, you should naturally do it.

Of course, we also see the megatrends. In the past, the market trend was from consoles to PCs to mobile games; But now, the global trend is from mobile games to PCs to consoles. Everyone has a computer, and it is natural that mobile phones can no longer meet the needs of entertainment. We even made this decision a little late.

Shadow: When it comes to shooting, PC and mobile game users around the world are two groups that don't coincide. Whether overseas or in China, they need PC products that are in line with the current era.

Leo: From our point of view, from the efficiency of industrialization, we made one game, but we ended up with two games. We often joke that with two main gameplay and three terminals (plus consoles), we're probably working on six games. In fact, the core is that we have expanded our previous advantages in mobile games to the PC side.

Q: Will your subsequent iterations be complicated?

Leo: From a technical point of view, our new version will support both PC and mobile games, and in the future, we will add console versions to achieve the integration of the three platforms, and there will definitely be no problem in terms of industrialization efficiency.

However, there are some problems now - PC and mobile game users may not be at odds with each other on some needs. Mobile game user data is very good and plays a lot, but in this scenario, there is often no feedback. PC gamers scold us every day. But I think it's a good thing that they can scold.

Q: From your point of view, are there any obvious differences between overseas players and domestic players?

Shadow: For overseas players, those differentiated experiences and unique content will support them to experience them repeatedly. Therefore, we will also reflect on the differences between our content and experience, and we must repeatedly output it to them, so that we can achieve very positive communication.

But it's also very likely, it's just that everyone's thinking patterns are different. After actually playing it and finding the game fun, players reached a resonance, and most people should still be the same.

Leo: Western players haven't been respected and listened to for a long time, so it's a bit flattering to have a manufacturer who takes their opinions seriously.

Domestic players are really us, but that's fine, and I really want them to scold. When someone scolds, at least it means that they care about us, or that we really don't do something well. But we still have to make trade-offs, because you can't meet all user needs.

Q: What are your trade-offs?

Shadow: There will be a lot of voices from the outside world, so our internal planners need to become veteran players first and make their own judgments - what kind of experience do we need? Have we achieved this experience?

Just like there is no design with a sliding shovel in the game, many KOLs on the Internet have been scolding this point for a while. But our thinking is that the sliding shovel will change our tactics, some of the high-handers and low-handed experience, and the operation will be more complicated. And we wanted each operator to have their own tactical expression, so in the end, it was decided that we would make a decision after multiple rounds of data verification.

Leo: We said at the time: there will be a great Confucianism to defend us. Later, the big man appeared on YouTube, and there is a video that clearly analyzes why there is no sliding shovel in "Operation Delta". This gives us some confidence.

We also have an internal remark: If you don't play one or two hundred in this version of the test and reach a certain level, don't put forward too many ideas, because you are just cloud games and cloud reviews. So at the end of the day, the whole team would play their own game, just to get to the table, which was also quite interesting.

Q: In Operation Delta, what is the relationship between the Grand Battlefield and the tactical evacuation gameplay?

Shadow: Two ways to play serve different users, and you can even treat them as if they were two different games.

Western users have been washed by COD and the Battlefield series for so many generations, and they like to treat games as relaxed entertainment products, and prefer "cool travel", so they will pay more attention to battlefield gameplay;

The vast majority of domestic players have experienced CF and PUBG, and some have experienced tile, and they will prefer Tactic and tactical evacuation gameplay.

Q: What do you think of the opportunities for a tactical evacuation at home? How do you win this battle?

Leo: There's nothing you can't win, and this category is far from the end.

Q: What is probably the most unique thing about you compared to other games in this genre?

Shadow: In more layman's terms, we have a variety of different operators. Because of the Operators, you can play some experiences that you can't play in other evacuation games.

Leo: For a game to be successful, it has to create moments of brilliance for players. We might be able to do this a little easier because of the operators.

03

The game industry is a reincarnation,

Proposition essay can't be done

Q: Compared with the previous products, the risk of "Delta Action" taking the 3A quality route will be greater?

Leo: I don't think so. This industry is very simple, and when the quality reaches a certain level, it can basically maintain the lower limit. Just like in the film industry, after Hollywood films reach a certain threshold, they begin to mass-produce industrialized content, which will cause some cost competition, but it will still be able to maintain capital for a long time.

Q: But why does it seem that the overseas game industry is so difficult in terms of public opinion and physical feelings?

Leo: Many big factories have an old problem: for so many years, everyone wants to be me, I want to be you, it's like going to a restaurant to order food, you always think other people's food is more delicious. We think it's stable to do 3A, but they think that once evergreen is made, it can be eaten for ten or twenty years.

Q: Is it inevitable to move closer to each other?

Leo: It's really a reincarnation. You see Activision, EA, and Ubisoft are all learning GaaS, but not everyone can do it. Activision and EA learn faster, and there are many small and medium-sized manufacturers who have learned for a long time and found that the manpower, resources and thinking patterns cannot keep up, and they go back.

Q: Why can't many European and American manufacturers do evergreen games?

Leo: Take some overseas manufacturers as an example, in the past ten years, their series of products have sold 20 million sales every year, which is 1 billion US dollars in revenue, which company can easily let go? This is their eternal lifeline and the highest level of strategy, and it is impossible to give up. Such a product must not be long-lasting, because you have to have a unique selling point every year to make users pay repeatedly.

Q: In the future, everyone may make high-quality, multi-end evergreen products, what do you think of the competitive situation?

Leo: I think a lot of things can only really succeed if they're purely gameplay-driven, and that can drive the evolution of gameplay as a whole.

And many large manufacturers try to use proposition composition to do evergreen games with PVP gameplay, which will definitely be subject to various restrictions. In a way, they can't match us because they're not as fast as us.

Shadow: For example, if we want to verify a gameplay, we need to go through user CE and online testing to see the daily retention data and buried data...... Repeated verification and thinking, this process, they may not have. In addition, the ability of Valve and Riot to make good data and good products is also based on the community system and user communication, and many large manufacturers do not necessarily have this gene.

Leo: It's hard to switch roles. Although I don't deny that TiMi may also make a stand-alone masterpiece in the future, to be honest, our team's talent tree is not focused on this, but on how to serve players, how to do PVP matching, AI and other skills. In the part of personal expression, there are indeed some skill points missing, and the same is true for those big factories.

Q: In that case, can the Chinese game industry make more triple-A's?

Leo: I believe that there will be more and more people and teams like this in China. After all, productivity is so high now, all the technology is so advanced, film directors can be talented, and game producers are the same.

Editor Lin Zhi also contributed to this article. 

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