We've heard a lot of similar stories about gamers leaving big companies and starting their own games to make their own games. But Gyro didn't expect that a new product "Anim's Endless Journey" (hereinafter referred to as "Anim") that was born out of the gameplay of "Dark Dungeon" was recently noticed, and the boss of the studio behind it was the producer of popular products such as Tencent's "Naruto".

"Anim" is a strategy card game developed by Shenzhen Ogubugu Network, which has been the first to be tested on mobile platforms on August 16. As the studio "Explore the world of soul-like animals!" The game retains the difficult strategy gameplay, meat pigeon elements and permanent death of the characters in "Dark Dungeon", and then combines the theme of animal anthropomorphism, the story theme of power struggle and the unique art style, and the unique tone is impressive.

The game's producer, Sea, who is also the owner of the game studio, once worked for Tencent, and has been in the industry for more than ten years, successively producing Tencent's web games "Q Pet Fight" and "TNT Ballistic Trajectory", mobile games "Water Margin for All", "Naruto", "Under One Man" and many other mainstream products, and finally chose to leave his job in 2021 to start a business, and three years later launched today's "Anim".

After the game was launched, Gyro had the pleasure of visiting the experienced producer, during which Sea also shared a lot of interesting facts with Gyro - why did he make such an "anti-market" game as "Anim", what kind of game genre might have more potential in the future, and whether he could make money and express himself at the same time... And how to continue to persevere in the gaming industry in this era when the dividends are almost dissipating.

The following is a transcript of the conversation (the content has been adjusted for ease of reading):

01. Talk about resignation:

I want to make game development something that I can love for the rest of my life

Gyro: How long have you been at the Rubik's Cube?

Sea: My work experience is relatively simple, I have been doing it for more than ten years, first I worked at Shanghai JoyCity (the developer of "Street Basketball") for more than a year, because my home is in Shenzhen, and then I went to Tencent's pet product department (the predecessor of Rubik's Cube Studio) to do "Da Ledou", "TNT", "Water Margin", and later "Naruto" and "Under One Man". After these projects, I started my own company in 21 years.

TNT ballistic trajectory

Gyro: Have been working on projects for more than 10 years?

Sea: Yes, I've always been in the industry like this, and not long after I went online, I started working on new ones. The operation of the Rubik's Cube will be divided into a little more detailed, and R&D and operation are done separately, and I am mainly responsible for project establishment and R&D. I've always been interested in making games, so I don't get tired of doing it for so long.

Gyro: The games you used to make seemed to be quite profitable, do you pay attention to the turnover of these products?

Sea: The few products I made at Rubik's Cube were really profitable. "Da Ledou", "Water Margin", "TNT" and "Hokage" are all quite high, and "Under One Man" is also okay. It turns out that Tencent's industrialization pipeline is very mature and has all-round support from the boss and colleagues in various departments, so in terms of R&D, my consideration of commercialization will be lower.

Gyro: You have done so many successful projects at Tencent, and the income should be very lucrative, why did you come out and start your own company?

Sea: My entrepreneurial goals are relatively simple, I worked at Shenzhen TV when I graduated. Because I like games, I went to Shanghai to find opportunities, and my family was very opposed to it at the time, but I just wanted to make games. Later, in the Rubik's Cube, I only had 3.5 people at the beginning of "Da Ledou", "TNT" was a web game made by 20 or 30 people, and "Water Margin" was a mobile game made by 60 people - I may have been lucky, from the very small scale to the later "Under One Man" team of more than 200 people, I have basically experienced it.

In the middle and later stages, it is not actually a question of income at Tencent, but a question of what it wants to do in this industry. Sometimes I try to propose to my boss some projects that I think are interesting, but the revenue expectation may not be so high, but Tencent has its own considerations, so some interesting projects may not be implemented.

And our startup company can support the team, and we can also do something that can see the possibility to try when we choose the direction, which is simply this goal, not to make much money. Making money is a matter of timing and luck.

Gyro: When did you start your own business?

Sea: Halfway through Under One Man. At this stage, I want to do something different, but not likely to do at Tencent. What we are doing now is from a more pragmatic point of view, not based on the idea of making a "Genshin Impact", nor is it a high-cost project like "Naruto" from the beginning. Starting a business is very different from doing things in a big factory like Tencent, there are many things that are given to you by a big factory, and it's not so simple to do it all from scratch, it's very similar to the feeling of playing a soul game with useless people.

Gyro: At the moment, what do you want to achieve more personal accomplishments?

Sea: I just want to make the game a product that I love for life, and I want to try all kinds of different things, and making money is not my primary goal. I think the game is good and fun, and the result will not be too bad. But if you keep an eye on the results in the first place, the process can put a lot of pressure on yourself and your team. Of course, it may also be that the product is done, and it may not necessarily be able to make money, and there is a heavy luck component. But I just want to make the game a product that I can "love" for life, and make all kinds of different attempts, and making money is not my "personal" primary goal.

02. Talk about products:

Reverse the market, reverse mobile games, small companies should be recognizable when making games

Gyro: Tell us about the current project, why did "Anim" choose the animal theme?

Sea: At the time, I wanted to make something more recognizable, and I thought that animal images should be used all over the world. And then the players liked it too, and it seems that they accidentally touched the furry hobby group.

The art design is one of the highlights of this work

Gyro: Did you guess the style isn't so popular?

Sea: Yes. At the beginning, we made several art styles to choose from, some of which were two-dimensional, and some of which were more "abstract". At that time, we also did buying data, and the best performance was actually two-dimensional, but we ended up choosing the animal theme because it felt more interesting.

Normally, we might choose the one with the best data, but now we want to choose from the perspective of "getting things right", so that the company can be recognizable. Small companies just need to find a niche and try to do their best. If you control the cost well, you can generally survive, but whether it explodes or not is another matter.

Spinning Top: The gameplay of "Dark Dungeon Like" was also thought of from the beginning?

Sea: First of all, our team loved Dark Dungeon and played it for hundreds of hours, and then we observed that suffering games are rare on mobile. We've seen a lot of Dark Dungeon Likes on mobile before, but I can see that the pressure in the player experience is not that heavy, and we prefer to retain that "sweaty palms" feeling.

Dark Dungeon by RedHook Studios

Of course, we are not a single-player meat pigeon game framework with medium and long-term operation, but more of a long-term RPG framework game experience, hoping to continue to operate and update.

We're not too ambitious, the map will do the open-world feel, and we can explore at will, like in GTA, if you encounter something here, you will get a mission there. I used to be bolder, but now after a few rounds of slow testing, I feel that this set is still a bit too against the habit of mobile games, so I gradually made some optimizations.

Hardcore setting

Top: What attracted you to the Dark Dungeon framework?

Sea: I really like the core combat design logic, such as positioning, pressure value, and other actions that are out of the ordinary. Especially when it adds a lot of uncontrollable things, it makes you feel like you can't go according to your original plan.

Gyro: With such a strong sense of frustration, aren't you afraid to dissuade mobile game players?

Sea: I'm still worried, because there are a lot of players who come for our art design, but they probably haven't been exposed to such a punishing game experience, so give him a buffer. Our game audience is very polarized: one group of people says the game design is rubbish, and another group says you don't understand it at all.

Gyro: But some mobile gamers still seem to have a lot of complaints about this gameplay, is this what you expected?

Sea: There was an anticipation, and when you did it, you knew that a game that was designed with negative emotions might look like this. The more obvious feeling during the test is that there were a lot of bad reviews in the first few days, and the situation will be much better after a while, and there are also players who give bad reviews and play from time to time, and this is the case in almost every test.

Gyro: Could there be any mobile gamers who have never played this type of game but have accepted it later?

Sea: Yes, they find it interesting because they haven't seen it before, and it's hard to find a game like it. I'm sure a lot of R&D teams also like Dark Dungeon, but they don't dare to take things too extremely, and there may be various considerations and many factors in a large company.

Spinning Top: How long does it take for a player to play a round?

Sea: I like the kind of production approach that Naoki Yoshida promoted with Final Fantasy 14 because everyone has a different level of busyness in their lives, so it's good to have some time to play.

Therefore, we let the players arrange the online time at will, which is good and bad, and may not be able to develop habits, and the data retained is not good-looking. Players who play intensively for two or three days and spend fifty or sixty hours online may not play again. That's what I'm talking about anti-market design concepts, and I didn't specifically ask users to punch in and log in to the game every day.

Gyro: Have you tried to innovate with the gameplay of Dark Dungeon?

Sea: We made a lot of changes to the core gameplay in the first six months. Unfortunately, the design of Dark Dungeon is very beautiful and difficult to change, it doesn't have any redundant parts, and it's very inappropriate for you to mess around. So I just lowered the bar a little bit, for example, the characters in "Dark Dungeon" have multiple positions for one person, which is more complicated. Our roles are all single-positioned, and different roles are provided with different roles through different designs.

03. Talk about the issuance:

Without large-scale purchases, thousands of new users can be added every day to maintain operations

Gyro: How did you get on the line? Is it up to expectations?

Sea: It's hard to talk about the exact income, but I can say that it's enough to cover our expenses and keep our team alive. There are still a lot of bugs when the game is just launched, and some problems cannot be seen during the test because the test users are limited. For example, the problem of server capacity will only appear after the open beta when thousands of people are online at the same time. However, in the days after its launch, "Anim" was relatively high on TapTap's new product list and hot play list, and even better than we expected.

In our first project, we didn't take income too seriously, but paid more attention to honing the team, clarifying the team's strengths, and many times making decisions based on the idea of "which way do we prefer", rather than based on the best data. When the team is more mature and stable, when the project is established in the future, the revenue issue will be further considered.

Gyro: The launch of "Anime" seems to be relatively low-key, and it has not done a lot of advertising?

Sea: Our distribution is relatively conservative, assuming that I spend a lot of resources to attract people when I go online, and as a result, there are a lot of technical problems when I start the service, and the traffic attracted becomes bad reviews, which is meaningless. We want to operate at our own pace, go live first, optimize the features, maintain communication with players, and do slow-burn operations based on their needs and our own plans.

After all, we are now a small team, and we are not going to go through the explosive and suffocating publicity of big factories, but more hope to find a community where players gather, do a good job of word-of-mouth communication in the community, spread it by the community, and continue to operate. In fact, "Anim" can already maintain a relatively good operating state by adding thousands of new users every day, so we are not in a hurry.

、

And at present, we have not officially launched the iOS side, and we happened to encounter the problem of iOS recharge, if we spent a lot of resources to push iOS, it would be very bad.

Gyro: So you think small teams shouldn't be too aggressive?

Sea: It's really difficult for a small team to take care of all aspects, like more than 10 of us, but whether you buy or not has nothing to do with the small team, it depends on what kind of product you make, if it's AFKlike, you still have to consider. "Anim" is like this, spending a lot of money to buy volume is a loss, not suitable for us. However, we will also use part of the budget of the surplus to promote, first reach the core users, complete the penetration of the core circle, and then gradually expand the circle.

Gyro: "Anim" is also preparing to land on PC, and now it seems that going long is already a trend?

Sea: According to my observation, the boundaries between PC users and mobile users have gradually blurred in recent years, and there may have been some disdain between PC and mobile game players in the past, but now users, they can not only spend a lot of time playing Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Dome Railway, but also play some triple-A masterpieces or indie games on PC or consoles, players just want to experience the game, and don't particularly care about the scene. In this way, it is difficult to simply say that he is a mobile game user or a PC user.

In addition, in recent years, many games have emphasized multi-terminality, and it is difficult to define whether it is a mobile game or a terminal game. For example, this year's action games such as "Singing Tide" and "Jeopardy Zero" that focus on frame rate have many players feel that the experience is better on consoles or PCs.

In short, it's not uncommon for a player to have two or more devices at the same time, and Anim has attracted a larger number of Dark Dungeon players to experience the game on mobile. Of course, Anim also has some unique experiences on PC, which can be tried out by waiting until the end of October when WeGame and Steam go live.

04. Talk about entrepreneurship:

The studio has a unique identity, continuous exploration, accumulation and precipitation

Gyro: Since you came out to start a business, why don't you do something that hasn't appeared on the market before?

Sea: If you don't take any investment, you take all the risks yourself, I think it's okay, but if you take the investment, you need to be responsible for a lot of people.

Gyro: So investment is key?

Sea: When I started the company, I said that I wanted to pursue both commercialization and art, but I had to be sure of it. Although self-expression is important, if you really spend four or five years making something and no one cares about it, it definitely doesn't feel good.

It's up to personal choice, there's nothing right or wrong, but judging from the data or market practices, most people's self-expression market is actually not very caring, and not every project is an "animal well" - one person can make more brilliant products.

This year's hit "Animal Well"

Gyro: Why did you and your partner choose to accept investment instead of starting a business alone?

Sea: I had other colleagues start their own businesses with their own money, and I can see that he is under a lot of pressure, and his mentality of using his own money is different from other people's money, and if he hits a wall, it is easy to make decisions skewed. And starting a business with a friend, he uses your money to pay his salary, and there will be a lot of pressure in case he doesn't do well. There is a business partner who has a mirror for doing right and wrong, and is more rational in doing things, and will not make decisions that are distorted due to excessive pressure or behind closed doors.

Gyro: What kind of game would you make if you were self-employed?

Sea: There's so much to do, it's hard to say. But I think it's okay to be interesting, I play a lot of genres, but some of them are not very good at, such as narrative games like "To the Moon", but there are people in our team who are good at it, and we can try it when we have the opportunity in the future. But the time is not yet ripe.

Gyro: What do you want to make the studio look like? Will future games like "Anim" be on mobile first and do F2P mode?

Sea: We're still figuring things out, so it's hard to say what the future holds, but we still want the studio to have a unique identity, a bit like Vanilla and Supergiant Games.

And "Anim" to make mobile first, may just be a continuation of my past experience, and making free in-app games is just a better choice for the company's development in the business model.

Besides, this doesn't mean that we will only make a certain type of game in the future, like Game Science, which used to make mobile games, and now it has also made triple-A. Our second project was developed with Unreal Engine as a preparation for the future.

Gyro: Have you considered trying to make a buyout system?

Sea: Definitely. I really like games like "Taiko Rishi", "Kenshi", "Tale of the Wasteland", and "Battle Brothers", and I also grew up playing "Xuanyuan Sword", "Legend of Chrono Heroes", "Angel Empire", "Cat and Dog" and other stand-alone games.

"Taiko Ambition 5"

Gyro: Do you think the purchasing power of domestic stand-alone players has really risen at this stage?

Sea: I've read reports before that the purchasing power of single-player players is gradually increasing every year, not explosive, and many players may move to Steam after getting tired of playing mobile games. I haven't looked into this in depth, but the biggest problem with buying out now is whether the team can support itself.

05. Talk about entrepreneurial experience:

To start a business and start a company, you must first determine the difficulty of the project

Spinning Top: Did you learn anything about "Anim"?

Sea: Although our project has been a bit long, it has been done in the 12th month as much as it is now, and the project cycle has only dragged on a little longer because of the version number and testing problems. Without these additional factors, it could have gone live in about 18 months. What we want to do and what we don't want to do is set in the first few months and it never changes, so it's a little bit more efficient.

Gyro: You know exactly what you want to do.

Sea: yes, no changes. From the first day of business to the sixth month, the art style and production pipeline process were all decided. Later, we just tune and add things, and the direction has never changed, and we will adjust the experience of specific gameplay more. And last year we were still working on another project, we had about 20 people in the whole company, there were only a few people in each project, not too many, last year we made a multiplayer confrontation game, studied some plans, and six or seven people finished the demo.

Gyro: The company has been established for three years, is there any revenue pressure now?

Sea: Absolutely, but it will ease a little bit after the project goes live, and we are very strict about the cost and don't spend money indiscriminately. We hardly outsource, we do all our assets in-house. Due to the application of Qianhai's preferential policies, the cost of office space is also very low.

Gyro: What is the difference between the experience of bringing a small team of 20 people and doing a project in a large factory?

Sea: It's clear that in a large company, you're doing A or A. And the small company is still a little more generalist, our plot planning, in addition to writing the plot, we also have to match levels, do systems, do character play, and our background programs also have to do the front-end, so that we can make games in a small volume. In fact, the framework of "Anim" is not particularly small, which also leads to the fact that although we reluctantly made it, there are many problems.

Gyro: What is the new feeling of running a company by yourself compared to leading a team to make games?

Sea: There's a lot more stuff that I didn't pay much attention to before. For example, the general direction of the company, in the past, I could just think about the project, but now we have so much money and just a few opportunities, yes or no, and the strategy of each step will be a little more careful than before.

There are also some very trivial things, such as the version number, which will also take a lot of energy, and in the past, someone at Tencent only had to talk to the relevant support department to start doing this. Including recruitment, our company does not have HR, everyone is HR, and they have to look at their resumes to recruit. In addition, when considering the project, it is necessary to take into account a series of issues such as financial pressure at the company level, and the perspective will be a little broader.

The actual project is not the same, in the past, many problems in Tencent can help you solve well, various middle office support departments, background data management, etc. But now we all have to do it ourselves, and even if it takes a lot of time, we make mistakes.

Running a company is more like the feeling of a business simulation game, with a lot of things to do. The biggest problem with starting your own company is how difficult you are going to determine the difficulty of the project.

Gyro: So it seems that big factories actually have a lot of benefits?

Sea: Yes, the functional package of the big factory is very complete, the quality of the things made is very high, and there is also HR for recruitment. It is difficult for small companies to do large-scale projects, or it takes a long time to make what large factories can do. Personally, I think that working in a big factory is like playing a game in a god costume. In the past, everyone may think that this is not good and that is not good. In fact, they may help everyone invisibly, but people don't know the benefits it brings. Therefore, large factories and small companies have their own good and bad, depending on what you pursue, there is no right or wrong.

Gyro: A lot of things in your own company start from 0?

Sea: It has to be this mentality, if you still have the habits of the previous big manufacturers, such as the operation needs to build a team to engage in data analysis, it is unrealistic. It may be to look at a few key indicators and experience the game yourself, supplemented by a small amount of data to make a decision. In the past, there was a lot of very detailed data in front of you, but now you don't have the conditions and foundation to do these things, which will test your ability even more.

06. Talk about the market:

The reason for the continuous success of past products is that the factors of the times are more important

Gyro: What are the opportunities in the market right now for small teams?

Sea: I'm still figuring it out myself, and if I ever do, it's a bit more mature than it used to be. The most obvious change is that the production threshold is lower than before, for example, two or three people can make good art materials, including some development tools, and you can also make very high-quality things with UE.

Gyro: What direction do you see in terms of categories, themes, and gameplay?

Sea: There is one, the experience of loss may slowly become more popular in the next two or three years. Things like "Dark Dungeon", "Tarkov", "Dark Zone Breakout", and "DAD (Dark and Darker)" may slowly enter the public eye. Small teams should do very vertical categories, and only you can provide what players want to play, and 10,000 daily active users can live well.

Gyro: The mini-game has been very popular in the past two years, will you consider this direction?

Sea: No, it's not very fast for our company, it's like a web game with three or four times the speed. In fact, they are of very high quality, and the quality of the mini-games we saw this year has improved a lot compared to last year, and the iteration speed is also very fast. But our company is not very suitable to do it for the time being.

Gyro: Do you think the current environment is still suitable for starting a business?

Sea: It's not been a good time for a few years, but it's getting a little bit better now. If you can afford it, you can do it at any time, if you can't do it, I think the safer and safer way is to do something outside of work. It's also nice to have a formal income and be able to do extra things that allow you to express yourself, and now that the game creation tools are better than before, it's actually quite convenient to make indie games.

If you want to make a lot of money, the opportunities in these years may be worse than working in a big factory. The capital is not so hot, and the opportunity is also very vague, unlike in the past, when you said that you want to do the second yuan, many people will give you money, after the second yuan is poured, everyone doesn't know what to do, like a layer of confusion, more to follow the venture capital, such as "Finished! I'm surrounded by beautiful women! When it's popular, go to the projection game. Of course, now "Black Myth: Wukong" has a tendency to drive the 3A wave.

The response to the "Finished" DLC was much lower than expected

Gyro: If you go back to 3 years ago, would you still start a business in the current market environment?

Sea: I think it would, because I really wanted to make my own game, and the experience was very different. Although I used to do okay at Tencent, but for me to start a business has different degrees of training and improvement, this is the experience that I can't get from working in a big factory, even if this company can't do well, I want to go back to work again, and I will definitely do a little better than before.

In terms of life experience, people have a limited amount of time in their lives, and we want to try more things.

Gyro: Have you been under a lot of pressure to start a business in the past few years?

Sea: It's big, not in terms of money, it's about being responsible for other people. Although I told the investors at the time that this thing was not profitable, and the team did not have a strong economic appeal, there was still pressure if the project was not profitable. This pressure stems from both responsibility to the team and to the investors, as well as the fact that we are not doing well enough in the game right now.

Gyro: What is the biggest experience of making so many successful products in the past?

Sea: Luck. I really think that continuous success is better not to be attributed to your own efforts, or to being strong enough, the times are actually more important. I may have done something right at that time, purely. In terms of strength, there are more people who are stronger than me.

Gyro: Do you think luck will still be on your side in this day and age?

Sea: I think it's a bit hard. Therefore, my goal has also been appropriately adjusted, to be pragmatic in starting a business, to be able to keep myself alive, to work hard to cultivate, and to wait for my own opportunities. When Larian was also poor, he also did outsourcing, but in the end he survived. So it's good not to give up on entrepreneurship, be optimistic, you can always reach the end, if you give up everything, it's over.

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