Text: Isaac & Thomas's Skull

Recently, domestic games have really gained a sense of presence overseas. At the recent Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, for example, there was a long queue at the Arena Breakout: Infinite booth. Its popularity overseas has not been low, although it has not yet been released on Steam, it has always been in the top 10 of Steam's wishlist.

Two years ago, not many people probably believed that "Dark Zone Breakout" could get to where it is today. 4 months, 50 million users worldwide; 80 million users worldwide in one year; Two years, 150 million registered users worldwide...... On the best-selling list of games, it has also been at the top of the list from time to time, and has also entered the Top 5. All kinds of achievements have also made it named and praised many times in Tencent's financial report.

On the whole, "Dark Zone Breakout" may be a typical Tencent in recent years, another proven success path - it is not a natural mass track, nor is it backed by a big IP, but in such a short period of time, in an extremely hardcore vertical track in the eyes of the outside world, it has developed a considerable volume. Coupled with the high-quality terminal games, it can be said that it has truly joined the global competition.

On the flip side, however, this may also be a challenge for the Rubik's Cube – we also observed that there are some overseas players who do not understand the commercial structure of this product. Perhaps for Rubik's Cube, getting to the top shooter tables is just the beginning, and there is still a long way to go.

We took the opportunity to chat with Enzo, President of Rubik's Cube, with other colleagues at Gamescom. This time, a lot of his views look a little startling.

For example, he mentioned that at the beginning of the project, the team decided that "Dark Zone Breakout" was sure to make DAU bigger, so he chose to skip the demo verification and directly take ALL IN; If you want to do a good job of innovation and grasp the essence of the new direction, you want to make yourself ignorant; In the game industry, the only common feature of innovation is that a group of veterans have spent a lot of money to solve a new problem; Choosing a rough direction and then committing to it is probably the only methodology in the gaming industry.

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

01

Talking about terminal games: as long as there are resources,

Be sure to seize the next technological change

Q: As the No. 1 position of the Rubik's Cube, how does it feel to be a producer again after many years?

Enzo: It's not been years. I read a previous article by Masahiro Sakurai that elaborated on the definition and difference between the so-called director and producer. By analogy, a game producer is a producer in the film industry, and by that definition, I have long been a producer in Dark Zone Breakout.

I have been working as a producer since I first started as the operation manager of "QQ Speed" and later on several Rubik's Cube products, and I am no stranger to this role. Now it's just because the player has a need for direct dialogue and goes from behind the scenes to the front of the stage. It is customary to seem that Japanese producers do this more often, and less domestically.

Then you ask me to do it on the front line, what's the difference? I make a direct affirmation that more resources are mobilized and the chain of decision-making is shorter. But relatively speaking, the responsibility is more straightforward, and as an operator, it is always necessary to consider issues such as "don't put all your eggs in one basket".But as a producer, there is no such option, only 1 and 0 results.

Q: But this is not a responsibility that everyone is willing to take.

Enzo: A lot of times it's not a matter of whether you want to or not, if a producer is responsible for a product, then the whole studio group is my product. As the person in charge of the studio group, there are not many Rubik's Cube products, and if a product is scrapped, isn't it your responsibility? You can't run away; In addition to rationality, I am also willing, after all, the opportunity to verify my cognition is quite rare.

Q: Did you suddenly decide to move from a mobile game to a desktop game in Dark Zone Breakout, after you became a producer?

Enzo: No. We don't have the goal of "hand-to-end", and even our mobile game development period and mobile game testing period overlap. The logic of our judgment is that the traffic dividend period that the industry began more than a decade ago is a historical accident, and this period has passed - you can hardly hope that every few years a Steve Jobs invents the iPhone. In the end, it must be technological progress that will drive the progress of this industry or the market to become bigger.

Just take an example: in the promotion of many games nowadays, ray tracing only uses a few close-up shots, puts a reflection in the water, and says, "Look, my picture is so good, there is ray tracing, come and play". Although the quality of the display screen is also very important, which constitutes a reason for players to try it, how many new ways to play it will be brought to the FPS terminal game by implementing new features such as ray tracing or full-scene destruction?

Imagine that in Dark Zone Breakout, there is a puddle of water on the ground, and the player doesn't hear the sound, but crosses the corner and sees a figure reflected in the water, and he shouldKnowing that there are people over there, you can tell whether to play or not - this is a feature that is directly related to gameplay.

Of course, this is just one example. However, this kind of association can only appear on the terminal game at first, or in other words, it can only appear in the place where the hardware restrictions are most relaxed. So we have to do the PC side, which is related to the distance between us and the new, not yet existent Gameplay, and the possibility of seizing the next opportunity.

Q: Is your latest AI feature part of this plan?

Enzo: The F.A.C.U.L is a tech demo that is kind of like our "moon landing program". "Ascending" is of course very challenging and meaningful, but in "ascendingIn the process, many branch engineering technologies will also be reflected in more and wider application scenarios。

The F.A.C.U.L is divided into two parts, the first is "giving instructions to AI teammates through the input of large language models" and the second is "AI teammates executing instructions more intelligently", which is exciting. However, I believe that in the step-by-step implementation, the AI must first land in the closest scene, such as making the wanderer or boss more intelligent first, and better playing their "matchmaking" in the gamecombat".

Q: Matchmaking battles?

Enzo: The purpose of PVEVP is often to eliminate E in other games. But in our game, E exists to better match the battle between the two P-ends.

The fact that the player encounters a wanderer on the road is not that important in itself, but if you shoot him with a shot, the location information exposed by the gunfire is the danger and the gameplay. If the player has more "dogfights" in a fight with NPCs (like with a real player) than a one-shot win/loser, quickly end the fight and make a transition. Then the meaning of this encounter with the AI will be reflected, and it will attract other players to join the battle, so that the game will have more variety.

In this case, some of the features tried on F.A.C.U.L could be useful to attract more real players to the battle.

Q: Do you expect a high degree of overlap between the mobile game and mobile games, or do you prefer to meet the needs of different people?

Enzo: The gaming industry is very well supplied right now, and players have so many options in the genre that it doesn't take my turn to structure player behavior.

All I can do is eat dry or thin what you want, and I'll put it here. It's okay if you want to play mobile games at the same time, because I don't control the player's fragment time, and I don't try to influence the player.

Q: Are there any challenges for you to do PC games?

Enzo: There are challenges, but after the initial accumulation phase, the challenges are not insurmountable. Rather than technology development, what we need to do is to understand the design differences at different ends.

For example, if you see a target on different screens, the limits of what your eyes can tell are different, so the length of the gun line must be different. It may be 25 meters on a mobile phone and only one point can be seen, but 70 meters can be seen on a computer.

Q: Some people will think that the Rubik's Cube is the first time to do a terminal game, isn't this resource a bit ruthless......

Enzo: Not really, because there will always be firsts.

The Rubik's Cube dares to do this, I think it is also because our size is just right; Big enough to get enough resources to invest; At the same time, it is small enough to be able to see this vertical class, and is willing to touch the edge first.

Q: Does touching the edge make you nervous? After all, you have to shoot at such a big global market competition.

Enzo: Absolutely, it's human. But I also believe in a saying: "What subverts you in the future is in a place you can't see", so when I think of the most competitive mainstream categories, the PC side that is closest to technological progress, and the most mature European and American regions, this is to let myself see as far as possible.

But at the same time, we are also competitive. Take the initiative to attack the FPS terminal game market in Europe and the United States, you call it active competition, or "volume", in any case, game developers from China have rolled up in China over the years, and have rolled out of competitiveness, and more and more game products from Chinese developers have been widely welcomed around the world. We should be confident in this.

02

Talking about categories: from 0 to 1 talking about innovation,

More suitable for the smart layman

Q: When you first played the Evacuation type, did you think it was a huge opportunity?

Enzo: No. In fact, even if you look at the short-term retention of "Dark Zone Breakout" now, it is not good, and retention data is usually used in the industry to judge the quality of a game. But why do we still have faith?

The reason is simple: trust your own experience. When I was first introduced to the "Search and Withdraw" genre, I thought it was a very new BR (Battle Royale), but obviously, it wasn't. I also lost it very quickly, I couldn't play, I had a lot of experience with previous games, I didn't understand it at all, I was full of trouble-making designs and a sense of purpose that was difficult to establish, and I had no clue. It was my colleagues who pulled me back and taught me hand in hand like I did when I played LAN games in the dormitory, game by game. After forcing myself to pay the cost of studying, I stayed.

And I thought I could represent some people, so we began to try to give our own solutions to this proposition, hoping to make a new experience loop based on our own understanding.

Q: There are so many ways to shoot, why did you become the subversive with the evacuation gameplay?

Enzo: Because it's the exact opposite of "hardcore", it's in a very hard shell with a soft heart.

Yesterday, a friend of mine asked me, "Why are you eyeing something so hardcore?" "I said very simply, although this is a shooting game, you can shoot from the beginning to the end - shooting is just a 3C means to achieve the game loop, and the core of the evacuation gameplay is to redefine the "win or lose".

In all previous games, life and death mattered. But in this kind of game, you may live every hand, but you don't "win"; It is possible to die, but it is worth it. Without the forced "win, lose, life, death", the intensity of the game can be controlled by the player himself;

Now this core is understood by mainstream manufacturers, so everyone will have a variety of different solutions. I think it's pretty good, it's lively.

Q: With so many games to do, what do you think is the core advantage of Dark Zone Breakout?

Enzo: Our solution, at the moment, seems to be the simplest - short TTK + high randomness + equipment can be brought in, forming a complete loop. So at this stage, the experience we offer is relatively pure and simple.

The supply in this industry is very abundant, and the options for players are very large. I think we stuck to the pure experience and made the longboard long enough.

Q: Do you incorporate some of the best solutions from others?

Enzo: I've talked to me a lot about this issue, and we're definitely trying. My current view is that regardless of whether the direction is to improve the feeling of refreshment or lower the threshold, it is very normal that there are other good solutions. But it's hard to make a certain adjustment, very smoothly into the already formed experience, and achieve self-consistency. It's not impossible, it's difficult, it requires a lot of trial costs, and it requires a certain degree of discipline, taking the major version as a cycle, continuing to try and iterate.

For example, if you want to have a faster pace and a stronger sense of coolness, should the supporting gameplay also be changed, should you join Team Deathmatch, so that the high mortality rate brought by the coolness will be compensated? If you want to lower the threshold and do the automatic picking function, do you also need to have another design to make up for the information gap narrowed by the shortcut function? This and that will become a different cycle, not necessarily bad, but it will form a new experience that needs to be re-evaluated.

So, when we look at a new way to play, it takes a lot of time to bring it in. It may take two or three years before we can iterate on the variant that adapts to us and truly exist as a permanent model.

We need to make a judgment – is this solution compatible with us? If it's compatible, it's no problem to do it. But what I'm more against is that when you see something and think it's trendy, you copy it without thinking, even if it doesn't match the core of the game itself. Then after half a year, the hot spot changed, and I did it again.

Q: There are a lot of shooting games now, all of which are moving in the direction of platforming and multi-gameplay, would you consider taking this path?

Enzo: Again, the supply in this industry is very abundant, and for every good way to play, there is one or more products to supply, so why do players have to play with me? Maybe a real platform-level product can do that, but at least for now, the dark zone isn't that big.

Of course, the gameplay fusion must be feasible. Games like CS have added many modes in the process of GaaS operation, but the core of this kind of game is still buried, and other gameplay methods are only used as subordinateExist.

If you want to talk about the operation of the dark zone, I want to seamlessly integrate into three or five good models in one or two years, and make it acceptable to users. And think it's fun? I don't think we're that good. So I think that trying new models should not be driven by the courage to innovate, but more by discipline.

Q: Will the emphasis on discipline in turn suppress gameplay innovation? To put it bigger, the innovation power of large factories is relatively low, is it because the discipline is too strong?

Enzo: Let me explain what "discipline" means:

First, before a new mode is not done, we must be cautious about pushing it to old players, especially not using the core resources in the game to drive the participation rate of the new gameplay;

Second, once we decide to make something new, then when iterating, we can't quickly pursue the next hot spot, but we have to eat one direction first.

Like 2002, China just started to have online games, and I think everything is new. But now, what you come up with is based on a deep understanding. Something like "I have an idea, if you don't give me money to realize it, you just don't innovate", we don't accept it.

I still have the same point of view: "Is it innovation from 0 to 1" is more suitable for the "smart" layman. Innovation is not a flash of inspiration, but a decade or decades of research in a field, based on profound professional accumulation, and finally in experience and technological progressUnder the collision, new opportunities have been found in the combination of professional research objects and other categories. And even if it does, it often doesn't take shape all at once. This is also the reason why our culture particularly values "extreme" and "specialized";

Q: What do you think are typical examples of innovation made because of discipline?

Enzo: I relayed a case mentioned by Steven (Tencent Senior Vice President Ma Xiaoyi), and I was very impressed: each generation of the COD series tries something new, but after nearly 20 years, how many resident models have it iterated on? Probably just the story mode, Team Deathmatch, and the latest BR.

Over the past two decades, they've tried every promising area, and some of the content has been less successful and then removed after a generation or two. And their strong development ability and discipline ensure that while keeping up with the trend of the times, every attempt is not a superficial taste, which is the innovative way of craftsmen.

Q: But finding a new direction worth working on is difficult in itself.

Enzo: Yes, not every product is successful, and we have paid a price. Just looking back, in the final analysis, the understanding of the essence of a thing is the core.

Q: How do you train the ability to acquire this essence?

Enzo: It's important to "can't play" – you don't think of yourself as a producer or designer, or even as an FPS veteran.

Any "old player" will play the game with the cognitive inertia of the past, and the most usual way to obtain new information is actually "analogy", to see that this new thing is more like an old friend from before. Admittedly, this is a good way to significantly reduce cognitive costs, save time and brain calculations, but it is also possible to draw wrong conclusions in a short period of time when faced with new things.

Sometimes, if you really want to know, you have to admit that you don't know anything, and purely rely on instinct to feel what kind of experience in the game will lead to flow? And I hate what happens, can they be divided and replaced? How intense does it add up to give you? Can it be self-consistent after separation and decoupling? Is it stronger or weaker?

Or take the dark zone as an example, if you think of yourself as someone who has the ability to change the direction of the game, you will feel nervous and exciting when loading bullets, searching for supplies, or bandaging, and you will start to think about whether the player can feel more at ease if the screen is not so dark. Will such a reassuring experience be more acceptable to ordinary people? - Then that's interesting, and it's not the same experience anymore. It's not necessarily bad, but that's another solution, and it's another topic;

So, if you think you can easily optimize some category design shortcomings, and these shortcomings are so obvious, then it can be a bit dangerous.

03

Talking about R&D: ALL IN in the first minute,

Where did the confidence come from?

Q: When did you think "Dark Zone Breakout" would be successful?

Enzo: We thought so in the first minute of the project, otherwise why would we want to do it? At that time, I was very impressed, because of the epidemic after the Spring Festival in 2020, the Spring Festival holiday was much longer than before, and many colleagues from other places were still after the start of work Unable to enter the office, a total of three of us had a meeting at the bubble tea shop downstairs and decided to do it.

At that time, there were less than 800 people in the Rubik's Cube, and more than 200 were invested in "Dark Zone Breakout" at the first time, and later more than 300, which was the first time to use all the power. A HANDFUL OF ALL IN.

Q: So confident? Where are you sure?

Enzo: At the end of September 2020, the demo was made, and after the completion of the demo, I pulled the colleagues of the project team to do a test with 100 people. I looked at the data on the test server, and until the first external test in the summer of 2021, I was the person in the project team who played the most games, including professional tests, and played thousands of hours.

I'm very confident because it's an exciting and unique experience that no other game has. So how big can it be? I've given you an example: once we've distilled the rules, I certainly want it to be a "football rule" – the number one sport that the whole world loves to play. And if it's not football, it's not that big, wouldn't I do it? It may also be a "hockey" - you can't play it in a place with high temperatures, but anyone who knows some of the NHL (National Hockey League) knows that although its fans are concentrated, the market is also huge, so let's do it well.

So back to the topic of "can succeed", how do we define success? If you can't be the first in the world, you won't be successful, and you won't do it, then it may not be successful, and there is a high probability that you will never do it. If something is made, we have our own core users, they like the unique experience we provide, and we can support ourselves, is that considered a success?

We still have this certainty.

That's what drove us to do this – the Rubik's Cube never saw it as a vertical market, even though we didn't see it the same way as the industry at the time, but what if we lost? I've tried, what if it happens?

Q: But isn't there too much of an adventure to take on such a risk?

Enzo: Is there an element of adventure? Yes, but not by much. In the operation of the studio, the Rubik's Cube may have been good and bad, but we have never lost money, and we are investing in the future within our means. Even if it is all in, it is still in the direction that we most recognize, and it is still within the affordable range;

And if there is a product that is not risky at all, I believe that the amount of new information it can bring will be very small, and in a market where everyone is clearly branded, your product and my product experience are similar, correspondingly, you will definitely pay a very high cost of buying volume.

Q: How did you find the direction of shooting?

Enzo: We're always looking for genes. But after really doing it once, we found that the genes were not found, but "dead", and we tried a lot, and finally the ones that did not die precipitated into genes.

In the action and shooting product lines, we have paid for many years and the iteration of multiple products. For example, in terms of shooting, we have been iterating for 10 years since 2014, and we have done two generations of products such as "Independent Defense Line" and "Ace Warrior".

We're not smarter than anyone else, or have a clever strategy – that's probably all an afterthought. When it comes to strategy, it's nothing more than what we decide what we want to do, and I have to do it. Other people do the same thing and compete with me, it doesn't matter, I'll do it; No one else does this, only I do it alone, and I will do it, and this thing may not be successful at one time, or even successful, I will do it. Action games are such things, and so is shooting.

Q: Tencent has successfully defined many major categories, such as MOBA and tactical competition. Do you think "Dark Zone Breakout" did this?

Enzo: Yes, we did define a new category. But will there be a new solution that will go even further? Will the category continue to evolve? It's possible.

Of course, I hope that "Dark Zone Breakout" can get bigger and bigger and become the best in the world. But frankly, it's not up to me to do it.

It's always like this when I make games: I have this hobby, convince myself first, and then show it in earnest, and see how many like-minded people there are in the world.

Q: Overseas, many users and KOLs have questioned your commercialization model, what do you think of these opinions?

Enzo: It's true that there are KOLs and players who don't understand Arena Breakout: Infinite's business model, because there's no precedent for such a cycle. It's normal for something completely new to cause some misunderstandings.

As long as players have played our game and understood the economic cycle in it, it is not difficult to make a judgment: paying for better equipment can obtain a relative advantage in battle, but at the same time, it must also bear the risk of losing equipment, which is directly proportional to the value of equipment.

In the Dark Zone series, "equipment can be brought in + short TTK + high randomness" together form the core of the game. In traditional FPS games, "winning or losing" is defined by killing and being killed. In the dark zone, a player is often prone to need to top up when the account is exhausted. So if it's all spent, can it be said that he "won"?

We are willing to listen to the voices of our users. But I think in all experience-driven industries, the user is not convinced, and you can only let him slowly come to his own judgment. If we change what they say, there will definitely be a problem, because design is a whole self-consistent closed loop, which leads to the whole body.

We were confident in our gameplay design, and there was no negative feedback on the data. So, maybe what we should do now is to be more patient, and at the same time do a more detailed job of educating newbies to help them understand.

04

Talking about strategy: the most basic successful unit is the project team.

Accumulation can't fool people

Q: Before "Dark Zone Breakout", for a long time, the popularity and evaluation of the Rubik's Cube seemed to be relatively low. What do you think is the reason?

Enzo: In the past, people didn't necessarily say we were bad, but more often because we couldn't see it. Because of the vigorous era of grabbing mobile traffic, we are absent, and I don't shy away from talking about this fact.

The reason is very simple, we are the only studio in Tencent that does web games, and it took us two years to quickly squeeze into a market that allowed us to survive, and then it took more than ten moreyears to fight against this origin of his own.

In the web game and card game market, we have achieved the first in the industry. But about nine or ten years ago, I had a talk on Tencent's internal GDOC forum, titled "I want to innovate", and the content was thereI have a strong sense of crisis - I am very worried that the studio has entered a new era with its engineering ability and asset accumulation, and even if it sees an opportunity, it will not be able toAt the table, you can't call.

Time quickly proved that the worries were not superfluous, and that was exactly what happened. It wasn't long before we looked around and realized that we were far from everything.

Q: The great era of mobile games has arrived, but you are not ready yet.

Enzo: Yes, I reported to the company at the time that in the first half of 2013, when we started working on mobile games, the problem with Rubik's Cube was that we didn't have front-end C++ programmers – none of them.

Obviously, it is not our turn to do asset relocation, such as the category opportunity with a clear "end to hand" card position. The result is the era of mobile gaming, and we've been absent from the mainstream market for a long time. First of all, it is not very easy to accept that you are already behind the times, and then it is even more difficult to find a differentiated direction.

Q: What did you think at the time?

Enzo: First of all, engineering capabilities and opportunities are indispensable, and if you don't have the right engineering team, you can't take advantage of them. Therefore, it is not about success or failure, but about how to have the capital to serve first.

In order to enhance our core competitiveness, after thinking about it for a long time, we decided to cut into two mainstream categories: action and shooting.

Why action? Because the human-computer interaction and performance of most games require action. It's not just fighting, is dancing a movement, climbing, jumping a movement? The basic skills and abilities of 3C game development must be raised level by level, and the action category can best exercise these abilities.

Why Shooting? Because it's always been the world's largest gaming category, it's not a one-size-fits-all backwater, and it's easy to spawn with other experience branchesCrossover, there will be new variants popping up from time to time, and there are new things that are convenient for us to cut into. It is with this judgment that the later story is born.

I can't guarantee that every project will be absolutely correct, but as long as the direction is in the same direction, we are willing to invest and pay the price of finding genes. Maybe now everyone thinks that the Rubik's Cube is more vertical and adventurous, and that's because that's how we came to be.

Q: Now you're running out in both action and shooting directions, and Dark Zone Breakout is also very successful. Have you floated for this?

Enzo: No, not really, our volume doesn't allow floating.

Q: You told me before that once you bet on something and have money, everyone will definitely be more bold and will dare to take risks to do different things.

Enzo: It's cool to be bold and do it right again. But on the one hand, I'm not obsessed with making myself look different from the world. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, you can build different cars on the same round wheels.

On the other hand, in the game industry, the most basic unit of success is the project team. The success of project team A has nothing to do with the success of project team B. The meaning of the success of Group A is actually to increase the chips in your pocket, so that you can invest more in Group B. So I don't think that the path that succeeds in the dark zone can be reused in all projects, if that is a path dependency. If we still want to build a new car and a good car, we have to take the risk.

Q: Does this perception affect your strategy, such as making breakthroughs in the same category to avoid failure?

Enzo: It's not easy to break through any of them, no matter what category they're in. But as long as you still have money in your pocket, you don't need to carry too much psychological baggage. Try it if you want to, and if you try hard and you still don't get it, then you have gained experience.

Q: At the end of the day, isn't there any particularly esoteric strategy for innovation in this industry?

Enzo: I don't know if there is. But out of curiosity, I made a statistic in 2022 to sort out what team made the innovative products that really succeeded, what they did before, what they did after, and whether the same team changed producers ...... the world in the past 20 years, whether it is console/PC or mobile

In the end, the result is that there is no pattern, except for one point: successful innovation is often a group of veterans who have studied deeply enough to solve a new problem, and in the process, everyone has paid a lot of money and is using their careers to accumulate more experience. So let's go back to our hearts and focus on the direction we have chosen.

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