t's been 5 years since the last interview, and I'm curious about how Wang Xi, the producer of Zhan Yi, has changed compared to the last time. The past five years have happened to be the five years of the open beta of "War Will", from not being understood to covering 156 countries and regions around the world, what the entire Buming Technology team is facing is also constantly changing.

This time, ChinaJoy reversed the usual low-key and chartered a bar to hold a carnival. Ten sets of armor were officially brought to the site for display and supported players to wear them - these are real armor, not studio props, and the official also purchased accident insurance for players participating in the event. More than 100 players participated in the carnival, many of whom made a special trip to Shanghai to participate in the carnival.

The scene of the Carnival of War

At the carnival, I met Wang Xi, who relaxed when the open beta of "War Will" was announced five years ago, and he just shared his future plans with the players on the scene.

Wang Xi told me that he now "follows my heart".

Five years, create a new category

Although it still seems to be relaxed, Wang Xi said that the current relaxation is a kind of confident willfulness, and the relaxation when drinking ice Coke at the ChinaJoy venue five years ago, waiting for the public beta to be announced, is largely a manifestation of "the ignorant are fearless".

Wang Xi describes himself as a maverick, and it is precisely because of this character that he dares to do such a deviant work - when everyone uses Unity and Unreal Engine, he chooses to develop his own engine from scratch; When the industry was making chicken games, he insisted on making games of leading soldiers to fight; When the whole industry was doing end-end games, he insisted on making high-quality end-game games......

"At that time, I was very bold and thought it didn't matter, it was the first game anyway. But then we also talked internally, I don't know if this game will last for two months after it is launched. ”

Truly conquer the big world with troops to fight the gameplay

The gaming industry is an industry with a lot of uncertainty. Many products don't make it to go-live, and only a handful of those that go live make it to more than two months.

So people in this industry tend to go for certainty. This is also a major reason why five years ago, after seeing "War Spirit", countless practitioners asked Wang Xi "Is it a three-kingdom warrior or an all-out war" - industry professionals are accustomed to using paradigms to apply to works to reduce risks as much as possible.

But Wang Xi believes that every product should be unique and should have a soul. A product that uses a paradigm to set may be a popular product, but it is difficult to become a truly great product. Therefore, Wang Xi's choice is to believe in what really moves him in his heart, rather than thinking from a purely commercial perspective.

"War Will" not only lasted through the first two months of its launch, but also operated stably for 5 years. The 5 years of operation of "War Will" gave Wang Xi the confidence to "follow my heart" to relax, and also answered the outside world's doubts about "War Spirit" 5 years ago.

Siege battles with up to 30 players

"Actually, there are a lot of things that can make me afraid, but I think that since Buming has this strength, "War Will" has this foundation, and we have so many cute players. Wang Xi, what are you afraid of? ”

Wang Xi believes that the current "Will of War" is no longer just a game, but the beginning of a category. Just like "Dota 1" is to MOBA, "Will of War" is now in the position of "Dota 1".

"War Will" has used the past 5 years to tell the outside world "what is a game with soldiers to fight", and in the next five years, Wang Xi will take "War Will" to stand in this category and make this category bigger and stronger.

Being a pioneer is not easy

In conversation, the five years since the launch of "War Will" sounded bland. In fact, as a pioneer in the genre – which means there are no mature projects to refer to – the past five years of "War Will" have not been easy.

"It's not hard to make a game that makes everyone's eyes shine, but it's hard to make a game that has a deep sense of gameplay and keeps players entertained for a few years. We created this game, but for five years we've been in awe, almost on our knees. ”

Compared with traditional cold weapon war online games, "War Will" has a large world ecology with game depth; Compared with SLG online games with a sand table world, "Will of War" has a real knife and real gun duel of "leading troops to fight"; Compared with riding and slashing, "War Will" has a self-contained action system. This requires Wang Xi and his team to control every detail of the game, and a little carelessness can have a chain reaction.

Real knife and real gun gameplay

"I was particularly impressed that the first time we did the season, we were in a hurry because we didn't know how the season was going to be done, like whether the territory was going to be remastered or what the experience was going to be for the new content to be added. In the past five years, our team has gritted its teeth, step by step from the earliest national server to the Asian server, from the value to the mechanism, from the Asia-Pacific region to Europe and the United States. ”

Currently, there are more than 100 Corps available to players. For a game with strong competitive attributes, the increasing number of optional legions (arguably heroes) can make the balance problem extremely tricky.

The balance problem has been the most criticized by players in the past five years, and it is also a problem that Wang Xi and his team need to solve in the next period of time. In Wang Xi's words, every time he held a player meeting, he would be scolded by the players, and every time he was doing the season corps, he had to repeatedly tell the team to do a good job.

The problem to be considered in "War Will" is not only the balance of the game mechanics, but also the performance of the history and culture of the Corps and the restoration of its historical combat methods while ensuring the balance and diversity of the battlefield as much as possible.

Corps from all civilizations

This leads to another problem: as a game with global operations, it is difficult to balance the content of the season and the strength of the corps, and it is often scolded by Chinese players if it updates the Western season, and some foreign players will also be scolded when it updates the Chinese season, and the strength of the troops of the civilizations on both sides must be cautious and cautious.

However, these "outputs" from players are what Wang Xi is happy to accept. Compared with the countless "big guys" who repeatedly asked him whether he was "playing soldiers or playing generals" before the launch of "Will of War", the "output" of players now is a manifestation of their love for the game, and these "outputs" are constantly injecting vitality into "Will of War".

"I tell you that if you are willing to scold you, it means that they like your work, and it shows that they still have expectations for it. Any game that is already online will have a lot of difficulties if you want to do it well. Some content we worked overtime to make, and we were scolded by the players, and we will be very aggrieved. But you don't know if it's good if you don't try it, and you have to learn to understand what the player wants from the scolding. ”

Just when Wang Xi talked about the specific game content design process, the players who participated in the carnival outside the interview room broke out into a debate about whether the use of "Xiangyang Spear Throwing Dead Soldier" in the game just now broke out into a debate.

10VS10 matches at the carnival site

Today's Wang Xi is surrounded by these voices, and is no longer questioned from various angles before the launch of "War Will".

He's enjoying the atmosphere right now.

AI will bring disruption, but it will not touch the essence

Although "War Will" has been in operation for 5 years and has achieved many achievements around the world, there has been no imitation of the same track in the past 5 years. There will be game companies that will steal the game screen of "War Will", and even Wang Xi's speech screen as the material for buying advertising, but no company dares to imitate "War Will".

In addition to the reason for market space, it is also because the requirements for AI technology for "leading troops to fight" are much higher than those of other categories. In the face of a complex battlefield environment, each type of long-range, melee combat, cavalry, and even each specific civilized branch will have different combat methods, and it is necessary to have profound technical accumulation to realize these combat methods and adapt to the complex battlefield situation - how the corps moves and what offensive and defensive actions it makes.

In other words, there are very few manufacturers on the market that can build similar games.

"Buming is a team with an engine background, and our technical team is very luxurious. These are not things that can be smashed with money. "In two years, we have established an AI team, and in the next round, these technologies will make a qualitative change in the user experience." ”

Buming Technology self-developed chaos engine

In fact, Wang Xi rarely revealed to the outside world the level of AI technology and his views on AI. But from the increasingly "smart" human fuselage of "War Will", we can intuitively feel the investment of Buming Technology in the AI part.

Wang Xi believes that in the next 5 to 10 years, AI will completely subvert games. But subversion here refers to the gaming experience, and does not touch the essence of the game. The role of AI is to optimize the user's experience under the framework of the game, and only the AI technology that can truly be integrated into the game and ultimately serve the user is the best AI technology.

"I know a lot of companies that are boasting about the AI + game concept, and with our game development capabilities, it is easy to make a lot of money by making a story based on this concept. But I think the product is the most important, your users and products are the most valuable, and your AI capabilities should be injected into the game to serve users well. ”

Make Warwill the go-to for war games

Like the one before the open beta, I asked Wang Xi how much he would rate the current "War Spirit". His answer was 49, 21 points less than the 70 in the open beta.

Wang Xi explained that during the open beta, "War Will" was a test game, and the current "War Will" is a game that has been in operation for 5 years, and the scoring criteria are different, and the current "War Will" has not tapped the potential enough, so it can only give 49 points.

It is precisely for this reason that Buming Technology has not yet carried out large-scale advertising and marketing.

"Our battle footage is actually very attractive when you edit it casually and put it on a foreign website, and it looks different from other games. But now I think there are still many problems to be solved, such as the corps acquisition mechanism, such as the liver, before we achieve 60 points, we will kneel on the ground to serve users well, and when we achieve 60 points, it is when we really make efforts. ”

"Make the best war game in the world"

For at least one year in the future, the main task of the Buming Technology team is to achieve a score of 65 or even 70 points for "War Will" with a score of 49. To this end, in the past year, Wang Xi has led the team to communicate with players around the world to explore the problems of "War Will".

"I'm going to ask users the most intuitive questions, what's good about this game, what you naturally like there, and what you don't like. The more I talked, the more I liked this work, and I felt that I had the responsibility and obligation to do it well. ”

At present, "War Will" is already the world's largest PC cold weapon war online game, and in the category of PC war games, Gaijin Entertainmentd's "War Thunder" and Wargaming's "War Trilogy Series" may be the only ones in the first place.

Achieving the height of these products is the long-term goal of Buming Technology. In Wang Xi's view, the current "War Spirit" has stepped on a key position.

"There are countless imitations of WOT, but all the users end up with the biggest product. "Will of War" is to make that biggest product, when you want to feel the ancient generals leading the troops to fight, experience the joy of conquering cities with partners, you will think of "Will of War". ”

Thousands of people at the same time to fight for the territory of the war

Different from 5 years ago, today's Wang Xi and Buming Technology are more prepared. Whether it's money or technology, they now have the confidence to realize all their ideas.

"The final Warmind should be a game that dominates the world, a super war game. All the gameplay of war games you can think of, including leading troops to war, including SLG, should be unified into one game. For example, if you like guns, chicken, co-op, and storytelling, it's all within the framework of Call of Duty. "Will of War" is about to become "Call of Duty" in the track of war games, "Will of War" has this potential, and we also have this ability. “

Epilogue:

"I don't want players to say that 'Warwill' is not good, if it doesn't, it can't be in operation for 5 years. Give us some time, and we will make the best war game in the world that belongs to the Chinese. ”

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