By Netease millions of dollars after the financing of "rain" popular road

The story begins with NetEase investing millions of dollars in an independent gaming studio, Spirit Square, an investment in a stand-alone game studio that is best known for its research and development and agency games. At the time of my interview, tens of square meters of spiritual tourist hall in the Pioneering Park for Foreign Students held a separate meeting room. All my conversations with Liang Qiwei took place in the not-too-broad aisle seats, and from time to time passers-by broke into our dialogues. Liang Qiwei's tone calm and quiet, the rhythm of the characters is not long or short, just to accommodate his methodical way of thinking into words and time. It has been seven years since he drafted the sketch of the independent game "Rain" from Tsinghua's deputy section. In seven years he has undergone a transition in his life from a prospective architect who can get a euro global pay in Shanghai to a professional game producer. Independent production of "Rain 1: Dead Town" was first published in the domestic free and attention within a small circle, followed by the English version of the independent gaming platform in foreign countries received tens of thousands of sets of sales, and then with the well-known agent Gamebar cooperation issue Rain before the two, ushered in the first batch of domestic paid users. After the establishment of LingYuFang studio, the third "rain blood prequel mirage" subvert the single turn-based mode, weakening the plot to join the fight pleasure, become easy to make men players Xuemaibizhang horizontal version fighting game. The next starting point is mobile games - they are moving their stand-alone "Rain Gentleman" onto the mobile screen to become a mobile online game that is expected to come online during the year. However, Liang Qiwei said: "Our team in this background has to be very cautious and solid at every step, because sometimes we do something that we will be scolded and unscrupulous, corrupt and yield to money. It's interesting to have a delicate balance. "As an independent game producer, Liang Qiwei started quite early - he was born in 1985 and started designing his first indie game during his junior year at Tsinghua University "Rain 1: dead town." Even at this age, he is still a little younger than when Markus Persson was developing the digital sandplay game Minecraft. It was because of his birth that he and his contemporaries were greatly influenced by colognes. Rain series of characters set, plot style are derived from the ancient martial arts world, and even "rain" is also from Cologne "End of the World moon knife", the original is - "rainy weather, ghost night cry." At the beginning of "rain", the fantastic imagination of the martial arts world was drawn as a draftsman in the auxiliary class and returned to the dormitory at night, then the scanner was scanned into the computer and the game program was written by RPGmaker. Doing this is about ten hours a day. Initially he set the picture for two people who had completed "Ghost Force", the predecessor of the "Rain Blood": the broken arm of his right arm and his leg, the flame-armor form the "absolute soul" of the human form, and the remaining half body, Monster's "Seven Ghosts Ming Cha". Then draw the protagonist "nine brake" is a "half-dead man" who was cut to the right arm, thrown down the abyss, relying on "ghost medicine" to sustain life. All modeling Yao Yi, dark colors, highly personalized. (Reference: The Birth of the Independent Game The Birth of Rain) This represents a typical standalone game - a game that's started as a creator has a strong vision to make, compose, and complete. It is cruel, chill, unexpected, but behind the obscure tone actually implies the freedom of the ancient world of martial arts: hermit hero, storyteller, brothel woman, decent, killer, innkeeper ... ... chaotic world, everyone Unique attitude to doing things. This is in sharp contrast to the glitzy commercial products of the big companies. Jonathan Blow, producer of the indie game "Fascination of Time and Space," in "The Big Game of Independent Games," said: "The big companies are catered for as many polished consumers as possible by highly polished things. The goal is to get rid of all the edges and corners. If there is a sharp corner, no matter what other people hit it or what, make sure that no one will be hurt .This and make a personal characteristic Works, on the contrary. "Before" Rain ", all domestic stand-alone games followed the protagonist's path from a weakened boy to heroes, but Liang Qiwei left his protagonist" soul " The number two mystery organization, trying to piece together the clumsiness behind the huge conspiracy. His maze is not difficult to walk, his character experience value rose rapidly, his game a total of only four hours long - all this "rain" looks like a heterogeneous domestic stand-alone game, though not in the mainstream media , Its innovation is in the circle of colleagues and RPGmaker circle provoked response. "I was then put up to see the players that play after the flu, those who Tucao, colleagues works, I am very happy. So the picture is this thing Well, do not earn money is the back thing. In fact, many fast food pagers, It may be possible to pit a group of players in a short period of time, squeezing some of the money as juicing, but there are players who spontaneously do cosplay for a web game, write fanciful novels, draw comics, discuss a bunch of plots, Cultural thing? I have not seen anyway, "said Liang Qiwei. "Plot known", has been "Rain 1: Dead Town," "Rain 2: Yecheng," fans praise. However, the rain for the third as "rain heraldic mirage", Liang Qiwei began to deliberately hidden too heavy game content. Complaints come along - the narrative of rain drama weakened. In fact, when making a mirage, Mr Leung did not want to sell too many cultural symbols in his game. He believes that stand-alone game into an extreme - "selling cultural symbols and piled cultural symbols of the extreme, such as the immortal Sword Xuanyuanjian this work, no one in foreign countries to play really like Japan games often have a lot of cultural symbols, But that is the core gameplay in Japan game beyond the cultural boundaries was established.A good game mechanics, play is cool under the premise of overseas players will instead take the initiative to explore the cultural connotations, so Japanese culture in The influence among European and American players is very high, "he said." Chinese culture, "as demonstrated by commercial entertainment, is a Chinese culture that only Chinese people can understand and one that foreigners can understand culture. This is the difference between Ang Lee and the domestic director. "We are now not selling any obscure cultural elements, is a universal, humanistic picture style and fighting style.For a foreigner, he played immediately by our high-speed, strange image, game mechanics , Fighting the refreshing attracted to, very good.Adrenaline and hormones are common.I think it so mirage can convey the concept of male players want. "In the" Mirage ", the role of movement is not Y Limit the shaft up and down, combat speed is extremely high, the system behind precision operation to bring high-speed movement under the pleasure of cracking. "This kind of thing is cross-cultural, you create a worldview, a set of operational mechanisms - there are mechanical and technological things in the world, but it is also an element of martial arts, swordsmanship and internal force. In this framework, there can be crazy scientists, swordsmen, monks, killers (may be semi-human semi-mechanized biochemical killer). "In addition to the interpretation of the cultural view, perhaps the commercialization of rain and drama sentiment is weakened Another footnote - when making Mirage, Liang has already invested in her seed and has her own game studio "Spirit Square" in Beijing. More importantly, Ling Youfang began to try commercialization, earlier this year with the Gamebar distribution Mirage, 30 yuan can buy a CDkey. At present, the spirit workshop is busy Mirage in the overseas platform Steam distribution, as well as the upcoming year's hand mobile game improvement work. Rain blood is out of the original niche independent game, to the public market. Like most of the stories we've heard about small teams, they exist in the form of independent individual developers or small teams that are most vulnerable to the real world waves. Liang Qiwei also said: "Big companies can play games from the perspective of capital operation. Using the plates they already have, they will soon be able to see the return because the game itself is a profiteering industry." Capital accumulation can invite the best artists, The best plan, the best program. They are like the Navy, but the little ones are like the pirates - the same risks as the sea lanes of the big companies, with the same big wave coming in, the naval ships unmoved and the pirates' small boats sank. Fortunately, when Liang Qiwei returned home for business, he met two people in succession - one was Xu Xiaoping and one was Ding Lei. When he saw Xu Xiaoping, he only had pictures and written materials accumulated for four years of independent games. He had no entrepreneurial experience (just returned) and previously learned hard skills such as building knowledge have failed in the field of games. But after twenty minutes, Xu Xiaoping gave Liang a seed investment of one million yuan. He was able to start his own game studio Lingyou Square soon after returning from Yale and had a team of four. And this year to see Ding Lei, he still bluntly: "I told him that before the PC stand-alone game done, but not profitable. Into mobile games, will also be a consistent pace and style of research and development, may miss many opportunities Ding Lei's answer is one word: Sike knock. This year, the first tour of the soul tour "Rain Bloodshed mobile version" will be available. And other online games, which will be built-in pay points: eliminate CD (eliminate a variety of upgrade time), a variety of enhanced character strength system, battle charts, sweepstakes and so on. They will also consider launching a stand-alone hand-tour that will be paid for without any pay points. Distance "Rain Blood" mobile game research and development began in June over. "The vast majority of hand tour teams in the country are executive teams - first, choose a popular subject matter (such as the Three Kingdoms, Jin Yong), and then choose a very fire game, such as COC class or card. After the game is played, the fastest execution of a product is made by the executive team. "The only thing that can be matched is the speed of plagiarism, as the industry calls" ", That is, leading the area to get stuck in the first place so that the latter is difficult to live on. The polished brand team is more like themselves and their own close combat, plagiarism in a mighty single-plank bridge, spiritual Youfang you need to take a ride to the other side of the bridge. "We do IP (brand), even though the name" rain blood "is far less famous than Jin Yong's novels or the Three Kingdoms, but we have to do this brand and watch it grow up day by day. Is ten years after five years, but this is a worthwhile thing to do. "Liang Qiwei said," Angry Birds is a very obvious case from making a product to becoming an IP. "You found that Rovio, the company, is now filming and selling plush Toys, out of a variety of comics, Angry Birds game itself already does not have a strong profitability, but it has the IP, immediately become a do Industry chain. Disney wants to buy Rovio because it is now the owner of an industry chain, not just the owner of a product. "" The majority of original brands in overseas games are produced and many are produced comparable to movies and Literary works of the great IP.I have heard the final fantasy concert, Blizzard's concert, was completely shocked.Chinese game player seems to be more willing to have a household name IP, rather than doing the original IP. This looks the least risk, in fact, not necessarily, such as the dozens of names containing the 'Three Kingdoms' game also appears in front of players, the product has been homogenized from the theme "Said Liang Qiwei. He valued the "snowball effect" because of the brand: "Our work is played by a few hundred people from one man to the next tens of thousands. Until now, the stand-alone player is still over 300,000 paying players Of small niche products, and the next step will be to do it in a space about ten times larger, which may not reach the forefront, but the plate is solid and basically spread by word of mouth. "But he also Acknowledging the existence of the mirage as a sequel, the independent thing to come is inevitable: when it moves from a niche market to a mass market, some people will think it has no niche So extreme. The first time I asked him this question, his answer was - as part of this indie game, the player can only accept this continuation, even if it is not perfect. However, his second reply, I think, is closer to his most true state at this time: cultural products such as games are divided into "functional layers" and "cultural layers." If we want to put an independent culture Layer "of things into the public, then the" functional level "will be very perfect, very friendly. This is a balanced art, exactly the same as building before. Your style is exaggerated, the underlying structure should be solid. To highlight the big roof, there must be a row of unknown columns in the support. All the maturity of the underlying work just for one or two of the most lethal point, the user only to see that 1, 2 points. This is a real maturity of innovation, before the time of independent games may I think there are 10, 8 points are all innovative. For example, before the PC version, has begun to go to this above, but not enough. Players will say that the story is not as good as before. This is our fault, because we are in a hesitant state, or are running 10 points are want to subvert the state, there will certainly be a serious lack of energy to do well. Because to be a very subversive point, too difficult. I used to make an independent generation, I think the artistic value is very high, in fact, that is, two points: style, drama. But the PC mirage, slowly weakened, this is not less time I spent, but thinking of other innovations, add up instead weak. Just as ordinary masterpieces are made up of a large number of ordinary languages, there is a very strong shock at a crucial point. We are the first to learn to write a large number of ordinary languages. He appreciates the line in "Black Swan": "Perfection is not controlled, perfection is erupted." He said he is willing to always do what he wants, even if the market does not respond well in the end, there will not be any Regret, or do not do the next time the idea. But to say - is not done enough by themselves. "It's perfect when you say it thoroughly and with great strengths and weaknesses, and from an artistic point of view, even shortcomings are a perfect part."