Chapter 121 Fork in the Road (Second update)
After hearing Kong Kong’s question, Qiu Yu thought for a while, and then said: “There are quite a lot of problems, office politics, blame-shifting culture, conflicts in all aspects...”
“Let’s talk about the key points. "
Well... that's you. To be more specific, it's you producers."
Kongkong shook his head slightly. Although he was annoyed, he had to admit that the other party was right.
Being too old to die is a thief. Tianyi is a large game company, but it also inevitably brings various historical problems.
The biggest historical problem is these producers who have made achievements in the past.
The prime age of most game producers is before the age of fifty, and they will encounter cognitive problems at the age of fifty.
Technology is innovating and times are advancing, and the experience they have accumulated in the past will lose its effectiveness or even become a stumbling block. Letting these people serve as producers will ensure the lower limit of the game, but the upper limit will never be high.
What's even more frightening is that sometimes, past experience can have side effects. This is a problem that every producer must face.
They should be like Teacher Shen, pass on their knowledge to the next generation, and then go home to take care of their hair.
Nodding, Kongkong said to Qiu Yu: "Do you want to stay here, or find another way out?" "
You must stay here, I haven't got any results yet."
"Okay."
He turned his head and thought for a moment. , Kongkong continued: "Don't leave after work, come here every day. I will retire at the end of the month. During this time, I will make up for you." "
...Why me?"
"You are pleasing to the eye." "
...Thank you."
"Let's go."
Watching Qiu Yu leave, he leaned back on the chair, feeling that his body was hollowed out, but he had some comfort.
He is fully responsible for this defeat, and his retirement at the end of the year is a certainty.
Looking back on his experience, he found that he had left almost nothing to the game industry. The only game that could be used as a talking point was the first PC game he made when he joined Tianyi.
That game imitated "Westward Journey" and included functions such as forming a team, catching pets, running around, and digging for treasures. It was a game in which players had to go online and invest four or five hours every day.
All kinds of traditional settings are present in his games, and he has made various innovations while imitating them.
Although it is immature, that game is the product of his greatest care. It is still in operation today, and there are still people playing it online every day.
Thinking of this, he suddenly lost interest in "Dark Guardian" and suddenly wanted to play his own game.
Turning on the computer, he skillfully opened the client, logged in to his account, and saw a message from his friend half a year ago:
[Why have you been offline for so long, and you remembered your account? 】
The other party did not know that he was the producer of this game, and Kongkong did not reveal his identity.
Finding that the other party was still playing, Kong Kong immediately responded: [Yeah. ]
[Let's go, it's time to catch ghosts 4 and 1, come with us. Fortunately, you have enough equipment and your level is not bad, so let’s go together. 】
【good. 】
In this way, I abandoned a lot of work, immersed myself in the old days, and started playing games.
After that, just as Kong Kong and Qiu Yu expected, the data of "Dark Guardian" went from bad to worse.
Players said that "Dark Guardian" is indeed good in every aspect, but it is not fun enough. The krypton gold can indeed be fun, but it soon becomes boring.
Looking back at "Dark Builder", its popularity is steadily rising.
As a free-to-play game, the spread of Dark Builders is legendary.
There is no operation to fuel the flames, the team has no purchase volume, and the only download entrance is the official website, although the official website is quite cool.
But even so, it has still become a word-of-mouth miracle with 200,000 downloads per day. Its slight social attribute allows players to easily promote it to four of their friends every time, thus making up to five Let's play games together.
Cooperation is the basis for its fission. Excellent quality and highly random gameplay are the conditions for proliferation. Different genres make it socially active, and various combinations of magic weapons that destroy the world also make it end every time. Finally, players will have the motivation to continue playing.
Moreover, the pace of the game can be accelerated, and the final time of each game can be compressed to half an hour, which is especially suitable for tired young people to take the time to play a game.
Someone once joked that if a living immortal was willing to charge a fee, he would immediately become a multimillionaire.
However, the immortal didn't care.
He only cares about whether the players are having fun.
Due to the replicability of its gameplay, in addition to Tianyi, a large number of game manufacturers began to imitate it.
For a time, games like "Dark Builder" sprung up like mushrooms after rain, with one appearing almost every day, and even a large number of imitators appeared abroad.
But the one-to-one replicas are basically dead, and those that can survive are the manufacturers that have built new gameplay based on the original, and the new gameplay has filled some vacancies.
Although it is only a small category, "Dark Builder" has created a new branch of games and allowed some manufacturers to find a development direction that saves money but is easy to achieve results.
After gaining the capital to survive through early imitation, some of them will continue to imitate, while others will embark on an original path, and then add some brightness to the game industry.
However, compared with the achievements created by "Dark Builder", Tianyi seems very poor.
In order to quickly iterate competing products, Tianyi Rongcheng Branch invested a lot of manpower and iterated crazily afterwards, but in the end nothing was achieved.
High-precision art seems incompatible with this genre, at least until there is a breakthrough in the performance of existing game consoles.
Finally, before the arrival of the New Year, Kong Kong’s newly established studio was disbanded again.
The once bustling office was empty, and the seconded employees returned to their previous project teams and continued to work hard at Tianyi.
President Zhang Ping originally wanted to give Kong Kong a gift, but Kong Kong refused.
I came back with great ambition, and now I leave like a lost dog. This process looks too embarrassing, so I'd better not let anyone see it.
However, in the empty office, he still called his last student, Qiu Yu, and gave him his last lesson here.
"What do you think is the most important thing for a game studio?" Kongkong asked, looking at the gloomy sky in the distance.
"Make a good game?"
"No, it's to live. Making good games is the ultimate goal of the studio. A game that can be famous forever, and even be talked about decades later, and there are even people to help you make MODs is the obsession of every gamer. But Before you achieve this goal, your most important goal is to stay alive." Finding that Qiu Yu was still a little confused, Kong Kong continued to explain: "A good game may not necessarily make you make money, but a bad game may not make you lose money. Every Game producers must learn to stop losses in time, cut off sunk costs in a timely manner, and identify every opportunity to make money and keep themselves alive." "If the
idle game becomes popular, then make idle games; if the card game becomes popular, then make cards. Cards; two-dimensional... don't touch that one yet, the two-dimensional is very rolly, wait until they have rolled up a lot of them, and then invite a batch of original paintings at a low price." "If the
domestic environment is not good, just do it abroad; whatever you like abroad, Just do whatever you want; even if they want to see the dirty pictures, let them do it in the game."
Qiu Yu couldn't help shouting at this time: "This has no bottom line!"
"But you can survive! For the game company For us, the bottom line is not important, only living is important. Only by surviving can you have the right to speak, can someone speak to you, and can all your previous experiences be washed away. If you die, no matter how good your game is, others will I will only remember your corpse."
"Others often say that I am realistic, but I can keep you alive, so I have been successful before. Until... Forget it, let's not mention this. In short, survive. No need. Send it to me, I drove the car."
He patted Qiu Yu's shoulder, leaving Qiu Yu in deep thought, and left the office.
He has already arranged Qiu Yu's escape plan. Although he is already retired, he still has some connections and can help Qiu Yu arrange a master planning job.
Of course, he is the main planner of a small game, but I believe that with Qiu Yu's strength, he will soon be able to make a mark in Tianyi.
After going downstairs, he was about to drive to the parking lot not far away when he noticed it was snowing.
There is plenty of water in Chengdu this year, and the temperature occasionally becomes very low. It has already snowed several times since the beginning of winter.
After stopping in the snow for a while, he lowered his head and was about to leave, when he found someone coming out from the other side.
It's Huang Ping.
Since the previous conflict, they have no longer contacted each other, but their dynamics can still be learned through some channels.
Seeing Huang Ping's figure, Kongkong knew that the other person should be here specifically to wait for him, so he sneered: "Come to see my joke?"
"...No, after all, we have worked together before, and I'm not that boring. What are you going to do next?" "
I'm retiring and planning to write textbooks. Several publishing houses are quite interested in my past experiences and plan to go back and write about them." "
That's good."
After a moment of silence, Kongkong suddenly asked: "The living immortal... ...Is it Fangcheng?"
Huang Ping did not answer, but his silent attitude proved a lot of things.
After appreciating Huang Ping's attitude, Kongkong felt relieved, patted his chest and said, "As expected, that's great."
Now Kongkong has become very thin, his hair is half white, and he looks more energetic and wise.
Pointing to the coffee shop on the side, he said: "Anyway, I'm fine. Your studio doesn't work overtime at night. Come and have a chat with me?"
"Let's go." Huang Ping nodded with a smile.
They chatted for a long time under the dim light of the cafe.
They talked about the first game they collaborated on, some weird things about their former colleagues who had resigned, their plans to cut down on the development prospects of the game, and their future development plans.
The two people who once cooperated, then became hostile, and now have resolved their differences finally sat together and chatted, exchanging words that they had not been able to say in the past due to identity issues.
They talked until eleven o'clock in the evening, when they finally needed to go back.
Putting on his windbreaker and scarf, he took out his car keys and asked, "Are you still living in the same place? I'll drive you there." "
No, I bought a house nearby and moved here long ago."
"Loan? How much is the down payment?"
"Full payment."
Kongkong was stunned for a moment, then looked at Huang Ping.
The fatigue caused by overtime work is no longer visible, and the thick dark circles under his eyes have disappeared. The Huang Ping in front of him seems to have become the boy he once was, overlapping with the figure when he first joined Tianyi.
Nodding slightly, Kong Kong said softly: "That's good, you guys did a good job, and you walked pretty well back then."
The two of them walked to the parking lot together, preparing to separate at the fork there.
The snow has stopped, and there is a rare layer of white snow on the ground. Although it will melt soon, it still gives people a white and clean feeling.
The orange lights lit up like torches, only to diverge suddenly as they led to the parking lot, forming a completely different road.
At the fork in the road, Huang Ping hesitated for a moment, but still said: "It was actually because of you that I joined Tianyi." "
Me?"
"Well. The first game I played back then was the PC game you made. At that time, I never expected that a PC game could be so fun, and I have been targeting Tianyi ever since. Before I joined the company, I always thought you were the best producer in the country. I even wrote you a letter, which included me You should forget about my various opinions and modifications on the game, as well as my admiration for you."
"...Indeed, what do you think of me now?"
"Haha."
"...Okay, the weather is getting dark. It's early. Goodbye."
"Goodbye."
They shook hands in a friendly manner and the two parted ways.
Huang Ping walked along the street lights into the distance, slowly blending into the orange light, and walked towards his warm home.
Kongkong, on the other hand, stepped on the snow and walked into the empty parking lot.
His pace became slower and slower, and by the time he reached his car, he could hardly stand.
How could he not remember!
How could he forget such a childish and enthusiastic letter!
He finally remembered his original intention for the game, and his former ideals and ambitions were like thorns piercing his chest, and he suddenly realized that he had become the person he once hated the most.
Kneeling beside his car, he cried silently like a bereaved wild dog.
The next day, the news of the suspension of "Dark Guardian" came out, but it did not attract much attention.
There are already many games like "Dark Builder", with new types of games appearing and new types of games leaving every day.
Except for a brief report by the game information UP owner on Station B and the news of Kong Kong's resignation, no one paid attention to it anymore.
Before you know it, the new year has arrived.
As for Fang Cheng, he felt that he could do it.
The third update and the additional update are on the way. I’m really busy today, sorry.
(End of chapter)