Time Travel: 2014

Even Ping Chi, who should be firmly on the same side as Lin Hui, actually has many people inside who are not very optimistic about the game "T-rex's Journey".

As for why this situation occurs, it has something to do with Lin Hui’s recent game design.

Although it is often said that simplicity leads to greatness, the highest state of software engineering design is simplicity but not simplicity.

Having said that, the game "T-rex's Journey" is too simple, simple and even a bit crude.

Before this, Lin Hui made games like "2048" and "FLAPPY BIRD", although they were very crude.

But there was only one "THREES" at the same time that had similar gameplay to "2048" online.

When the game "FLAPPY BIRD" was first launched, there were almost no games similar to this game.

Although "2048" and "FLAPPY BIRD" are also very simple.

GRAY FOREST has made such "simple" games in the past with almost no competitors when they were launched.

Because there are no competitors, it is naturally a simple model of taking the opposite direction.

Even if the game content is not that good, you can still achieve success.

If Lin Hui and his previous games, which had almost no similar competitors after their launch, could be said to have won by taking the wrong approach.

So the success of the game "T-rex's Journey" can be said to be an adventure taking chestnuts from the fire.

Why do you say this way?

Because of the little game "T-rex's Journey".

Putting aside the connotation that Lin Hui gave to this game in terms of design elements.

Formally speaking, this game is essentially a horizontal parkour game.

In addition, the game "T-rex's Journey" is just a 2D parkour game.

Although Lin Hui’s previous games were all 2D.

But making a parkour game 2D, well...

I can’t say that the idea is weird, I can only say that the idea is too big. .

Some radical marketers within Apple even feel that the game "T-rex's Journey" does not look like a serious project by Lin Hui, but more like a product that Lin Hui made casually.

Geniuses are often willful, and it doesn't seem strange that a talented designer like Lin Hui occasionally behaves willfully.

In short, the game "T-rex's Journey" made by some staff within Apple is very much like a blockbuster product created by Google/Google's crappy programmers. . .

The most indispensable thing in the current Apple App Store, especially the Apple Mobile App Store, is parkour games.

In terms of various parkour games, there are not a hundred but seventy or eighty.

The names are all highly homogeneous, basically like "XX Cool Run" and "Quick Travel XX".

It can be said that there are quite a few competitors for the game "T-rex's Journey".

Compared with other competitors that are also parkour games, the game "T-rex's Journey" has no advantages.

If the game "T-rex's Journey" can reach three to four million effective downloads, the price will be slightly increased.

In this way, even if the market response to the game "T-rex's Journey" is cold, it seems to be nothing.

After all, even with three to four million effective downloads, the game "T-rex's Journey" can still generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

When Lin Hui launched the game "T-rex's Journey", he checked the Apple platform exclusivity agreement as usual.

In the spirit of the minimum agreement, Apple has promoted and publicized the game "T-rex's Journey" accordingly.

Despite this, many Apple employees, including Huang Jing, are not optimistic about products like the game "T-rex's Journey".

Although it was not optimistic, the reality was extremely disappointing.

"T-rex's Journey", a game they considered to be very simple, has set many records.

“The fastest small game with revenue exceeding 10 million US dollars”

"The fastest game to hit $20 million in revenue"

"..."

“The fastest small game with revenue exceeding 50 million US dollars”

How could a small, under-appreciated game like T-rex's Journey achieve over $50 million in revenue?

Incredible results!

But GRAY FOREST did it.

And as the saying goes, the winner is the winner and the loser is the loser, even in the IT field.

Successful people are always given countless halos.

After Lin Hui's rapid success.

A group of people immediately jumped out to promote the game "T-rex's Journey" that Lin Hui had previously created.

Although the software field will not adapt to the cold law of "history belongs to the winner".

But successful people never lack all kinds of "just the right time" judgments.

This kind of judgment is rather a hindsight-style interpretive analysis.

But the specifics don't matter.

Anyway, Lin Hui has recently transformed the "simple" style of this game that many people have questioned into a minimalist design concept.

As a result, it became the object of crazy tout.

And it's not flattery in the ordinary sense, it's simply advocating without any limits or bottom line.

Huang Jing already boasts that she is half a fan of Lin Hui, but she still feels a little ashamed after seeing some media/self-media comments kneeling down and licking Lin Hui.

Huang Jing was looking through "Gaowan Cool Comments" today.

She found that "Gaowan Ku Ping", a relatively professional software evaluation column in China, was very negative about GRAY FOREST:

"Hello, everyone, I am the "Ku Pingjun" you are familiar with. In this issue, we will talk about the minimalist design of the software.

Software designers often flaunt minimalism, a minimalist design style.

But is minimalism, a simple design style, really that easy to achieve overnight?

Looking at the design philosophy of software, it is not difficult to find out. In fact, software minimalism, a simple design, has three enemies:

——Configuration files, redundant parameters, and a large number of complex interfaces. "

“Most minimalist designers though have the minimalist design concept of minimalist style in mind.

But it is limited by configuration files, redundant parameters, and a large number of complex interfaces.

Those who promote minimalist design tend to design software that is the opposite of what they advertise.

In particular, the redundant configurations of many big V software that always advertises simple design are surprisingly high.

When looking through the 'XXXXXX' software developed by a well-known 'minimalist designer', our team unexpectedly found that 90% of its configurations were redundant.

Although from an engineering perspective, it is necessary to maintain a certain degree of redundancy in software design.

But 90% redundant configuration is really a bit excessive.

‘Ku Pingjun’ actually didn’t know what the simple design pursued by the simple designer was.

My feeling for ‘Ku Pingjun’ is that the famous minimalist designer loves configuration in his heart.

In the opinion of ‘Ku Pingjun’, if designers are not obsessed with configuration when creating software, they think that more configuration items mean that the software is more powerful and has a wider scope of application…”

"'Ku Pingjun' finds it hard to imagine how a software can create 90% redundant configurations.

It wasn’t until ‘Ku Pingjun’ looked up the design details of the ‘XXXXXX’ software created by the famous software engineer that he learned the reason why the software had so many redundant configurations. "

"A certain software engineer is working on the configure file of the 'XXXXXX' software, which often lists hundreds of configuration items.

But do we really need so many configuration items?

Not necessarily, under normal circumstances, we just need the default values. What is default? Because the designers of the software feel that these are the most optimized and most likely to be selected configurations, then since they are the optimal configurations, what reason do we have to change them?

Another example is that a software engineer is working on the parameter settings of the 'XXXXXX' software..."

"..."