When I write a bug it becomes the core gameplay

""Nine Swords"...

"I vaguely feel like I've heard something about it. Is this game still in operation?"

Lilith subconsciously opened the official platform to search, and found it.

But judging from the current data, it is quite bleak. It cannot even crack the top 100 on the best-selling list of mobile games. As for the specific profit data, it is naturally impossible to estimate.

"When did our old friend Shengjing Group come up with such a game? It was so quiet.

"But it's normal. Shengjing Group is also a big company. It has so many games. Some games have very little investment. They are all lottery-based. It's normal if you haven't heard of them." Lilith said while reading the game introduction.

Gu Fan shook his head slightly: "No, Mr. Li, this game is not a lottery game. It is said that the investment in it is as high as one billion."

Lilith was shocked: "What? Taking over the young master?

“One billion!!

“It only took one billion to come up with something like this!

"Isn't this money laundering?"

Gu Fan was silent for a moment: "This...it's hard to say.

"In short, the project of this game was established very early, and the development of it was started about ten years ago.

"It took more than seven years of research and development, and was officially launched about three years ago. Then it has been hanging around until now. Because no specific data has ever been disclosed, no one knows what the revenue level is.

"Anyway, it has never been on any best-selling list. Players suspect that this game will not even be able to repay the operating expenses. However, Shengjing Group cannot accept that its one billion is wasted in any case, so it has been holding on. On, did not stop taking it.

"Oh, by the way, Shengjing Group launched a vigorous internal investigation two years ago and sent some corrupt elements to prison.

"So everyone has speculated that out of the billions of R\u0026D and promotion funds for the game "Nine Swords", maybe some insiders have embezzled half of it. But there is no real evidence for this kind of thing, so it can only be talked about after dinner. .

"But putting aside things like money laundering and corruption, by just studying the game itself, we can learn some useful experiences from it."

At this time, Lilith has already found some promotional materials for this game, including CG and PV, as well as live demonstrations.

In fact, it looks good at first glance.

"Hey, why is there another game called "Nine Swords"? Oh, it's called "Legend of Nine Swords", but this one is ranked 97th on the best-seller list!" Lilith asked curiously, "This is Did Shengjing Group redo it?”

Gu Fan explained: “No, no, no, this is the work of another company.

"Because the name "Nine Swords" comes from a very classic martial arts, or fairy novel. Its story background is a martial arts style with a high level of martial arts, and it is a classic work that was well-known to every household decades ago. .

"Then the various copyrights of this book sold a lot, so it's not just Shengjing Group that is making the "Nine Swords" game, but other companies are also making it.

“But what’s a bit frustrating is that “Legend of Nine Swords” is a relatively old-fashioned mobile card game, and the production level is strictly speaking only the level of ten years ago.

"Nine Swords" by Shengjing Group is known as the top open world 3A masterpiece of the next era.

“In terms of investment, it’s hard to say whether the former has 10 million or not. Compared with one billion, there is definitely a gap of a hundred times.

"As a result, Shengjing Group's "Nine Swords" was outsold by the mobile card game "Legend of Nine Swords" in terms of revenue. This is enough to show that Shengjing Group must have done more than one thing right, otherwise it would not have caused the trouble it is now. so."

Lilith couldn't help but be in awe: "Well, what you said makes sense!"

Before, although Lilith knew that the game "Nine Swords" was very cool and failed, she didn't have a particularly clear idea of ​​how cool and failed it was.

Now she has.

Being 100 times invested and killed by an opponent with the same name would seem outrageous even in a novel, but it happened in the real world.

All I can say is that the matching mechanism in this world is indeed amazing!

And this also shows one thing: the failure of "Nine Swords" cannot be explained by "corruption" alone.

No matter how greedy you are with that billion, you will only be greedy for 500 million at most.

You can't be blown away by a game with an investment of less than 10 million, right?

So I must have made a series of wrong decisions to achieve such a great achievement.

And what specific things did you do wrong? This is worth learning from Nitian Game.

Gu Fan continued: "And what's even more interesting is that within Shengjing Group, there is actually a very strict screening mechanism.

“When Shengjing Group was producing games, the competition between various projects was very fierce, and it could even be said that they were ‘raising worms’.

“At every stage of project development, a comprehensive evaluation will be conducted. If the evaluation does not meet expectations, it may be significantly modified or even directly axed.

"The game "Nine Swords" is interesting: it is actually the winner within Shengjing Group.

“It went through many evaluations during development, but it passed every evaluation.

"Even if the project team has certain project management problems, resulting in a waste of investment, in general, the money should be spent in real terms, otherwise the senior management of Shengjing Group will not realize it after the game is released. Found something wrong and started a thorough investigation.

"So I think analyzing the failure of this game is very important for our subsequent success."

Lilith nodded quickly: "Yeah, that's right!

"Gu Fan, you have successfully aroused my interest, so what is the problem with this game? I am so curious!"

Gu Fan said slowly: "President Li, please listen to me slowly.

"First, let's go back to the initial establishment of the "Nine Swords" project.

"At that time, the project team of "Nine Swords" was ambitious. Their idea was to use the standards of 3A masterpieces and the gameplay of an open world to create an epoch-making mobile game.

"By drawing on the strengths of many companies, combined with the super IP of "Nine Swords" and the accumulation of various successful games of Shengjing Group before, a super hit will not be easy to get?"

Lilith thought for a while: "Well, it does sound reasonable.

"Wait, how come this seems a bit like what you said before.

"Krypton gold mobile game 3A masterpiece?"

Gu Fan nodded: "Yes, reviewing the failure of "Nine Swords", in fact, the first point is that Shengjing Group decided to use 3A standards to develop mobile games, and there is another very important point, which is the choice of game engine.

"We all know that Qianhuan Editor is cheap, easy to use and stable, so most mobile games at that time were made with Qianhuan Editor.

"However, the official version of Wanxiang Editor had just been launched not long ago, and it was not even open to general game developers.

"After all, Shengjing Group is a big company, and it is easy to get Wanxiang Editor from the official side.

Lilith thought seriously for a moment: "Wait! Wanxiang Editor, but there are still a lot of bugs when we use it!

"Wasn't it a disaster during the internal test?

"Is Shengjing Group crazy? They are not collecting negative emotions from players, why would they use this editor!"

Gu Fan explained: "This is of course a hindsight view. In fact, there were quite a few game companies that fell into the trap back then, and Shengjing Group was just one of them.

"When the Wanxiang Editor was first released, everyone knew that it would definitely be unstable as a new engine, but to what extent would it be unstable? That's hard to say.

"It was also because a large number of game companies fell into the trap in the past three to five years that everyone gradually formed the consensus that 'Wanxiang Editor is a rip-off'.

"At that time, Shengjing Group chose Wanxiang Editor for many reasons.

"Compared to Qianhuan Editor, Wanxiang Editor certainly has many advanced features, which was also the highlight of the official propaganda at the time.

"These include a fully automatic lighting system, which means that the producer no longer needs to adjust the light; and an advanced scanning import system, which means that the modeling cost is greatly reduced; and a powerful AI generation function, which can save a lot of time in the production of templated dialogue actions...

"In general, these new features have a common benefit, which is that they can reduce the cost of large-scale 3A masterpieces during the development process, and also give some small companies the opportunity to overtake on the curve.

"The price is that the engine is not stable, and there will be all kinds of strange bugs. The game will become more and more stuck after playing for a long time, and there are all kinds of unexpected small problems, etc.

"But how to say it, in the eyes of Shengjing Group at that time, these are small problems that can be solved. Anyway, it would be better to spend more time on optimization.

"In hindsight, Shengjing Group is indeed too optimistic, because these problems have only been barely solved today with the joint efforts of us and the official."

Lilith was a little regretful: "Yes, it has been solved, what a pity."

Obviously, the first thing she thought of was "replicating the successful route."

Gu Fan continued: "But this success needs to be qualified, that is, it was successful on a high-end computer.

"On mobile phones, so far, there has not been any successful game using the Wanxiang Editor.

"After all, there is a big gap between the configuration of mobile phones and computers."

Lilith nodded suddenly: "What about then? The game "Nine Swords" should also be known as three-way interoperability, right? How does it perform on mobile phones?"

Gu Fan coughed twice: "At that time, the players at that time joked like this:

"The graphics of this game are really good. It is "Nine Swords" on high-end computers, "Five Swords" on medium and low-end computers, and "One Sword" on mobile phones.

"Because at that time, in order to ensure that the game can run on mobile phones, Shengjing Group had to choose to reduce the picture quality and special effects when all conventional optimization methods were exhausted. Then the originally lush hillsides turned into green polygonal mounds, and the number of cool fairy sword special effects around the characters was directly cut to the ankles.

"But optimistically speaking, this is not bad. After all, even if it was cut to the situation of "One Sword", these players' mobile phones can still barely run the game.

"Many players' phones are stuck on compiling the color tint or loading the interface, and in the end they can't even play One Sword, and can only play Zero Sword."