news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

Title image | Ancient River Map

Disclaimer | This article does not contain any commercial cooperation

Author | Night Wind

The Chinese style card battle game "Ancient River Map" recently launched its first test on the PC side. It was developed by Guigu Technology, the creator of "Ghost Valley Bahuang". This is the first CCG game of Guigu Technology, but it is not the first for some core members.

"Tales of Immortality" is almost an unavoidable topic for domestic independent games. During the EA period, the sales of this sandbox cultivation game exceeded 1.8 million in the first month, and it once topped the global best-selling list. The number of people online on Steam at the same time also broke the record of domestic independent games, so it was called "the light of domestic games". According to statistics from "National Game Sales Bar", its sales in 2021 reached 3.9 million.

But in May 2022, it encountered the "Creative Workshop" public opinion storm, and the Steam praise rate dropped from 89% to 50% within a week. After the team's continuous efforts to update, the recent praise rate has risen to 75%, which is not easy.

After experiencing rare ups and downs, producer Zhang San now looks like a "cautious idealist": he and his team still try new products based on their own preferences, and do not even require commercial returns beyond operating costs; but their way of thinking is often rigorous and realistic, and they only reveal a lot of helplessness when discussing the current market environment.

"The gaming industry is very difficult now. I feel that it has changed a lot compared to the past few years." Zhang San sighed before Game News asked any questions. "It's mainly not conducive to promotion, because people may have been more tolerant and trusting of things in the past, but now there are more voices of doubt and criticism. ... It's hard to show some personality like before. Now you may have to be more moderate so as not to offend people."

"It's easy for everyone to become characterless and dull. I think the gaming industry or society has lost some of its fun."

"I hope to lead them to create a successful product."

The project of "Ancient River Map" was launched at the end of 2021, less than a year after the official version of "Ghost Valley and Eight Wastelands" was launched. But the initial idea actually came a long time ago, which came from some regrets in his past.

Long before "Tales of Immortal", Zhang San also established a team to make a mobile game with CCG+RTS gameplay, focusing on highly competitive real-time battles. According to his description, this game "went around the world in 2017, and the gameplay was highly recognized, and basically all platforms had high scores"; "but it didn't make money... because our team's commercialization ability was not good, we may have excessively pursued fairness in the game, environmental ecology and other things, and we were not very good at doing commercial things. ... So later that product could not be made."

After the update and maintenance rhythm of the official version of "Tales of Immortal" gradually stabilized, he had the idea of ​​picking up the game again. He found a numerical planner and a programmer from the original team and asked them to try to develop a new game prototype independently.

"I say let's continue this dream and see if it works this time."

They decided to remove the RTS elements and make a more typical CCG card battle game, "not doing fusion, just doing this part well."

"CCG is actually a very interesting game category. It is very fun in itself and many players around the world like to play this type of game. But I have always felt that there is a pity that there are not many domestically produced themes."

In addition, the original team had five years of experience in related project development. Zhang San thought that at least the thing was feasible, "I think we are at least qualified to do this." Dreams, market, and experience, these three factors put "Ancient River Map" on the development schedule.

What’s interesting is that behind the unfulfilled dream, there is a group of people with unfulfilled dreams. After the demo made by two employees ran smoothly, Zhang San contacted several members of the original team one after another and called them back.

After the team was disbanded, some of them have been working in other companies for several years, and some have switched to other industries. One of the numerical planners was disappointed with the game industry and went home to open a tea shop. But when Zhang San called them, they either resigned or closed their shops and all came to Guigu Technology. Even several members of the original team took the initiative to contact them. Some of the recalled members participated in the development of "Ancient River Map", and some were assigned to the "Ghost Valley Bahuang" project team.

"The company was dissolved at that time, and the last two people left worked with me on "Tales of Immortal". After "Tales of Immortal" became a success, it was of course a stimulus for the other people who worked there before." Zhang San analyzed. "I also hope to lead them to make a successful product. Everyone worked very hard in the past. In this industry, if you don't make a successful product, it's actually a pity."

With the new expectations of a group of old friends, "Ancient River Map" has been developed with a team of about 9 people. Before the first test in November last year, Zhang San also backed out. He said that there were actually many difficulties in terms of technology, planning, and art. Sometimes the cards were difficult to design, and sometimes they were technically impossible to achieve. But he felt that this gameplay was "still quite fun", and the test data "felt pretty good", so he persisted.

A CCG that is easier to get started with

The current "Ancient River Map" is a fast-paced card battle game. Each hero has 40 health points, and each side has four card slots. In each round, players can consume spiritual power to play cards and use some card skills. Then in the settlement phase, the cards on the field will attack the opponent's cards and heroes in turn.

This gameplay framework is similar toHearthstone》 is quite similar, but there are many changes, which greatly lowers its overall threshold.

The spiritual power in the game is equivalent to the mana crystal in Hearthstone. The initial upper limit is 1, which will be replenished and increased by 1 point in each round. This is the key to restricting the player's actions in each round and forcing the player to reasonably calculate resource allocation. On this basis, the attack targets of the cards in each round cannot be controlled by the player, but are attacked one by one in the order of the front and back rows during settlement, which is equivalent to "semi-automation", and the calculation amount in each round is greatly reduced.

In addition, the attack action is unilateral, rather than a "collision" in which both sides will lose blood. This means that players do not need to calculate the attack target for each card and pursue maximum value. At most, they only need to calculate the order of playing cards in advance and allocate the relationship between the front and back rows to reduce the opponent's number as soon as possible, and the strategic difficulty is also much lower.

Card types are divided into three types: follower cards, spell cards, and magic weapon cards. The first two roughly correspond to the follower cards and spell cards in Hearthstone. The weapon cards and hero cards in Hearthstone have been deleted, and the magic weapon cards are a new design in Ancient River Map. When the magic weapon card is still on the field, the player can spend spiritual power to drive the magic weapon every round, allowing it to release skills again. This provides a certain supplement to the upper limit of the strategy in each round.

The more obvious differences in genre construction are achieved through the built-in skills and exclusive cards of different heroes. The current 9 heroes are divided into three races: human, god, and demon. Basically, each hero can achieve at least 2~3 different genres of play, which has initially demonstrated considerable strategic richness. However, there are still some minor problems such as insufficient balance, fewer core cards for some heroes, and sometimes poor compatibility between different genres, which need to be slowly adjusted according to the test situation.

Zhang San said that by lowering the strategic threshold, reducing the amount of calculation, and speeding up the game rhythm, "Ancient River Map" wants to attract some non-CCG core users. In addition, it does not intend to directly snatch people from classic CCGs such as "Hearthstone" and "Magic: The Gathering", but hopes to absorb those players who have abandoned the game for various reasons but still recognize the CCG gameplay. In both cases, the theme of cultivating immortals is a unique advantage.

The good news is that the second test data is much better than the first test. From the current test situation, 70% of the players are old players from "Tales of Immortal", and only 30% are CCG core users attracted by the gameplay. After all, it is still in the testing stage, and this ratio may be affected by the brand publicity effect, but it still shows that this set of gameplay has a certain compatibility. Of course, the test data of CCG core users is better.

Zhang San also wants to take advantage of CCG to promote the cultivation of immortals theme further around the world. He said that Ghost Valley and Eight Wastelands has verified the acceptance of overseas users for the cultivation of immortals theme, especially players in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan have no cultural barriers, and a small number of players in Europe and the United States are also willing to accept it.

"Optimistically speaking, I hope it can achieve good results around the world, and help domestic CCGs reach a relatively high level, and then have a certain influence, so that people will know about The Ancient River Map in addition to Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh."

The game currently has the common ladder mode and arena mode. Next, the team also plans to expand heroes and card decks, at least increasing the number of cards from the current 300 to around 500; perhaps there will be innovations in the rules and new gameplay, similar to the Tavern Chess in Hearthstone. To this end, the project team may have to expand to about 20 people.

However, the biggest problem at present is that the team has not yet finalized the business model of the game. Buyout or GaaS? Just this most basic question alone "hesitated for more than half a year."

"At the beginning, we wanted to do a buyout system because we are more familiar with it. But later I talked to many friends and thought about it. Maybe now I will lean towards making it free and then selling passes and skins."

“In fact, the buyout system is safer for us. In other words, if we adopt the buyout system, it may be safer for us, and we can have a guaranteed income regardless of drought or flood.But the problem is that in the long run, it may harm those who spend money to buy it.Because this type of game requires a large DAU and a constant flow of active users. If you set the threshold for a buyout system, then the number of users will decrease, and the users who paid for the game in the beginning will not be able to match with real people later, which will not be a good experience for them. But if it is free, with zero threshold, then there will always be people coming in, and since it doesn’t cost money, it (active users) will be able to grow.”

However, this is just an idea at the moment, and no final decision has been made yet. I am afraid we will have to wait for the third and fourth tests to verify. The game is expected to be launched in the first quarter of next year.

"Whether we should sell card packs is also a question. ... In fact, the payment rate for appearance-based games should be very low. Unless we can make it very large, to the extent of half a Hearthstone, it will definitely not be as good as a buyout system for our income. ... In the worst case, it is possible that we cannot even cover the server costs."

"Our logic is that as long as we don't die and the team can survive, I am willing to give benefits to the players." said Zhang San.

But the most important prerequisite is that the team can survive. He also made it clear that he does not want to use the income from other projects to make up for the operating costs of "Ancient River Map". "The cost of early development is not a big deal... I hope that its future operation can at least maintain its own server costs. This is my bottom line."

“Even the comma you put is wrong.”

The idea of ​​"wanting to at least make a successful product" in "Ancient River Map" actually started when "Tales of Immortal" was made. It is better to say that if it were not for this idea, there would probably be no "Tales of Immortal".

Zhang San studied landscape design in college and started a business after graduation. "I was actually quite famous at the time and I was doing pretty well. But in 2013, I suddenly felt that there was more to life than this."

"I felt like there was no point in working in the traditional industry, and I felt like I should try my hand at the forefront of the world. ... At that time, in terms of traditional industries, I felt that the Internet industry was at the forefront; and within the Internet industry, I felt that games were closer to me. Because I played a lot of games, and I also liked games. Another thing was that I felt that games were an Internet product that was easier to internationalize at that time. ... I hoped that my vision could be globalized."

At that time, he liked playing the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" series of Japan's Koei Co., Ltd., which is a very classic SLG game. He believes that he "improved his intelligence" in the process of playing the game, and improved his "organizational and communication skills" in the process of organizing gang battles, etc., and gained a lot. Therefore, he wanted to make a strategy game and wanted people to grow, so he formulated a CCG+RTS game direction with quite deep depth.

"It was a big step. We were just a newborn calf that was not afraid of a tiger. We wanted to make a 3D game right away, and it was a PvP game, and it was a combination of CCG and RTS. It was a big step."

This failed attempt cost him 20 million and left him with a debt of one or two million, as he had no other income at the time. "2018 was the worst year, a year when there was no hope."

“At that time, I actually thought about giving up, but in the end I still felt that I should leave a trace, I should leave something to prove that I was there. At that time, I also wanted to make a stand-alone game, and since I was familiar with cultivation, I wanted to make a cultivation game that I thought was fun, so I designed the prototype of “Tales of Immortals”.”

Game News asked, you were still in debt at that time, have you ever considered that it might be difficult to make a profit from a stand-alone game?

"All I'm thinking about is how to make my money back. I think if I can realize what I want, I can definitely make my money back."

"At the time I thought it might sell a few hundred thousand copies, but after a round of testing two months before the launch, I felt it could sell a million copies. ... You have two little people inside you, one confident and the other uncertain, wondering if it will work or not. It's always that kind of struggle mentality, it's hard to describe."

Unexpectedly, the EA version of "Tales of Immortal" became a hit after it was launched, with sales exceeding 1.8 million copies in the first month, far exceeding his expectations. However, at that time, the team had been under pressure to survive and had been working on the development work at a high intensity for two consecutive years. The first thing he felt was not joy, but "a bit numb".

"This is the only time in my life that I've experienced this feeling, and it was very strange. ... I felt great joy, but it was completely overshadowed by the pressure and panic. I was afraid that (the team) wouldn't be able to handle it."

With such pressure and worry, he and his team continued to work at a high intensity until the official version of the game was released. However, before that, after the news that the "Creative Workshop" would adopt a third-party platform was released, a large number of negative reviews almost halved the game's positive reviews within a week, which was completely beyond the team's expectations.

"At first, I thought there was nothing wrong with what we did, because there were 2,000 core players who tested it, and none of them said there was a problem. After the official launch, the situation suddenly turned completely around, and I was very surprised and hard to understand. Later, after (I) posted some articles, I was bombarded with criticism. It was hard for me to understand, I couldn't comprehend it, and I didn't know what was going on. That's how I felt."

Zhang San concluded that the issue involved the identity of the publisher, and the game mod had to pass the review before it could be launched. At that time, the team had a misunderstanding of the Steam player ecosystem and only considered functional issues. The people who participated in the test were all core players, and they were very tolerant of the team.

"There may be some people who don't like us and quickly come out to step on us and add fuel to the fire, and then rumors fly everywhere. At that time, it is too late for you to refute the rumors, so the matter is magnified."

The team quickly contacted Steam and obtained an exception to allow the creative workshop to be reviewed. They also sent a screenshot of the official Steam email to prove their authenticity. Even so, some people still did not believe the authenticity of the screenshot.

"Thinking back, that month was like a living hell. I had never experienced being scolded by the entire internet before, so when I saw some news online, I couldn't understand the feelings of the person being scolded, but now I can understand."

"I was very anxious at the time and could only sleep for two to three hours a day. Later, I talked to some friends and adjusted myself. Some friends who had similar experiences of cyberbullying also talked to me about their experiences and slowly got over it. There was no other way. You couldn't speak out online at that time. Even typing a comma was wrong."

This incident did not dispel his desire to continue making games, but it made him "feel like being a bad guy instead of a good guy a lot of the time." He believes that the company cannot survive without making money, but it must make "reasonable profits."

"Of course, I'm not saying that I'm a good person or anything. Maybe I just want to pursue a little freedom and stick to my principles. But there was a moment when I felt that my persistence was not very meaningful. I felt that."

The company has not accepted any investment so far and is still relying on the income from "Tales of Immortal". Even now, there are still many cooperation intentions coming to the door.

"You may have to think a lot at first, but it will be easy once you figure it out later. ... Figure out what you want and what you don't want. It takes time to figure it out."

The company now has about 40 people, more than 20 of whom are developing the sequel "Tales of Immortal 2". The idea of ​​this project has been around for a long time, and it was finally approved in the second half of last year. It is still under construction, and the workload is "very large". Based on the previous work, they want to upgrade the NPC's AI logic, enrich the world view, and upgrade the art quality. In Zhang San's view, it is "natural" to launch a sequel to a stand-alone game.

With the halo of the previous work, will the team have any psychological burden for the sequel and "Ancient River Map"? Zhang San is very open about this.

"I think there will be some, but you still have to be open-minded. No one can guarantee that you will always be a phenomenal success. That's impossible. Then this industry would be too easy, right? Success is inherently difficult, so you just have to be true to your conscience and to the players, and do your best. As for the result, I think it's up to fate."

As for that hellish accident, he had figured it out now - voluntarily or forced to do so.

"I feel a little bit sorry, but I also think it's a necessary hurdle, and it's good to go through it. I later analyzed that we can't escape this hurdle. After going through this, maybe for the team or for me, we may be more cautious in doing things in the future. ... There's no other way. If you don't look at it in a positive way, what else can you do? If you don't look at it in a positive way, you will get depression."

"In fact, I think sometimes it's not good to be too smooth. Maybe it's the law of the world. If things go too smoothly, you will accumulate factors that lead to disasters. They will keep accumulating and will explode at some point. So it's better to go through life stumbling around."

Conclusion

In fact, in addition to the two new products, some newcomers in the company have already tried the mini-game track, but it is just an attempt at the moment. Zhang San vaguely feels that mini-games are dissolving the barriers between commercial games and content-oriented games, so it is necessary to understand it.

Game News finally asked the question - will "The Ancient River Map" and "Tales of Immortal 2" still adopt the EA model?

Zhang San said that the income from "Tales of Immortal" should be enough to support the development of two new games. He paused and said, "But it is also very dangerous."

"I'm not thinking too much about it now. I'll just take it one step at a time. This industry is still changing rapidly."