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In a cafe not far from the ChinaJoy venue, I met four members of Pearl Abyss, the developer of this Korean online game, including Kim Jae-hee, the project director of Black Desert.

All four of them joined the team at the early stages of Black Desert Online, and at the time Pearl Abyss had only a dozen people in total. In terms of seniority, they can all be considered the company's founding backbones.

But surprisingly, the main creators all look quite young - mainly in terms of their mental outlook. As the interview took place in a unique cave cafe, the four team members were all wearing T-shirts with the company's logo printed on them. They looked quite relaxed, making it hard to imagine that behind them is a world-class product with more than 55 million registered players and 2 billion euros in revenue.

From right to left are Black Desert Art Director Oh Yoon-taek, Director Kim Jae-hee,

Kim Sang-young, art director, and Kim Dong-kyung, director of the visual arts department

Jin Zaixie said that this might be because Pearl Abyss is a company that allows employees to "keep their brains active", encouraging everyone to generate new ideas and implement them, so that everyone can always maintain a young mentality, and also make "Black Desert" still a game that looks fresh and full of vitality.

Now, this game is finally going to be officially launched in China, ushering in a new starting point.

When "Black Desert" was released and achieved huge success, one of the most talked-about points in the industry was that Pearl Abyss, as a newly established game company, developed a "console 3A" level online game with a development cost of US$8.73 million, and generated more than US$300 million in revenue in a short period of time, which is a model of "small wins big".

This is not some mathematical magic. Listening to the behind-the-scenes stories told by several main creative members, it is easy to understand why this team was able to do this.

Most of the initial founding members of "Black Desert" came from different professional backgrounds, some studied fashion design, and some were engaged in art sculpture. Before joining Pearl Abyss as the director of the Black Desert project, Kim Jae-hee worked as a media reporter in the game industry for 8 years. During this period, he was invited many times by Pearl Abyss founder Kim Dae-il to work together on "Black Desert".

But the other party didn't actually tell him what they wanted him to do specifically, they just said "You come first, you are the right one to come!"

After Jin Zaixie hesitated for a long time and finally decided to join Pearl Abyss, the first task he received was to design and create monsters - this obviously had nothing to do with his previous work. Fortunately, Jin Zaixie found this job novel and interesting, and he enjoyed doing it... Later he learned that this was just part of the company's new employee training, so that everyone could understand all aspects of game production.

Even after becoming the director, Jin Zaixi still felt that he had not actually accomplished anything concrete - he just conveyed the idea of ​​"what kind of content we want" to his colleagues around him, and it wouldn't be long before the desired content would be delivered to him.

This is of course just modesty, but the autonomy of the creative team is obviously one of the factors that made Black Desert successful.

At that time, Kim Jae-hee only mentioned to Director Oh Yoon-taek on Friday, "I want a beautiful and sexy female character, and players may like it." Director Oh agreed and said, "Let's do it on the weekend."

Two days later, Director Wu submitted the draft of the Black Knight character he designed with the theme of "Black Rose", which was then further refined and improved by Director Jin Dongqin who was in charge of visual arts. With the cooperation of the two, Black Knight became a character with both cool sexiness and cool handsomeness. At the same time, it also accurately conveyed the medieval fantasy background of the game, which was the starting point for attracting many players to join this game.

The Dark Knight is the signature character of Black Desert Online

More often than not, when Jin Zaixi found his colleagues in charge of related sections and said that he wanted to optimize and improve the art design or action model of a certain character, the answer he got was often "it's already being done."

Turning the design into a playable character in the game is naturally a complicated process.

This efficient communication is obviously a major reason why the game's production costs are kept down, and it is something that many teams envy; at the same time, being able to "spend money wisely" is another secret to Pearl Abyss' rise.

During the development stage of Black Desert, the motion capture system was still considered advanced technology in the industry. For Pearl Abyss, which had more than a dozen people squeezed into an office at the time, it was a considerable expense to purchase a motion capture system for themselves, but in the end the company gritted its teeth and bought one.

Because there was no more extra space in the office for motion capture equipment, the early motion capture of Black Desert was actually conducted in the underground garage of the company's office building. Passersby would often pass by with surprised looks - perhaps no other game company using motion capture works in such a miserable environment.

At the beginning, Pearl Abyss could only make room in the office to do motion capture.

The game's art and action director Kim Sang-young also mentioned that at the beginning when someone passed by, everyone would always stop what they were doing embarrassedly, but later they could almost ignore the looks of passers-by.

Because they have their own motion capture system, the team is free to record whatever they think is necessary. Recently, they have also started using motion capture on real animals in the game to add more vivid movements to pets and mounts in the game. The "actor dogs" they hired are still race-level dogs that have won prizes and are paid a high hourly rate. Alpacas, for example, have already used some motion capture.

The vivid shape and posture are undoubtedly one of the reasons why players are willing to tame mounts in the game.

Judging from subsequent developments, purchasing their own motion capture system was indeed a necessary decision. Combined with the self-developed engine, they achieved outstanding development efficiency and performance effects, which created an advantage for the new team Pearl Abyss in this regard, making "Black Desert" still have a unique action performance in the field of online games.

Pearl Abyss, which once only had one office and had to use the underground garage as a motion capture room, now has a motion capture center covering an area of ​​more than 100 square meters.

Today, Pearl Abyss's motion capture center

When veteran players in China who are familiar with the development history of Black Desert Online introduce this game to new players, they often say with some joking: "This is the KoreanGenshin Impact'." ——Even the main creators of Pearl Abyss have heard this.

On the one hand, the two are somewhat similar in game type, both featuring a seamless open world that encompasses everything. Just as "Genshin Impact" has largely broken everyone's imagination of the game's graphics and content, "Black Desert" was also presented to everyone as a "next-generation online game" at the time. Compared with previous MMORPGs, it has considerable innovations in visual experience and gameplay.

Especially after launching on consoles, the influence of Black Desert Online has further spread rapidly around the world. This development path also coincides with the global growth of Genshin Impact through PS4.

At that time, it was still a consensus that "online game graphics and operational feel were inferior to stand-alone games." This was not entirely a chain of contempt, but rather that online games were limited by the network environment and business model, and inevitably made sacrifices in the above aspects.

However, "Black Desert" is comparable to the 3A console masterpieces of the same period in all aspects - delicate high-definition modeling, a vast world, and real-time action combat experience. On this basis, it also has multiplayer social interaction, rich life content, fierce PVP and guild wars.

This completely surpassed the previous concept of online games, and ultimately attracted a large number of users who originally only played stand-alone RPGs on consoles, thus completing the "circle expansion".

On the other hand, as mentioned above, "Black Desert" is Pearl Abyss's first project, but in the extremely competitive Korean online game market, it broke through the siege from a number of old game companies, rushed to the world, and became a remarkable new star. This is quite similar to miHoYo's sudden rise a few years ago with "Genshin Impact".

The office building where Pearl Abyss is now located

Director Kim Jae-hee said that although he was not very familiar with the specific situation of "Genshin Impact" and miHoYo, he believed that the two did have some commonalities in the general direction. He also went a step further and believed that this commonality did not only come from a single company, but from some changes in the environment.

He cited what he saw at Chinajoy as an example: the characters played by the COSERs at the exhibition were quite rich and diverse, which indirectly reflected that modern players pay more attention to their own preferences, rather than flocking to play popular games like in the early days of the Internet, and everyone is more willing to express their individual characteristics rather than just follow the crowd.

COSERs trying out Black Desert at CJ

This situation is very similar to what happened in South Korea 10 years ago. It was during this period that G-Star, South Korea's largest annual game exhibition, began to attract more overseas exhibitors and media, and transformed from being mainly local online game exhibitors to a global game exhibition.

In this environment, large-scale games like "Black Desert" and "Genshin Impact" with more open and diverse content and gameplay elements are more likely to gain more recognition.

From this point of view, the experience of the Chinese version of "Black Desert" has been somewhat tortuous, and it is not necessarily a bad thing that it is finally going to be launched in the mainland now.

Today, Black Desert Online still has the top lighting effects in the online gaming industry.

Director Jin Zaixue has participated in five CJs. On the one hand, he has witnessed these changes in the Chinese player community, and on the other hand, he has also felt many collisions between Chinese and Korean cultures.

He mentioned that he really liked The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, especially the new version in 2019. During his visit to China, he heard about the well-known young female stars Zhao Lusi and Dilireba. As an overseas fan of the Three Kingdoms, he also learned for the first time that Zhao Yun was as popular as Guan Yu in Chinese folklore. Many members of Pearl Abyss were also paying attention to and looking forward to The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber.Black Myth: Wukong》...These fresh information will become the source of inspiration for their game creation, and it is also one of the secrets for "Black Desert" to remain fashionable until now.

The game's tenth professional character, "Plum Blossom", is clearly derived from the intersection of East Asian cultures.

When he heard that the popularity and influence of Jin Yong's dramas in China, especially among the younger generation of audiences, has declined, Director Jin Jae-hee said generously: This is normal, but popular culture is a circle, as long as it is truly good content, there will always be a day when it will be recognized again as the times change.

Correspondingly, Jin Zaixie also mentioned that Pearl Abyss and Black Desert hope to maintain their original aspirations. Even though the company is getting bigger and bigger and the office is getting bigger and bigger, the only difference is that the discussion with relevant colleagues that could be carried out by just turning around before has now become a matter of climbing two flights of stairs to find each other's office.

It seems that Pearl Abyss still maintains that kind of efficient communication. For example, when I asked, "Are the horse mounts in the game also produced using motion capture?", Director Kim Sang-young, who is responsible for the game's art actions, answered, "No, at that time," and then turned to Director Kim Jae-hee and said, "In that case, it's time to update it," and then recorded the matter.

"Horse Taming" is a very distinctive and representative gameplay system in "Black Desert"

In the view of several main creators, "Black Desert is Black Desert", and the essence of Black Desert is to become a game that has its own system in all aspects and is "fun to play no matter how you play it".

In fact, even today, there are still many gameplay designs in "Black Desert" that look quite novel and even radical.

For example, the game greatly restricts private transactions between players (initially, personal transactions were not even allowed). Regardless of whether the players obtain various outputs through combat or life skills such as gathering and hunting, they basically have to be transferred through NPCs and priced uniformly before they can flow into the trading market, forming an extremely self-consistent economic system.

This largely prevents the formation of a studio ecosystem, but correspondingly, players can only obtain resources through the designed content in the game, and cannot use real-life elements to shake up the in-game experience. In other words, this can also be regarded as a kind of screening for players. Perhaps only players who are really willing to live in Black Desert as another world can persist in playing for a long time.

However, the stable operation of "Black Desert" in the past decade has proved that the scale of this type of players is not small, and has a very strong stickiness far higher than the general MMORPG audience. Director Jin Zaixi mentioned that there is even a group of loyal players over the age of 60 in the game.

This stickiness comes largely from the in-game life gameplay system.

For example, a considerable number of domestic players are quite addicted to the "horse training" in the game, which includes selecting and capturing wild horses of different types and attributes, taming them, arranging breeding, and then trading them with others... Many players play "Black Desert" every day for no other reason than to be horse traders.

Horse taming strategies have always been a popular topic in the player community.

The fun of it is actually easy to understand. It is impossible to provide such a cumbersome and complicated horse training or other simulation management system in general online games. In such specialized management games, players can often only play alone or trade with other similar players. They cannot experience becoming a professional and respected "horse trader" in an environment where most people are willing to fight, as in "Black Desert".

According to Director Jin Zaixi, they did not think of making the horse taming system so complicated at first. They just followed the realistic logic of "the world map is too big so everyone needs horses as mounts, so why not let everyone catch them for fun? Since there are horse catching, there should be horse raising, and if there are horse raising, there should also be horse breeding..." and they unknowingly made it like this. The basis for all this is the working atmosphere mentioned above: "There is no need to assign specific tasks to each employee during the development stage, everyone will take action first."

There is also the fishing system in the game. In the early days of the game, it was even called the "fishing desert" in South Korea. Many players did not participate for the utilitarian rewards within the game, but just wanted to fish wherever they wanted. Instead, the development team gave additional rewards to those fishing players.

For example, there was a player in a foreign server who only fished in the game, and chose to fish at the seaside where the experience value rewards were less. He fished for nearly ten years. Finally, the development team specially designed a Boss that would appear because of sea fishing, and this player indeed became the first person in the entire server to summon this Boss.

The world boss that needs to be summoned through sea fishing in the game——Bell, the heart of the ocean

Jin Zaixue also mentioned that there are many players who met in Black Desert and got married in real life. This may also be because this game can provide a unique sense of reality.

During the epidemic, a Czech couple was unable to hold their wedding in reality, so they chose to hold it in "Black Desert" instead. As a result, it developed into a "wedding of the century" with official participation and players from all over the world coming to celebrate.

In short, "Black Desert" is indeed a very special online game, and its uniqueness varies from person to person.

In fact, the Chinese server of the game has recently started its first test. Judging from the current world channel, most of the active speakers are old players returning from foreign servers. They also mentioned that they might consider giving up their foreign server accounts that they have operated for many years and coming back to play the Chinese server because this game can bring a lot of sense of belonging. They believe that if they play in an environment with more compatriots, they will have a better experience.

Pearl Abyss and Tencent, which is responsible for the operation of the Chinese server, have of course made a lot of preparations for this. For example, unlike foreign servers, the Chinese server will no longer require the purchase of an entry ticket. The Chinese server will be updated at a faster speed to catch up with the foreign server version progress, allowing players to experience the latest and most complete game content. At the same time, costumes and even characters that are more suitable for Chinese culture are being designed...

Compared to the high-profile promotions in the past at CJ, Black Desert had a relatively plain booth this time. But as Director Jin Zaixi said, this does not mean that the project is not valued, but as a mature game, Black Desert no longer needs so much external promotion, and everything it wants to convey is already in the game.

The Black Desert booth at this CJ