Video Game Designer

Excluding the outsourced art staff, and counting the simple Gu Jian Qi Xia contract workers, there are now more than 100 employees employed on the entire project.

If it is placed on some large-scale client games, this manpower is actually a younger brother, but in stand-alone games, this is already a very large proportion.

And the follow-up Long Zu also applied to Chuhe for an increase in investment, and the development funds of the entire Gu Jian Qi Xia have reached 65 million, a very huge number.

Compared with the birth of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, DNF's sternness, and the now seemingly invincible PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, except for the press conference that attracted a group of players and media at the beginning of the project, there has been no news for such a long time, only Occasionally the official Weibo mentions that the popularity of Gu Jian Qi Xia is not that great.

Even if this is an absolute domestic masterpiece costing 65 million RMB, except for stand-alone players who especially love Xianxia, ​​Wuxia and Guofeng, compared with other games such as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Gu Jian Qi Xia does not have much People pay attention to such a game.

Came to Shang Hai's Long Zu studio, Chu He followed Zhang Ke and Qian Bin to visit. This is the third time Chu He came, and it has been quite a long time since the previous two visits.

During this period, it was obvious that Long Zu's office had also expanded a lot.

"Is the game already in the internal testing phase?" Chu He, who was sitting in front of the computer in the office and was trying to play, turned to Zhang Ke and asked.

"This is the second round of testing. We have conducted actual testing with a dozen or so internal machines. Basically, there are no serious bugs, and the optimization is definitely beyond the players' imagination." Zhang Ke had a smile on his face. Said.

"The screen feels like an animation." Looking at the game screen on the screen, Chu He paused and gave his own evaluation.

Yes, it looks like an anime. The game is not like the 3A in Europe and the United States. It is more and more realistic. On the contrary, the game screen of Gu Jian Qi Xia makes people feel like it is fake, not real. .

The original design of the characters, including the modeling, is too perfect, or in more popular terms, it is too handsome.

All handsome, this style is very similar to the Final Fantasy series of SE.

"In fact, the team has had many discussions on the art style of the game, and we finally settled on this style." Zhang Ke explained: "The story of the game itself is built on the boundaries of mythology and fantasy. Pursuing enough truth? Truth and freedom, this is not the theme of Gu Jian Qi Xia."

Chuhe also nodded in agreement. I won't talk about the quality of a game, but if you can't even recognize the positioning of the game, it will be a very bad thing.

As for the framework of the game, in fact, Gu Jian Qi Xia and Jian Xia Zhuan are both biased towards the Japanese RPG type. Many domestic stand-alone games, especially the RPG type, have basically been influenced by the Japanese RPG. More or less, you can see some shadows of Japanese RPG.

Early Japanese-style RPGs were basically characterized by rich characters, stories, diverse system designs, and vivid dialogues. However, with the advancement of game technology, Japanese-style RPGs are no longer invincible. Now, European and American style RPG has gradually become the mainstream.

But domestic RPGs are basically more influenced by Japanese RPGs, such as The Legend of Swordsman.

Including the current swordsman developed by Zhang Ke, Chuhe has also seen a lot of Japanese RPG shadows on it, and Zhang Ke himself was one of the core members of The Legend of Swordsman before.

Also in The Ancient Sword and Fairy, Chu He also saw a lot of shadows about the Legend of Swordsman.

Although for an RPG game, especially the most important plot of this turn-based linear RPG, Chuhe has not experienced it yet, but including the character design and the characteristic poems, Chuhe has a feeling of seeing the legend of swordsman , but at least in terms of the screen and the fluency of the game, it is necessary to completely explode the swordsman.

And judging from the introduction at the beginning, the background is even more grand than The Legend of Swordsman.

"There are many shadows of The Legend of Swordsman." Chu He put down his mouse and said a word.

There are a lot of excellent content in the game, aside from superficial things such as UI and art, at least the development of the plot and the narrative in the first ten minutes of the game are very good.

The unfolding of an ancient picture scroll is accompanied by an explanation of the background of the game, but not all of it is thrown out, but it lasts for about a minute, allowing players to basically understand what the world is like, and then the main characters begin to appear, and background.

It's not excellent, it can only be said to be good, but these excellences are not enough to amaze Chuhe, so Chuhe has to pick out the faults in the game.

"Yes, in many places, there are shadows of the Legend of the Swordsman. I have always believed that the Legend of the Swordsman is definitely the pinnacle of the current domestic Xianxia genre, and the Legend of the Swordsman only has the Legend of the Swordsman 1, the Legend of the Swordsman 3 and the Legend of the Swordsman 4." Zhang Ke looked at Chuhe and said seriously.

Swordsman 1, this is the starting point of the whole series, not only in China, but even overseas, it caused a wave of waves. Looking at it, Swordsman 2 is the same as today's Swordsman 5, Swordsman 6, and Swordsman 7. It's just that The work behind the company is eager for success, there is no doubt that this is a spicy chicken.

The Swordsman 3 is a change in the series, which succeeded but also failed. The Swordsman 4 is the last glory, and after that it is a money-making work for consumer feelings, without sincerity.

Chuhe nodded, but didn't speak.

More than 300 original game music, dubbing from beginning to end, including dialogue lines and story narration, a total of more than 600,000 words, and three different lines of good and evil endings, as well as interactive CG cutscenes with the QTE system. This game is not so much a game as it is a story, a story that players can watch while playing.

"Is the digital version priced at 78 yuan?" Chu He asked Zhang Ke after finishing the proposal.

The research and development cost is a real 65 million, plus the follow-up publicity and other cost expenditures, that is, Gu Jian Qi Xia must sell at least 1.2 million copies to recover the cost.

"Yes, my price is 78 yuan!" Pursing his lips, Zhang Ke nodded fiercely.

1.2 million copies, is this number high for Tianhe Network?

not tall.

The global sales of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on the host platform and PC platform have exceeded 10 million. There is no doubt that the sales volume of the PC platform alone has already exceeded 10 million. The global sales of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds have exceeded 10 million in just one week after its release. The first small game of Tianhe Network has sold over 20 million.

Even including the Meteor Butterfly Sword under Longzu, the domestic sales plus overseas sales have exceeded 5 million copies.

But these games all have a common feature, that is, they have a multiplayer mode. Of course, the original rivers and lakes did not have a multiplayer mode, but the open world and support for MOD modules are its characteristics. It is not a Pure RPG game.

And Gu Jian Qi Xia is a true linear RPG game, an RPG game that focuses on storytelling.

As high as 65 million investment, if it fails, it will be a devastating blow to this type of game, even martial arts and fairy tale games.

‘Tianhe Network can’t make money on Xianxia and Wuxia RPG? '

‘With such a large investment, the cost can’t be recovered? '

‘Games based on Chinese culture are doomed to fail. '

'Didn't you see that Tianhe Network has stopped making Huaxia-style games after Jianghu? '

It can be foreseen that if Gu Jian Qi Xia fails, then the industry or players will spread such a tone.

Even after the establishment of such a project, even in Longzu's team, Zhang Ke's shoulders were under tremendous pressure, even though the final boss Chuhe didn't give him any orders.

If it fails, then maybe I will leave disheartened, such an industry.

During the days of developing Gu Jian Qi Xia, this idea appeared in his head more than once.

In the office, there were only Chu He and Zhang Ke. Hearing Zhang Ke's complaint, Chu He, who was leaning on the chair, couldn't help showing a little smile on his face.

"So, what are you worried about? The money is all mine, not yours. Even if I lose money, it's my loss, and I regard myself as the savior of domestic games. Well, if you say something bad, don't you think it's too much?" Do you think highly of yourself?" Chu He had a smile on his face.

Can he understand such a mood?

Of course it is understandable, from selling Shang Hai's first house to selling the second house for the follow-up publicity, he was in such a mood at that time.

Maybe after the failure, I will never dream of playing games again.

As for the savior of domestic games, this title is too heavy. Even though countless players in China have given this title to Tianhe Network, Chuhe never thinks so.

There is no so-called game savior, neither are game manufacturers, nor are gamers.

No game manufacturer can be a savior, just like gamers don't need to pay for some junk games because of the revival of domestic games.

Game manufacturers make games that carry their own sincerity and make fun games; gamers spend money to buy these games.

That's enough for an industry like this.

"Do what you should do, show your sincerity, and leave the rest to the players to decide."

On the eve of leaving Longzu's studio, he proposed some changes to the details of the game, and Chuhe left Zhang Ke with such a sentence.

His next trip is the United States. He has been drawing big cakes for almost a year, and it is time to do it. If there are too many, at least he should disclose some information on his Twitter, otherwise he will be caught by those who are looking forward to the wilderness. It's not a big deal for Red Dead Redemption fans to remind them every day.