Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

"Grandma's recipe" is a cooking theme life simulation game, but also the graduation project of two young game developers.

Fang Fan and Hou Mai graduated from New York University majoring in game design. In 2021, they produced the game's demo--, a "game that focuses on the real cooking experience", which can be experienced for about half an hour. But even if it is such a short demo, it has also received a lot of praise from players after its release.

The graduation project demo has also been recognized by the school and selected into the incubator project, so that the two have strengthened their confidence in the follow-up development of the game.

To their surprise, Grandma's recipe has been "favored" by some developers. A few days ago, Fang Fan received the staggering news that a version of their graduation project with the same name appeared on Douyin-and it was quite popular.

The basic play of "Grandma's recipe" can be summed up in a few words: cooking Chinese food, home-cooked food.

If there is anything special, it is probably that it has a certain "practical value". Last year, PCGamer, a foreign game media, spoke highly of the Demo produced by this Chinese student-"amazing freedom".

What's interesting is that the initial play of the game is very limited: players can only move between the stove and refrigerator, and there is only enough ingredients for one dish in the refrigerator every day, and follow the steps that Grandma taught remotely through her mobile phone. the advantage of this is that it does not "blow up the kitchen" and avoids the risk of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

However, the "amazing degree of freedom" can be seen from the operation of Chinese and foreign players: Chinese players who know how to cook Chinese food will cut the ingredients small enough; the chili stalks cut out of the chopping board will also be skimmed aside from the main material with a knife to separate them from the main material; starting the pot is a hot pot of cold oil, which can also be fried with onion oil; turn the spoon for a long time to avoid food zooming …

In the hands of foreigners, the situation is completely different-all ingredients, including oil, salt and soy sauce, can be poured together; soy sauce can be poured for five seconds; a whole piece of ginger the size of a slap can be cut twice and thrown into the pot and boiled together.

This completely different reaction happens to be the "Chinese cooking" that Grandma's recipe is trying to restore.

Fang Fan and Fang Fan uploaded their game Demo to the independent game platform itch.io, hoping to communicate with more players and get feedback for further optimization, which was well received by many foreign players.

Many people think that it is better than most "cooking simulators" on the market, at least here will be very serious evaluation of the taste of the finished product, rather than the blood of the "fried kitchen", it emphasizes the significance of food and cooking.

What is even more rare is that even if foreign players know that "NaiNai" in the game means "Grandma", they will still use "NaiNai" to call their grandma in the comments section.

As for the domestic side, without the help of publishers, the works of the two creators have also attracted the attention of many players. In the Little Red Book, the highest number of likes in the recommendation of Grandma's recipe is more than 50,000.

The reason why domestic players can "cook properly" in a simulator game is the fireworks that can not be ignored in the game itself.

Grandma's recipe itself has a complete narrative line that guides players to explore the life behind cooking while cooking.

This is a simple story. The "I" in the game is far away from home, works outside, and lives alone in the process of working overtime and ordering takeout. When the Spring Festival is approaching, the protagonist learns to cook with his grandmother thousands of miles away through his mobile phone.

In such a situation, I believe many netizens who work hard outside have a deep experience, and the communication with their grandma in the game also makes many people have the illusion that "the mobile phone is monitored."

For example, grandma does not understand the popular hobbies of young people, does not understand the meaning of misinterpreted emojis, and will not use and adjust electronic products. When asked about my career plans as an Internet practitioner, Grandma was always unable to see your future and it was difficult to give any constructive advice. She would always say "always support you".

In the face of grandma's formality, "I" is the same. Everything follows her, reminding her not to trust marketing numbers and not to click on links. The loneliness and confusion of a person outside is more difficult to tell through the mobile phone screen, while in the face of our elders, we often have to cut the complexity and simplify it, or it is better to have more than one thing, and thousands of worries end up with the sentence "everything is all right".

But "I" and my grandmother are also actively groping in the generation gap-"I" found the opportunity to chat with my grandmother on the grounds of learning to cook, and my grandmother is very happy to take the opportunity to show off her decades of cooking experience in teaching.

It is not difficult to guess that these familiar family contents come from the overseas life experiences of Fang Fan and Hou Mai. Hands-on cooking is one of the important survival abilities of workers away from home. After home cooking that was once readily available has become an extravagant hope, they will probably be better able to realize the value of home-cooked meals.

In order to make the dialogue in the game more real, the two creators frequently called home and chatted on Wechat during the development process, and many of the conversations that appeared in the game came from the real plot.

Such a seemingly insipid dialogue does not last all the time. The grandma on the other end of the protagonist's mobile phone is in Wuhan. The calendar on the refrigerator shows that the time is in the first month of 2020. The grandma's conversation also revealed the latest news. It is not difficult to guess that my wishes to return home during the Spring Festival and my grandmother's desire to see their grandchildren will have to be changed with the arrival of the epidemic.

This is also what they have experienced personally-Hou Mai, who is in charge of game programming, whose family experienced the sudden disaster in Wuhan at that time. Two generations of people in a different place, but worried about each other, such a mental journey has also entered the game.

It's hard for players not to wonder if the other end of the phone on the screen is really connected to an elder. Once upon a time, they were organized and asked you to obey the rules, but now they don't know what you want to talk about most. They think that they can only solve your urgent needs in the trivial matters of life, so they are especially enthusiastic.

Grandma's recipe already has its own Steam page, and now you can add a wish list.

Perhaps it is the local fireworks, so that during a short trial, most domestic players will find a familiar feeling in the game-in fact, even if you make a mess, grandma will say "pretty good" in the end.

After Grandma's recipe became well-known at home and abroad, many publishers began to seek cooperation between two young people. It was also in the mouth of the publisher that Fang Fan and Hou Mai heard the news that made them angry and helpless:

"have you launched a mobile version of your game in China?"

When they open TapTap, they find that a game of the same name already has a reservation interface. Although they can't be played yet, the demo pictures clearly contain the important content and art details of their works.

The two creators immediately submitted a report to the platform, and soon TapTap officials took the game off the shelves. They thought the storm should end here, but things soon ushered in a new situation.

Now you can only see this "Grandma's recipe" through a snapshot of the web page.

A few days later, a player sent them a link to a little red book about a blogger recommending a mobile version of Grandma's recipe-the one they had reported off the shelves.

Fang Fan followed the video to search on different platforms and found some game presenters who even mistook it for the official mobile version of the original.

This so-called "mobile version" can be played directly by clicking on Douyin's Mini Game platform. From the beginning of the interface, the two games have revealed indescribable similarities:

The first part is "Grandma's recipe" made by Fang Fan and Hou Mai, and the second part is "imitation".

The same cooking game, also through the communication with grandma to get recipes, cut ingredients, make dishes, is also done after the harvest of grandma's evaluation.

However, whether players know the original or not, everyone will be a little confused about the "mobile version of Grandma's recipe"-why does Grandma teach me to cook and need me to spend 30 seconds watching beauty commercials?

Players who have clicked on this kind of short video Mini Game must be very clear about the experience of "there is a game in the middle of the advertisement".

There are many bright spots in the original work. Fang Fan and Fang Fan spent a long time recording the sounds made by cutting different ingredients in order to restore the reality of cutting vegetables on the chopping board. The physical effect of the spoon is more stable, and the color of the ingredients varies with the heat. Of course, the more important details mentioned earlier are "the realism of communicating with the milk line."

These do not exist in the Mobile version of Grandma's recipes. The communication between the player and the grandma on the other end of the phone is very stiff, and the cooking process is just a simple stacking of ingredients. If you accidentally want to start all over again, please take a look at a 30-second advertisement and the system will give you money to buy ingredients again.

More coincidentally, the original demo can only be played until the second day, while this "mobile version", even if you keep watching ads, can only wait until the seventh day, and then the time will not go any further.

Fang Fan could not laugh or cry at this. Their original intention of releasing demo is to get more in-depth feedback from players, but they did not expect to be "snatched" by other developers at all, let alone that they did not even change their names.

The two young developers were completely unprepared for the issue of safeguarding their rights.

It is not realistic to put the hope of safeguarding rights into law in the short term. Fang Fan and Hou Mai are both overseas at this time, and they play games in their spare time and do not have much extra energy.

On the other hand, "Grandma's recipe" has no clear release plan for the time being, and although the game has gained a certain reputation, it has not done enough copyright protection in China.

They were the first to refute the rumor of the so-called "mobile version" on their social accounts, explaining that their works had been plagiarized. Fang Fan said that the quickest thing they can do now is to call on players to see the recommendation of the game and try to clarify it in the comments area so that more later players can know the truth.

Taking into account the future copyright, software copyright and other issues, the two collected a lot of supporting materials, trying to deal with the possible lawsuit, "We hope to plagiarize the company off the shelves of this game, revoke the relevant software copyright."

The support of public opinion has achieved certain results. The "figure" clarified by netizens can often be seen in posts and video comments that recommend the "mobile version". Some of them have also been praised as the number one hot review, so that more people can see the truth at a glance.

Soon, Fang Fan learned the good news: "Grandma's recipes" can no longer be found in Douyin and Mini Game.

The two are a little angry and helpless about what happened to their works. Most of the creations of domestic independent players are first released on platforms such as Steam, and they are often easy to fall into a passive position when safeguarding their rights. Writers like them who are living overseas are even more inconvenient. the so-called "dark enemy and bright" cannot stare at another "imitation" of their game every day like a gopher.

Fortunately, at least now they have some experience in safeguarding their rights, and even if they do run into a "stubble", they also know how to deal with it.

Fang Fan's reminder to other independent game developers

However, as of press time, they found that Grandma's recipe, which had been removed from the shelves, had made a comeback on the same page with a different name. Ironically, although the name of the game has become "cooking simulator", but the main visual picture still did not forget grandma.

"Grandma's canteen."

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: platinum Isia

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