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

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: Zhu Siqi

The end and beginning of adult Gap Year.

At first glance, WOW Studio's office area looks similar to all small teams: the main body is a large, flat workshop with tables next to each other. The programmer wore a U-shaped pillow around his neck, staring directly at the computer screen and tapping the keyboard.

What is unusual is that the walls and cabinets here are covered with all kinds of hand-made decorations, even the studio Logo is made by themselves. Turning into the conference room, a huge warhammer sand table and a bunch of lovely green-skinned things suddenly pop up in the corner-all orcs similar to the classic images of World of Warcraft and even the Warhammer series. These orcs have been made into various furnishings, such as green Mona Lisa, green girls with pearl earrings and other world-famous paintings that have been modified by magic, and will also greet orc-themed pictures during the holidays. On Valentine's Day this year, two orcs were beaten by Cupid, who is not good at archery, and now they have gone for an outing with their families.

WOW Studio's official website is also very interesting. The front page shows an orc sitting on a barbecue. The meat whirled round and round on the fire, making a sound and smelling delicious, but the pony opposite him was still empty. Zhai Jie, founder and producer of the studio, interpreted this as: "We think that playing games is like barbecue. We should be patient, neither fast nor slow. When the smell of meat is overflowing, there will naturally be like-minded players looking for it."

WOW Studio is a small game studio that wants to build the ORC Universe.

The welcome interface of the official website actually plays "monster hunt". Our WOW does not mean "World of Warcraft", although many people will understand it at first glance. " By the way, Zhai said, he threw off his arm and made a surprise move. "it's' wow, 'which means amazing."

The description sounds concise, but it goes straight to the point. The overall temperament of WOW Studio also gives people the same feeling. The small nine-member team in Shanghai was officially established in January 2023, but its core members are not as young as the studio itself. In a nutshell, the story is likely to fall into a recurring template: a group of developers who work for big companies reach middle age and have often been involved in lucrative PC games and mobile games such as Legend, Kyushu and Alloy warheads. With the accumulation of experience and money, they don't have to worry too much about their survival, and when old friends get together, in the middle of drinking and barbecue, they talk about their dreams of the past again, and then hit it off: why not do something really fun and interesting?

The same is true of WOW Studio, but not exactly. This team is more like the product of the "self-release" of the core members, full of whim and strange colors, but there is still a serious, commercial foundation accumulated over the years. The two aspects of the team will be reflected in their new projects to be launched in the second half of the year.

Adult Gap YearWOW Studio was only established in January this year, but several core members have been working together for more than a decade since they just met and worked together. Asked what they did last year, Zhai said, "it's just for fun" and "do whatever you think is fun."

Their projects do not seem to be very commercial. "Orcs must be blind" is essentially an editor that allows players to generate hundreds of millions of different orcs in minutes, a number that makes people "blind" and dazzling. How interesting the editor is depends solely on how much developers and players love these green creatures. Even chat memes like Zhai are enthusiasts of orcs and naturally enjoy it. "I hope everyone can have their own image of orcs." "I think there is an orc yearning for freedom and joy in everyone's heart," he said. "if there happen to be two players with exactly the same orcs in the crowd, we will make a match for them. it's kind of an interesting fate."

"Green Bar" is a live interactive game customized for bilibili Carnival in July last year. When fans are brushing the on-screen comment, the anchorman can control the small TV on behalf of bilibili to come and go in front of the long wine table and eat it.

Last November, the team went to CiGA Game Jam to do a homophonic puzzle game "Trick Trick". The game has a total of five levels, corresponding to the five letters in "Trick". Players need to find possible homophones from the screen according to hints such as "big change living person", "escape art" and "change pigeon". After making up enough, they will be able to clear the customs.

The main pleasure of solving puzzles is that homophones are hidden in unexpected "stalks". For example, in the case of "wall-piercing", if you rip off the left orc's hat, you will find that he is actually "Trump", corresponding to the word "wear". At first glance, this solution is really hard to think of, but when I look back, I only think that this "Trump" orc is really decent.

The orc on the left is actually all the scenes, characters and props in "Trump" and "Trick Trick". All the scenes, characters and props are made in 48 hours, most of them are hand-painted cardboard, and a roomful of people lie on their desks and cut them all night. All the materials are ready-made: the paper shell comes from the Ikea cartons left over from the move, and the red cloth used as a curtain comes from Zhai's daughter's eliminated trousers. All kinds of wonderful ideas are pieced together to become a mini orc theater that can be seen in the game.

"that's what it feels like to play games. It's fun." Zhai always repeats the word "fun". The day WOW Studio was founded was "an ordinary day that is not dark and windy every month". He gathered everyone together and discussed from the most common topic: "what is fun?" what is fun? "

Zhai said that in the past, when players did "legendary" projects, the first thing players said was not how to play the game, but where to charge the money. "in that very mature business system, what you do is actually a paid experience, just do a good job of the paid experience."

He hopes to get out of that practice for a while and return to the game itself. Green orcs disguise for fun, then do all kinds of generators; homophonic stalks are funny, then do homophonic puzzles. Of course, ask the player what he wants to play in the game.

The process of playing the game itself has to be fun. The second question discussed is a little more abstract: "what is happiness?" More specifically, if they can live to be 100 years old, what do they want to do when they are 100 years old?

"play your favorite games with the people you like." This is the answer they got at that time, and it sounds like a group of high school students. However, they really intend to continue this state until they are in their forties and fifties. "We are a group of old friends and old guys together, and we have nothing to harass each other."

After that, several core members left the original company and got together, together with those recruited later, to form the current nine-person team.

The strange thing about this is that everyone knows that the gaming industry was in a bad situation last year, and it may be more unrealistic to give up a job and reach a friendship of "leaving for you" than metaphorically "passing friends". Or, it's not a question of who quit for whom, but because everyone wants to jump out of the original track and explore a new direction at that time.

Zhai was more moved by the fact that several other core members did not question why he came out to start a business in such a recession, but said, "I've been waiting for you to raise the flag for too long." It's a bit like a middle-aged Gap Year, putting aside some of the more rational and safe choices for a while and spending the year as he pleases. "well, we're actually a lot like a bunch of idiots." As Zhai Ying spoke, she laughed first.

In addition to WOW Studio itself, they have set up a developer community called the Orcs Tavern. The size of the community is small, about 100 people, all interested in developing games. Every once in a while, Zhai will organize everyone and hold an online discussion in the Tencent conference. You can say what ideas you have and what you want to try in the discussion.

"there are a lot of novices in this community, or people who are not very familiar with the game production process. People in our studio are more experienced, so we will provide them with some advice and help." Zhai said.

There is also a symbolism in the place where WOW Studio members and community partners play games together. Zhai found that a large number of people want to quit to play games. Perhaps because of the limitations of the actual situation or the lack of opportunity, we do not dare or can not realize this wish. The existence of WOW Studio and ORC taverns makes them see that "someone has really done this" and that it is very cool for some people to achieve what many people are afraid to do at all costs, which is a kind of encouragement and encouragement to all those who are interested in the industry.

One thing, Zhai was very impressed and moved. "one day, a female college student came to us. She was very interested in us and said she could help us with free music effects if necessary, but she was going to go abroad soon. She wanted to visit our studio before going abroad." Zhai agreed. A few days later, the girl really went to their office with a bunch of sound collection equipment, chatted for a long time, and said that even if she went abroad, she would help as much as she could.

Both the Gap Year and the pub are essentially providing rest for the spirit of the members. Unfortunately, this is not a fairy tale world and a legendary continent, and a long rest is not sustainable. Not only Zhai himself, but also other studio members have not yet reached the point where they can really have wealth and freedom and begin to retire. After playing for a year, "I really can't make it any longer". So at the end of last year, WOW Studio began raising funds to build a commercial game to provide a steady cash flow for the studio and to store food and ammunition for the future. Around the corner from the conference room, right around the wild orcs, the orc stickers are on the back, and the glass walls are densely and neatly covered with a spectacular array of tags.

That's the equivalent of a schedule for their new project. The internal name of the new project is "Code name: ancient Juji" (homophonic Terrier: ancient, huge mobile base). It is a mobile placement game with a core mechanism similar to "Slim Adventure" and is mainly aimed at overseas markets.

Judging from the label array on the glass wall of the studio, people are now "doing things seriously" for the orcs! Being able to find an investment by the end of 2022 and not even having an Demo in the game makes WOW Studio look like a lucky guy. "the market is really bad." Zhai said, "when many people talk about investment, they wave their hands directly, 'don't invest' and don't talk to you at all."

However, they finally completed the financing as planned. "I am very grateful to my investors for being able to make decisions that seem irrational at this point in time and in the general environment," Zhai said. " Zhai and Zhang Shengqi, the main planner, switched to professional player mode, as if they had turned the interview into a roadshow, from which we can roughly see how they convinced investors: "in fact, I have always thought that the game is divided into three parts." it's not art, planning and procedures, but world outlook, play and commercialization. Our plan is to reduce the purchase cost with a more differentiated worldview, art, and play, and then realize it with a stable commercial model. "

This kind of plan is not a word of mouth, nor is it an ad hoc decision. "even if last year's projects were more or less part of our 'play', they were all part of the 'Starwow'' worldview... we actually paid great attention to building and adjusting this worldview, carried out a lot of iterations, and added a lot of details." "because of the differentiated world view, differentiated art is more likely to impress people and reduce the cost of buying, so we attach great importance to this aspect," Zhai said. "

The so-called "Starwow" is the world view with the green orcs as the protagonists. These rough-looking big men lived comfortably on their planet until a group of human uninvited guests arrived to attack them and rob their homes-a passage borrowed by Zhai from the "Avatar" series. because he found that the story type of "alien demolition office" was particularly popular. The chariots of human troops are derived from the famous war machines of World War I and World War II, with a crude retro style. The orcs have developed their own trump card weapon, the ancient giant base, an ancient and huge mobile base. Players will control this giant chariot and move forward all the way to resist human invasion.

It is not enough to have a world outlook, the content of the game itself is the most important carrier. The project "Code name: Gu Juji" took about three months to try and adjust to determine what kind of games to make for what kind of audience.

"We set the design boundary for the game when we set up the project: core users love it to death, while pan-users do not hate it." Zhai said.

In art, this means that veteran players of Warcraft and Warhammer can not put it down, and players who are not familiar with them do not feel ugly, but feel "ugly and cute". As the protagonist group, WOW Studio optimizes the stereotypes inherited by orcs from classic series such as World of Warcraft and Warhammer, removing negative tags such as "primitive" and "belligerent" while preserving orc spirit, and adding more funny and "offline" elements, such as overall round lines, serious "earth-wrapped sky" appearance, serious and swaggering posture.

The orc spirit in Starwow's worldview means tenacity and perseverance in play, which means they want a "familiar strangeness" to the main audience who are familiar with the Slim Adventure model.

At the beginning of the project, several control rooms inside Gu Juji, such as engine room, missile room and cockpit, need to be manually set up and upgraded. so as to ensure that the behemoth's blood volume, armor and attack power increase steadily with the progress of the level. "compared to the placement class, the original version is actually more simulated operation, or quite heavy simulation operation." The main planner Zhang Shengqi introduced.

Later, they found that many players could not accept it. A considerable part of the audience to try the "code name: ancient Juji", is looking forward to finding a new way to play in their "comfort zone", and this "comfort zone" is mainly to place and upgrade the value, does not include simulation operation. So the team changed the mode of the control module several times, trying to integrate the upgrade of each cabin into one button. In the latest version, the cabin has also changed from a more realistic arrangement at the beginning to a vertical arrangement that is easy to slide up and down.

This is the initial game interface, and now it has been reoptimized and laid out. "but in terms of numerical value, our experience is not quite the same." Zhang Shengqi continued, "We will give players a very strong sense of numerical feedback at every level." The original "Slim Adventure" kind of, its numerical growth is relatively linear, equipment, partners and skills are relatively stable growth, a line up. But we want to keep an explosive experience at every level. For example, once you get a new equipment, such as a spark plug on the engine, you will have a feeling of instant enhancement and sudden cracking. This is the part that we are good at in domestic games, and we just want to output it. And this kind of games are infinite levels, unlimited growth, so they are not afraid of later numerical collapse and other problems. "

Of course, WOW Studio won't miss any chance to play funny in his own game. Small surprises in various details are also part of the differentiation experience. For example, one of the checkpoints, Boss, was originally a modified World War I tank, but in order to show that it was a female villain, they had a white parasol sticking out of the tank hatch, a clothes pole sticking out from the back and hanging some underwear.

The first level of Boss, a Mark I tank will appear in the later stage of a lot of orc heroes are also the focus of "playing tricks". If you identify them carefully, you will find that most of these images come from familiar works, including Johnny Silver-handed Orcs, Strange Doctor orcs, and clown orcs. They all have their own skills and bonuses, and shoot on the ancient base as orc leaders. In the later stage, collecting and training these heroes will become the main way to play and pay for the game.

Zhai also added an idea to the game that made everyone feel "a little too much". "have you ever seen placing games to strengthen the plot? have you ever seen placing games to do two stages for Boss?" Zhai himself was delighted, "but I just want to do it. Don't you think it's funny? the first time you hit Boss, you broke his muzzle and he ran away. You have to chase him. When he showed up again, the muzzle was changed to something else, because it was temporarily modified."

This may be the difference between "code name: ancient Juji" and the end-to-end mobile games that developers have done before. Even if they are commercially mature games, they can now focus more on content and systems than on paid experiences, and release themselves by the way using all available space. This state is much happier for team members, and it can also make the game more unique.

The combination of seriousness and fun is in a sense similar to WOW Studio's team temperament: they actually have a solid foundation, and at the same time, they add idealized or "stupid" elements to try their best to make players and themselves happy. People always ask whether it is a contradiction between doing something mature in business and doing something interesting, whether it is a contradiction between reality and ideal. WOW Studio's attempt may suggest that it is possible to combine the two.

The code name Gu Juji is expected to be completed by the end of August and testing will begin in September or October, Zhai said. Taking into account the cycle of applying for version numbers and the consumption of content by domestic players, the game will give priority to overseas markets, and then promote the domestic version according to the situation. The official version will not use the internal name "code name: Gu Juji", but will change to a more famous name, "such as' rumble'or something."

But in any case, for WOW Studio, for people who have lingered in orc taverns, the experience must have been extremely special and mostly enjoyable. Perhaps they will not only bring more amazing "WOW" works, but also continue to live a life full of "WOW" spirit and surprises.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.