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

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: Peng Chuwei

Lao Yang worked as an editor of popular Software for 21 years. In other words, as long as you have bought any "popular software", you are Lao Yang's reader.

Two months ago, we found Jie Huang, the publisher of the game magazine. According to Sister Huang, Toule published the article "Sweet Water Garden: 20 years of Magazine and Game Publishers." This article is the beginning of a series of oral history-we try to find people who have had some or even important influence on the Chinese gaming industry, but remain unknown, and ask them to tell stories about their past.

This time the protagonist Lao Yang is the earliest generation of gamers in China. Lao Yang joined Volkswagen Software in 1995 and worked as an editor for 21 years, in charge of game strategy-related content. He didn't leave until 2016. In other words, as long as you have bought any "popular software", you are Lao Yang's reader.

A few days ago, we chatted with Lao Yang all afternoon in a teahouse by the side of Shijingshan. It's not far from Lao Yang's home.

Lao Yang was born in 1969 and is contemporary with my father. It is hard for me to imagine how Lao Yang became a game magazine editor. in fact, Lao Yang himself did not expect that he would deal with games for so many years. Although he was exposed to games when he was in college, from graduating from college to working as an office administrator in an institution of a certain university, Lao Yang still chose to follow the rules. It was not until 1995, when Volkswagen Software was established, that Lao Yang found a choice that suited him.

He has worked in popular Software for 21 years, and it is hard to find anyone more experienced than Lao Yang in the fields of game editors and players. As a player, Lao Yang has been in contact with games as early as the 1980s and is one of the first players in China. As a game editor, he finished the journey with Volkswagen Software.

When "popular Software" was founded, Lao Yang 26-year-old "popular Software" as a magazine publishing process, and its own creation, prosperity and decline is also a fascinating topic. It involves all kinds of stories, which have been told countless times. This article will provide a new perspective for us to look at the changes in the world over the past 20 years and understand the story of the earliest generation of players in China through Lao Yang.

The following is Lao Yang's self-account, we have made appropriate deletions and corrections.

When I entered Dasuo, I entered popular Software in 1995, when the magazine had just published its third issue, and there was a job advertisement in it.

I happened to be interested in the game, so I went. The editorial department is in a residential building on Chongwenmen Street in Beijing, where the president of Dalu magazine chatted with me. At that time, there were not many people in the editorial department. in addition to the president, there was also a proofreader teacher and three editors. The president used to be an excellent air force test pilot, the proofreader teacher was a comrade-in-arms of the president, and an air force ground engineer came to the editorial department after being demobilized. He still maintained a very rigorous work attitude when proofreading magazines.

The president asked me what I knew about games and publishing. Although I know nothing about publishing, I still know something about games. Therefore, it should be said that it was very smooth for me to enter the "big soft", because at that time, shortly after the establishment of the editorial department, I was very short of manpower, one person had to do several things, and the president himself wrote several articles for the magazine.

When I first joined the editorial department, there were only two editors, a proofreader and an artist except for a chief editor. I am the third editor, and my daily work is mainly to read the manuscripts sent by the author. At that time, the authors' contributions were all printed on paper, and the editorial department had a computer connected to a printer.

If the manuscript sent is printed, I will read it directly. Some people will send handwritten manuscripts. We usually type into the computer first, and then print it into a paper document, and we all watch the revision on the paper.

Most of the time, I read the contributions related to game reviews and strategies. Since its inception, popular Software has adhered to the policy of giving consideration to both applications and games, with computer applications and computer games accounting for half of the page number. The first few main columns are: special topic summary, which mainly talks about the relevant knowledge and information of the computer application industry; practical knowledge, which mainly publishes the skills of using various software tools; hundred gardens, which mainly talks about the small knowledge of computer hardware; the game strategy, it is the column with the largest number of pages in the big soft game, and six strategic articles will be published in each issue at that time.

In addition, there are game exhibitions, which introduce readers to the latest games on the market at that time; secret skills of games, introducing some game modification methods, cheating codes, etc.; games talk freely and publish some game evaluation articles; game theaters publish fan novels written by readers based on the game. Finally, there is a game ranking that recommends the most interesting game products to readers through the review articles of the contributing authors.

What I am mainly responsible for is the introduction column.

I judge whether a strategy is good or not, one is to see whether the game written is popular, and the other is to look at the writing style. I'm sure the author won't make it up. I remember that Zhu Jiayin wrote a game strategy before, until the last few hurdles, because the magazine was about to meet a deadline, so he didn't have time to finish it, so he read it by himself, and then "made up" an ending according to his impression, but because he was good at writing, the readers didn't notice.

The judgment standard of the game evaluation is that as long as the author has something to say, it is reasonable, and the writing style is good, it can be published. As to whether what is said is correct or not, each has his own views and views.

These ideas will eventually spread, because we had a lot of influence at that time. I have a very impressive thing. During the period when Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn was launched in 1995, there was a domestic translation of "conquest and destruction" at first, and an old editor of "Da soft" called it "command and conquest" according to the literal meaning of the English name of the game. Later, with the huge circulation of "Da soft", his translation was recognized by players all over the country. This is how the Chinese name of the game "Command and conquest" was decided.

The command and conquest series aroused a generation's enthusiasm for real-time strategy games throughout the 1990s, the command and conquest series and the glorious "three Kingdoms" series have been very popular in the "big soft", and there have been a lot of contributions.

I also play games early. In high school, I saw people playing games on Apple's Ⅱ computer. In 1988, my second year of college, I had my own computer and a video game console in 1989. There were few games at that time. I went to the computer store in Zhongguancun, where there were some stalls of computer companies. I went to ask the salesperson to give me games. There are always some games on the salesman's disk. It was in this way that I played the first generation of the Prince of Persia series.

This is one of my most impressive games, and of course it may have something to do with the lack of choices at that time.

In 1992, after I graduated, I worked as an administrative worker in an institution of a university. During this period, I came into contact with the first flight simulation game, the F19 Fighter, which was launched by the famous simulation game company Microprose in 1988. I can't remember how many crashes it took to figure out how to land the plane safely. At that time, computers did not have a CD-ROM drive and could only use 5.25in or 3.5in floppy disks. It cost 16 diskettes to install "Chinese Paladin", each of which cost a lot of money. In 1994, I replaced the "386" computer. There is a CD-ROM drive on the computer, of course, the CD-ROM drive is still very expensive, and it costs 1000 yuan. However, with a CD-ROM drive, you can buy a 30-yuan game disc. That's when game discs began to rise.

The earliest martial arts game I played was "the Sun and the Moon of The Smiling、Proud Wanderer", which was as big as 20MB, and my hard drive was only this big at that time. So you have to empty the hard drive in order to install the game. This is a third-person action role-playing game. I am a little disappointed with the picture effect of the game, but the animation of "Lonely Nine Swords" is still impressive.

Before 1998, the editorial department asked us to go to work at 9 o'clock, but we were usually not late until 09:30. In the editorial department, I mainly read the manuscripts. I saw that I would go home around 7 o'clock in the evening, and sometimes I would play computer games when I got home. At that time, my favorite game was the "Command and Conquest" series, including the later "Red Police." In 1999, the editorial department's rules for commuting to and from work were relaxed, coupled with the gradual rise of online games, and there were more times to play games all night. At that time, I was very interested and my mind was sharp. When I have ideas, I also write some drafts myself. Basically, my youth is all in the "big soft".

In 1997, the editorial department equipped everyone with computers, and at that time, we played several rounds of Diablo. For a while, because we played very hard, someone in the editorial department was responsible for checking to see if anyone was secretly playing games at work. At that time, we cut the window of Diablo to the back. Cut as soon as you see the editorial director coming.

After 1999, online games became popular in the editorial department, first playing "Ultima Online" and then exposed to "Ever Quest". Some of us (including me) were defeated and left the game because of the super-real and harsh settings of the game world. One of the most interesting (and painful) events at that time was that an editor painstakingly brushed a key task prop he had just got for a month, which was a bottle of wine. just as he went to the toilet, another editor was in debt. I clicked on the bottle of wine with a mouse and immediately drank it with a gurgle. As a result, one was depressed and the other was dumbfounded on the spot.

Then there was Stone Age, during which I first came into contact with plug-ins, got the pleasure of plug-ins in online games for the first time, and later produced a full-color supplement to Stone Age. Then there is "Magic Baby". It is said that an editor's roar while playing "Magic" to fly off an opponent's pet resounded inside and outside the newsroom.

Of course, the most popular game was the later World of Warcraft, when an editor formed a tribal guild that could take the top spot on his server. During that period, the editorial department also published a series of World of Warcraft supplements, in which the 3D copy map was the original highlight given by Zhu Jiayin. On the other hand, the "Legend" series of games played by many people in China have not been popular in the editorial department. We also played the Eternal Tower in South Korea for a few days and published a related special issue.

In 1997, the editorial department of Dalou moved to a glass store. We set up a local area network there for the first time. We have played some LAN connection modes of stand-alone games, such as "Age of Empire" series, "Thor Hammer", "Need for Speed" and so on. Of course, from then on, I no longer have to read paper manuscripts. I can read them directly on the computer.

After playing too much, the responsible editor came to urge the magazine to publish the magazine. We publish the magazine in accordance with the set of processes adopted by the publishing houses in the past. The specific process is as follows: after the editor gets the manuscript, read it first, revise the text and show it to the responsible editor, then read it by the chief editor, and finally review it by the editor-in-chief.

Only when the editor-in-chief signs the manuscript can it be confirmed that it can be published. After the draft is finalized, it will be typesetting and film production. At that time, the magazine printing method was film printing, the layout was output to the film through the equipment, and then the editor checked the film. If there was an error in the typesetting on the film, if it was a minor mistake, such as a few typos, use a knife to cut out the error, and then let the editor put all the content to be corrected in a blank layout, and then put the layout used to correct out a piece of film. Then cut each correction from the film with a knife and fill it into the film that has been scratched, so as to correct the error.

This is done to save money, without having to reproduce a piece of film every time a mistake is found, thus saving the cost of publishing. However, if it is a big mistake, such as page number confusion, resulting in a large number of left and right pages of the magazine misplaced, then we can only scrap the film and spend money to reproduce it all over again, so that the president will be angry and blame is inevitable.

After making sure that the film is all right, the next step is to send it to the printer. The printer will first use the film to produce a blue pattern (that is, blue paper), and the editor will ask the editor to check the blue paper again to see if there are any problems. Finally, the editor-in-chief and the current editor will sign it at the same time, and it can only be printed after it has been signed.

The chief editor is looking at the blue paper responsible editor. Several of our editors take turns as responsible editors.

The responsible editor is equivalent to the general coordinator in the process of magazine publication. The first job of a responsible editor is to plan the page number. For the sake of cost, the page number of the magazine is usually fixed, how many pages each person is responsible for, should be declared centrally at the beginning, and statistics should be made by the responsible editor. Although each column has a page number range, in fact the page number will float. For example, an editor's column is between 55 and 58 pages, but he has a particularly good article in hand and wants to report a few more pages. At this time, as an editor-in-chief, I have to discuss with the editor-in-chief whether to delete the article or the text until it is deleted into a reasonable category. On the other hand, if the content is not enough, the responsible editor should discuss who should fill in the manuscript and fill in the page number, which is an important coordination of work.

In addition, you have to coordinate with the Advertising Department, because there are more and less advertisements in each issue. If the page number of the advertisement is not fixed, the content of the text will be adjusted accordingly. At that time, the cost of printing was very high, and once it was wrong, it was difficult to change. In particular, large pictures of advertisements are often required to do opposite pages, which involves the order of single and double pages. Non-publishing practitioners may not be familiar with it. Magazines are not the same as books with pure text. There are pictures and large pictures that occupy two pages (the so-called "opposite"). When typesetting, they are all based on two pages, that is, "open books". To put it simply, if you count the wrong page number, or print one more page, then all the pictures in the magazine are wrong and will have to be reprinted.

The second part of the work of responsible editors is collaboration. At that time, the Volkswagen Software was published once a month, and the contribution collection time was one month. Our work was divided according to the week. In the first week, we received and selected the contributions from last month's authors, and in the second week, we almost finished reading these manuscripts. We also agreed with some special writers on the topic of the next issue. The third week began to focus on typesetting and correcting layout errors. I have to go to the printing shop in the fourth week.

As a responsible editor, I need to ask editors and artists to fill in and arrange the content in accordance with the specified time. The earliest typesetting tools were not WYSIWYG, but were implemented by entering instructions. At that time, artists were like programmers, typing lines of instructions on the computer, and then generating the magazine layout after typing the instructions in order to see what the effect was.

If there is a problem, go back to the instruction page to modify the instruction. If mixed arrangement of pictures and texts is involved, it will be even more painful. The artist has to vacate all the space to be mapped, first put all the pictures to be used in a blank space, and so on, first use a knife to dig out the blank film reserved in the magazine layout, and then cut out the needed picture from the special film and fill it into the film on the magazine layout. Later, with Apple computer in the editorial department, artists began to mix pictures and text directly. After typesetting is completed, the file is stored on disk, and the editor takes the disk to the printer.

In the early years of the magazine, the responsible editor was in charge of running errands. At that time, printing was not laser typesetting, and documents could be sent directly to the printer. But to produce the film first, and then send the film to the printing factory. At first, we printed in the people's Liberation Army Daily printing factory, and the film was produced in Zhongguancun. After the content of each issue is edited, the editor should take the disk to Zhi Chunli in Zhongguancun and print out the film.

After the film is out, we will watch it again. At that time, there was a special desk for watching film in the editorial department, which was said to be made by the proofreader himself. The surface of the table is inlaid with a piece of glass and under the glass is a fluorescent lamp. After the light is turned on, you can put pieces of film on the glass of the table and look at the light and make a final mistake.

Magazine night strategy column before 2000, the Internet fee is very expensive, it is difficult for ordinary people to search and collect a large number of software and game resources they are interested in. So the editorial department made "popular software CD" according to the needs of computer players at that time, including an application disk and a game board. The main content of the game board is trial play and patch sharing, while the app disk is a bunch of free software, which is very popular for a period of time.

The editors who produced the popular software CD belong to the CD-ROM group. By 2001, Dabu had a press group again. Before that, the editorial department followed the principle of using the author's manuscript as much as possible, and the editor sometimes wrote it himself, but also contributed as the author.

At that time, several authors who could write were basically fixed. Because they often write, they can be regarded as friends. Everything you write is said hello in advance. One of my deepest impressions is "Maple Red one knife flow". He can be regarded as the king of China's game strategy, and the total number of words written must be more than one million. However, in this respect, even if you become the first in the country, you will not be famous.

As far as I can remember, there was still a system of contract authors at that time, in which there were five or six contract authors, and the editorial department issued certificates to them. In the era of print media, we often encounter the problem of more than one contribution, because the information is underdeveloped, it is difficult for editors to verify the uniqueness of the manuscript, so we use the contract author system to solve this problem.

This system is also a means used by various newspaper editorial departments to "rob authors". To put it simply, if you sign with me, I can give you a higher fee and give priority to letting you write popular games. However, at that time, "popular software" did not need to rob authors, because most of the authors were scrambling to contribute to us.

After 2001, I received comments from some readers who thought that the strategy on "popular software" was too slow, especially compared with the computer Business Intelligence. At that time, there was a lot of competition among computer newspapers, which can be seen from the time of the first publication. We will mark the publication time of the next issue in each issue of the magazine, but this time is always empty, because all magazines will rush forward. Because the price of a game magazine is not cheap, most young people will only choose to buy one. At this time, whoever chooses the same topic in the morning will have the advantage of starting first, so everyone will be in a hurry. This is actually a vicious circle. As far as I can remember, for a while, the February magazine even went on sale on January 20.

The second reason for "being in a hurry" was that logistics was not as developed as it is now, and magazines generally did not print at various printing plants across the country for cost-saving reasons, which also led to the arrival of Volkswagen software in southern cities much later than in the north.

For a time, the editorial department asked me to scramble for time to come up with strategies. I remember that there was a game called "Allied death squads: deep behind enemy lines". At that time, the game was just out, and only some parts of the country could play it, but Beijing didn't have it yet, so I found a German version of the graphic strategy online. Then I went to Zhongguancun to find a translation company to translate German into Chinese, and finally came out the strategy earlier than other magazines.

I am not very satisfied with the quality of the strategy of "Allied death squads: deep behind enemy lines" in "Da soft". In fact, the strategy is slow, and the author cannot be blamed. On the one hand, in order to pursue quality, the authors who write strategies for "Da Rui" tend to be more detailed and slower. The solution can only be to request manuscripts as early as possible. At the same time, I usually ask the strategy on "big soft" to be both practical and literary. There is no need to talk about practicality, literary sense, refers to the game strategy should have a certain style of writing, as a story as readable.

On the other hand, the magazine itself is slow. For example, if January 20 is the time for the magazine to be printed, then it will take four days from the leader's signature to the production of the film, and it will take two or three days to print itself. Before that, the editor-in-chief has to review, and then it will take a week to type. According to the calculation, the editor has only more than a week to organize the manuscript. This is equivalent to the fact that the editor has already received all the manuscripts of the February Magazine as seen by readers at the beginning of January. This does not count the time for the author to write.

In other words, if there is a game in early December and you can see the strategy of the game in the February magazine, it will be considered a "time-out" strategy. In my impression, the fastest print media published in the game strategy at that time was the "computer Business Intelligence News". The game strategy in the computer Business Intelligence News comes out quickly, on the one hand, because it is a newspaper with a short distribution cycle, and on the other hand, the newspaper is located in Chengdu, where the game CD-ROMs get there faster than Beijing.

The prosperity of "big soft" is due to the large number of readers of the "popular software" strategy column, so game manufacturers attach great importance to this column.

With many readers, manuscripts and letters, I am impressed by Beijing Xintiandi Interactive Multimedia Technology Co., Ltd., a company that acts as an agent for foreign games. Every time they want to play a new game, they send someone to the editorial department to express their condolences, bring us a bunch of snacks, and then go to the advertising department to get in touch with each other and advertise the strategic articles in the magazine.

Later, in order to rob both readers and advertisers, Dalou launched a model. To put it simply, it is to send editors to major game companies to eat, live and work with them, stay for a week, and then write reports about game companies. Editors did this job as early as 1999.

Later, I also went to game research companies like Target Software to play Qin Sham and Iron Armor Storm, which have not yet been released. I saw that the computers in these companies were affixed with seals to prevent leaks. Later, another old editor and I went to Jinshan Company to do an interview, that time was ready to launch "sword net 2".

I think that is the most brilliant time of "big soft", but it is a pity that "big soft" did not complete the transformation of network. In fact, the start of the "big soft" network is not too late. In 1998, we had a forum called "Jinghe backyard". By 2001, the scale of the forum was already very large, but it had always been a forum with no strategy in it. it is the president's idea that no content may affect magazine sales.

Without "big soft", some people say that "popular software" after 2013 is not "big soft".

After the 12th issue in 2013, the magazine "popular Software" did not exist at the level of national journal management. The magazine is completely gone because the serial number has been cancelled. From 2014 to 2016, popular Software continued to be released by borrowing other serial numbers.

In 2014, Volkswagen Software had a lot of editors, basically the same class. It was the most popular year in the later period of "Da soft". The situation was even worse in 2015, and 2016 was the last struggle of "big soft". Throughout 2016, I was responsible for most of the content of popular Software.

At that time, several authors supported me. Together with another editor, I managed to fill the whole magazine. He is in charge of the application section, and I am in charge of the game section. Later, it could not hold up, especially in the game magazine, the print media had no foothold, and the network new media was booming and unstoppable. So we did a crowdfunding in the last issue of that year, got some money, and finally rushed a handful of circulation to give that issue. After that, I left Da Ruo.

I held on to the end, "big soft" did not do any more, I also left. That year, I was 47 years old. After that, my work and games became farther and farther away. In the last two years, I can't play any more games. I watched the plot flow of Diablo 4 last month, and I did a really good job.

(Lao Yang is an alias in the text. )

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