Text | Yu Shenglin
TBabaylanCG is the abbreviation of the exchange card game. It has a history of nearly 30 years since its earliest board game development.
The first TCG was launched in 1993, which is the well-known board game “Magic” that became popular as soon as it was released, and it also made the company behind it Wizards step by step to the top spot in the industry.
Then in 1996, Pokémon, which was popular in Japan, also launched its own TCG. In 1999, the most familiar card game “Yu Gambler” of domestic players was officially released.
Then these cards quickly occupied the convenience stores of major, middle and primary schools in China and became the absolute dominant of everyone’s spare time. Game Daily Yu Yu’s family still has hundreds of cards that he won when he was a child. Of course, most students did not know the specific gameplay of TCG, but at that time there were already many full card stores in first-tier cities in China for everyone to play these board games.
Brand stores in Beijing in 2005/Photo source: Wuxia Amon
Although offline board games are very popular, there are few TCG network games outside of Komiks.
In 2001, “Legend of Blood” was just introduced to China, and online games ushered in a blowout development in 2002. In that wild era of domestic online games, Wu Xia Amon, who had just graduated from university, designed the first TCG online game in China, “Interactive Martial Arts”, which opened up his own fate with TCG.
“Interactive Martial Arts” press conference
Shortly after Wu Xia Amon’s first game was launched, he had the idea of resigning and starting a business. Although he had no money or qualifications, he had dived into the “no return” of game entrepreneurship with his love and motivation for such games. That year he was 26 years old.
For more than a year, after dozens of failed investment investment, Wu Xia’a was heavily in debt. Meng finally couldn’t stand it and found a class. She went to Suzhou Game Snail to serve as the main planner of “Mecha Century”.
More than two months later, Wu Xia Amon finally found an opportunity, got a million investment, and began to develop his second TCG “Xiao Yaoyou”. At that time, Wu Xia Amon never expected that he had never seen the carefully designed game.
“Xiaoyaoyou”
On the eve of the game’s launch, investors felt that the game had been completed and no longer needed Wuxia Amon, so they set up a new company, and all the employees and computers were taken away, leaving only the poor Wuxia Amon and his main program friends. However, “Xiaoyaoyou” which lost the producer and main program, it was down for a long time on the day of the public beta, and various vicious bugs appeared frequently, and disappeared soon after it disappeared.
Later, unwilling to give up Wuxia Amon, with his main program friends, the two made a brand new TCG “Eight Immortals Online”, which was officially launched in 2008. As a result, the new game was cheated by the distribution company as soon as it was launched. The distribution company not only did not share the share, but also copied a page by itself. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Cinema‘s “Ten Thousand Demons” came out. “Ten Thousand Demons” made micro-innovations based on “Eight Immortals”, but because of the inaccurate copying, the numerical system was not tightened and it soon became cold.
The Eight Immortals Online later experienced several twists and turns, and finally operated in Wu Xia Amon as a private server until 2012, until it was bought out by a Shenzhen company.
“Eight Immortals Online”
This game is Wu Xia Amon’s favoriteGames, planning, art, and websites are all made by Wu Xia Amon himself, and there are no restrictions on the content, so you can do whatever you want.
2013Cinema, the popular Blizzard Hearthstone began testing.
Furthermore, among the games in this category, “The Five Elements Master” launched in 2017 is considered a representative work.
Yuyu: Why is it named Wuxia Amon?
Wu Xia Amon: In 2002, I took it when I was doing “Interactive Martial Arts”. I like martial arts very much. I have read a lot of martial arts novels. I once wanted to change the online name to “Martial Arts Dream”, but I felt a little stingy, so I used the homonym of “Martial Arts Dream” to “Wu Xia Ameng”.
Yuyu: How was “The Five Elements Master” born?
Wu Xia Amon: After the sale of “Eight Immortals Online”, I started my business again in 201Babaylan. I was fortunate to make millions from other games. At this time, I was facing the problem of project establishment. Based on my interest in CCG and my feelings for “Eight Immortals Online”, we finally used all the money to make a CCG “Five Elements Master”, and the combat rules are inherited from “Eight Immortals Online”.
The Five Elements Master can be said to be the continuation of life in “Eight Immortals Online”. In “The Five Elements Master”, I designed an achievement commemorative card called “Tumbler” to commemorate those years of being pushed around but not wanting to fall. Haha, it’s pretentious, manual dog head~
Yuyu: After “The Five Elements Master” is launched, will any player compare it with “Heartstone”?
Wu Xia Amon: After the game was online, it had a high score of 9.4 when it was recommended by TapTap for the first time. However, many players saw that it was a card game, and they scolded us for copying Hearthstone without playing it. They had a bad review backhand, which led to a continuous decline in the score… Later, due to the recognition of quality, the scores rebounded all the way. Now there are more than 100,000 yuan downloads on TaKomikspTap, and they still retain a high score of 9.0.
In fact, the rules of “Five Elements Master” are inherited from 20How could the “Eight Immortals Online” launched in 2008 copy “Heartstone” launched in 2013? When Hearthstone first came out, many old “Eight Immortals” players came to me and joked that Hearthstone was plagiarizing us.
Yu Yu: How is “The Five Elements Master” doing in terms of balance?
Wu Xia Amon: The balance of “The Five Elements Master” can be listed to illustrate:
In the duel between experts, there are nearly 20 sets of playing methods with a winning rate of more than 50% and a usage rate of more than 1% each month (the different sects and five elements combinations are the same). This number is far more than that of other CCCinemaG.
In addition, the winning rate of routines with the highest winning rate is lower than 54%, which is also far lower than other CCGs.
Yuyu: I have been persisting for 20 years, why is Komiks so obsessed with card games?
Wu Xia Amon: I like to play games with high strategic nature, and card battle games are very strategic and never tired of playing them.
Yuyu: Which game do you think you have made the best? Why?
Wu Xia Amon: The best one is the latest “Devil’s Secret Realm”. “The Five Elements Master” is also a real son, but its artistic performance has always been a pain for us and has been discounted…
“The Five Elements Master”
Yuyu: Are there any interesting news during the game development process?
Wu Xia Amon: There are quite a lot of interesting things, let’s talk about the early years:
In 2005, in order to write a good financing business plan, I went to the brand store to inspect it. There are dozens of card stores that mainly sell Magic Cards in Beijing, and there are also board game venues. When I took the second photo, it attracted the attention of the store owner and asked me about my purpose, and I honestly told me. He knew that I was not a customer, so he limited me to leave within 30 seconds and stayed wherever I was cool… Years have passed, and occasionally I remembered the embarrassing look at me back then.
YuKomiksYu: What major problems did you encounter during the game development process?
Wu Xia Amon: The biggest problem is the choice of art style. It must not only meet the characteristics of the subject matter, but also cater to the preferences of the majority of players, but also take into account development costs, development cycles, and subsequent dimensions.https://comicmov.com/”>BabaylanThe difficulty of protection…there are too many restrictions.
Yu Yu: How many people are there in the team at present? Are you doing a new game?
Wu Xia Amon: There are more than 20 R&D personnel, and they are still making an independent game “Silent Cricket”.
Yu Yu: What do you think is the good and bad aspects of “Five Elements Master”?
Wu Xia Amon: The advantage of “Five Elements Master” is that its gameplay is high enough, and its disadvantage lies in its visual performance. In other words, the advantage lies in its gameplay and numerical design, and the disadvantage lies in its art design (art performance is not only a design issue, but also has a lot to do with the investment. A company made a CCG two years ago, and its film <a The cost of Cinema head animation exceeds the entire R&D cost of "Five Elements Master".
The advantages of “Devil Secret RealmKomiks” is the same as “Five Elements Master”, and it is still planning the design of gameplay and numerical values, while the disadvantage is that it is difficult to add pvp.
《Demon Secret Realm》
Yu Yu: Summarize your years of entrepreneurial career. Do you feel the pain?
Wu Xia Amon: I don’t feel the pain. Although I have experienced many setbacks, I may be optimistic by nature. I have never felt any frustration, and I may be used to it.
Yu Yu: Will I want to make some more novel card strategy games in the future?
Wu Xia Amon: If you have a strong IP, I will make another TCG or CCG.
Yu Yu: Do you have any suggestions for newcomers who have just entered the industry?
Wu Xia Amon: If you want to do a programCinema and art will be easy to change careers in the future.
If you want to do planning, you need to first ask whether you love game design very much and whether you have the talent of Komiks in this regard.
Yuyu: During the interview with the Game Daily, we often encountered some colleges and even high schools and started doing games by ourselves.The producer of the drama is approaching the college entrance examination. What majors do you think if you want to enter the industry and play games in the future, what majors do you think are better to study?
Wu Xia Amon: First of all, it depends on which job you want to do. If you are doing programs or art, you will naturally choose a related major; if you are trying to do planning, then the major is not that important. What is important is that you must play more games in college. If you must choose a professional direction for game planning, you can give priority to majors related to programming. Game planning does not require programming, but if you know how to program, some sub-jobs can do more things.