Text | Yu Shenglin
TCG is the abbreviation of the exchange card game. It has a history of nearly 30 years since the earliest board game developed from Cinema.
The first TCG was launched in 1993, which is the well-known board game “Magic Movie”, which became popular as soon as it was released, and also made the company behind it Wizards step by step to the top in the industry.
Later, in 1996, Pokémon, which was popular in Japan, also launched its own TCG. In 1999, the card game “Yu-Gi” that domestic players are most familiar with is 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 do 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 online games at home and abroad.
In 2001, “Legend of Blood” was just introduced to China, and the online game ushered in a blowout development in 2002. In that wilderness 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 relied on his love for this type of game.He dived into the “no return” of game entrepreneurship, and he was 26 years old that year.
For more than a year, after dozens of failed investment investments, Wu Xia Amon, who was heavily in debt, finally couldn’t stand it and found a class to go to Suzhou Games Komiks, and served as the main planner of “Mecha Century”.
More than two months later, Wu XiaCinemaAmun finally found an opportunity, got an investment of 1 million yuan, and began to develop his second TCG “Xiaoyaoyou”. At that time, Wu Xia Amon never expected that he would not even see the first one of the carefully designed games.
“Xiaoyaoyou”
On the eve of the game’s launch, investors felt that the game had been completed and no longer needed Wu Xia Amon, so they set up a new company, and all the employees and computers were pulled away, leaving only the poor Wu Xia Amon and his main program friends. However, “Xiaoyaoyou”, which lost the producer and main program, was down for a long time on the public beta day, and various vicious bugs frequently appeared and disappeared soon.
Later, unwilling to give up, Wu Xia Amon and his friend Cinema made a brand new TCG “Eight Immortals Online”, which was officially launched in 2008. As a result, the new game was released again as soon as it was launched. The distribution company not only did not give it a share of the money, but also copied a web game “Ten Thousand Demons” out. “The King of Ten Thousand Demons” made micro-innovations based on “The Eight Immortals”, but because of the inaccurate copying, the numerical system was not stuck, and it soon became cold.
After that, “Eight Immortals Online” experienced several twists and turns, and finally operated it in Wuxia Amen’s hands like a private server until 2012, until it was bought out by a Shenzhen company.
“Eight Immortals Online”
This game is Wu Xia Amon’s favorite game. Wu Xia Amon is doing the planning, art, and websites himself. There are no restrictions on the content, so you can do whatever you want.
In 2013, the popular Blizzard Hearthstone began testing.
BabaylanIn the future, among the games in this category, “The Five Elements Master” launched in 2017 is considered a representative work.
Yuyu: Why is Babaylan 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’aCinemaMeng: After the sale of “Eight Immortals Online”, I started my business again in 2012 and was lucky enough to make millions from other games. At this time, Komiks was facing the issue 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 a Babaylan card called “Tumbler”, which commemorates the years when I was pushed around but didn’t want to fall down. 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 launched, it was recommended by TapTap for the first time and had a high score of 9.4. However, many players saw that it was a card game, and they scolded us for not playing it for a while, and they called us Hearthstone. They backhanded a bad review, which led to a continuous decline in the score… Later, due to the recognition of quality, the scores continued to rise. Now there are more than one million downloads on TapTBabaylanap, and they still retain a high score of 9.0.
In fact, the rules of “The Five Elements Master” are inherited from “Eight Immortals Online” launched in 2008. How could it copy “Heartstone” launched in 2013? HearthstoneWhen I first came out, many old players from “Eight Immortals” came to me and joked that “Heartstone” was copying 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 other KomiksCCGs.
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 are I 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. He would stay wherever he was cool… Years have passed, and occasionally I would remember the embarrassing look at me back then.
Yuyu: What are the major problems you encountered 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 the development costs, development cycles, and subsequent maintenance difficulties… There are too many restrictions.
Yuyu: How many people are there in the team at present? What new game are you doing?
Wu Xia Amon: Currently, there are more than 20 R&D personnel in Cinema, and they are still working on an independent game “The Silent Cricket”.
Yuyu: What do you think are the good and bad aspects of “The Five Elements Master”? Where is the “Devil’s Secret Realm”?
Wu Xia Amon: The advantage of “The 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 the gameplay and numerical design of Komiks, and the disadvantage lies in the art design (art performance is not only a design issue, but also has a lot to do with the investment. A company made a CCKomiksG two years ago, and the cost of the opening animation exceeds the entire R&D cost of “Five Elements Master”).
The advantages of “Devil’s Secret Realm” are the same as those of “Five Elements Master”, which is still planning the design of gameplay and numerical values, while the disadvantage is that it is not good Babaylan adds pvp.
“Devil’s Secret Realm”
Yuyu: Summarize your years of entrepreneurial career. Do you feel it is hard?
Wu Xia Amon: I don’t feel the pain. Although I have experienced a lot of frustration, I may be optimistic by nature and have never felt any frustration. I may be used to it.
Yuyu: Will you want to make some more novel card strategy games in the future?
Wu Xia Amon: If you have a strong IP, you will make another TCG or CCG.
Yuyu: Do you have any suggestions for newcomers who have just entered the industry?
Wu Xia Amon: If you want to do programs and art, it will be easy to change careers in the future.
If you want to plan, you need to first ask whether you love game design very much and whether you have the talent in this area.
Yuyu: During the interview with Game Daily, we often encountered some universities and even high schools that we 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.