TecRah

Wen Xue Dexing

Interview Yan Yu

Editor Liu Shiwu

On December 18th, Sony Interactive Entertainment Shanghai Ltd. hosted the PlayStation China 10th Anniversary Party in Shanghai.

Ten years ago, the official entry of PS4 into China was regarded as a key point in the gaming industry, and the ban on the sale of game consoles since 2000 was thus brought to a close. However, the problem of the console was solved, and then came the challenge of scarce content.

Whether it is for Sony or the other two manufacturers of the Mikado, the market gap of more than 10 years, so that the domestic content ecology user habits and overseas markets are very different, the production side and the consumer side of the state is almost from scratch. As the first major console manufacturer to return to China, Sony’s solution to this problem is, on the one hand, to continue to bring classic games into the country, and on the other hand, to fully support local game developers, which has given rise to the China Star Program.

The China Star Program is a mentoring and support program launched by PlayStation for local game developers in China. Since its announcement in 2016, the China Star Program has supported and assisted a number of local game development teams, and the first two phases of the program have incubated a number of games on domestic and international platforms, including most of the mainstream game genres from shooters to puzzles to action-adventure games.

In November 2022, the third phase of the China Star Program was announced, promising to provide one-stop support for up to 10 games, including funding, technology, and other game development-related support, and the scale of the third phase of the China Star Program will be much larger than the previous one, with each selected project being provided with free resources worth about 1 million RMB.

Of course, for the game industry, there is a lot of uncertainty in content production. In the China Star program, there is no lack of Shadow Torch City, hardcore mechs and other good reputation, but there are also a number of high hopes but did not succeed in the work. From the first to the third phase, Sony and many game studios have not stopped looking for solutions to make good games.

On the day after the 10th anniversary party, SIE Shanghai held a media interview with China Star Program Project Leader Bao Bo, Lost Souls Producer Yang Bing, Suzuran Project Producer Xu Min, and Neverwinter Producer Ying Chao. We talked with the guests about the development of these three titles, as well as the support and opportunities that the China Star Program has brought over the years.

The following is a summary of the highlights of the interview by 36Krypton Games

Lost Souls still needs a final push, Suzuran program reveals game business model

Previously, at the 10th anniversary party, the single-player action game Lost Souls, which has been in the making for ten years, released its latest promotional PV, teasing that the game will be officially released in 2025, and will be logged on the PS5 and PC platforms. Another multiplayer online shooting action game Suzuran plan also previewed will be online in 2025, and the absolute dawn is the third phase of the China Star Program selected new projects, previously invited offline test in ChinaJoy, is a secondary yuan hard core action open world game, there is no actual release plan.

About the specific release time of the Lost Souls, from the interview to see the situation can not be determined. Bao Bo said that the development of Lost Souls has been fully on track, but due to some well-known reasons in the game industry, it still needs to be the final sprint, and will probably fight until the last minute.

For another game, Suzuran, producer Xu Min said that the game’s online content is basically developed and is in the polishing and optimization stage. The game’s business model is basically in line with mainstream service-based games, with free downloads, season updates and season passes as the main payment, combined with SIE’s overseas promotion and localization resources, it is expected that the game will be launched in more than a dozen countries and regions around the world next year.

From the previous news, the game mode of Suzuran Project supports PVP PVE, after a certain degree of competition between players, and then by the surviving team to cooperate against the enemy.PVP mode is similar to the third-person battle royale, and some of the tactical skills and in-game design can be seen in Apex’s shadow. Combined with Apex’s poor operation and the loss of players due to inaction in the recent year, if the game has a more mature globalization layout and long-term operation means, it may be able to absorb the players in this category.

Jedi Dawn is a secondary open world game that focuses on hardcore action, which means that the combat part of the game is more demanding for the players in addition to the secondary style of painting. The previous live test, almost no trial players through the BOSS. progress, the person in charge of Ying Chao said, is currently in the volume stage, and for the core of the combat part of the feedback changes.

From 2A to 3A, the vision of the China Star program becomes larger

Compared with the situation eight years ago, the volume of games in the third phase of China Star Program seems to be expanding. This time, most of the projects selected for the third phase of the China Star Program are mature development teams with more experience, and more targeting action, open-world role-playing FPS and other large game categories.

Bao Bo, head of China Star, said that China Star’s goal has indeed changed, from mainly supporting small and medium-sized independent projects to survive in the past, to now add a fire to medium to large-scale teams, so that they can challenge the higher level of the game.

The change in ChinaStar’s vision and ambition may also have something to do with the country’s growing and mature game talent pool.

Bao Bo mentioned that more and more experienced developers have been selected for the ChinaStar program than before. We found that a lot of very professional developers have chosen to come out and start their own business and join this field. The goal of these developers has gradually changed from making a game to breaking bread with powerful works, and ChinaStar upholds the goal of cooperation and service with Chinese developers, and of course hopes to incorporate such a goal into the vision of the entire ChinaStar program.

Sony China Star program as an important supporter of China’s game development, behind the change in its vision really reflects the development results of the domestic game industry over the years and market trends. In addition to the maturity and growth of technical talent, the explosion of Black Myth Goku reflects the market sentiment of demand for high-quality 3A, which also strengthens the determination of more Chinese developers to challenge 3A.

Domestic single-player ARPGs are piling up, and the soul flavor is pulling all the stops.

More people dare to challenge 3A, which is of course a good thing for the Chinese game industry, but 3A does not mean that there is only one type.

From the nine games announced by China Star in its third installment, the proportion of ARPGs and soul-like elements in Chinese single-player games is on the rise, and the novelty of these games is more on the level of art and worldview settings, while in terms of core gameplay and gameplay excitement, what we still see is the same set of familiar features that have been tested in the market and are familiar to a lot of gamers, which is a bit worrisome.

In the European and American gaming circles that have experienced the 3A era first, we have seen a certain type of burnout, or to mention that example, the TGA’s 2024 Game of the Year was awarded to Cosmic Robot, and the Mobile Game of the Year was awarded to the indie author’s Joker, which means that the European and American worlds have already reached the age of longing for core gameplay innovations?

More importantly, in just a few years, China’s single-player game market has also changed, the appearance of the Unreal Engine 5 and a variety of technological changes, greatly raising the players for the pursuit of game graphics. In the next ten years of China’s game market, a more mature and worldly player group will undoubtedly be cultivated, and under such market conditions, seeking differentiated content is a good thing for both players and manufacturers.

For a long battle line of large single-player games, if piled up in the ARPG and class soul elements, can not take their own core creativity and competitiveness, players are afraid that the type of burnout will also creep in.

The following is an excerpt from the interview, with some deletions based on the original intent.

Q It’s been a long time since Lost Souls was announced, and a lot of producers started making games because of Lost Souls. However, while many of these producers have already released their games, Lost Souls has been undergoing a lot of polishing, and will finally be released next year, so tell us about your journey.

Bing Yang: Yes, it’s been quite a long time, and I feel that over the years the boundaries between the development process and my personal life have blurred, and it’s basically become a part of my life.

At the very beginning, it was a one-person project, and then it got a lot of attention and encouragement, and a lot of partners and friends came over to help, and started to work on it as a team to build up a new project. In fact, at that time instead of knowing nothing, dare to do everything, but in fact, keep stepping on the pit, in the middle of a period of depression, the whole person down. Later on, I slowly got back to the rhythm, including more support and attention, not only the team’s ability, but also some of my personal experience, the situation is slowly getting better, the energy is back.

By now the whole process of the project is also near the end, and relative to these years, I think it is still worth looking forward to the present results and what can be brought to you in the future.

Lost Souls Producer Yang Bing

Q What’s the reason behind the long development cycle for Lost Souls compared to regular buyout games Is the current Lost Souls in line with what was ideal when the game was first revealed eight years ago?

Yang Bing The first reason is a very realistic one, although Lost Souls had a lot of attention back then, my personal experience and ability were not enough to support making it into a game that could be officially released in its entirety. So from that point to the present, there was a long period of time for the team to form and for me to grow and make trial and error.

What Lost Souls is going to be is a game that meets the expectations of my team and my abilities, as well as the resources available to us. We’ve made a lot of adjustments in the middle of the game, but we’ve kept the art assets that we all saw and loved, as well as a lot of things outside of the graphics. For example, the main story of the protagonist and his dragon has been refined and enriched. The combat style is still high-speed and flashy.

Q You just mentioned that the Lost Souls games aren’t the same as they were in the beginning. How long ago was the upcoming version roughly finalized, like three years ago or five years ago? When it was made, was it set in stone and extended from there, or was it slowly filled in after the framework of the entire worldview was built?

Yang Bing The overall tone was not finalized until 2021, when a 10-minute PV was released, and the flow of the presentation was exactly the same as the one used at last year’s ChinaJoy. After that process was finalized, it was used as a reference template for the rest of the game’s development process, and the final version of the game was completed at that time. It was during that time that the finalization of the game was completed, and it was basically during that time that things such as the overall story line, specific plot examples, and the structure of the entire worldview were fully sorted out.

Q I tried out the latest Lost Souls demo, and the smoothness and visual effects were significantly better than the previous version. What were some of the key optimizations made to the game during the year? What kind of issues will you focus on between now and the official release of the game?

Ice Yang: Based on the last version you played, we’ve optimized the game based on feedback from Sony Interactive Entertainment and other beta testers, including optimizing all of the enemies, and all of these details are still being worked on. After a certain point, we will lock a version that we are more satisfied with.

In addition, we spent more time on the scene art, because the project was initiated earlier, when it was still the PS4 era, a large number of assets were also produced at that time, and after the full port to the PS5, we upgraded the graphics. Last year, we optimized the entire art assets. The China Star Program team helped us a lot with this.

Afterwards, we also made some adjustments to the plot and animation, and all of this work is currently being wrapped up.

Q Lost Souls and Project Suzuran have been released for a long time, how do you adapt to the major changes in the player base and the market environment of the domestic game industry from the time of the project to the time of its release?

Xu Min: For Project Suzuran, it’s true that the entire game market, including the multiplayer online shooter market, has changed a lot since we started the project. That’s why we have been observing the changes in the market and the preferences of the player base during the whole development process, and we have been adjusting and testing our game and gameplay design accordingly.

In addition, at the hardware level, it is true that the improvement of hardware over the years is also very big, when we originally set up the project, the main version of the PS4, and now it has been migrated to the PS5 Pro, the whole player’s requirements for the quality of the game, and the improvement of hardware skills, etc., have forced us to go to the art of the continuous iteration, so in fact, at the beginning of the announcement of the preview and the current game has been a completely different thing. So the teaser trailer and what’s in the game now are not the same at all.

We considered whether to update the engine, but after discussing with the publisher and the technical team, we decided to stay with the highest version of UE4 and not migrate to UE5.

Yang Bing The situation on my side is similar, and because the project has been going on for a long time, my personal habits are also changing, maybe my hand speed is not as good as it was back then, and my patience is not as good as it used to be, and this is sometimes reflected in the game, for example, some quests may be too long, so I cut them down, so the whole process system is more linear and fast-paced. Another is that the difficulty of the game, the difficulty has been reduced a lot, before the difficulty has been cut, including which skills of the enemy can be bounced back these tips all out.

Project Suzuran Producer Xu Min

Q After the ChinaJoy, what feedback did the team receive, and are there any specific comments that need to be changed?

Ying Chao Yes, we are actively adjusting and updating the game based on the feedback. For example, how to improve the interactivity of the game in the core combat area. In the previous version we considered in order to allow players to have a better adaptation, offensive and defensive transitions to be able to react to, will make the interval between moves longer, the enemy’s moves may be three or more, the rhythm of the cycle will be longer, the combat interactivity will also be relatively weak. The way to adjust is to add some rhythm transition, an attack to turn defense, so that will form a sense of rhythm, the rhythm is rather easier for players to get used to.

In addition to the feedback of players, we have been thinking of ways to do a more friendly threshold, so that players can get started faster, not only to feel the fun of action games, but also to reduce the frustration of playing, this is our more than half a year to adjust to do more things.

More details, such as action, including the feel of the polishing and so on. Because the battle is the need to continue to polish the process, until the game on the line as well as the future of long-term operation process is always to do things.

Ying Chao, Producer of Jie Xiao

Q Since the China Star Program was announced in 2016, it has incubated a lot of domestic works along the way. As the earliest project devoted to supporting domestic games, looking back on the development process of the China Star Program, what do you think the program has brought to domestic games? What kind of outlook do you have for the future?

Bao Bo Personally, I have looked back on the 8-year history of China Star and I feel that it has evolved together with the game industry. Why did the program change a little bit in the third phase? It’s because we feel that the quality of the developers we meet and their visions are really bigger than before.

At first, most of the developers we met were passionate indie teams, but later on, we realized that there were a lot of very professional developers who chose to come out and start their own business and join the field. Some of the developers said they wanted to beat Only Wolf as soon as they met. As I got in touch with them, I realized that they didn’t just say that, but they did have a certain amount of accumulated experience in it.

Later on, after I did some research in the developer community and examined about 30 to 40 teams, I wondered if the China Star Program could set its goals a bit higher. Because nowadays, people’s vision is no longer limited to making a game and then stopping, but hope that Chinese games can break hands with those powerful games.

I thought to myself, “Since many developers have such a vision, and the China Star Program is all about working with and for Chinese developers, why don’t we incorporate this goal into our vision? As it turns out, this idea is shared by many people in the company.

In terms of actual resource help, we also hope to be more professional in the future, and we’ve been learning a lot lately about what kind of people are lacking on-site to help. For example, some of the technical problems of the project, then I will now look for external experts to regularly review, to see if he has some risk. In the past we may not be willing to spend this money, then now we may add this link.

Now, we are progressing together with Chinese developers, and this year there is a surge of domestic single-player games that are extraordinarily popular, which is good news for the whole industry. Many users may not have experienced the hyper-realistic style of game projects before, especially the unique feeling of fighting boss battles, which is hard to forget once you’ve experienced it. Now that a Chinese developer has done it, it’s a rare opportunity for Chinese developers.

If the China Star Program has played a role in giving some teams confidence, or actually helped them to raise the quality of their projects to a higher level, then we will be satisfied.

Bao Bo, Director of Game Production, China, Sony Interactive Entertainment Shanghai Co.

Q It’s been two years since the third phase of the China Star Program was announced, and nine games have been selected so far, some of which we saw playtested at this year’s ChinaJoy, and some of which we don’t have a lot of intel on at the moment, so please give us an update on the progress of each of these games.

Mr. Baobo, I’m going to introduce the progress of each of these games in the order in which they were selected.

Awakening Blade has already been released, it was released on both PS5 and PC in October this year, and it’s selling well.

There are a few things that need to be resolved with the project, and we’re actively working on them.

Dabba the Hedgehog, From the Windward, Against the Gods, all of these projects are going very well and are in active development.

Codename, Jinyiwei, is also going well, and we’re expanding the team recently.

Loulan This team isn’t too big, but they’re not slow to make content, and it’s going well so far.

Yingchao Jiexiao is working on a lot more content, including more levels and battles, some controllable characters, including the plot. At the same time, we are also doing polishing and enhancement in response to the feedback from the ChinaJoy demo as well as the offline invitation test.

Q I believe that not a few indie games voted for China Star, but the number of indie games finally selected is very small, may I ask what aspects of these indie games do not meet the requirements of China Star? I feel that indie game developers prefer PC or Switch to release their works, and many famous works are released on these platforms before launching the PS version. May I ask if this has something to do with Sony Interactive Entertainment’s treatment of indie games, or does it mean that indie games have some natural disadvantages on the PS platform?

Bao Bo That’s a good question. But first of all, I have to declare that I can only represent the China Star Program. Then, we don’t receive too many submissions of indie games on our side, and then about maybe a couple dozen.

There are certain criteria for selecting games for the China Star Program, and we will analyze several elements of the game, including the picture, core gameplay, narrative, technical level, and other overall performance, and we do not set any specific limitations on the categories of the game.

Of course, we need to pick carefully, but sometimes it’s impossible to pick something out, and the quality gap between different works is very big. Making a game demo is relatively easy, but if you polish it as a product, many teams may not be able to finish it.

There are also problems with the subject matter, for example, some independent game teams like to play cult games or have some violent and bloody content, which is not easy for us to deal with. Because we, China Star, still hope that we can get the version number, and these nature of the project for us is still some pressure.

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