Dear players,
How nice to hear from you! It's been some time since we last updated you on our current progress. Today, taking advantage of "Game Of Fate 2"scheduled on January 15th, I'm writing this letter.
With the launch of the demo version of "Game of Fate 2", we have noticed that there are more and more voices about our works both in our own community and in other communities, and the depth of these discussions or questions raised is deeper than before. This is a good thing for us, indicating that more people are paying attention to our works and are willing to contribute your ideas and criticisms.
We really welcome more people to put forward their ideas, as good feedback can effectively help improve the creation. Many of the issues being discussed now are very big topics, and I will discuss our views and practices individually. It doesn't necessarily represent the correct paradigm for nascent FMV works, but I will describe our thinking process and decision-making reasons.
Regarding the issue of the plot tree:
Although our team is new to the field of FMV, we are also a game business team that has been engaged for many years, and we also attach great importance to the interactivity of games ourselves.
The ideal situation is definitely to have various narrative structures such as a network, a ring, dots, and islands in a work. This not only requires telling the story clearly, but also shooting all the variable situations of each character on all lines, and making the decision-making interactivity more liberal.
I believe that this can be achieved as the market gradually enters a better commercialization stage, but it is still relatively difficult at present. Both live-action shooting and engine cartoon production have an exponential increase in cost and production time, and we are currently still exploring how to achieve better parallel operation, all of which require a process and feedback.
In fact, players who have played "Game of Fate 1" and completed it should know that we have made three network lines and one ring line in "Game of Fate 1". And your previous choices (including those across chapters), the combination of multiple choices will have different influences and directions on the subsequent story.
We have also made major branches, for example, the death of other characters will also affect the direction of the story, and so on. In fact, the storyline done in "Game of Fate 1" is already very complicated, it may not be obvious enough due to the length. In our future new works, "Cellveilance" and "Game of Fate 3", we will continue to explore stronger and more complex story line structures.
We're definitely always exploring more complex storylines rather than just doing linear stories, and the overall goal is definitely the same. However, considering issues such as market conditions, costs, creation difficulties, and user acceptance, it cannot be achieved overnight. This requires a gradual process and more feedback from you. It is difficult to say that we can achieve the most complex and ultimate state in one work.
"Game of Fate 2" is a work of real-person revenge legend. Because it has a clear historical main line, it is rather special. The main line will be relatively strengthened, while the branch lines will be relatively weakened. We also use a network narrative, but the structure and storylines are different from that of "Game of Fate 1". In the "Game of Fate 2", We hope that you can experience the feeling of that event from the first perspective, and can personally feel the interactive choice between several historical figures.
Regarding the issue of the first-person perspective:
This issue has actually been discussed quite a lot before. We think that using the first-person perspective in FMV works has a natural sense of immersion, while the third-person perspective cannot be fully immersive no matter how many years it develops. This is not a technical development issue, but simply a matter of whether you want to play a story about yourself or someone else's story.
Therefore, we are basically making works mainly in the first-person perspective. As for whether FMV can also be done well in the third-person perspective, that is for sure. The quality of the story has no direct relationship with this. The main core difference here lies in whether it is to act or to watch. The first-person perspective is currently mainly limited by the fact that the shooting level is not mature enough, and there will still be some primary problems during shooting, which will give people a rather rough feeling. Since the third-person perspective is the mainstream mode in the film and television industry, the shooting and editing techniques are already very mature. We have also tried to use some second-person narrative shots as embellishments.
We have spent a lot of energy and time this year mainly on running in these very basic shooting problems, because there is basically nothing to refer to, so you have to constantly ponder at the same time of creation, and the director, and photography, etc, to discuss parameters, lens language, etc. We think we have made great progress in this part, and gradually we can do better narrative presentation, and the texture can also be gradually enhanced.
Regarding the design issue of choosing wrong and immediately dying:
In fact, we have already paid attention to this issue after "My Destiny Girls". The early design of peer works is choosing wrong and immediately dying, bad endings, good endings, and grand finales, etc.
In fact, we also have the idea of weakening or cancelling the bad ending this time because now it seems that the bad endings are very unpopular in such works, so we have strengthened the good endings or grand finales, but after several works, we still keep choosing wrong and immediately dying. We don't think this is a bad design, but rather a unique interactive experience compared to film and television works.
The shortcomings of choosing wrong and immediately dying that are currently criticized mainly reflect in not providing diversified narrative decisions, not providing a more reasonable and linear sense of story turning and experience interruption. In fact, it can also be understood that this ending provides a very dramatic narrative feedback and a sense of gameover interruption with unpredictability in game-like interactions, and this feature goes against film and television stories, but it perfectly fits the game-like experience narrative.
If we use it, generally, it is to reflect the gameplay, and the decision-making situation of the narrative route mainly relies on the structural design of the plot tree to solve. As for whether there is any suspicion of padding if it is used too much, to be honest, there will definitely be some in the creative process. Currently, no work can achieve that every choice is meaningful.
We will still use this in our subsequent works. In the current work under this narrative structure, we think this is a highlight design that should not be abandoned. We cannot say that we don't use it just because it is different from the logic of film and television, but we need to gradually enhance the significance-carrying capacity of the decision, and finally hope to achieve the ideal state where every decision is meaningful.
Regarding the issue of the clean shadow and tone:
Actually, this is something we deliberately did, and we have been exploring for a while.
The reason why it looks so new or why it is so bright outdoors is actually a preconceived misunderstanding. In order to reflect the atmosphere, conventional films or movies generally pull out a super warm color system for period dramas, mainly to show a sense of antiquity and dilapidation, so that you can feel the sense of immersion instantly. But in fact, this is a very big gap from reality. If you think about it carefully, it is not reasonable. As the protagonist, you have already traveled through time, how could the things you see with your eyes have a super warm color system? It's only possible if you wear yellow glasses. This is a different concept in itself. We don't mean that we can't adjust the color system, but we prefer to make color adjustments for the purpose of satisfying the atmosphere on the basis of the color system that is close to what you actually see with your eyes, rather than completely staying away from this range.
When it comes to the color and shadow tone of outdoor scenes during the day, let alone the period of the Republic of China, even if it were the Three Kingdoms period, it should be this color and shadow tone, because this is what you really see.
It can be seen from the color and shadow tone of the indoor scenes that we have studied the color and shadow tone, such as considering the shadow tone of moonlight, the shadow tone under the yellow old light bulb, and the shadow tone of the Paramount Ballroom later.
This issue is not only for period of the Republic of China, we think horror dramas and action dramas should follow this logic, that is, it is necessary to be based on what a person should see in different environments, and then make adjustments up and down in this situation, rather than directly putting on the preconceived color and shadow tone for the sake of the atmosphere. As for why it feels inconsistent, because this is already a new visual presentation mode, users are not used to it and don't know why we do this. To sum up, we do not reject using adjusted color and shadow tone to enhance the atmosphere and texture, but in some scenes, we hope that what everyone sees can be closer to the reasonable feeling of the first-person perspective. This is actually a trade-off issue, that is, to choose reality or style. We have chosen reality in both "Game of Fate 1" and "Game of Fate 2".
Regarding the issue of our works being made quickly:
Actually, there is no secret about this. The total time we spend on a single project is actually quite long. The reason why we can make it quickly is mainly because the project system we adopt is different. It is a model where all business lines are carried out in parallel and finally converge at the milestone. Many other film and television projects mainly adopt a linear advancement, so some of their projects seem to take a very long time, but in fact, it is about the same. We do this, on the one hand, because most game projects are done like this, and the team is more accustomed to it; on the other hand, it can also allow us to harvest market and community feedback more quickly to iterate and strengthen subsequent new works.
There are also some other questions, which I won't talk about first due to space limitations, and we can discuss them together next time. Currently, FMV works are still in the nascent stage, and there may be many immature issues, but we expect there will also be many new highlights and experiences in them!
Finally, I hope you all like our new Product "Game of Fate 2", a legendary story of the Republic that we have devoted all our efforts to create, and go into the long river of history to go on that legendary journey of destiny together!