Introduction
The plot of the game is fictitious, and any similarity is purely coincidental.
In recent days, the game group has become lively because of the mention of a game “Internet Natives”. The game was released on Steam on October 20, and has received 82% of players’ praise.
Interestingly, the story of this game actually revolves around the game group, but it tells the story of “how a game group perishes”.
Game screenshot
Maybe you have had a similar experience. Friends who used to gather in groups on the Internet because of their hobbies have reduced their bubbling (speaking) as their living conditions changed. The group has also gradually become deserted from the amount of information that was always 99+ before. This is the beginning of the game “Internet Natives”. But at this time, a newcomer arrived. He was withdrawn by the administrator for posting a “shit picture”, and angrily embarked on the road to find an explanation. During the negotiation process, he gradually learned about the “past life” of this group. .
newcomer report
“Internet natives”, the term is associated with the post-90s generation, referring to people who have grown up with the Internet since birth. There are no positives or negatives about this term, but the discussion on the pros and cons of the Internet is endless.
In the mind of the game’s producer, Wen Jian, the internet is good, it’s sticky, noisy, and warm. So he used a display screen, mobile phone and various electronic pipes and slime girls to form a small world, and packaged it as a gift for the Internet and players.
“It’s because I didn’t grow up on the internet that I feel the internet is precious and it’s more of a good thing for me.”
01
A game born from a crowd
“Because a group made a game, and because of this game, the group disbanded.”
Regarding the production opportunity of “Internet Natives”, Wen Jian once introduced it in the game development log of station B, which sounds a bit dramatic.
In fact, Wen Jian’s choice to make a game was purely a coincidence, and even made some jumps. Before making games, Wen Jian worked as a coloring assistant for Zi Yingxiang’s works in a comic studio in Shanghai. Before that, he was a graphic designer, specializing in poster design. “These jobs are very jumpy,” Wen Jian said with a smile.
It doesn’t sound like it has much to do with gaming. However, due to the existence of an old game group, Wenjian gradually unlocked the new task of game production.
The first is to regain the hobby of painting. Open Wen Jian’s Bilibili Atlas, in 2019, an anthropomorphic mechanical girl with a circular keyboard is his first dynamic. At that time, swarm robots were popular, and the group leader Wenjian also kept up with the fashion. He took this mechanical girl as the image of swarm robots, and took a weapon-like name “Ling Shi”. And this is also the prototype of the protagonist of the game. The keycap in the screen has become one of the animation elements that the protagonist of the game later appeared on.
Mechanical Girl Ling-style and later protagonists
Just like the beginning of the game, in the group that newcomers come to, although there are constant new news every day, the old group friends become less talkative. In real life, Wen Jian is also experiencing the same situation. This group, which was once established because of Minecraft friends, has gradually become deserted due to the graduation of the group and the work of the group. This somewhat lonely feeling coincides with the animation “Overlord” that Wen Jian was watching at the time.
The “Bone King” who stayed alone in the server
In order to make the group active, an idea was brewing in Wen Jian’s mind, “Make a game as a New Year’s gift for the group friends, and make the group friends into NPCs or BOSS in the game, just like the plot in “Bone King” “.
Different NPCs in the game
It’s summer 2019. He learns by doing. Originally, he was just “playing around”. The game that he planned to finish in a month or two seemed to be unable to stop the car. The video playback volume of the game at station B is very good, so Wenjian intends to continue. Contrary to expectations, as Wen Jian led the game fans to the old group, although the group became lively, this old group seemed to be getting further and further away from the original intention.
In the end, this old group, who had spent four or five years of his birthday, died because of an astringent picture. Perhaps to commemorate, Wen Jian combined and adapted the stories that happened in this group into a game plot. “Maybe many people have joined such a group, but there is no such thing as a banquet in the world, and things always have to come to an end,” Wen Jian said.
In real life, on the other hand, the story continues. This game also became an opportunity for Wen Jian to step into independent game production. During the Spring Festival of 2020, Wen Jian quit his job as an uncreative coloring assistant in Shanghai and returned to his hometown. Unexpectedly, the epidemic came before the end of the year, and Wen Jian, who was unable to go out to find a job, decided to find another way out. He wanted to use “Internet Resident” as a stepping stone to find a “game art” job. But more than half a year later, the game has been made into a demo, but the job search has hit a wall everywhere.
Some despondent Wen Jian also “breaks the jar”, “Don’t want me, right? Then I’ll do it myself.”
And all of the above, this is the current “Internet Resident”.
02
The internet is made up of slimes
Why slime?
Those who open the game may be deeply impressed by the green screen of the squirming slime girl inside. You know, all information in the computer terminal is just a string of codes composed of 01. However, “Internet Resident” is uncharacteristically, virtual information has become a daily warm street scene, there are red scarf girls holding trees as umbrellas on the roadside, and there are kiosks. Manhole covers line the streets, pipes linger along the curbs. Or piles of hard drives and hardware, dull libraries, and electronic oceans of screens. Wenjian describes it as a “sticky, warm, soft” feeling.
Underwater world and library
Wen Jian has been puzzled for a long time on how to present the online world. He once stared at a hard drive that had not been used for a long time, remembered that “the solid-state drive is powered off for too long, and the data may be lost”, and began to imagine that if the data were anthropomorphic, what would they experience in this environment? But this idea was eventually put aside by Wen Jian because the data could not be visualized.
In order to be “Internet Resident”, Wen Jian made reference to the visual elements of the network in related games, such as “The Matrix”, “Ghost in the Shell” and “The anchor girl is heavily dependent”. Their representation of the web is either 0101’s green code, or a prototype UI, or a contrasting color design. These elements are either alienating or mysterious, and he sees them as “bubble blowouts for soda, or a gathering place for punk kids.”
Relevant visual elements in these works
But this seems to be contrary to Wen Jian’s concept, “the Internet is actually a very beautiful place, it is actually very close to our life, and even an important part of our life itself”.
Later, by chance, a picture of a girl crying brought inspiration, “the tears are like a part of the body”. And he also suddenly realized that the composition of the network is actually human, and he also had an idea: to express this kind of flowing material with slime seems to be made in heaven.
So in “Internet Dwellers”, the Internet finally settled into a world composed of slimes. All kinds of messages are turned into slime monsters, players need to fly all over the screen to fight, and when they are unable to fall to the ground, players will also become a pool of slimes until they press the A button to revive.
Enthusiasm for the Internet does not mean praise. The description of the slime monster in the game may make players smile and think of many Internet events.
The description of the mobs in the game
Of course, later, the enemies are no longer all slimes, but also jellyfish, mushroom girls, spiders and other characters. The reason is that Wen Jian found out, “It’s all because the slime can’t draw the difference, can’t draw anymore, and has some aesthetic fatigue.”
In addition, there is another idea about the setting of the slime——
“Many RPG games use slime as the first novice monster. The online world is huge, but the game only talks about a small world, your first slime.”
“The game is over. In fact, for the entire online career, you just killed the first mobs.”
03
Beat up the admin and capture the group owner
The motivation for the gameplay is a bit bloody – to get back the “Shitu”.
For this goal, the player will become a “keyboard man” in a familiar environment, flying across the screen, using uppercuts, bombs, and ground punches to smash blockers.
But compared to this bloody motivation, players will feel pain in the hands in the real experience, and even the difficulty is too high.
“Internet Natives” is a clear version action game, which contains about 44 maps, a total of 40 small levels, and the number of daily mobs is 40+. At the same time, if you use a handle, the game will derive nearly 30 combo combinations around the shoulder button of the handle, but players will inevitably be unable to remember too many moves in the later stage. In addition, in order to reduce the difficulty, Wenjian has designed about 20 kinds of positive buffs, including clearing the map, increasing the speed, etc., but sometimes it is difficult for players to recognize the icon.
Various moves
Therefore, in addition to the plot, pictures and music, some gamers also made negative comments due to the gameplay, thinking that the gameplay was “lack of polish”.
In this regard, Wen Jian told the teahouse that this was indeed the part that he hadn’t considered.
When the game was designed, the reason why he chose to make a beat-up action game is because the combination of scenes, monsters, and skill elements in the demo, a beat-up action game of the box garden naturally formed. On this basis, taking into account your own interests, take the tricks and how to make beautiful combos as the fun of the game. Tricks are fun, but he realizes it’s a mistake to pack all his skills in one session. In addition, he also defaults that the player will master all skills at the end. In fact, some players may not have opened the skill map to learn new skills for flying monsters. Therefore, when the number of flying monsters increases, the player’s game experience plummets.
From my experience, over-skilling doesn’t seem to be the biggest problem. Perhaps for ordinary players, there is a lack of skill casting guidance for different monsters, so that players can be more clear about the usage scenarios of each skill.
In addition, after every five levels, players will face a boss battle. Some boss battles may evoke ancient memories of “Internet residents”, such as minesweeping and chess, and players will surely smile.
chess
In any case, it took about two years to complete the game, which is the biggest reward for Wen Jian. The team also started by himself, and gradually joined the programmer Marshmallow, and the “Super Clam Soup” private message was added as a music arranger, and the team gradually grew.
Yesterday, Wen Jian told the teahouse that since the game was released on October 20, the sales of the game have just exceeded 10,000, which has already met his expectations.
“Actually, my expectations are very low. As long as I can cover my meals, I will actually pay for it, and my expenses are very small.”
Epilogue
Finally, I asked Wen Jian if there were any parts of the game that felt difficult. He said, it seems not, for him, learning by doing, there is a reason to learn is the biggest motivation.
The only difficulty is that when there are more and more members, how to communicate and cooperate and establish a unified process is the most difficult. Through the post-production of “Internet Residents”, this process has been initially smoothed out.
After that, he plans to make a game with a weak gameplay and a heavy plot. “The game settings are already there, and the basic world view is already there, but I haven’t figured out what form it will take.”
Maybe Wenjian will pick up his old business and make a comic. But he lamented that comics didn’t seem to be easy to do, “then make a game similar to “Memories of Edith Finch”.Return to Sohu, see more
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