How AFK Journey goals to make anime into a world artwork fashion

I haven’t interviewed realized something about Chinese language recreation builders shortly and so I took a while for a dialogue with Xiaodong Tian, chief product officer of Lilith Video games and Farlight Video games. I wished to see how the crew approached making a world recreation.

He joined Lilith Video games in 2013 because the 66th worker of the corporate. He’s been the producer of AFK Journey, AFK Enviornment, and Soul Hunter. And his firm simply unveiled the Music of Strife replace for the sport,

Headquartered in Singapore, Farlight Video games is a newly established recreation publishing firm and the worldwide publishing model of Lilith Video games, a developer primarily based in Shanghai, China. In 2022, the corporate printed Dislyte below the Farlight Video games model, and it has since been out there in additional than 200 nations with over 1.2 million downloads inside the first week of launch. AFK Journey was launched in March 2024.

The brand new Music of Strife replace shall be out there for AFK Journey servers which were energetic for 42 days. To unlock this and all future seasons, gamers want to achieve Resonance Stage 240, clear all AFK Phases, and full the search “The Last Leg”. As soon as they’ve gained entry to the content material, gamers can decide up the primary quest in Holistone.

AFK Journey is now out there without cost on Home windows PCs by way of the official web site and on iOS and Android units by way of the Apple App Retailer and Google Play. I talk to Tian by way of a written Q&A via a translator. Right here’ s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: This looks as if a really large undertaking. How many individuals work on this recreation?

Xiaodong Tian: At the moment, there are about 190 full-time workers devoted to the undertaking crew. Moreover, many different departments inside the firm are supporting our improvement and publishing efforts.

Our crew was impressed to create AFK Journey after a specific assembly with gamers of the earlier recreation within the sequence, AFK Enviornment. A participant expressed confusion, saying that they felt misplaced and didn’t perceive why they had been growing their heroes or always progressing via ranges. They felt aimless within the late recreation, questioning the aim of frequently getting stronger and pushing via phases.
This sentiment actually struck us. We determined then and there that we wished to deliver the world of Esperia to life with compelling storylines to encourage gamers, and supply wealthy character backgrounds to provide the sport a deeper which means. We wished to infuse Esperia with actual vitality and create a really dynamic IP. That’s after we determined to begin this undertaking.

GamesBeat: Once you consider the viewers for this recreation, how do you describe them?

Tian: The widespread traits of our gamers may embrace a ardour for RPGs, a desire for the fantasy journey style, an curiosity in accumulating distinctive heroes with various personalities, and a penchant for strategic and tactical gameplay.

By way of the sorts of gameplay these gamers search out, we purpose to be as various as doable, as a result of the gameplay providing in AFK Journey in comparison with AFK Enviornment is far more various. There’s wealthy RPG storytelling, open-world exploration components, social options, and extra strategic informal aggressive mechanisms. We wish to welcome totally different gamers as a result of we consider the world of Esperia shouldn’t be monotonous and boring; gamers can uncover their very own distinctive experiences and delight within the recreation.
Moreover, we applied numerous designs to be able to guarantee these totally different gameplay choices don’t battle with one another. For instance, within the Honor Duel mode, we take away the impression of stats and particular person development, contemplating the necessity for equity in informal competitors. This permits gamers who take pleasure in competitors to expertise the enjoyable, and permits the heroes of Esperia to reveal their strategic variety in a good setting.

GamesBeat: The place are a lot of the followers when it comes to geographic areas?

Tian: We’ve found via knowledge and conversations with gamers that we actually have a world viewers for our titles, and that is very true for AFK Journey. This variety is intentional as properly, as we wish our firm and merchandise to service a world viewers. Lilith Video games began in 2013 in Shanghai, rising steadily over time as we launched new prodcuts. A couple of years in the past we established Farlight Video games as the worldwide publishing arm for all Lilith Video games titles. In the end we wish our firms to reflect the wants of our gamers, guaranteeing that we’re serving all our followers throughout the globe.

GamesBeat: How do you describe the artwork fashion?

Tian: The artwork fashion could be very distinctive. We’ve been attempting to provide it a reputation, and internally we regularly discuss with it because the “Magical Storybook” fashion.

Our artwork director and artwork crew place nice emphasis on the consistency between the gameplay expertise and the visible results. We would like the visible fashion to convey a way of informality and leisure, identical to the gameplay. The artwork crew has accomplished plenty of detailed design and sprucing, from character design to UI interplay, and after round three years of constantly listening to participant suggestions and observing knowledge, we lastly achieved the distinctive fashion we had been after.

Our artists are avid players themselves, and their private experiences assist them combine our artwork fashion and visible particulars with AFK Journey’s gameplay, so that they complement one another. Every little thing in the end serves the participant’s expertise, and what’s applicable for the gamers is what’s greatest. For instance, the preliminary design of the sport’s maze featured a posh transition impact that appeared cool however made the method too tedious. We simplified it to reinforce the participant’s precise expertise.

Moreover, our artwork fashion has constantly advanced via fixed updates and optimizations. The sport went via greater than half a yr of updates earlier than its official launch. We saved refining it primarily based on participant suggestions and knowledge. Even the ultimate model earlier than launch underwent important modifications. This iterative course of will proceed as we try for excellence. With the discharge of recent updates and characters, we consider there may be all the time room for enchancment.

GamesBeat: How do you retain the standard excessive for this recreation? What decisions does that result in when it comes to updates and improvement?

Tian: First, we concentrate on the consistency of the sport. This consists of the coherence of characters and scenes, the way in which gamers work together with the world, and the steadiness between stats and visuals. We worth crew communication and collaboration. It’s not nearly easy division of labor; we encourage everybody to work collectively. Our artwork and writing groups become involved early within the character design and world setting, and our UI/UX crew participates in performance discussions from the beginning. We promote collaboration via communication, guaranteeing that everybody understands the design intentions. This helps each crew member contribute to every function from their skilled perspective, guaranteeing that each character and have within the recreation feels cohesive and unified.

Particulars are additionally essential, our crew places plenty of effort into refining particulars. Each crew member strives so as to add extra particulars to the sport inside their capability. The vivid world of Esperia is constructed on quite a few small issues. For instance, within the character show interface, heroes from totally different factions have corresponding climate results to make them really feel extra built-in into the background. Moreover, our scene design takes into consideration the constraints of a vertical display, which may make top-down views really feel cramped. To deal with this, we integrated a “rolling log” impact to keep up the distinct top-down perspective whereas offering a way of smoothness. This ensures that gamers don’t really feel constrained when exploring the huge world for prolonged durations. We additionally spent plenty of time tuning the tech behind the sport, akin to iterating the useful resource loading mechanisms over a dozen variations to make sure a clean participant expertise.

I additionally attribute our high quality to the worth we placed on participant suggestions. We encourage our builders to interact with the neighborhood and take heed to gamers’ voices. We maintain common weekly neighborhood conferences and have devoted workers to gather and manage participant opinions and ideas from numerous channels. We periodically contain core undertaking designers in discussions on high-interest subjects raised by gamers. As a long-term service-oriented recreation, co-creating the sport with gamers is a key philosophy for us. Lilith Video games has a tradition of creating buddies with gamers, which means builders should not simply recreation managers who design primarily based solely on their concepts. As a substitute, we’re intently linked with gamers, collaborating to construct the sport collectively. We rigorously analyze participant ache factors and translate them into modern designs that meet the wants of nearly all of gamers.

We’re devoted to being a long-term stay service recreation, aiming to make it simply as thrilling ten years from now. Maintaining the sport recent and fascinating, so gamers all the time have one thing new to discover, is crucial for us. We’ve designed a novel seasonal replace mechanism, releasing new maps, tales, and characters at a gentle tempo. That is complemented by cross-server gameplay, stat resets, and environmental modifications, guaranteeing gamers all the time have one thing new to take pleasure in. In future seasons, we are going to proceed to enhance our craft and design, experiment with new recreation modes, and maintain the options gamers love whereas phasing out those who aren’t as properly obtained. By means of this in depth updates, we hope the sport will grow to be much more participating over time.

As for the social options, we additionally purpose to attenuate the impression of the stat variations amongst gamers. As an illustration, in Enviornment mode, we use a baseline degree to compress the hole between gamers’ AFK progress, tools ranges, and different main stat techniques. This ensures that victories within the Enviornment will be achieved via technique changes and expertise fairly than stat superiority.

For platforms, we try to accommodate each cellular and PC customers. We would like each PC and cellular gamers to benefit from the world of Esperia. Whereas guaranteeing a clean gaming expertise on cellular units, we have now additionally invested efforts into optimizing the horizontal display model for the PC.

At the moment within the gaming business, many video games are transferring to suit into the metaverse. We hope that the world of Esperia also can develop on this course—inclusive, wealthy, and various—permitting as many gamers as doable to expertise its magnificence.

GamesBeat: How are you going to make it extra interesting to the West?

Tian: I consider that what attracts Western gamers isn’t one thing fully Western. If one thing is already very acquainted, it’s unlikely to deeply captivate a participant. Nonetheless, if one thing is 70% acquainted however has 30% novelty, the mix of familiarity and suprise makes it extra interesting. From the early phases of growing AFK Enviornment, we primarily based it on a Western fantasy worldview and cartoon fashion. Then, we added our personal interpretations and improvements, steadily discovering a steadiness the place Western gamers really feel each familiarity and novelty.

In truth, this method could be very interesting to gamers across the globe. Everybody can discover one thing acquainted and one thing new within the recreation, which is the impact we wish to obtain.

GamesBeat: What do you think about to be a very powerful options within the Music of Strife and future updates?

Tian: As talked about earlier, the seasonal replace is a revolutionary experiment for a conventional card RPG’s updating tempo. Past simply an replace, it introduces a complete new season with new maps, tales, characters, and enemies. There are new seasonal objectives for improvement and assortment, in addition to cross-server gameplay. Gamers can meet new buddies and rivals, embarking on a very totally different journey every season. Personally, I’m most excited concerning the new maps and tales. They reveal extra concerning the characters’ fates and storylines, assist me perceive the heroes’ motivations, and fulfill my want to embrace braveness and energy. We purpose to create a vibrant, imaginative world in Esperia via these dynamic and vigorous seasons.

Moreover, throughout every four-month season, we are going to constantly launch new tales, actions, and gameplay, which gamers can stay up for all through the season.

Whereas we’re happy with the content material at present out there, we typically think about this to be very early on within the recreation’s long-term improvement. What gamers see now could be simply the tip of the iceberg of our creativeness – the Esperia we envison is far richer, so we hope to surpise and delight gamers in future seasons as properly.