Introduction to Advanced Mathematics

Copywriting: I swear on my hair, my interview records are all true! (As I said that, I drank a whole bottle of Bawangfangfang with tears in my eyes)

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I am a reporter for a financial magazine.

In my long career, I've had quite a few… well, how to put it, very confusing interview experiences.But every time I sorted out these interview records truthfully, I was always criticized by the editor-in-chief, "You should not work in a financial magazine, you should write an article for the Onion Daily".

These killed manuscripts remained in my hard drive, gradually accumulating more and more, I pulled a separate folder to install them, and whenever I was overwhelmed by reality, I would open it and have a look, so that You can start to doubt your life.

I resigned from the magazine not long ago, and when I was sorting out the documents, I found them again. There are some contents in them, which I think are quite thought-provoking.I happened to have time after leaving the company, so I sorted it out a bit, posted it on the Internet, and shared it with you who might be interested.

Mr. Y was one of the interviewees who left a deep impression on me. At that time, the game company he founded was preparing to go public. The editor-in-chief asked me to make arrangements as soon as possible so that when the news of the listing came out, the magazine could simultaneously publish an exclusive interview. .

I made a lot of preparations to interview Mr. Y. In the early years, the mobile game "A2" developed by him and his team became popular in the entire mobile game market as soon as it was launched. At that time, they were just a game development team composed of a dozen young people. It's just a room, and it's not easy to do this.

But because of the popularity of "A2", related interviews and reports are overwhelming. I read dozens of articles, and I am convinced that I can't dig out more interesting hot spots from this topic.

This interview opportunity is very rare. If it is done well, it may be on the front page of the magazine. I am not willing to submit a mediocre answer sheet, so I further explored the history of the works of Mr. Y's team.I found a topic rarely mentioned by reporters, that is, before "A2", the original team of Mr. Y Studio also produced a mobile game called "A".

From the name analysis, "A" should be the first edition of "A2".In fact, these are two unrelated games, not even the same type of game. The success of "A2" is due to its unique game content, which is praised by the industry as "creating the first of this type of mobile game".

And "A" is a very bad street role-playing game, the kind where you can get down to level 99 with one knife, and you can get the best equipment with one click.

Compared with "A2", "A" is too simple in terms of graphics and creativity. If I hadn't checked it several times, I wouldn't believe that these two games are the works of the same group of people.

I tried to search, and the ancient mobile game "A" has long been removed from the APP store, and there is no installation package on the Internet, so I naturally have no way to experience it.Will this small clue become the breakthrough point of my interview with Mr. Y?

At that time, I didn't have too much expectation. With the list of questions I made, I went to the cafe downstairs of Mr. Y's company at the appointed time, preparing to meet Mr. Y.

Out of many years of professional habits, I always arrive half an hour earlier than the interviewee, in order to adapt to the environment earlier, and at the same time, to respect the other party, I will not be late due to accidents.

To my surprise, when I arrived at the cafe, Mr. Y had already sat down one step ahead of me and waited.At one point, I thought I had misremembered the time and apologized one after another, but Mr. Y seemed more embarrassed than I was.

He said that he came early to play games in a leisurely way, and he didn't expect me to come so early, and at the same time politely asked me if I could wait for him to finish the boss, because his teammates couldn't fight alone, I Of course there is no problem.

Our meeting started from the embarrassing situation where he was concentrating on fighting the king and I was drinking coffee. I have interviewed so many people, but none of them started like this.

During the period, I also sneaked a few glances at his mobile phone, and I was very sure that it was not the game screen of "A2".Given the possibility of undisclosed game secrets being involved, I don't take the liberty of asking.

About 6 minutes later, Mr. Y put down his phone and apologized to me again.I also repeatedly stated that I arrived early, and after a mutual apology, our interview proceeded ahead of schedule.

Mr. Y is much younger than the subjects I usually interview, but he was originally a young entrepreneur.Moreover, he was the founder of a game studio first, and then he became the CEO of a game company. He has the vitality of a gamer and the keen insight into fashion and fashion that a gamer must have.

We exchanged a few words, and I mentioned "A" inadvertently, and Mr. Y was very surprised:

"You know "A"?"

"..." I could only answer hard, "I have a little understanding, after all, when normal people hear "A2", the first thing that comes to mind is what "A" is like."

Mr. Y nodded and agreed with me: "But you know what? The game I just played is "A"."

I must have been stupefied when I was surprised: "But, I have already searched before I came here, and this game has been discontinued a long time ago."

"You don't even have this..." He paused, "It is indeed taken off the shelves, but after all, it was developed by us, so it remains in the phone and has not been deleted."

"So that's how it is..." I couldn't figure out a lot of things, my brain short-circuited for a while, and I answered a meaningless nonsense.

Mr. Y guessed it: "Are you curious, since the game has been taken off the shelves, why are the servers still running?"

I nodded hurriedly: "Yes, yes."

"Is it okay for us to talk about this topic?" He compared the notebook in front of me gentlemanly, "It seems that it doesn't fit in with your original plan."

I swiftly collected the interview list: "No problem at all, I am more interested in this topic, if Y is always willing to talk about it, I will be honored to listen."

Mr. Y followed my suggestion, raised his hand and took a sip of coffee, gradually sinking into memories...

(The following is the first-person interview record of Mr. Y)

About ten years ago, as a graduate, I applied for an internship in an unknown small game company.After working for less than half a year, the company closed down, and I lost my job along with more than 20 other colleagues.

At that time, everyone was going to find a new job, but it was not easy to find a job. At this time, the project leader who took me along suggested that since the company office is still in the lease period, the former boss of some old machines does not want it, so we should take some of them first. Xiao Hei outsources the work to earn money for instant noodles. During this period, whoever finds a new job will leave, and there will be no delay.After discussing it, everyone agreed.

Then we took over some loose jobs on the Internet, all of which were outsourced and then outsourced. We don’t know how many packages have been transferred to us. There is no technical difficulty, but the money is less and the work is more.When Party A settled the payment, he withdrew the tax and transferred the money to the personal account of the person in charge, who then withdrew the cash and distributed it to us.During this period, about ten people left one after another, and I didn't stop submitting resumes, but they all disappeared.

Later, the person in charge never knew how to create an empty shell, and received the biggest mobile game outsourcing for us at that time, which was "A", and Party A generously paid an advance payment.It is said that it is developing a new game, but in fact the core is given by Party A. We just change the skin, and then make up a worldview to put it on.

Since the person in charge is mainly focused on business and this project does not require much planning, this task was handed over to me who has almost no experience.

For my colleagues, this job is relatively easy and lucrative, but for me it is a kind of torture.Because I am a senior game fan, I have played eight hundred games if not one thousand since I was a child, but I have never been exposed to such a simple and crude game. From the beginning to the end, it is about fighting monsters, upgrading, and exploding equipment, in an endless loop.

There were times when I couldn't take it anymore and told my co-workers that what we were doing was shit.Colleagues said that players spend money to play shit, Party A’s father pays you to make shit, will you do it?

Helpless, I can only compromise, but I don’t want to compromise so completely. I still have a small dream of being in the game industry at first. I will turn it into a small design today, a small idea tomorrow, and add it to the work plan without any trace For this reason, the initial programmers quarreled with me a lot, thinking that I increased their workload.

The turning point was that there was a staged acceptance by the person in charge, and found that one or two functions in it were very interesting, but they were not required by Party A. He was curious and asked me.

After learning the truth, he suggested that everyone else try it. You know, at that time, except for the testers, no one wanted to play that game, and the programming art was just completing tasks routinely.After everyone experienced it dubiously, they also admitted that the game after the modification has become a little bit more fun.

This incident gave me a lot of encouragement. More importantly, several colleagues are willing to cooperate with me. They even take the initiative to discuss with me how to improve it to make it more fun. We brainstormed a lot of interesting ideas. It's something that other games of that era didn't have.However, due to the time cost, we can only pick up some of the simplest ones to complete, and many excellent ideas can only be shelved in vain.Until the first mature version of "A" was produced, I can say with confidence that it is shit, and it is also a piece of shit studded with diamonds.

It's a pity that I couldn't be happy for a few days, and the person in charge sent bad news, and this party A also went bankrupt.The person in charge ran dozens of times, and almost lived in front of the company, and in the end, only one-third of the final payment was returned.

At that time, everyone was very negative, thinking that we had a bankruptcy debuff, which had been stopped for a while, but after the incident, they each started submitting resumes and looking for jobs.

The person in charge called everyone together for a drink and said that he was very sorry for us. He used all his personal savings during this period to subsidize the balance, and everyone shared it equally, and dissolved on the spot.Everyone was drinking a little bit that night, and one of the programs said, Y, that is, I, really put in effort to make this game well, it's a pity that people can't play it.If it wasn't for me, he would have forgotten that he learned computer because he wanted to make a game that he thought was awesome.

Many colleagues echoed his words, and I suggested on the spot that we should not divide our luggage at this time. We have nothing but the little money, and only the game "A".We should use this money to push "A" online, and let those players who love to eat shit know that the game can still be played like this.

I never dreamed that the drunken nonsense would come true after sobering up, we didn't have any money and didn't break up, instead we moved into a more crowded office, saved money for licenses, rented servers, After paying the platform fee and applying for a game batch number... until the day the game was launched, I felt very unreal.

What we didn't expect was that when the game was just launched, there were [-] to [-] online users. You must know that we don't have any spare money for publicity.The person in charge has a lot of experience. He said that it is normal for a new game to have such a popularity, but it will gradually decrease. Whether there are players left or not depends on whether the game itself is fun or not.

Even so, this number has exceeded my expectations by a lot. In all fairness, if I were a player and saw a game of the type "A", I would not download it at all.

Sure enough, the number of people online gradually decreased. When the public beta was over and the billing system was launched, there were only about 600 people online stably. From [-] to [-], the gap was too great. I almost couldn’t accept it until I looked at the in-app purchase sales records...

As a poor young man at that time, I couldn't understand at all why someone put so much money in the game, especially, it was still that kind of game, do you know what I mean?

(I nod.)

But after thinking about it later, this is also normal. After all, "A" was originally aimed at local rich users. They don't care about the plot or the connotation, as long as it is fun to spawn monsters and fight.The person in charge told me that these [-] users are our core users in the future, as long as we work hard to keep these people, it will be enough to support a dozen of us.

In this way, our game is basically operating stably. I accepted the suggestion of the person in charge, spent time researching the consumption habits of a few big players, and deliberately strengthened this aspect, and the later income will be even more impressive.

During that time, two relatively big things happened. One was that the person in charge encountered the best opportunity for him, so he reluctantly handed over the company to me and left, but because his money was still there, Still count as our shareholders.The other is that there was a user who charged [-] yuan in one day, which frightened us all, fearing that he was a minor who swiped his parents' bank card.Fortunately, the customer service contacted and said no, we were relieved and joked that our game was favored by some coal boss.This user will be very important to me and our team in the future. I will call him Z.

After Z entered "A", I have never seen such a cheap water bill even if it is described as spending money like running water.We have a customer service dedicated to his business, because he has recharged too much, all through the platform, and it takes more than half a day to recharge every day.In addition to helping him complete the recharge, the other job of the customer service is to be his feedback channel. If he wants to ask for equipment, babies, etc. that do not exist in the game, the customer service will pass it on to me, and I will consider making them.

So during that time, my work content was roughly divided into two types. One was to continue to design and develop interesting updates, and the other was to meet the various requirements of big softs, especially Z.Every time the latter is updated, there will be a wave of recharge climax, and the former will be updated, and the income will be enough.Over time, the focus of my work has naturally shifted to the latter. The company's operating conditions are getting better and better, and we moved into a big office.

Maybe it’s because I’m satisfied with my material life, but my hypocrisy has happened again. I’m not satisfied with this game no matter how I look at it. I’m full of repulsion at work every day. I even proposed to change hands at a company meeting, but it was rejected.Of course, some companies came to talk to us about cooperative operations, and proposed to use the rolling service plan and add more consumer items, but of course they were rejected.Later, I became more and more negative, and I didn't develop new content at all. I occasionally designed a dragon-slaying costume to deal with the matter. Any employee in the company, even the sweeping lady, could be competent for my position.

When I was most confused, the customer service responsible for Z found me and said that Z was planning to abandon the game.When I heard the news, I was dumbfounded, because I really didn’t understand that when Z played this game, at least he bought a house to get in. How can he not play it if he doesn’t play it?I can't imagine the scene of spending money like water.

The customer service also said that Z told her that he had played many games of the same type, and that "A" was the most fun one and the one he paid the most money for.But "A" has become less fun recently, and he doesn't know why, anyway, he just wants to give up.

I clearly remember that it was summer, and I was cold after listening to it, not because I lost the cash cow of Z, but because of something else.

After that day, for three full days and three nights, I barely ate or slept, didn’t go to work, locked myself at home, and completed the prototype of “A2”, which hadn’t been named yet.On the fourth day, I came to the company with a plan and told everyone that I was going to leave my job and set up my own studio, and those who were willing would come with me.Shit studded with diamonds is also shit, I don’t want to be a producer of shit anymore, not to mention that even the kernel of “A” is a mobile game street product, I am at best a porter of shit.

What I didn't expect was that after reading the first draft of my design, other people said that this project is very interesting and can be done. Everyone is willing to join the team, which makes me very embarrassed. I could have proposed it in a meeting The new project was abruptly played by me as a separation scene.

The rest was very simple. I registered a new studio, and "A" continued to operate, but it was no longer updated. Except for one or two customer service staff, everyone was devoted to the new project.I rediscovered the fun of making games. Every day I opened my eyes to test, and closed my eyes to conceive. For almost half a year, I forgot the existence of "A".

"A2" is the most satisfying project I have poured all my heart and soul into. I watched it be born from conception to birth.Every code and every line of it is original by my team. I even once thought that there is no more perfect game than it in this world. Everyone who has played it will go crazy Falling in love with it, I am so confident when I am in the expansion period.

At the end of the new project, my workload was reduced, so I went to help with the finishing work of "A".Before that, I heard that the number of online users of "A" is very small, so small that it can be ignored. We just need to find a time, release the suspension announcement, and then take the game off the shelves.