I miss the gaming industry in 2015 more than words can express.

What games were you playing ten years ago?

Before the holiday, while watching anime nostalgia videos, I accidentally thought of this topic.

In 2015, I was still a newbie who had just started working for a little over a year, at the level of a green - horn.

When writing manuscripts, I always got stuck on topics like "the backfire of a certain big - name game's reputation", "the ugly money - grabbing mechanism of a certain game", "a certain game copying too blatantly", which made industry insiders laugh. There were also propositions like "Why is Touhou Project the greatest doujin work" that left industry people confused. Of course, the results were far from the industry's requirements and were not approved.

Looking back now, reputation can indeed kill a game; players will abandon the so - called "money - grabbing X - set"; as for plagiarism, although there has been a conclusion in the player community, the industry still can't come up with a clear answer. And the so - called Touhou stuff is just a passing cloud. Domestic second - generation games have occupied most of the doujin second - dimension market.

In 2015, I had just started playing mobile games not long ago and was still touched by the "artistry" of games.

At that time, I was still immersed in the aftertaste of my first mobile game, "Deemo", and highly praised this kind of fresh - style games. However, as I got in touch with more domestic mobile games at work, I was brainwashed by the transformation from web - games and PC - games to mobile games, and taught a lesson by the social - promotion packages, red - dot notification packages, and the so - called "big - company X - sets". Finally, I understood what the "rules of mobile games" were.

Today's 0.1 - discount mobile games perfectly illustrate what classic mobile games looked like back then.

Looking back ten years later, most of these rules still exist in different forms. For example, the red - dot notification packages are still popular, but the average intensity is a bit weaker; the value of the "big - company X - sets" is still increasing, and there are many emerging companies from that time creating their own "X - sets"; the numerical card games that used to have billions in revenue have transformed into forms like Roguelike + X, SLG + X, and Idle + X, making money globally...

In 2015, there were two mobile games that impressed me deeply, namely "Implosion: Never Lose Hope" and "BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle".

The former, "Implosion: Never Lose Hope", continued Rayark's spirit of "creating high - quality products". That game really amazed me at that time, and I couldn't put it down for a long time. Later, Rayark planned to adapt it into an animated movie while the iron was hot, but it hasn't been made yet. The crowdfunding page from that year is in a mess, which is a great pity. Looking back now, creating "high - quality" console - style paid mobile games is indeed not as practical as creating "AAA mobile games + gacha money - grabbing" with console - level resources.

The latter, "BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle", is one of the few games that made "true operational innovation" on the touch - screen. The mechanism of triggering action chains by swiping gestures was very novel. Even now, few later games have been able to make more innovations. It's just that the team behind "BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle" has had a rough time in recent years. The team disbanded at the beginning of last year but made a comeback with the 2.2 - million - selling "BlazBlue: Chaos Effect".

In 2015, "Arena of Valor" had just been in public beta for a short time and was still in the early development stage.

At first, "Arena of Valor" was not called that. It was "Hero Battlefield" and later "League of Kings". Inside Tencent, it had another rival, "Super God", which was more popular first. The number of registered users of "Super God" reached an astonishing 25 million in October. At that time, "Arena of Valor" had just been remade, and who could have imagined that it would become the number one mobile game in China today.

I still remember the experience of getting gradually addicted to "Arena of Valor" at the beginning. It was not long after the New Year's Day in 2016, and the new hero Hua Mulan was launched with the old - fashioned skills. Back in my rental house outside the 5th Ring Road in Beijing, I would lean on the head of the bed, charging my iPad, and play ranked games with Hua Mulan over and over again. Then, unexpectedly, I got my first MOBA pentakill. When I looked up at the time, it was four o'clock in the morning.

Later, seeing my colleagues around me getting addicted one after another, and even a colleague who was a "Dota purist" couldn't resist, I dared not play "Arena of Valor" anymore because it really affected my work of writing.

In 2015, it was also the end of the wild era of the domestic mobile game industry.

In this year, "Dota Legend" was sued by Valve and Blizzard and taken off the shelves, and Snail launched a fierce pursuit of "The Journey of Flower". These two major events respectively indicated the "take - off of IP value" and the "elimination of the rough skin - changing model". Instead, the rise of original forces, the era of big - IP hype, and the explosive growth of IP - adapted mobile games came the next year.

In this year, NetEase's "Fantasy Westward Journey" mobile game was launched and quickly entered the top tier of the charts. This meant that the competition between Tencent and NetEase had entered a white - hot stage. It also represented the signal for the transformation of classic PC game IPs into mobile games. Moreover, it meant that the window period for small and medium - sized companies to reach the top of the best - selling list was closed. What followed was the era of giants, first - tier big companies, and classic IPs.

In this year, countless new game categories emerged. In terms of mainstream categories, the pattern of the three major categories of card games, RPGs, and SLGs evolved into a six - strong pattern after adding three emerging forces: MMO, MOBA, and FPS (Tencent's "Assault Fire" vs. Hero's "Gunfire Online"). In terms of niche categories, "Miracle Girls", representing the female - oriented games, and "Kantai Collection", representing the second - dimension games, began to enter the mainstream view of the industry.

Especially starting from the "700,000 incident" in the Kantai Collection Tieba, domestic second - dimension games have entered the "era of great controversy" from the very beginning.

After that, publishers and developers had disputes, there were office - on - Weibo and public - opinion battles, sky - high outsourcing original paintings, the prevalence of soft porn, kneeling - and - licking - style operations, fan - circle - like and crazy second - creations, circle - to - circle opposition and extreme public opinions, homogeneous cartoon rendering, the gacha three - piece set, industrial involution, open - world wars, the era of large - scale overseas expansion... This track has created numerous industry firsts and also subverted players' perception of mobile games.

In 2015, it was also a year when many heroes emerged in the game industry, which can be seen from the nominations of the Golden Grape Awards that year.

In this year, the mobile game "Shadow Blade" produced by Liang Qiwei had just been launched; "The King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Battle OL" produced by Cao Nan and "Young Three Kingdoms" produced by Cheng Liangqi started the era of numerical card games; and "Adventure and Mining" made by Lu Jiaxian brought idle games into the industry's view and was called an indie game by many people at that time.

Now, ten years have passed. The young heroes have been influenced by the passage of time since they entered the game industry, and all have faced new fates. Liang Qiwei's new game "Shadow Blade Zero" is called "the second college student in the village"; Cheng Liangqi founded Yuefu Interactive; Cao Nan's Longquan Storm unfortunately withdrew from the market; after Lu Jiaxian disbanded Muqiqi, he joined ByteDance Games...

Looking back, I suddenly feel extremely nostalgic for the game industry in 2015. Undoubtedly, this was the most lively and chaotic year in the domestic game industry, full of countless opportunities and about to face standardized reforms. The following ten years were long enough to be awe - inspiring and short enough to seem to pass in a flash, and they also wore away too much of the innocence of those who first entered the industry.

I wonder if you all will remember ten years later where you were in the game industry ten years ago, what games you were playing, and what goals you had in mind?

This article is from the WeChat official account "Game Grape" (ID: youxiputao), author: Yiguangliu. It is published by 36Kr with permission.