In the gaming industry, the only thing that remains unchanged is change. Game types, business models, platforms, etc. When your team starts researching and developing a project, it is difficult to say whether the game is outdated when it is completed. Moreover, the gaming industry is also one of the areas with the worst job stability. Whether it is voluntary resignation or passive layoffs, it makes this industry seem so volatile. However, Klei Entertainment, an independent game studio based in Vancouver, Canada, seems to have a different understanding. They are seeking normalized company operations. Chinese founder Jamie Cheng believes that retaining core talents is the most important thing to want the company to survive for a long time. Game research and development is not about youth, and life and work do not conflict.
We have introduced the company's masterpiece "Famine". Since its release in April 2013, it has accumulated sales of more than 5.8 million yuan on the Steam platform and revenue exceeds at least US$50 million. However, Klei's success was not easy. When the 24-year-old Chinese founder decided to set up a studio, he never expected to go through two studio "closures". He once fell into mortgage houses to maintain the studio's operation. During this period, he also experienced the dilemma of having no projects to do. Klei, who had been established for 11 years, only found the path to success after he experienced Nirvana rebirth. Jamie Cheng, the Chinese founder of Klei Studios, believes that reasonable salary, minimum overtime and creative freedom are sustainable, even profitable strategies in the gaming industry, and the company's survival simulation masterpiece "Famine" has proven this. And when this game was launched, the timing was just right.
Instability in the gaming industry
In the first four months of the start of 2013, at least 18 studios laid off a total of more than 2,000 people. Funcom closed the background studio at that time, Zynga closed Baltimore and Japanese studios, Atari closed the Eden Games, Disney closed the Junction Point, and LucasArts and TimeGate chose to close it themselves.
The second largest issuer at the time also laid off 10% of its employees in the first half of 2013, and about 900 people were affected. One of the company's competitors, THQ, went bankrupt under the suppression of creditors, investment companies and former competitors. The list of layoffs and closures is still long. We will not elaborate on it here. However, one thing we want to explain is that between the New Year 2012 and mid-2013, at least thousands of people returned home from the office, without income and medical insurance, and did not know where the game's future would go.
is different from the jobs in the film industry, jobs in the gaming industry are neither concentrated nor unionized, jobs are easily lost and affected by low wages and high tax cuts. In view of this, Cheng's choice to give up Montreal's high tax cut advantages is unusual. In the past few years, many 3A studios in Canada have successively chosen to give up Vancouver and switch to Montreal to seek a better entrepreneurial environment.
The instability of the game industry is like a cumulonimbus cloud that can pour down at any time. Game planners, artists, musicians, marketers, public relations personnel and executives are forced to learn and reflect, and the repeated questions are raised by different people: Does the game industry still have room to survive? Buy a house, support a family, or retire? At this time, Cheng gave another answer.
In 2013, the founder of Klei Entertainment gave a GDC conference titled "How We Created the Mark of the Ninja Without Being Sense" and the company's understanding of dignity, reason and family. In the same year, Cheng and his wife ushered in the birth of their first child. This year, Jamie Cheng was exactly 32 years old. He neither often visited bars nor had a very fashionable hairstyle. If you hear someone give an industry lecture on growth, few people will think of him. However, Cheng is very thoughtful, quiet and calm, and every word in the speech seems to be carefully considered, and his speech is very fluent, as if it was ready a few years ago.Chris Dahlen, who once worked with Klei, said, "Cheng gives people a quiet and authoritative feeling. He doesn't act like a boss, he doesn't impose his own ideas on others and orders others to do things, but it's obvious that he is always the last person to speak."
Cheng is very thoughtful, and you will find that what he says is carefully considered.
The Klei office in Vancouver is located on the fifth floor of a business building. The 35 employees of the studio are placed in a compressed L shape in the loft-style office. He said at the time, "The next room is empty, and I want to rent it to expand the office space." Cheng's desk is right at the right angle of the L shape so that team members can promptly reflect and get his help.
The creative team of "Famine" is only six or seven, all of which are artists and game designers in their thirties and forties. Before the game was released, the team was slightly larger, but then some members transferred to other projects, and the remaining six or seven people were responsible for the subsequent content production of the game.
"Famine" is a 2D survival game where you need to obtain survival essentials in the wilderness and survive. This game is destined to be unusual, from the game's gameplay (no ending except death) to the creation of the game, to the promotion of the game (tester buyers can get a free gift to friends). The game caused a sensation among players, who expressed their love for "Famine" with in-game behavior. Halfway through the development, Klei had to remake the forum management software because the originally designed software could not handle the sudden growth of visitors and a large number of player posts.
This game is actually an attempt at Cheng's research and development concept. He believes that a special game can still be successful with a reasonable budget, normal working hours, and fair selling price. When talking about employees getting low wages and overtime working to serve the company, he said, "This kind of heroism is out of a sense of responsibility, because once your business needs heroism to survive, then everyone will hope to do this. You will face more and more pressure, and there are more and more unknowns, and you cannot plan for it. So, every time a hero appears to save us, it will make me feel that it is a failure, not a success." Cheng also knows that he and Klei have had this experience.
Like many independent game studios, Klei was born in an apartment. After graduating from college, Cheng successfully switched from an intern to a full-time employee of Relic Entertainment's Vancouver Studios. He enjoyed his time and learned a lot, especially from Alex Garden, the company's young co-founder. When talking about Relic, he felt that like most 3A jobs, he had very little overtime and had a good office culture, which was also what attracted him. However, after more than three years, Relic's size has expanded from 40 to 100, and Cheng hopes to go to smaller companies.
's first 'disintegration': The first game was cold and the team was disbanded
He found a puzzle platform game "Eets" in his hard drive. He made a demo for the game during college. In a short time, he felt that a small team could make this demo into a sellable version. Cheng's college friend and high school classmates Marcus Lo, Alex Colbert and Steven Chen decided to complete the project with him, and they called their team Klei. Cheng then introduced the game to the West Coast game publisher, hoping to reach a distribution agreement for his emerging studio or get outsourcing work. He said, "I looked very young, I was only 24 years old at that time, but I looked like I was 16." Within two months, the young entrepreneur was turned away several times.
Two months later, Chen left the team and believed that the company's stability was too poor. At that time, everyone in the team was very young and needed to find a job to survive. At this time, Cheng became the only person in Klei Studio to invest, using his savings and the $10,000 he borrowed from his brother to pay rent and other people's wages.
Jamie's then girlfriend and now wife Irene Cheng recalled with a smile when she mentioned how his husband turned the apartment of a family member into a studio, "I was hesitant at the time. It was difficult for small startups. When you don't have a source of income, you don't know what will happen." At that time, Irene was still in college, so she could work with Jamie during the day while also taking courses.
The first thing that gave Klei the opportunity was the Canadian government. In March 2006, a loan from Telefilm helped the company with only three employees to have its own office in the Vancouver business district. This small office of less than 10 square meters is probably only as much space as Volkswagen vans. So this office is not perfect. For example, its windows cannot be opened and it faces the sun. On the hot summer day, after the air conditioner of the building is turned off at 5 pm, the temperature inside the house can be imagined. Klei employees often start working at this time.
Cheng contacted a local artist named Jeff Agala, who is now the company's creative director. Agala did two full-time jobs at that time. During the day, he was the director of the cartoon production company. After getting off work at Klei at around 4 pm, he continued to work until 11 pm. Cheng revealed that each of the four employees at that time had three computers on, "but we only had one power socket, and we would encounter a fuse blow every day." Cheng would take off his shirt and work. He revealed slightly naughtyly that after the refrigeration machine was turned off, the smell of sweat in the entire office could last for several weeks. The late night working overtime, the unpleasant smell, and friends who work hard for work, these two and a half years of nostalgic memories make him very unforgettable. However, these old times are more suitable for nostalgia than reappearance, because at that time there was neither money nor spare time nor fun, and this kind of time was doomed to be unable to last.
Also in 2006, European publisher Frogster purchased the distribution rights of "Eets" in Germany and France. Cheng recalled at the time that the authorization fee was about 90,000 euros. He added, "They sold about 100 sets. I don't think they would be willing to cooperate with us anymore, but in any case, the feeling of getting the authorization fee is very good. I mean, the difference in the game sold makes us very sad, but we are also very happy with the funds to survive."
In the past two and a half years, Klei's situation was basically: three employees, plus Agala, worked for a long time every day and had no compensation. What kept them alive was loans and temporary outsourcing. Before a former mentor returned to Vancouver, there was nothing changed at Klei Studio.
Life living under someone's roof: Signing a contract with Nexon North American studio
In 2006, the office was very far from Jamie and Irene's two-bedroom apartment. In March 2013, their daughter Tessa was born here. Irene basically undertakes most of the planning and preparation work. Jamie purchased some furniture, and his office became a baby room, and the dining area became an office. Jamie and Irene's parents both live in the city and are very willing to help. Everything is very normal.
Irene said, "I don't think you can feel ready to welcome a new life. You think you are ready, but when it really happens, you don't know what will happen, and there will always be many surprises waiting for you." Jamie clearly remembered the four days and three nights he was with his wife in the hospital. Two weeks later, Jamie was working again. Before his apartment, children and marriage, the young Cheng had to sell a game, and Alex Garden was ready for the game to be released. He and Jamie are very similar in many ways. Garden joined Distinction Software at the age of 15. In 1997, the 21-year-old founded Relic Entertainment and then launched a series of masterpieces such as Homeworld, Warhammer 40000 and Company Heroes. The company also allowed the young entrepreneur to pay off his debts and remained an employee of the company until he was acquired by THQ in 2004. Soon after, Garden left Relic.
In November 2006, the Korean game publisher hired Garden to lead its North American game studio. Since there was no game and Garden needed a new project, it naturally reminded him of his employee Jamie Cheng many years ago. The Klei team and Cheng at that time planned to make a game called "Sugar Rush", which was a casual fighting MMO that was a bit like "Super Mario Bros." but took an online form. In addition to ideas, this project also needed to have a unique appearance.
So he found Jeff Agala, a local artist who had participated in the "Eets" project. At that time, Agala was already tired of the position of animation director, especially the boring and repetitive work, and he also needed to recruit employees for temporary outsourcing. However, Agala was not ready to change jobs at that time, so he worked two jobs again, working at Atomic Cartoons during the day and working at Klei at night.
Cheng will stay up late at night to accompany the artist, "I am responsible for writing code, and Agala is responsible for the art." What the two made is impressive, Garden agrees with this, Klei has also obtained outsourcing work, and can also borrow a small part of the space in Nexon's office. But Klei is not part of the company, except that its members are treated like Nexon employees, and they suddenly moved from less than 10 square meters to about 100 square meters of space. At this time, Agala also quit her job at Atomic Cartoons and joined Klei full-time. Cheng had to recruit more employees. When everything happened, their game was only 2 weeks away from the public beta date.
studio "closed" again: Nexon suffered a financial crisis and
Cheng said, "We were really close to the release of "Sugar Rush" at that time." After two years of study and development, the game has undergone two closed betas and three art style changes. Cheng, Agala and other Klei members are ready to release the game. Paul Ku, a former Nexon online technical engineer, said, "My wife and I have played this game together." He also hopes that the game will be released on Nexon's platform, and the project will be the ending part. Of course, Ku also clearly remembers that Nexon was in chaos at that time.
Ku said, "It feels strange. It was tea time. I realized something was wrong, but I still felt it was a normal day." After the financial crisis in 2008 caused a fatal blow to the won. After falling into management and economic difficulties, Nexon could no longer afford the operating costs of the Vancouver studio, and all employees of the entire team had to be laid off immediately without any preparation period.
Ku said, "This is certainly shocking news." We all went to the bar at that time, except Cheng and other members of the team. Since it wasn't part of the Nexon team, Klei's employees were still working in the office, and at that time they were working on a web server design for online games. Even if the game was released, it still needed Nexon's support team, and these people had been fired.
Cheng said, "This is the first time I have experienced the studio being closed. It also made me realize my financial responsibility. Nexon North America Studio has been established for two years but has not released a game. I realized that I have a certain responsibility. If this had not happened, Klei might not have existed. The experience of working in Nexon has brought many help to Klei."
Finally, the Nexon office was only Klei's team and some empty boxes left. Then the reality came: this was not their office, but sublease from Nexon. They needed to find new places and make new games, and they could not wait for a moment.
Judging from the current situation of Klei, the past story is like adventure, and heroes overcome difficulties, but here, heroism is still not a compliment. Today, Cheng is no longer the only parent member in the company. In 2012, three employees in his team all had their own children. Kevin Frobes, one of the founders of "Famine", is about to welcome his first child, and he also asked for maternity leave for several months. He said, "I'm actually very affected by this. If I were to another studio, I would probably have ended my career.I think once you have a two-year-old child, you may never work overtime until 2 a.m. again, because when you look back at the age of 60, you may feel, ‘I wish I had achieved my own achievements in this game’ or, ‘I was not around when my child learned to walk’, which one is more regretful? As long as you can still make money to support your family in the end, you will not want to choose a job. "
Paul Ku is a former Nexon employee who worked with the Klei team for a long time, and then he joined the company and advanced to a father. He has common misfortune in the gaming industry, from EA, Microsoft to Nexon, and eventually lost his job, and he hopes to have a more stable career in Klei. "I go home the same time every day, of course, that's because I have kids, which is very important." Before that, I had no children, no family, and was single. Perhaps stability didn’t matter to me at the time, but now it’s very different. I don’t want to ruin my family life because of work, and it feels good to work here. "
Cheng added, "No matter how good I plan, I am not as good as what happens naturally. Just as Tessa was born, our company is far from financially safe, we don't work overtime often, we are more free and flexible, but I'm more likely to take care of my family." ” ”
Klei’s creative director Jeff Agala said when comparing being a parent and doing two full-time jobs at the same time that he has prepared for his entire career, the first is to become a father first, and the second is to work at Klei. He said, “I love this job, I don’t know if you believe it. The most stressful time of every day is when I drive home, because I’m eager to get home because I know that my family is waiting for me and my daughter is learning to walk, so I really want to help her.” "For Agala, the two jobs are interdependent. He uses painting to support his family, and his family gives more motivation to work. If this is not the case, "I may be more desperate and less creative. I feel like they are the source of my passion for developing games and the motivation for my passion for life. "
Cruel living environment: houses are used to mortgage and get loans
When I first started, there were neither children nor stability, and Klei had just two entrepreneurial prototypes. In "Sugar When the Rush project was about to end, they didn't realize that the tragedy of Nexon was about to happen, but Cheng and Agala were already increasingly worried about betting on the same game, so they made two plans, a 3D free tennis game and a 2D horizontal action game, the latter of which was Shank.
His team found an office in Yaletown and used the remaining part of the funds Nexon had paid them to them for rent and employee salaries. Due to the slump in the real estate market at that time, Cheng rented it at a relatively low price.
Despite this, their financial security soon disappeared because Cheng took the two projects "Sugar Rush" and "Shank" to seek publishers in different cities. "Sugar Rush was cancelled again after it was selected. Today, Cheng calls the game an "undead game." Meanwhile, Shank is not favored by publishers, so Cheng and Agala mortgaged their house and borrowed more money from the bank to pay everyone's salary. It wasn't until 2009 when they participated in Penny Arcade Expo that publishers noticed their game.
After 9 months of closing at Nexon's North American studio, Klei was not only homeless, but no game to be released, EA Partners later signed a contract with Klei to give the team funds to complete the development of the Shank project. Cheng recalled, “The feeling at that time was, ‘Oh my God, we finally got some funds, and we could finish the game and release it’, but at the same time, we also felt that it was so bad that it took so long to find the publisher. ”
Since Klei had no funds to recruit more employees before the EA signed, Cheng delayed the production of the Shank project in many aspects. The bank's loan was only enough to pay employees.At the PAX East show in March 2010, Klei showed off two levels that had been completed. In the next three months, his team created 13 levels, a series of bosses and cooperative play. At this time, the team still felt that the Sugar Rush project could be completed.
Cheng said, "This is the worst time in my life. I can understand that some people don't like Shank because the project was rushed out. We had no other way and didn't have time to do better because the agreement we signed had to be released in that quarter." Klei's team had many night owls. Agala, who was in charge of hand-drawn animation scenes, wore a wrist stand at the time. He said, "It can be said that Klei's working environment was very poor at that time."
In the last few months, Cheng once thought that maybe he made a mistake, and his wife expressed dissatisfaction with often staying up late to work overtime. In the office, there are still 3 weeks left to finish the game. The young man looked at the list of things to be done, and then found that there were still 6 bosses and 3 levels to be completed. Marcus Lo told his colleagues, "Go step by step, we just do our best. It feels like, I can't actually complete what I promised, it feels like you have a month's school assignment, you haven't started on the last night before handing in the homework, but the difference is that this decision will affect the lives of others." Lessons learned by
: both work and family and life
Cheng said, "At the end of the Shank project, I felt that if I did it again, I would never be willing to repeat the same mistakes." The Klei team analyzed the problems in R&D in detail and found the wrong way to put them in trouble. Of course, there are many aspects, such as the lack of reasonable arrangements for game production and time spent on adjusting the wrong things. They need a more flexible release date, and the publisher's funds are in place late in the game making process. So, the studio once again reached a crossroads: What kind of company will Klei become?
The team hopes to tap Klei's maximum potential. In addition to work, they also want family and life. They no longer want to live overtime day and night, and they no longer want to show their heroism. "We are making changes because there are a few of us who are going to be fathers," Cheng said. So they developed guidance plans. When a project takes more time to complete research and development, it requires sufficient confidence to reject unrealistic plans from publishers, and if this means canceling the game, "we must be able to bear it."
As they learned, a game is not enough. The company needs to create games in a planned way so that multiple projects can support each other and keep the team working at all times. This means doing more on the basis of the existing team size. Shortly after the release of Shank, Klei began to make the sequel game Shank 2 for EA. At this time, they had a more realistic time frame and signed a Mark of the Ninja project agreement with Microsoft Studios.
Cheng and his wife moved closer to the office, which made his job a big change because he could still go home for supper even when he worked late. Although many studios agree with the philosophy: successful games require a lot of manpower and time, high budgets, and essential marketing. But Cheng has a different view, and he believes that employees who are happier, healthy, creative and economically free are more able to make interesting and successful games. The process of game development does not necessarily have to be very hard.
concept test
After Shank, Klei did not immediately see the rain and the sky clear. Employees still often need to work overtime until very late, including Cheng. As CEO, he also needs help planning Ninja Mark, and managing a company while making games sometimes makes him very tired.Moreover, "Ninja Mark" also has its own problems, which also allowed Cheng to learn more. In his GDC speech, he said that a lot of R&D time was spent trying some things that conflict with the content of Hidden Things game, and it took many days for combat gameplay and fire. He said, "The most waste of time is that you have developed something wrong."
Cheng had to look back and remeasure what the game was like. He refined a system that would fit into the core ideas of the game and then test it in a vacuum. For example, they specially designed a creative prototype to hide shadows or jump to an enemy. As the release date approaches, the game still needs to be optimized, so Cheng applies for an extension to Microsoft. Although the increased R&D time has been used up, the Klei team has finally completed the game project, and they no longer have to stay up late to work overtime for a month. "Shank 2" and "Ninja Mark" both received very good reviews after the release. Both games were developed within a relatively reasonable time, and their philosophy experiments began to show results.
Jeff Agala made a promotional art picture for the subsequent content of "Famine". In the picture, the hero Wilson with his hair is looking into the cave. This game has a manufacturing function and a unique art style. The stone wall art he created was obtained after taking photos in a cardboard tube and then digitizing it.
He was very flexible when painting. The art style of "Famine" itself represents its research and development process, which was fast and loose, like a rough sketch. Klei's previous games, such as Shank and Ninja Mark, have been adjusted. Agala said the studio has not given up on that style, but in the project "Famine", the rough drawing style looks more free.
The first version of "Famine" was made in the last day of the holiday break at the end of 2010 for 8 hours. In August of that year, they released Shank, and Cheng felt that they needed to accelerate creatively, so he held a game jam. The prototype of the game produced by designers Kevin Forbes and Ju-Lian Kwan looks like a survival RPG. The game has a permanent death setting, and items are consumed. Players must learn from failures so that they can make greater progress in future adventures. "Famine" is a wilderness survival game full of science and magic. Players play Wilson and are accidentally thrown into a cruel world. You don't know where you are or how to get here. All you can do is survive. There is no newbie teaching in the game. One of the highlights of this game is to explore how to play the game.
More than a year later, the full version of "Famine" research and development did not begin until January 2012, when "Shank 2" had just been completed. At this time, Cheng only served as the CEO of the studio. He was responsible for guiding all projects, rather than participating in the design of one of the games. In terms of the project development direction, he said that he had had a heated discussion with the "Famine" team. One direction was that as a survival game, players became stronger and stronger, gradually becoming dominant and using nature and the creatures therein; the other direction was to make a survival game that would eventually die and would lose everything.
Cheng thinks that the latter may be too cruel and may scare the player away. However, the master planner Forbes believes that security is not the most important thing, and he feels that the dark and desolate play style is correct. It’s a good experience to struggle to survive and explore every night. For this, Agala also changed the art style for the game. They showed the demo to Cheng, and then their CEO liked it very much, and Forbes's point of view was correct.
Quick development: Let players help you make games
The original free beta version of "Famine" was tested on the Chrome platform, and it was difficult for a while. The studio hopes to hear feedback from players, especially what suggestions do players who are facing difficulties in the game have. But it's very interesting that people prefer the difficult version of the Chrome platform, and they start sharing the game.When a relatively complete update is ready, Cheng immediately pushed the game to Chrome for sale, and implemented a buy-one get-one free to let more people experience the game.
Then, an even more unexpected thing happened. Many players gave the games they obtained for free to live broadcast players. This promotion received a very unexpected effect, becoming the biggest driving factor for game promotion and sales.
test version and promotional practices have many implications. Cheng realizes that this method cannot be reused in all games. He believes that the game "Famine" includes exploratory gameplay. When the game released the beta version on Steam, "Famine" became the most popular PC game, and the game is selling faster and faster. It is difficult for you to see when it is peaking because it has been growing all the time.
He said, "I really feel that its success proves that inner satisfaction is stronger than external rewards. A common example is that if you have a daughter who likes to draw, she draws because she likes it, not because of what rewards others will give her. Then you tell the little girl that you can get $5 per picture, then she will draw faster and worse, but it will also get worse. This is normal. If you no longer give her $5 rewards, she may even stop drawing because you replace her own inner satisfaction with external rewards." He said, "We want to create a game that gives people inner satisfaction." The difference between
and free games is that "Famine" does not have a special reward system, and the rewards in the game continue to appear, because playing games and exploring themselves are very good rewards. Forbes said, "The process is very interesting. After we determined the game format, Cheng joined. I don't remember how many times he told us that we could just do it, but then he was even more addicted than me. I asked him if he was sure it was difficult to do this, and he said it was absolutely fine."
Agala said, "I remember Shank. We did a lot of things at that time, and this practice method was very time-consuming. For Famine, we tried to complete the game quickly, then posted it to the players, quickly made a playable version, and then asked the players to help you adjust the game, which made us twice the result with half the effort." This practice also proved successful. Before Famine was officially released, it had sold 300,000 sets for $15. So Klei chose a self-issued model, so that all revenues are directly included in the company's capital, except for the share of the digital store.
Life and work do not conflict
Paul Ku has worked in many studios. He believes that the format of game companies is changing. Overall, it means that game companies bid farewell to endless overtime and no weekends. But he believes that what other studios still don't understand is that an employee has family and his own life besides work. Wife Irene Cheng said, "If Jamie still needs to work sixty or seventy hours a week, life will be difficult, and I will need to be a full-time mother by myself." Jamie is still working from home. He contacts via email and plays many games at home. Irene says her husband often watches Twitch.tv, pretending to be an ordinary player playing "Famine" and knows what users like.
During dinner, they have an unwritten rule, that is, they cannot look at their phones if the other party does not allow it. Since Jamie often works at night, he is responsible for taking care of her daughter at night, and Irene enjoys it. Although she doesn't play games much, she thinks Klei is very magical. She took over the studio's accounting very early and never stopped. She said, "This has also involved me in the company's growth to some extent, so I'm not ready to give up this position."
For Klei Studio and Jamie Cheng, change is a gradual process. Cheng does not regret the experiences he has gone through, even if he has experienced many setbacks."I think this is one of the reasons our culture is very good, because it's something we built slowly with time." Cheng still remembers his experience of going to the West Coast to seek publishers, making authorized games to maintain office rents, and of course, the publisher's experience of giving Klei contracts. He said, "I'm glad my previous approach was not successful."
Cheng has mentioned more than once that his goal is to promote the development of the game. Compared with the success of "Famine", Cheng's more important success may be to create a studio like Klei, which has enough creative freedom and independent game development spirit. As the company grows in size, Klei's offices are becoming increasingly like a community that houses multiple independent gaming teams.
He said, "My goal is to build a studio that can survive for many years, 20 years or longer. The only way to achieve this goal is to retain core employees. I saw the loss of talents in other studios. I think this is expensive, and doing so is short-sighted." However, some people say that game development is a food for youth, and it is impossible to retain employees for a long time. For example, can Jamie Cheng still play games when he was 50 years old? He replied, "In fact, there are already employees over 50 in our team."
