Survivorship bias: A million ways to die in the Chinese gaming community

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By DS

Those who work as planners all think they can become Chen Xinghan; those who play e-sports all think they can inherit SKY's mantle; those who work as investors all firmly believe that the project they are interested in will definitely be the next "Dota Legend".

First, let me use a simple case to introduce to you what "survivor bias" is.

During World War II, the Allies needed to thicken the armor of their fighter planes to improve their survival rate, but due to limited military funds, they could only carry out partial upgrades. So the question is, which part is the most critical and worth thickening the armor to resist enemy fire? People have different opinions, and finally decided to use statistical surveys to solve the problem, that is, carefully check the degree of damage suffered by each fighter plane when it returns, calculate the overall damage of the aircraft, and then make decisions based on big data analysis.

Soon, the statistics came out: the most seriously damaged parts of the Allied aircraft were the wings, some of which were almost shot into sieves; on the contrary, the least damaged parts were the cockpit and the tail engine, and the cockpits of many aircraft did not even have scratches. Just when everyone was ready to add thicker armor to the wings with this conclusive report, a statistician (Abraham Wald) stopped them and proposed a completely opposite plan: thickening the cockpit and the tail. The reason was very simple: the planes that were hit in these two places did not come back. In other words, they are a silent data - "the dead can't speak."

Finally, the Allied leaders listened to this suggestion and reinforced the cockpit and tail. As expected, the situation in the air battlefield improved and the pilot survival rate was greatly increased. Facts have proved that this was an extremely wise measure.

[[150444]]

The core of this story is "survivor bias".

In our daily lives, we often encounter similar conceptual fallacies. For example:

• Foreigners seem to be very rich? — That’s because poor foreigners basically don’t go abroad, so you won’t see them.

• Do animals behave abnormally before an earthquake? -- That's because animals usually behave abnormally too often and you don't pay attention to them.

• Airplane crashes seem to be very easy to happen? -- That's because normal-operating aircraft will not be reported, and you don't know; (the accident rate of aircraft is only one in 2.5 million)

…

But today, we are not going to talk about airplanes or statistics, but games.

To be precise, let us take a closer look at the status of those silent data in the large-scale sampling environment of the Chinese gaming circle.

At least, these dead people can still talk.

※The following interviewees are all pseudonyms to avoid suspicion※

"I designed a game that fundamentally failed to serve the purpose of what games are supposed to serve: the players."

Nickname: Fengyu Age: 29

Settled in: Shenzhen

Occupation: Game planner

Feng Yu had just submitted his resignation letter, but he didn't know where to go next. He only knew that he was burning up his remaining youth and wasting his life on a job that he himself felt wasted.

Feng Yu is a game planner, doing a trivial job in a large company in Shenzhen - but this is not the original intention of his choice of career. Feng Yu graduated from the computer department of a prestigious university, and his idol is Hideo Kojima. Before he rejected the generous job arrangement at home and chose to enter the game industry, he felt that he had to reach the level of Hideki Kamiya at the very least. However, now he sadly discovered that his value is not even worthy of carrying shoes for the younger brother of the sulfuric acid-faced Itagaki Tomonobu.

Game planning is a very popular profession in the game industry, and it is also the most coveted profession for many game players when they were young. Unfortunately, this industry practice does not include China. In many game companies in the mainland, planning is just a dispensable existence for newcomers to practice. Fengyu's company is relatively better, but it only regards game planning as "nature's porter" - not seeking independent originality, but seeking reliable copying. Fengyu's department is responsible for keeping a close eye on the Japanese and Korean mobile game market. If there is any slight movement on the APP best-selling list, it will be captured immediately to ensure that no dark horse is missed. Then after a period of copycatting that lasts from a few weeks to a few months, this dark horse with a new look will be released with a stamp of "Chinese heart, Chinese goods" on its buttocks - this is why we always feel a sense of déjà vu when we accidentally see mainstream popular games in Japan and South Korea today.

[[150445]]

As an old player with more than 20 years of gaming experience, Feng Yu has countless brainstorming plans in his mind, but he has never had the opportunity to implement them. In fact, as a planner, he does not even have the power to make the most basic modification suggestions for those copycat games, even though he has been working in this position for five years. Whenever he puts forward some more interesting ideas and concepts, the operations and product departments will immediately ask, "Why do you want to change it this way? What new in-app purchase items and profit points will be generated? Why add them if there are none?" Such rebuttals, as for technology and art, they are even more happy to do less. In fact, this is also a common problem faced by the profession of game planning in China. Feng Yu has now thoroughly seen through its contradictory nature-the games I plan are essentially completely unable to serve the objects that games should serve: players. In today's fast-food mass-produced game industry, what is produced is just a batch of "social interaction software" that piles up numbers. Strictly speaking, they are not worthy of being called games at all. In addition to comparing numbers with others, there is no basic gameplay. The sad thing is that no one cares about this-including the players themselves.

The fuse that caused Feng Yu to completely collapse finally appeared. At an internal planning proposal meeting two days ago, the department head asked everyone to create a card battle game based on "Hearthstone Legend" and firmly believed that the previous copycat "Legend of Crouching Dragon" and other games failed because they did not understand the core needs of domestic players. In this head's conception, paying players can put a big screw (Ragnaros, the Fire Lord, 8/8, skill: deal 8 damage to a random enemy at the end of the round) on the table in 1 mana crystal round, and VIP players can give this big screw an additional "stealth" skill... This speech stunned the planners at the table, and then they stood up and applauded, praising the head boss for his creative idea, which can be called a combination of Chinese and Western, which is simply amazing! Without further ado, let's get started!

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(Photo by: Weibo ID @炉石娘)

Feng Yu felt that it was time for him to leave before he completely rotted in this circle. Feng Yu's family had a deep background and he could barely be considered a second-generation official. He thought that if he had to rot in this fucked-up life, it would be better to rot around his family and in the circle. Anyway, it was all rotten.

Coincidentally, when Feng Yu signed the resignation handover form at the front desk, a nearby university organized students to visit the company for study. The excited chirping of the children could be heard everywhere. Looking at their clear eyes that envied the surroundings, Feng Yu seemed to see himself five years ago.

Every boy likes to play basketball, but in the end, how many can enter the CBA, let alone the NBA?

Nickname: MSM Age: 27

Lives in: Shanghai

Occupation: E-sports player

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MSM used to think he was the most optimistic person on the planet. But he doesn't think so now.

It was in high school that MSM first discovered that he had a talent for playing games. MSM was surprised to find that his finger reactions and memory were different from those of ordinary people. He could master the operations that ordinary people would take a long time to learn after a few attempts. For example, in "StarCraft", although everyone started playing together, he could easily beat three people one by one after a week. It has to be admitted that there are such geniuses in the world, which also gave him sufficient capital for confidence. So, when MSM received an invitation from an "e-sports scout" after playing a series of "Dota" ladder ranking matches in a gorgeous way one night in his junior year, he agreed to join without hesitation. In order to train, he once again chose to drop out of college without hesitation. "I used to pay to play other people's games, but now others pay me to play games!" - Facing the future life, he encouraged himself in this way.

However, even a genius like MSM can only be regarded as a small splash in the wave of Chinese professional gamers. After leaving campus life and joining the professional team, MSM showed unprecedented perseverance and persistence in training. At this time, the game had changed to the popular "League of Legends". According to the sponsor's contract, MSM's team lived in a three-bedroom and one-living room with a decent environment. They had to train for 10 hours a day and rest one day a week. The monthly salary was 3,000 yuan. If they won a high-profile seat in various competitions, they would receive a commission of one to two thousand yuan. MSM was very hardworking at first. He used all his spare time to train day and night, and his skills improved rapidly. However, life is not an inspirational story. God doesn't care whether you reward hard work or not. MSM's team did not become outstanding because of this, not to mention that there are thousands of e-sports players like him in China. This is like every boy likes to play basketball, but in the end, let alone go to the NBA, how many can enter the CBA? Soon, MSM no longer viewed gaming as their favorite entertainment, but rather as a means of making a living, repeating mechanical labor day after day.

Later, MSM's teammates changed batches after batches, but he didn't get a degree certificate at the beginning, it was difficult to find a job outside, and he had a good relationship with the sponsor, so he simply stayed and let the situation change. Now MSM's teammates are generally born after 1995. When chatting before going to bed at night, MSM found that their motivations for embarking on the road of e-sports are basically surprisingly consistent: they believe that e-sports is the most suitable career in the world for them, they believe that they can support themselves by "playing" with their hands, and they believe in the classic slogan of the WCG event "change your destiny with victory" - after all, for children of this age, a prize of hundreds of thousands is indeed enough to change their destiny, at least they can go back to their hometown to marry a wife and build a tiled house.

However, in his career, among the comrades around MSM, the number of people who have truly changed their fate through e-sports competitions is still approximately zero. The reason why I added "approximately equal" is because last year, a friend of mine went downstairs to buy steamed buns during training and opened a lottery ticket. He won the first prize and immediately went home to buy a car and a house. MSM is not sure whether this case should be counted as "e-sports changed fate".

Now, MSM has passed the peak period of physical adaptation to e-sports. Maybe it is because of his age, or maybe it is the sequelae of staying up late, his nerve reflexes have begun to become slow, and the mouse elbow he suffered from long-term training in the air conditioner will hurt when it rains, and his wrist is sometimes not very obedient. He knows that it is time to leave this circle, but where should he go? Be an endorsement? Get sponsorship? Sell products? Be a commentator? Start his own business? He is not famous enough. People now only know Ruofeng and Xiaozhi, and only regard SKY as the eternal emperor. MSM, who has heard of it?

Another professional game started, MSM sat quietly in the audience, there was no place for him in the starting lineup.

MSM finally understood why those veteran players who were about to retire cried in the audience after he defeated them when he was a rookie.

Screw the boring 9-to-5 job. For my ideals and for the tribe, I’m ALL IN!

Nickname: Lao Chen Age: 36

Lives in: Beijing

Occupation: Investor

[[150448]]

When I started writing this paragraph, Lao Chen suggested that I change the occupation column from "investor" to "unemployed". I thought about it and finally couldn't bear to change it. In fact, because of investing in a mobile game, he is now no different from being unemployed.

Lao Chen was originally a white collar in Beijing, affiliated with a Fortune 500 company, at the management level, with a wealthy family, and a spirit of adventure, always looking for something to do, destined to be a restless person. Just like that, an investment project that was restless came to him: making a mobile game.

The project initiator is a childhood friend whom Lao Chen trusts very much. The two grew up together in arcades and were robbed of tokens by gangsters. They have established a strategic partnership in the gaming circle with a common hatred of the enemy. So Lao Chen got excited and decided to go to work from 9 to 5 for his ideal! For the tribe! I'm ALL IN! So he simply quit his job, sold two houses in the capital, sold most of his stocks, and built a decent team. And everyone's strategic goal is very consistent - to make a 3D hardcore mobile game that will shock the world! The gameplay will blow away 3DS! The graphics will beat PSV! Everything is based on player experience, and we will make a truly conscientious mobile game masterpiece in Chinese history!

If life is a Hollywood movie, then you can guess the following plot without me saying it: Although the game development process was full of twists and turns BLABLABLA, although there were problems with the funding operation BLABLABLA, even if there were cracks in the relationship between the gay friends BLABLABLA... this mobile game was successfully launched at the critical moment, and instantly became popular all over the country and famous all over the world. It achieved a win-win situation in terms of word-of-mouth and revenue, and created an epic gaming benchmark. Under the leadership of this trend, human entertainment has entered the era of art. The aesthetic taste of players has generally undergone a leap in dimensionality. All bad coins have been expelled from the game market, and the world has been thoroughly purified, which is known as the "Third Renaissance". Lao Chen and his gay friends have thus become the new generation of Tesla and Jobs, and are remembered in the immortal hall of human history...

However, if life is so simple that people can guess the ending, how can it be called life?

In reality, the real life script is like this: the game development did have twists and turns, there were indeed problems with the financial operations, cracks did appear in the relationship between the gay friends... and then, nothing happened.

Let me describe it in detail. First of all, the concept of "3D hardcore" was the first to be questioned. It's not that people are worried that there is no market for hardcore games, but that basically no one will make real 3D games. This project was originally planned to be a 3D action role-playing game. However, for a small team that has just been formed, it would be good to find a set of programs that can do 2D cartoon rendering technology well. What else do you want? Especially at that time, domestic 3D technical talents who are proficient in the Unity engine are quite rare, and even if you find them, you may not be able to afford them. In the end, there is no choice but to directly reduce the dimension. From 3D to 2D, the level of coolness immediately dropped by more than half.

The second is the funding issue. A common problem among domestic startups is that they expand without a plan in the early stage when they are well-funded, recruiting a large number of people, and then recruiting more administrative personnel for the sake of management, thus forming a vicious cycle of overstaffing. The team looks noisy and enthusiastic, and everyone is busy, but it is of no use to the overall project. In this way, the game development progress has not made any progress, and the company's operating expenses have soared like a rocket. Even though Lao Chen runs around for financing all day, it is difficult to keep up with the progress of expenses. He had to tentatively ask his friends: Life will be difficult if it goes on like this, how about we streamline each department? Control the monthly expenditure budget? His friend firmly replied to him: It's okay, the game will be online soon, and the flow of water will be like the Yellow River flooding. By then, you won't have time to recruit people, so how can you fire people?

So Lao Chen had no choice but to go back and wait patiently, from 2013 to 2015, a total of three years.

In these three years, the game was deleted and revised, revised and deleted again - the purpose of the revision was not to make the game more fun, but purely to meet the publisher's in-app purchase requirements. The game also used the skin of popular IPs twice, but unfortunately it ended in failure. Either the copyright sharing was not finally negotiated, or the transplant planning was not right. In the middle, there was even a bloody bug of "Liu Guanzhang sworn brotherhood in Taoyuan and worship Guan Gong" in a promotional video, which became a laughing stock in the industry. In this regard, Lao Chen has long lost his initial ambition, and he doesn't even want to make money. He just hopes to break even. However, their capital chain has long been broken, and the main problem they are facing now is that they can't find reliable operation and promotion. In China, no matter how good a game is, once it lacks this, it is tantamount to being sentenced to death in the womb.

As for Lao Chen's buddy, since he didn't invest much money, he withdrew from this muddy water more than a year ago, leaving Lao Chen alone to continue suffering in this torturous single-player dungeon at difficulty level X.

When I saw Lao Chen two days ago, I was shocked. After not seeing him for several years, his hair had turned completely gray. His once bright and iconic smile was now replaced by a frown. His face was haggard, his back was hunched, and from a distance I thought he was an old man. I almost didn't recognize him. After the greetings, we went to a restaurant we used to go to in Xinjiekou and sat down to reminisce about the past. The boss was still the same boss, but he didn't recognize us anymore, or he was too lazy to recognize us.

Lao Chen told me that he and his wife had just completed the divorce procedures, and the court awarded the child to his ex-wife on the grounds that Lao Chen was no longer able to fulfill his full support responsibilities for the child.

I said: I told you not to get involved in the murky waters of the gaming industry, but you refused to listen. I have been working in the media for so long, have I ever given you any bad advice?

Lao Chen smiled and said: It's okay, everyone has their own difficulties. Just hold on a little longer, and maybe it will be fine when the game is online. Come, let's have a drink.

#p#

The pigeons saw that it was white with black in it, and drove it away; the crows saw that it was black with white in it, and drove it away too. The white crow finally realized that it was an alien.

Nickname: Tsukihime Age: 28

Settled in: Guangzhou

Occupation: Media Business

[[150449]]

Yue Ji can be said to be one of the few business otaku girls in China. It is rare to find such a cute girl in the world who can combine the two incompatible words "otaku" and "business".

Yueji was not originally interested in doing business. When she first joined the company, she was originally applying for a web editor position. However, at that time, the website had just cut a few sections, so there was a surplus of editors, and the business department was always short of staff. When the boss saw that Yueji was so cute, he decided to let her do odd jobs in the business department for two days to get familiar with the environment. As a result, she became familiar with the environment for 4 years. Now Yueji is the deputy director of the business department, and she is still as cute and charming as ever.

As a business person, Yue Ji's biggest advantage is that she understands and loves games;

As a business person, Yue Ji's biggest pain is that she understands and loves games.

As a "housewife", Yueji understands the angry articles written by those enthusiastic young editors very well, but her job is destined to stand on the opposite side of them: at the request of the cooperative manufacturers, she has to revise and review the manuscripts, and in serious cases, the whole article has to be deleted, and sometimes the editors even need to apologize to eliminate the impact. Yueji has also been an editor and knows that writing is not easy, so she helps the editors to block and take responsibility, almost becoming a new generation of scapegoat. When the situation is really unbearable, it is transferred to the editorial department for handling. However, the editors think that Yueji is making things difficult for them and never have a good face for her; business colleagues think that Yueji is too protective of the editors and easily causes trouble for their own people, so they also look down on her.

Yue Ji felt that she was like the white crow in the fairy tale. The pigeons saw that it was black in its whiteness and drove it away. The crows saw that it was white in its blackness and drove it away too. The white crow finally realized that it was an alien.

Being an outlier is fine, after all, she has her own way of life. Yue Ji no longer expects companions, nor does she look for companions. She begins to learn to work alone, eat alone, go shopping alone, stay at home alone to watch anime, follow American dramas, and play games. Her real life and business work have completely formed two completely different states, like the two poles of summer and winter.

If Yueji can keep this state, then she can always go on peacefully in any company. However, life often likes to add a spoonful of seasoning to the bland soup pot script, so that you have to face it. Yueji's business department and editorial department are increasingly at odds with each other, and the atmosphere is always tense, as if it is about to explode. There are certainly feuds and grudges among the old employees, but more of them are the newcomers who blame each other without knowing what is good for them - the new editors complain that the business department is so obsessed with money that they only know how to lick the manufacturers and ignore the overall quality of the website, and the new business department satirizes the editors for having a lot of typos and being worse than illiterates and always causing trouble, so it is better to fire them all. As an old business person, Yueji naturally has to start by correcting the concepts of the new colleagues in her department, but from their eyes, Yueji feels obvious doubts and hostility.

Sometimes, Yueji felt as if she was living in an ancient imperial court, with civil officials on one side and military generals on the other. Both groups were always arguing for their own interests, but no one was thinking about solving the problem from a macro perspective. The emperor who really had this ability - that is, the boss - always stood on the side of the business department. After all, the business department was the money-making department. Whenever there was a conflict between the two sides, the editor would be dragged down and given a beating first. Yueji never approved of such a simple and rough way of dealing with things, which would only increase the hatred of the editorial team and the arrogance of the business department, and would not benefit the entire website. Gradually, talented editors left one after another, and young business people who flattered them took over one after another. This was not the corporate culture and growth trend that a large company should have.

Moreover, Yueji's company now has no bottom line in the recruitment requirements for business personnel. Almost anyone who can talk is OK. Yueji watched helplessly as a new business person in the external media WeChat group sent a rubbish red envelope with 1 yuan split into 100 parts, and then wrote what he wanted to say in the title of the red envelope. He thought he had won the attention of hundreds of people in the circle with his cleverness, but in fact he was embarrassed.

The last straw that broke the camel's back for Tsukihime was a conversation between two senior executives one afternoon.

Supervisor A: "Have you heard of a company called Blizzard? They seem to have released a lot of games. Can I ask them for a gift pack? Let's do an event for the Mid-Autumn Festival."

Supervisor B: "I don't know. Please talk to the Deputy Director of Business Yue Ji and ask her to contact them this afternoon. If Blizzard doesn't give us face, we in the media will ban it in a minute!"

Supervisor A: "That's right, I don't believe it won't come!"

…

Tsukihime, left in September 2015.

I went to war for my country and I can sacrifice myself. I went to work in the morning and called my family in the evening to tell them that I had jumped off the building because I had not done my job well. Is that ok?

Nickname: BANYANO Age: 34

Lives in: Shanghai

Occupation: Media person

[[150450]]

Student BANYANO (hereinafter referred to as Mr. B) has a gaming history that can be traced back to the ancient Atari era. Since then, he has almost never missed any consoles or classic games. He can be said to be a typical "young man doesn't work hard, but gets into gaming when he's old". In the last mock Chinese test before the college entrance examination, Mr. B probably lost his mind and ended his essay with a line from the protagonist of Final Fantasy VIII: "Squall once said: 'Keeping distance may be the most correct way for humans.'" He regretted it after handing in the paper and couldn't sleep at night. As a result, the essay was actually praised by the head teacher in public. She commented at the end: The famous quote from the famous writer Squall is really the finishing touch!

From then on, B had a new hobby, writing, and he contributed a lot to various game magazines. He left a lot of footprints in many ACG print media at the time and was quite famous. So before graduating from college, B was hired as an intern by the editorial department of a game magazine, and officially entered the game media circle until now.

I was very confused on my first day at work. The editor-in-chief gave each new employee a book, "Send a Letter to Garcia", saying that the book contained the corporate culture of our company and that they had to write a review of no less than 800 words after reading it. However, "Send a Letter to Garcia" is actually a complete corporate brainwashing pseudo-book, which means "the tasks assigned to you must be completed unconditionally. You must ensure that every task - send the letter to General Garcia who represents the interests of the group, otherwise your life will be meaningless." This is actually a bit of a substitution of concepts, which is equivalent to replacing national justice and ethical family affection with the interests of the company. I go to war for my country and I can sacrifice. I go to work in the morning and call my family in the evening to tell them that I jumped off the building because I didn't do my job well. Is that okay?

Before Mr. B joined the editorial department, what he envied most was the close relationship among the editors, which was like a family. At that time, the Internet was not well developed, and the editorial department that had direct contact with foreign media was the source of first-hand game information in China. Everyone basically regarded the editorial department as their home. They would go out for a quick meal at night and come back to continue playing games and making guides, and by the way, they would look forward to the release of hot news from overseas so that they could make hot topics as soon as possible. At that time, almost everyone defaulted to working until late at night, and anyone who got off work and returned to the dormitory before 11 o'clock would be embarrassed to say hello to others.

However, as the competition between print media became increasingly fierce, the company began to gradually cut costs. The first was to introduce a new rule for those who stay up late: except for special overtime situations such as deadlines, air conditioners must be turned off after 6 p.m. to save electricity and protect the environment. In other cities, air conditioning may not have much impact on editors, but in Guangdong, where it is as hot as a sauna in the summer... From then on, Mr. B and his colleagues were forced to disperse after get off work, and for the first time they began to have the concept of "overtime".

When it comes to air conditioning, there are many rules: 1. You can't turn on the air conditioning on rainy days, you have to open the window. But once the window is opened, no matter how heavy the rain is outside, the hot and humid air will come in, so editors generally hate rain; 2. The air conditioning temperature must not be set lower than 26 degrees, and the reason is: save electricity... Editors really don't know how much electricity money can be saved between 24 degrees and 26 degrees. They only know that many people who are a little far from the air conditioning have brought their own small electric fans, which is better than nothing. Mr. B's seat happened to be right next to the central air conditioning at that time. At first, he was very happy and thought he had picked up a great bargain, but the flower withered before it bloomed for long. Every time during the lunch break, there would often be buddies who couldn't stand the heat and came to secretly lower the air conditioning temperature. If Mr. B didn't watch, the director would come to him angrily soon: "Mr. B, what are you doing! Don't you know the company rules?" Mr. B cried out for being wronged, but the director ignored him.

It doesn't really matter if the work environment is a little worse, but in terms of company policy, what Mr. B can't understand the most is the behavior of competing with competitors for the publication date. The so-called publication date is the date when the magazine is released. For some magazines that mainly sell game guides, if you lag behind your peers by even one day, the sales of the current issue will be greatly reduced, so there will often be a situation where two companies compete for the publication date. For example, let's say both are semi-monthly magazines with a 15-day publication period. If this issue of magazine A is released on the 15th, one day earlier than magazine B, which is released on the 16th, then B will definitely shorten the publication date by 2 days in the next issue, and advance the magazine originally scheduled for the 31st to the 29th, and must fight back. But A is not a pushover. We have been competing for so many years, and we have long known your routine, so A also adjusted its own release date to the 29th, and even gritted its teeth and released it on the 28th. The two companies compete with each other over and over again. What consequences will this cause? The first one is definitely a quality issue. You squeezed the content that originally took 15 days into 13 or even 12 days. The editors worked overtime, had no weekends off, and didn’t get enough sleep at night. Quality and speed are definitely a trade-off. And the problem is serious because it’s okay if your ordinary articles have errors, but once there is a problem with the data in the guide, the player is stuck in a place and can’t get out. This guide may be useless. After all, you are not a website and can modify the guide content at any time. Over time, readers gradually lost confidence in the brand reputation of the magazine, and fewer and fewer people read the magazine guides - anyway, there are a lot of errors, I might as well read the online ones, which are free.

Next, there are a series of problems caused by the number of issues. Everyone is rushing to publish, but what will happen in the end? It is only July now, but I have already published September A. However, the state stipulates that periodicals can only publish a fixed number of issues a year and cannot exceed the limit. What should I do? Well, I can save the country in a roundabout way and launch September C, a special issue, which will shorten the time by about half a month. At the end of the year, I will launch an annual supplement. The weight of two issues will also not be counted in the regular number of issues. Isn’t it great? However, this seemingly satisfactory solution has greatly harmed the interests of loyal readers, and the first to bear the brunt are mail-order subscribers, because the post office does not care whether your magazine is delivered in advance or not. They will mail it according to the issue number on the magazine, and the efficiency of the post office at that time was generally low. The final situation is: a loyal reader of a magazine paid a year's fee in advance, which would definitely be considered a platinum VIP customer today, but the magazines delivered each issue were two to three months out of date, and there were one or two issues missing every now and then, after all, the post office does not care about the supplements. In short, those who can still support the magazine in this way can no longer be described as true love, but in today's words, they are real brain-dead fans. However, game magazines have ignored this most loyal group the most. All of this has laid the groundwork for the collective demise of China's game print media in the future.

After four and a half years of work, Mr. B also chose to resign.

The official reason is: the world is so big, I want to see it. The personal reason is: haha.

[[150451]]

postscript

Feng Yu, MSM, Lao Chen, Yue Ji, Mr. B, I think there is no need to hide their real names or pen names, because most of you don’t know them anyway. They are the truly forgotten, silent majority.

The title is really not an exaggeration. Based on what I have seen and heard in my more than ten years of gaming media career, I can cite hundreds of examples like them. If a special column is set up to write about one person a day, it will be no problem to serialize for three to five years.

Until now, there are still tens of thousands of Chinese people who hope to jump into the Chinese gaming industry every year. Some do it for dreams, some for money, and some simply because it is easy to make money. However, their eyes are often only focused on those who survived.

Those who work as planners all think they can become Chen Xinghan; those who play e-sports all think they can inherit SKY's mantle; those who work as investors all firmly believe that the project they are interested in will definitely be the next "Dota Legend".

So today, please forgive me for bringing you to such a desolate cemetery. Look at those people lying here, whose names passers-by have long forgotten. They may be what you are most likely to become.

The survivors are not a warning to us.