Exclusive interview with Fishing 3 producer Fan Shaoqiang on the birth of a project with revenue of over 100 million yuan

The Fishing Master series under Chukong Technology has always been a popular casual game among mobile game players. After the upgrade to Fishing Master 3, it has become even more popular among mobile game players. When communicating with Fan Shaoqiang, the producer of the Fishing Master series, we learned that the current overall revenue of Fishing Master 3 has exceeded 100 million yuan, and the number of users is over 40 million.

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Fishing Master 3 Producer Fan Shaoqiang

The initial dream

When recalling his entire career, Fan Shaoqiang talked about a good memory. After graduating in 2007, he has been engaged in software development. In 2009, he turned to mobile application iOS development. At that time, he met Gary, one of the founders of Touch. I came here on the first day of Touch's establishment. I also participated in the establishment and production of Fishing Master. At that time, I led a group of people to produce Fishing Master 1 in 3 months and achieved good results. Now I think that period of time is really worth remembering.

The earliest casual games had a very good prospect on the iOS platform. Since the second half of 2010, Angry Birds and Cut the Rope have been our goals. People are often seen playing these two games on the bus. The graphics are very beautiful, the controls are very simple, and there is no need for an Internet connection. People can play them anytime and anywhere. Before making Fishing Master, I developed two projects and won the first place in the free list in China, but I was not as happy and excited as the success of the Fishing Master series.

Gradually, the graphics of mobile phone games have become more and more sophisticated, and the types of games have become more and more abundant. Many players have begun to slowly shift from PC to mobile phones. Especially in the second half of 2014, the graphics of 3D games have become higher and higher, comparable to large-scale games on PC.

Every upgrade of Fishing Master is at its core: the version upgrade of Cocos game engine, from the first generation of Cocos2d-iPhone and Cocos2d-X to the current Cocos-X3.0. Currently, the Android version of Fishing Master 1 has 200 million users, and iOS has more than 50 million users. Fishing Master 2 currently has more than 150 million users, and Fishing Master 3 reached 10 million downloads within 48 hours of its launch, and ranked first in downloads on both iPhone and iPad.

Fan Shaoqiang said: Fishing 3 is based on the new Cocos-X3.0 engine, which has opened the era of 3D casual games. Behind the entire project, there are also many problems that bother Fan Shaoqiang's team. During the communication, the reporter learned that Fishing 3 was highly anticipated at the beginning of the project. It needs to carry a large number of users and bring high income. Therefore, the package size and adaptability have always been emphasized. The package must be less than 30M, and the adaptability must include as many models as possible above Android 2.3.

Package size and my tailbone

During the development of Fishing Master 3, we were also in the process of running in the new engine. During this process, we encountered many problems, made a lot of optimizations, and often compared and tested other engines on the market.

During the development of Fishing 3, the thing that impressed me the most was the optimization of the package size. During a regular stand-up meeting, I didn't pay much attention. After emphasizing that the package must be less than 30M, I fell off the stool I was leaning on and landed on my butt. Later, I went to the hospital for a check-up and found that my coccyx was fractured. At that time, I was still joking that if the package could not be reduced, it would be a shame for my fall.

After the efforts of the whole team, the result is really good. The size of the first package is 22M. We analyzed and budgeted from all aspects, such as png8 for art resources, ogg compression for sound resources, high and low poly processing for models, and tried to reduce every possible place. We tried not to miss any 0.1M content, especially in the later stage. When everyone found that they could save 0.1M resources, they were very happy, as if they had won a big prize.

There is always some difference between data and reality

After implementing the basic functions, we started the pre-launch testing work. We used more than 300 machines in the company, covering a wide range of operating systems and models. When we first launched the game, we tested it ourselves and also tested it on the Testin Crash Master platform. The adaptation rate reached 92%, and we are very satisfied with the result. According to previous data, Samsung and Xiaomi users account for a considerable number of players in the fishing series of games. With the help of Testin Crash Master, we tested that there were adaptation problems in some Samsung models and made adjustments immediately. After the first launch, everything was good. After 48 hours of launch, it achieved nearly 10 million downloads on iOS and Android platforms.

Later we updated a version, and the data looked good, but there was a problem. The download conversion rate of some channels decreased, but not all channels. It was a very strange problem, because from the feedback of our testers, the overall adaptation was not that bad, but from the data, there was indeed a problem. Testin Crash Master reported that the adaptability was around 77%. We need to quickly locate the problem for analysis, but the investigation of several problems in parallel requires a large number of people and machines. If we use our own people and machines, it will definitely affect the progress of other projects. Fortunately, we have cooperation with Testin Crash Master. We can initiate several parallel tests in one day to locate the problem, which speeds up the progress. From the beginning of the Fishing 3 project to now, the number of errors has dropped by about 30%-50%. There were 18,000 errors in November, about 15,000 in December, and below 10,000 in January. We are very satisfied with this result.

According to the data fed back to us by Testin Crash Master, the root cause of the problem lies in encryption, and the operator modified the billing SDK later. The earliest encryption method used took longer to start up, so on some models, the process would be killed due to the long startup time. After the correction, the adaptability reached 88%, and we added crash logs. We used Testin Crash Master to locate a problem with the operator's billing SDK on Meizu's own system. Before, we only knew that a certain phone would crash, but if the phone was not in front of us, it was really difficult to locate the problem. With the logs of Testin Crash Master, we can upload the user's ID to match the crash information to a specific user or a certain model of phone, and accurately locate the problem through background queries.

Before this, we could only ask users to help export crash logs. Usually, customer service staff would call to communicate and guide us step by step. It was okay for patient users, but if we encountered impatient or wary users, they would be rejected directly and might be easily mistaken for scammers. This was a very embarrassing thing for us.

In Fan Shaoqiang's opinion, such an effect can be achieved because of the long-term in-depth cooperation between Testin Crash Master platform, Touch Technology and Cocos engine. Testin Crash Master has long provided authoritative and accurate one-stop cloud testing services for mobile game products on the Cocos platform. For developers, Testin Crash Master and Coocs are two very important tools, just like building a building. One is responsible for construction, making the game from scratch; the other is responsible for the decoration of details, making the whole building more refined and making the overall experience of the game more complete.

The current total revenue of Fishing 3 has exceeded 100 million yuan, and the number of users is over 60 million. This achievement is inseparable from the support of Testin Crash Master. Thank you Testin Crash Master and thank you to all game players for their support of the Fishing series of games.