Chapter 417 It can go any faster!


    Finally putting together the last piece of the puzzle, Lilith felt refreshed and couldn''t be happier.


    Finally I feel confident again!


    Gu Fan looked at her and couldn''t help but sigh, this **** demon has a very good psychological quality? No matter what kind of setbacks you have encountered before, as long as you find a new direction, you will immediately put all the previous unhappiness behind and continue to move forward with all your strength.


    If this was a normal human being, he might have been discouraged long ago.


    Well, this indomitable spirit is indeed worth learning.


    Lilith sorted out all the current game mechanics and quickly wrote them down. Then, she looked around at everyone and made the final arrangements.


    "Okay, then the mechanics of the game "Blood of Lies" are all finalized! Next, Zhou Yang and Wei Chengjie, each of you will be responsible for half of the design draft and complete it as soon as possible!


    “This time we are going to do something big and invest all of our company’s current excess R&D funds into it!


    "By the way, by the way, Gu Fan, how much money does our company have now?"


    Lilith obviously didn''t pay much attention to money. For her, she had no intention of making money when opening the company Nitiantian. Even if she lost money, she could make up for it with other businesses.


    I just didn’t expect that Nitiantian would continue to make money, and there was no need to make up for it from other businesses. Even the newly developed physical industries were very successful.


    Lilith gets annoyed when she thinks about making money against Heaven, so she rarely pays attention to how much money the company makes.


    Gu Fan was silent for a moment: "I''m not sure about this either. I''ll ask the finance department later."


    Lilith looked suspicious: "You don''t know either?"


    You know, Ni Tiantang''s net income will be distributed to Gu Fan as a bonus according to a percentage. He should allocate it to himself as soon as he makes money. How could he not be clear about it?


    Gu Fan coughed twice and said, "I''m so focused on the game that I''m so busy writing code that I don''t have time to pay attention to these things.


    "Besides, I don''t have time to spend money."


    Lilith was doubtful.


    But considering that he made surprise inspections every now and then, Gu Fan really spent most of his time in the villa thinking about the game, and really didn''t have much money to spend, so he reluctantly believed half of it for the time being.


    "In short, spend money! I want to see "Blood of Lies" developed as quickly as possible! I want to use the best skin to deceive all the players, oh no, attract them!"


    Lilith couldn''t wait to put her hands on her hips, her expression was very proud.


    But at this moment Zhou Yang poured cold water on her at the right time: "But Mr. Li... games are not something that can be made faster by spending money...


    "It doesn''t mean that it takes 100 people to develop a project for three months, but 200 people can shorten it to one and a half months. It can''t be calculated that way..."


    It is true that games are a labor-intensive industry. Basically, most of the expenses are in labor costs. Generally speaking, the more people on the project team, the faster the game development speed.


    But there is a limit to this kind of thing, and it cannot be piled up without limit.


    Because whether it is games, movies, or other similar industries, the more people there are, the more complicated the division of labor required, and the difficulty of controlling the entire project will increase exponentially.


    Just like some big-budget movies, there may be thousands of people working on set at the same time. Let’s not talk about letting these thousands of people perform their own duties. Just feeding them is enough for the director to drink a pot.


    The same goes for games.


    If you want to make a large-scale game, the more manpower the better. But with more manpower, the number of middle-level personnel required for coordination and management will also increase exponentially, and even the upper-level personnel who manage the middle-level personnel will also increase exponentially.


    The more people there are, the more serious the internal friction will be at the management level, and the more people there will be, the code or art level will be uneven and difficult to unify. The energy consumed in standardization may even exceed the serious work itself.


    Therefore, there is an upper limit to the increase in personnel, and Nitiantian has basically reached this upper limit.


    So far, Nitiantian can be roughly divided into two production teams, headed by Zhou Yang and Wei Chengjie respectively.


    After continuous poaching and recruitment, the number of these two production teams has reached a team size of nearly 200 people.


    The entire Nitian staff has reached more than 400 people.


    This is already quite a high number.


    Because Nitiantian''s game production is actually a flat structure, the number of people among various departments is quite unbalanced.


    Since Lilith can provide art resources and music resources directly from hell, Nitian does not need to maintain a large art team at all, but only needs to adjust the 3D art and motion art of model details.


    In addition, Nitiantian does not need a dedicated operations team. After all, Nitiantian’s games are all directly thrown on the official game platform, and there is no problem with subsequent operations.


    After cutting off these irrelevant personnel, Nitiantian''s employees are still mainly focused on the three departments of planning, programming, and testing. Basically, all the good steel is used on the cutting edge.


    For the previous games, when almost every game was developed, the project team would recruit 20 to 30% of new people.


    This has almost reached the limit that the company can bear. If there is more, I am afraid that there will be problems with the management of the entire project team. There may be a situation where new employees are completely idle and cannot be effectively utilized.


    Lilith actually wants to spend money to speed up the progress of the game. I''m afraid it''s a daydream.


    However, Gu Fan shook his head slightly: "It is not completely impossible to speed up the development of the game by spending money.


    “The solution is simple: outsource.”


    Zhou Yang was stunned for a moment, but quickly shook his head: "No way, Mr. Gu? If we outsource it, how can we ensure the quality of the game?"


    Lilith''s eyes immediately lit up: "No need to guarantee it!"


    Gu Fan was silent for a moment: "No, we still have to guarantee it, otherwise we can''t guarantee whether there will be some magical bugs in the outsourced code."


    Lilith instantly fainted: "That''s right... So what do you say about outsourcing?"


    Gu Fan explained: "It''s very simple. We just need to ensure the quality of development as much as possible while outsourcing. This will take a certain amount of time and may require the running-in of two or three projects. However, once successful, we can further accelerate game development. The speed." Zhou Yang and Wei Chengjie felt a little incredible when they heard this.


    Outsourcing, as the name suggests, is when a company entrusts non-core business to external professional companies in order to reduce operating costs and concentrate resources.


    An outsourcing company is a company that specializes in a specific field and provides industry services to many other companies at the same time.


    In human terms, it means spending money to find other companies in the market to help share the work.


    For example, some entrepreneurial game companies basically outsource art directly.


    Because in the process of game development, it is very wasteful to directly support an entire art team. After all the art resources of the game are developed, the art team will have nothing to do, and the company will have to spend money to support it. But if it is an outsourcing company, after the art resources for this project are released, they can continue to release the art resources for the next project, which can be perfectly connected and can be regarded as optimizing resource allocation.


    But outsourcing is not a panacea, for the same reason as before: the company''s organizational structure has limits.


    If the company''s organizational structure is unreasonable, it will need to spend more resources on internal coordination and unification of rules, which will increase new workload and cause more losses than gains.


    Judging from the current situation of Nitiantian, the art resources that are most in need of outsourcing are not the biggest problem.


    Although the bigger the game, the longer it takes Hell''s art team to produce art resources, but in general, no matter how big the game is, the time it takes Hell''s art team to produce resources is still shorter than program development.


    In this case, there is actually not much need to outsource art. The whole process is stuck in the program.


    As for the program, it happens to be a part that is not suitable for outsourcing.


    Because art standards are easier to establish and online communication is more convenient, while procedures require constant coordination and online communication is inconvenient. It is best to communicate offline and unify standards. If you find any problems or bugs, it’s best to solve them as soon as possible.


    What''s more, if something goes wrong with the program, it will be a big deal. Most game companies don''t like to outsource such an important thing.


    Of course, there are also some amazing European and American game companies that will outsource their programs to Asan programmers in order to save money, and the final results are without exception disastrous.


    Although Lilith does not care about the quality of the program, the various wonderful bugs in the past have turned her into a frightened bird and no longer accepts the emergence of any bugs.


    After being chased and intercepted, there were frequent accidents. If I let myself go, wouldn''t it be like "Ascension" reappeared? That''s absolutely not possible!


    Gu Fan explained: “My idea is very simple, exponential growth!


    “So far, the total number of programmers in Nitiantian is about 300, and among them there are about 240 reliable senior programmers who are familiar with the work process.


    “We selected about 100 people from these 240 people to form about 10 groups.


    “Each team is directly stationed in an outsourcing studio to be responsible for part of the development work.


    "As for the remaining 140 people, we will directly recruit almost the same number of programmers and let them complete the development tasks one by one."


    Zhou Yang was a little surprised: "Mr. Gu, are you saying that 140 changes to 280, and then to 560? Such an exponential growth?


    "But I''m afraid it''s not feasible, because the process of bringing an old employee up to new people will also seriously reduce his work efficiency. In this way, two people working together to develop a program may not necessarily be faster than an old employee alone."


    Gu Fan nodded: "In the short term, that''s true, but in the long term?


    "As long as they have experienced one or two projects, the 140 newly recruited employees can almost grow into senior programmers and are already familiar with our internal development process, so they can continue to expand.


    “Then we can send another group of the previous employees to various outsourcing studios.


    “The outsourcing studio is the main part of our efficiency improvement.


    "As for the construction of the program framework and various coordination tasks, it is up to me and Brother Dahui as well as all the key programmers who remain in the company."


    Zhou Yang was even more confused: "Is this... possible?"


    It all feels so unreliable.


    Wei Chengjie pondered for a moment and then nodded slightly: "Theoretically speaking, it can barely be established. After all, those top large companies basically use similar methods to expand their headcount. It''s a matter of mentoring and mentoring within the company.


    “But there are several big drawbacks to doing this.


    “The first is the outsourcing company.


    "The outsourcing company must not just connect with our company. Even if we send ten people, will they be willing to use all the company''s resources for us and fully cooperate?


    "Even if we can make them unable to refuse by throwing money at us in the short term, what about the gap period in game development? They will still have to develop other games.


    “Unless we can ensure that the subsequent game development will not stop at all, without any gaps, and the money we give is far more than other companies, we can gradually turn these outsourcing companies into our own use.


    “Secondly, whether it is outsourcing or internal one-on-one training, it will actually bring huge financial pressure.


    “For a long time, our input costs may be three or even five times as much as before, but the output will be about the same, but the time will probably not be shortened by half.


    “This is still an optimistic situation.


    "If we are not optimistic, we may invest five times the cost, but the output of the game will shrink, and the time will only be shortened to 70 to 80% of the original time. Wouldn''t that be too cost-effective?


    “I’m afraid that in the end, I won’t even be able to recoup the cost of the game.


    “Of course, the only advantage of doing this is that maybe after a few games, when this model gradually matures, we can indeed further compress the development time of the game, but compared with the risks of doing so, it always feels like it is small. Losing a lot…”


    However, Lilith didn''t care at all: "It doesn''t matter, it doesn''t matter at all!"


    Obviously, for her, money or not is not a big issue at all. It doesn''t matter if the game shrinks a little, but it may increase the negative emotions of players.


    All she wants now is speed! The sooner the better!


    As long as the games are released quickly enough, there will always be those treasure games that make people contribute a lot of negative emotions. The little adds up to a lot!


    "Very good, then you should proceed with this matter immediately and run forward, quickly!"


    (End of chapter)