Posted in: Arena Breakout, Games, Interview, Level Infinite, Mobile Games, Video Games | Tagged: Arena Breakout, interview, Level Infinite, MoreFun Studios, Yiming Sun

Interview: Chatting With Arena Breakout Lead Producer Yiming Sun

We had a chance to chat with the Lead Producer of Arena Breakout, Yiming Sun, as he talked about the game's development while in beta.

A few weeks ago, we had a chance to take part in a special preview event for Arena Breakout, getting our first chance at the game in a more expansive setting. As part of that event, we were given a chance to chat with the lead producer for the game, Yiming Sun. We got to talk to him about creating and developing the title, as well as a number of other topics related to its development, as we slowly make our way to the game's release. 

BC: Hey Yiming, how have things been for you so far in 2023?

YS: Pretty good, though very busy with current work on making Arena Breakout.

How did the concept for Arena Breakout come about, and what made you decide to go mobile at the start?

As I mentioned in my talk at GDC, Arena Breakout began mainly because we saw an opportunity with internal team capabilities to make an impact at this key time in the industry. We believe that for serious tactical shooters, there is a gap on mobile with the demand from a new generation of mobile gamers. Our team at MoreFun Studios felt very confident with our technical strength and expertise on the mobile side to quickly bring together an original and completely competitive high-quality game experience on the mobile side.

The game has been promoted as being more of a hardcore experience as opposed to other titles. What brought on this approach?

The concept of hardcore is actually not completely accurate – what we hope to convey is a more serious experience. Compared with the more casual and "arcade" shooting products of existing mobile games, Arena Breakout provides a more focused, competitive, and in-depth tactical first-person shooter experience to meet the needs of the new generation of mobile game players.

A good chunk of the setup revolves around preparing for battle and inventory management. How was it making a system that was complex but not overbearing?

Battle preparation and inventory management are important parts of the core gameplay. The close combination of maintenance management and different firefights on the battlefield emphasizes the importance of making changes and substitutions to items on-the-fly, making each battle a unique experience. Therefore, we must achieve sufficient game depth and drive interest of players in this combat system, while managing play mechanic difficulties and confusion sometimes caused by the limitations of mobile devices. This is why we have created a series of intelligent assistance systems and operating algorithms to assist first-time players – optimization in this area will continue in the future.

When it comes to missions and level design, how do you go about planning the difficulty with both the enemies and objectives so that the PvPvE feels balanced?

This is a complex topic. In short, one of our goals is to create a convincing and reasonable battlefield environment. At the same time, we want to enable gamers the freedom to experience a rich and reasonable PvE layout to mobilize players' active behavior to form more challenges. The difficulty of enemies and tasks will be directly related to the level design goals. To avoid complicating the PvP experience, we will use PvE and mission tasks to increase battlefield changes and tactical dimensions.

How much customization did you decide to put in Arena Breakout? I ask because you touched on the fact there's no skins or "dance moves" from characters, so how much can players make themselves unique?

Actually, that's not quite true – there may have been some misunderstandings about aspects of personalization. At this stage, we have not invested too much energy in character skins, but it does not mean that we do not pay attention to the personalized needs of players. We are currently focusing more on the gameplay and new experiences. At the right time, we will gradually start to launch personalized service content.  Of course, this type of content will be in line with the style and tone of the game. We'll definitely listen to feedback from players and continue to iterate content according to the requests of players. As for the dance moves, I think a professional fighter may have less mood and opportunity to show off his dance moves during intense and life-and-death tactical actions. However, there may also be some opportunities for appropriate personalized performance movements and actions. This mainly depends on the opinions of the players, and I am open to it. However, I am still very optimistic about our current military aesthetic style, and I believe that we can meet the individual needs of players on this basis.

The touch controls for the game seem to be a little more refined than other titles. What made you focus on making this so precise rather than making it an approximation?

The touch control of mobile shooting games is the most fundamental factor related to the quality of the game, and it is also one of the core competencies of our team. For tactical shooting games, the embodiment of precision and operational skill technique is the key to the depth and fun of the game. As a senior FPS developer, this aspect of the game is the module I paid most attention to at the beginning of the project. It also contains a lot of technical patents and our internal team's know-how that makes the game controls quite special.

What made you decide to incorporate a looting system with price goals as one of the objectives?

Loot is an important part of the entire gameplay cycle. We hope that players can get a numerical result with feedback that's intuitive to understand with the loot system. We want to establish a clear goal and verify and share the gains of each battle, so players know the value of their successes after each mission.

How has the testing phase of the game been going, and what have you learned from the players?

The testing phase has gone generally smooth, and players have given us a lot of good feedback that exceeded expectations. At the same time, it also put forward a lot of opinions for us to review. The CBT has informed us to pay more attention to the impact of service quality, such as network quality, matching strategy, and storage size, on player experience. At the same time, as a very novel and in-depth tactical shooting game, new players also need better gameplay promotion and educational content to help them eliminate common mistakes and understand the fun of the game. These are also the focus that we are following up on and improving upon for the game.

What are some of the major additions you'll be looking to include after the game is launched?

We plan to gradually add gameplay content, including new weapons and equipment, maps, enemy bosses, and weather systems. At the same time, more proven new character models and worldview-related gameplay will be revealed when the game is live around the world.

What are your thoughts going into the eventual launch of Arena Breakout?

For a long-running online game, the so-called "final release" may just be a starting point. My thoughts are like this – we have just started, and we will continue to move forward.

Do you have any final thoughts or things you want to talk about that we didn't discuss?

We still have a lot of innovative ideas and blueprints that we want to realize. When the time is right, I am willing to share and discuss with our players. Our team is also full of hope for the future possibilities of the game. Let's focus on the global distribution for now, and hopefully, we'll get off to a good start.

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