(EN) #Wolffun Team: a Product Team that Delivers Value and Innovation

• Thetan Book: How was Thetan Arena created?
• #WOLFFUN TEAM: Game Design Team 101

“Thetan Arena is an achievement that brings pride to me and the whole development team. The moment the game reaches 150,000 of Peak CCU will remain unforgettable for everyone. With Thetan Arena, we did what we had always wanted: to bring joy to millions of users worldwide, and we will continue to do so.” - Mr. HOANG SO, CTO & Head of Product at Wolffun Game.

A spaceship cannot be launched into space as long as its design is still on paper, without the hands of engineers to turn it into a reality and make it work according to its intended functions. From the design stage, all members of the Product division are fully responsible for all aspects of the product, from the concept and development to testing, data-driven improvement, finalization, and release. The Product division not only plays a core role in game production and operation but also serves as a chain of linking different teams, which are: Data, Quality Control, Developer (Front-End, Back-End, Unity), and Project Management.

How we develop our product

“It’s like entering a battle in Thetan Arena” (laughs), CTO Mr. Hoang So shared. “The first thing to do is to scrutinize the design draft of the game designers, dissecting their reasoning to understand their design and how it aligns with the company's current direction. We will put the idea on hold without a proper response until there is enough conviction. It is like a civil war between the teams in the Product division, except that we all work towards the same goal: A finished high-quality product upon its release."

“Unlike the process of making games as an 'indie developer' as we did before, Wolffun currently has nearly 100 members, with the Product division making up the majority. Therefore, we must be more professional by adapting a standard studio workflow with the spirit and flexibility of an ‘indie developer.’ This helps us to achieve the desired quality in a more effective and efficient fashion.”

For the Product division, when our product is introduced on the market, data plays a significant role, accounting for 80%, in letting us know what content to improve and develop further.

'Data doesn't lie.' It gives us a better understanding of games in general and the users. I really admire the Data team led by Mr. An Nguyen, a leader with a sense of humor who will become severe when 'observing' the data. Measuring numbers, analyzing them, and making improvements is the ultimate goal that motivates An to work on new and more effective methods. He often researches and learns from experts and even goes on adventures to famous game studios in Europe. This is very helpful when applying the new experience to our products.

Alert, there are bugs in the release!

The 'gatekeeper' is what we call Ms. Trinh Nguyen, Head of Quality Control, according to how she and her team members meticulously detect bugs in each release before they reach the users.

“She really is the ‘boggart’ of the Dev team” (laughs). “Trinh never compromises or easily lets go of any error that her team finds.” We will afterward classify and grade the severity of the bugs for sequential processing, setting deadlines for completion before releasing the product.

There are various bugs that we encounter, and some of them can only be spotted when we have a certain number of testers on the team. Therefore, we usually divide a product launch into 2 or 3 phases, from Alpha and Beta to Official Launch. In each phase, we will collect valuable feedback from the users, many of whom have unique experiences and are even willing to help us improve the product, which we wholeheartedly appreciate.

“I remember at 5:30 PM every afternoon, three months before the product launch, an announcement of a product test would appear on the company’s internal portal. That was when the first users were also the company members themselves. Everyone, I mean all of them, would test the product together, spending time laughing and challenging each other or getting angry at bugs. It would become a frequent activity that unites individuals in the company, directing all of us toward a common goal. Those times were indeed precious.”

We learned a lot from Thetan Arena

• Thetan Arena: The Untold Story

The application of Blockchain made Thetan Arena one of the top GameFi projects at the time of its launch. The game attracted more than 20 million users, overloading our system and causing it to collapse. That was no doubt a costly lesson! We did not get to celebrate when the peak CCU jumped from 50k, 70k, to 150k as the team had to quickly fix the issue. The commitment and dedication were at an all-time high.

Our next lesson was about the implementation of Blockchain in games. There was a vast amount of knowledge to take in in a short time, which came with a lot of pressure as the market was constantly changing. It is totally different from producing and releasing a traditional game, as we have to simultaneously focus on improvement and optimization.

"For me, implementing Blockchain in games is an exciting experience. Previously, we were simply a group of game developers selling our products to users, but thanks to Blockchain, our users can now possess ownership over their items and trade them with others. This is not merely a difference but a revolution. Furthermore, the impact of the cryptocurrency’s market volatility is trivial to the game development of the Product division, as the advantages and disadvantages of Gamefi are the main influences instead. Wolffun Game’s objective is to create games that genuinely bring value to users, so a proper comprehension of GameFi will allow the Product team to continue to improve the game. With an understanding of the limitations of GameFi, the team will focus more on more beneficial features for users so that they can enjoy the game and earn from it.'

Thetan Rivals & the Worthwhile anticipated

Compared to the intense battles that require skillfulness in Thetan Arena, the gameplay of Thetan Rivals is a new experience that Wolffun Game wishes to deliver to our users, as it is suitable for players of all ages. The developers draw on the expertise of the Multiplayer genre to create Thetan Rivals. Instead of allowing a maximum of 8 players in a match like Thetan Arena, Thetan Rivals enables a capacity of up to 32 players, who will go through 3 rounds of walkthroughs that take place on many different maps to play. Therefore, regarding product development, Thetan Rivals has much more workload than Thetan Arena.

After Thetan Arena, Thetan Rivals is a new beginning that awaits many.

The shortage of game developers with Unity expertise has made the competition with game studios in developed regions more challenging for those in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Therefore, Wolffun Game has been employing training models so that the in-house juniors can receive more experience to develop to the senior levels. We aim to be among the region's Top 5 Game and Entertainment Platforms by 2025.