Black Stream Interactive Entertainment, AnOveral Game Production Management Service Provider

Before the 2021 Spring Festival, we interviewed Black Stream Interactive Entertainment Co.,LTD  as the end of 2020. This professional game production company is recognized for producing high-quality games and providing full-process services and solutions to game developers.

CGGE:  Can you tell us a little bit about the history of your company?

Black stream Interactive Entertainment Co.,LTD was established in 2011. It’s formerly the game division of Silk Road Vision. The team members have been in the game industry for nearly ten years. Now we have three branches separately in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Chengdu with currently more than 200 people.

We are not just a “production tool” for providing the game content, but providing overall game solutions, integrating industry resources and creativity to our customer. We have the advantages in rich experience in game projects, standardized art production pipeline and perfect management system.

With the partners all over the world, we have participated in the production of many large-scale 3A-level game content from home and abroad. Now we have reached in-depth cooperation with internationally renowned game development companies such as Ubisoft and Tencent. We provide complete outsourcing solutions, including original concept design, 3D models, animation, level design special effects, etc.,. With the experience in hundreds of projects, we already have set up a good reputation and wide visibility in the industry.

CGGE: How many people work at your facilities?

As mentioned above, currently, we have over 200 stuffs and will continue to increase in the future.  But our concept for developing is not simply to expand the number of staff, but more importantly to improve quality and service capabilities. What we provide is a comprehensive solution. We need the employees who have the creativity and good planning capability. As we know, talents are the scarce resource. The high-quality talents are the basis for us to provide better services.

As for the structure of the team, project management should be our key business in feature. Very few content providers have a PM team of our size with the project manager account for 10% of all employees. We are not purely an “art asset production service provider”. Our overall solution is to provide complete production process supported by the professional management team to greatly reduce management costs for our customers. Thus, the artists can devote themselves to the production wistfully.

Our production covers the original concept design, 3D model, animation, level design, special effects and action required for game content production as well as provide complete outsourcing solutions. The core managers in different department have averagely 15 years experience. Over 20% of the staff are senior production members. In addition to focusing on the improvement of the production ability of the personnel, we also care about cultivating their overall management ability. This is the key to our overall game solution. We hope to improve the quality and value of the service through our “management”.

CGGE: What’s the company’s main business right now?

At present, the company’s main business is to provide overall solutions for games. Unlike the traditional art outsourcing production methods, we are more of a whole-process service output from game planning to final presentation. The art content production is also a part of our revenue. And our “creative + management” model is the key to create and provide full-process services from traditional art production services to overall game solutions for game developers. Through a complete pipeline and management system, it runs through all aspects of game development-art design, gameplay design, standard formulation, content production, quality review and art team resource expansion, etc.,. It creates an overall solution to implement. We are committed to become the most reliable partner of customers and a high-quality game art content service management provider.

CGGE: What’s your secrets of success?

Secret? There are many factors that affects a company’s survival and development. Both external and internal factors will have a vital impact on the company. They are not separated.  In my opinion, the company currently cannot be regarded “Successful”.  We’re still on the way to that. A correct direction is critical. It is a blueprint for a company’s development. Once we were on the right way, we could be successful. Otherwise, it will run counter to the mainstream, and no amount of effort will be futile.

We also always maintain a learning attitude and acumen and discover the real data from the market. We focus on improving our ability, improve service quality in creativity and professionalism. We combine Chinese game development model with overseas 3D project management for many years to provide customers with services from traditional art production to overall game solutions. This is quite rare in the domestic game service market.

CGGE: Despite the global impact of the pandemic, do you feel that there has been/will be a shift in the landscape of how industry or your company operates moving forward?

China has the world’s widest game market, the world’s largest game company, and the world’s most abundant outsourcing resources. The rapid development stage of the game industry was between 2007-2013. Due to the pandemic, the stable market had ushered in unexpected growth. According to gamma data, in the first half of 2020 , the game market sales revenue has increased by 22.34% year-on-year, and once again rebounded to double-digit growth. This is of course due to the epidemic.

During the epidemic, players spent more time at home and games become an important form of entertainment to kill time. Which has ushered in new opportunities for the game industry. Even though, there was the truth that the plays had more requirements on quality of the game. Overall, the epidemic has brought more positive effects to the game industry, not only promoting the game industry, but also forcing the richness of gameplay and the quality of art content to further upgrade.

Market is promising. While many game content suppliers were facing challenging. Most of them lacked advanced management models or a practical solution. They would be just a service provider. We not only pursue the continuous improvement of content quality, but also hope to combine our creative design to increase the added value, improve the service, make customers more worry-free, and reduce the burden on game developers. To some extent, we are at the forefront of this road. We are on the right way. The epidemic has prompted us to accelerate the upgrading and transforming service models in order to survive, and to better provide our customers with valuable solution.

CGGE: Do you have any favourite projects/milestones has worked on/achieved over the years?

Fortunately, there are many projects of different period that affect us deeply. The overseas 3A game “The Division”did so when we were a start-up. It made us to think “what kind of service should game content providers provide”. When Ubsoft came to us, frankly speaking, we were not ready at that time.  After rigorous evaluation, we finally reached an in-depth cooperation which lead us a technological leap. Its strict and standardized overseas project pipeline made us realize that how the manage is critical to the production. Since then, we have gradually established a complete set of standardized procedures and built an efficient project management system.

Poster of the Project Black Stream Particpated. 

With the competition was becoming increasingly fierce and the service provide mode was in urgent need of transformation and upgrading, we resolutely embarked on a road that was not yet mature in China to “provide the overall solution of the game” for our customers. Cooperation with Tencent game studios is our first attempt to take on this mode. Though the game is not currently online, but it is a worth waiting for. We did have some difficulties at the very beginning, but it’s quite natural. It takes time to accept something new. And it deserves a bit more time. During the period of preparing the project, we came to an agreement to participate in the game planning and design. We joined the whole production pipeline and built the trust. Now we are one of their core suppliers. The core of our service is to assist studios in a series of work, including the establishment of art direction, the splitting of production content, the establishment of production process, the production of art content, the review of project quality, the control of project schedule, and even the expansion of art team resources through process and management and key content production. In nearly three years of cooperation, we have provided a set of customized solutions for the project, and won high recognition from the customer.

Poster of the Project Black Stream Particpated. 

CGGE: Can you tell us anything about what may be in coming up in the near future for game productions?

We successfully completed Pre-A financing with RMB 10-million at the end of 2020.  We plan to spend this fund for the development of our partners, to find more “like-minded” people to move forward together; then, we will also use it to expand the training of core technical and manager teams. We will integrate the industry resource through the management service platform developed by ourselves. It will release the burden on creativity. We also improve the capability of providing with the complete solutions. Additionally, we have always had an “international dream”. It’s hard to see Chinese game content suppliers on the world summit. We hope to expand to overseas market in the next 1-3 years and increase the scale of overseas business through the establishment of overseas branch offices. We want  to become a Chinese game solution provider that can speaks out on the international stage for China game companies.  And this year, in addition to continuing to provide customers with high-quality overall game solutions, high-quality game content and supporting services to achieve full coverage of art content, program development, and localization, we also hope to open new business modules such as game promotion. We plan to open up territory in some brandnew game extension areas.

Thanks for Black stream Interactive Entertainment Co.,LTD!

By: CGGE Editor Dept.