Hello World
Today is July 23, 2026. It has been exactly three weeks since my 30th birthday and two weeks since I left the company. After leaving, I moved into a new home and finished setting up my new computer. I have decided to start this section on my personal website as a place to keep some personal records.
As the saying goes, “At thirty, one stands firm.” To “stand firm” means becoming independent in society and achieving something of one’s own. It means that one’s aspirations and convictions have taken root—that one’s personal goals, having withstood the tests of time and practice, have become part of one’s life. It takes courage to leave a familiar environment, and I believe I have successfully taken the first step.
Looking Back on the Past Thirty Years
I was never among the very top students growing up. Perhaps my teachers, mentors, and managers had very high expectations of me, believing that I could aim for the most prestigious schools or become one of the best employees. But my personality always seemed to run counter to those expectations.
I was born into a scholarly family in Wuxi. Although I grew up in a single-parent household and was raised by my mother alone, I have never felt that I lacked love in any way. My family always hoped that I would get into good schools and earn high marks to prove myself, and I suppose I did manage that. When moving from primary school to junior high, I was admitted to the gifted youth program at Tianyi High School and successfully skipped a grade. In high school, thanks to the support of my teachers, I participated in several science competitions and was introduced to programming along the way. Although I ultimately qualified for the final round of recommendation-based university admissions in 2013, I unfortunately failed to get into Tsinghua. Thank goodness the gaokao was still my last line of defense, and I successfully enrolled at Nanjing University for my undergraduate studies.
My four undergraduate years at Nanjing University were also quite eventful. Shortly after enrolling, I entered the honors class in the Department of Computer Science through the Everest Plan, also known as the Top-Notch Student Program. I was also fortunate enough to meet several good friends in that class, whom I remain in touch with to this day. Although our professors expected us to become leaders in computer science, many of us clearly did not manage that (laughs). Most ultimately returned to the mundane world and joined major IT companies to make their contributions there. I was obviously rather aimless throughout my undergraduate years and had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do after graduation, so I took the path of least resistance: I stayed at Nanjing University through postgraduate recommendation and went straight into a PhD program. Some people may think I am humblebragging here, but at a Project 985 university, securing postgraduate recommendation is not actually that difficult as long as you do not mess up too badly.
Starting graduate school at Nanjing University marked the first major turning point in my life. The professor I worked under was fairly mediocre in practice, and after seeing with my own eyes that the entire lab—more than thirty people—had failed to publish a single paper over the course of a year, I had already begun thinking about getting out. During the second semester of my first year, I started wondering whether I might try pursuing game development in the future. So I began taking part in various Game Jams and Events to make games, while also searching for game-related graduate programs. It was during this period that I learned that North America and Europe actually had systematic education in game design. Around July 2018, I spoke with my mother on the phone for nearly five hours. In the end, she supported my decision to withdraw from Nanjing University and apply to game-related programs in the United States.
The road after that was relatively smooth. Starting in July, I simultaneously prepared my portfolio, studied for the TOEFL and GRE, and assembled my application materials. Beginning in October, I applied to game programs at NYU, SMU, USC, and other schools, all while feeling extremely anxious about whether I would be accepted anywhere. Fortunately, SMU Guildhall accepted me. NYU GC put me on the WL, but I felt it was probably out of my league anyway (. So I truly have to thank SMU Guildhall for changing my life.
Once I had received the offer, things became much easier. I was preparing to withdraw around the middle of 2019, but I still had half a year before then, so I approached NetEase to see whether I could intern there. I have to thank Mr. Zhong Lihua here, who was also the first mentor of my professional career. The interview process back then was actually very informal. As I recall, we simply had a few phone calls, and I was upfront about the fact that I could only intern for six months before leaving to study in the United States. Mr. Zhong was very supportive and warmly welcomed me to intern at NetEase Leihuo in Hangzhou. That was the beginning of my first, brief professional experience. The project at NetEase was not particularly complex, but it was my first opportunity to study and understand Unity in depth. Looking back now, I wrote quite a lot of garbage code at the time. I also have to thank my former NetEase colleagues for cleaning up after me later. To my surprise, even though NetEase often has pre-production projects that die before seeing the light of day, the project I worked on during my internship was actually released and remains in operation today—Absolute Deduction. Thinking about it now, the concept behind the product is still very cool, and there are few comparable competitors on the market. Perhaps that is why it has remained in operation to this day.
From 2019 to 2021, I learned a great deal in the United States. I saw the maturity of the American education system, as well as many of my own shortcomings. From the moment we enrolled, Guildhall’s professors constantly emphasized the pressure and difficulty of finding employment. The school also regularly invited prominent companies from the industry to give lectures or recruitment presentations. I believe that much of my present mental maturity comes from those years at Guildhall. During my two years there, I genuinely felt as though I had returned to my final year of high school, studying a vast amount of material at truly high intensity.
Without exaggeration, Professor Squirrel Eiserloh is one of the most important benefactors I have ever met. He had been programming all kinds of games since the Apple II era and the days of UE2, and I admired him greatly while I was at school. Anyone in a technical field knows that if you want to earn the respect of technical people, you have to demonstrate real ability. When Professor Squirrel taught engine implementation, he rewrote his teaching materials from scratch every year and made sure that he had personally completed every assignment he gave us. Having experienced undergraduate education in China, I knew only too well how rare professors like him were, which made Professor Squirrel’s teaching all the more precious.
My Connection with Hypergryph
I first learned about Hypergryph while interning at NetEase, when a colleague told me that a game called Arknights had just launched. At the time, I assumed it was probably just another small-studio anime gacha game worth trying briefly before dropping. I genuinely never expected that, seven years later, I would still be playing it.
In 2020, Hypergryph was still at a very early stage. Even though Arknights was embroiled in all kinds of controversy that year, my absolute confidence in the founding team and my familiarity with anime gacha games still led me to submit an application for graduate recruitment. I still remember that Will conducted my first interview, while the second was with the boss himself, Huang Yifeng. Both left an incredibly deep impression on me. That was why I chose to join Hypergryph without hesitation and take part in creating games there.
When I first joined Hypergryph in 2021, I became part of the Ex Astris project team. The atmosphere within that team was completely at odds with the quality of the game that was eventually released. It embodied my most fundamental ideal of what a game company could be: everyone on the team wanted to create something good, and everyone was also friends. We would eat together, talk about anime we had recently watched and conventions we had attended, and work together to improve the game from the perspectives of our different disciplines. Back then, I felt as though I had truly glimpsed the ideal state of a game company.
But the good times on Ex Astris did not last very long. By the end of 2021, my manager informed me that I would be transferred to work on a sequel to Arknights. As a dyed-in-the-wool Arknights fanatic, I naturally knew that opportunities like this were exceedingly rare, so I accepted the transfer without hesitation. You may already know what happened afterward: first came the initial reveal of Arknights: Endfield, followed by its various promotional campaigns and its successful, highly profitable launch. I know that I poured an enormous amount of effort into the project’s success. Traces of my work can still be found throughout the engine and rendering pipeline, and I feel that my more than four years of effort were not wasted.
Many people may want to ask me: if Endfield was so successful and the project team was not laying anyone off, why did I leave? WeChat, Weibo, and Zhihu may not be suitable places to discuss this, so I have decided to talk about it here on my personal blog.
Starting around the project’s second beta test in 2024, the project team expanded at breakneck speed, and the company began to move beyond its small-studio roots and gradually become a more established organization. As various experts and industry veterans joined, work on the project’s many features and tasks began to proceed more smoothly, but the amount of overtime also continued to grow. From the end of 2023 until I left in the middle of 2026, I seemed to be working overtime almost constantly. Sometimes we worked alternating five- and six-day weeks; at other times, we followed an even harsher Pinduoduo-style schedule. It was genuinely exhausting and sacrificed an enormous amount of rest time. In particular, even when I left work early in the evening, took time off, or traveled, colleagues would still contact me around the clock with all kinds of questions. Out of a sense of responsibility, I would usually respond immediately. This left me exhausted—and my title and salary did not seem commensurate with that level of responsibility. Trapped in this contradiction for so long, I eventually decided that it was better to let go. The company has plenty of experts capable of carrying all kinds of work. I am sure it does not need a tiny cog like me.
Another thing worth mentioning is that it has been almost five years since I joined the company in 2021, yet I never received a promotion, had the opportunity to mentor newcomers, or was allowed to conduct interviews. There seemed to be absolutely no expectation that I would advance toward a senior role, so I believe leaving was the right decision. This may not be the fault of one or two managers. I believe it reflects a broader problem with how the entire company develops junior employees. I hope Hypergryph can do better in this area in the future.
Of course, leaving Hypergryph does not mean that I will stop playing its games. Arknights and Arknights: Endfield remain the only anime gacha games I still play. As long as they remain in operation, I believe I will continue supporting both. I also hope my former colleagues will keep working hard to produce more and better content.
Looking Ahead
After leaving Hypergryph, I chose to begin making the visual novel I truly want to create. Games like these are often seen as having neither “technical depth” nor a market, but I believe a good visual novel can earn an excellent reputation. I personally love Kotaro Uchikoshi’s Ever17 and the other games in that series, as well as Kinoko Nasu’s Witch on the Holy Night. I hope to create a similar AVG in China—one with a polished script and presentation backed by genuine technical prowess. Fortunately, very few people in China are currently working with the subject matter I want to explore. I hope I can truly create a visual novel that everyone will enjoy playing.
For now, I am still in the preparation and recuperation stage. Once the time is right, I will continue moving the project forward. Very few people may ever read this blog, but if you happen to find it and are willing to keep reading, then please look forward to what I create in the future. :D