Riding a trend is 1% of success; being the right person is 99%
Liang Qiwei draws on years of game-making to argue: trends and capital narratives can sustain short-term revenue, but what truly determines fate is the creator's character, not external circumstances.
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The core of the knight-errant is not goodness, but willingness to risk greatly
Liang Qiwei rejects equating the knight-errant with the everyday good person (like helping an elderly woman cross the street). True knights-errant must, driven by hatred and injustice, choose to bear risk with superhuman resolve—if you're not exposed to real danger, you're just a good person. This also explains why knights-errant are always outsiders: the rivers and lakes stand against the state; knights have no power to enforce law, only to maintain justice where order collapses.
— Liang QiweiPlayers see through any moral label you attach
When the team tried to add direct dialogue like "For nation and people, that is the great knight-errant" to give the game moral weight, players almost universally rejected it. The problem wasn't disagreement with the sentiment itself, Liang explains, but that players saw through the creative intent: you're not thinking about the game itself, you're trying to borrow external moral associations for mainstream approval. The lesson became: convey the spirit obliquely, never through self-congratulatory statements.
— Liang QiweiIn school he was the invisible man in the dorm
Liang Qiwei recalls having Asperger's-like traits—indifferent to the real world, acutely sensitive to the virtual. In his dorm, he wasn't bullied; he was "transparent." Roommates gradually stopped inviting him to meals, and he felt no loneliness, because loneliness presumes a desire for companionship he simply didn't experience. The term itself mischaracterized his state.
— Liang QiweiOne failed exam erased his entire life plan
Liang was on track: fifth in his class, accepted to Tsinghua for graduate study through the direct enrollment track. Then he failed engineering economics, an unprecedented system failure—the rules said you could advance to Tsinghua but couldn't graduate. Like learning there is no final boss before the climax, the world suddenly unraveled. But it was also the first time fate loosened its grip on his predetermined path as a "problem-solver."
— Liang QiweiDuring the capital boom, the team forgot how to do real work
After Blade of Shadow I found early success—twenty people, a couple million yuan monthly profit—the company dreamed bigger: anime, series, IP matrices, even pitching for a New Third Board listing. For years, Liang's actual work was pitching to investors, cutting deals at dinners, spinning IP narratives. Real coding and art happened less than a day per week. He compares it to martial artists who haven't drawn a real blade in years; when actual combat comes, they're finished in one stroke.
— Liang QiweiProfessing purity is the start of impurity
Liang reflects on an article he wrote years ago: humble-bragging about colleagues' raises and a new girlfriend abroad. He sees it now as commodifying pure creative experience into capital-market small talk—using claims of "purity" to prove he'd learned the money game. Two selves were fighting: one faithful to first principles, one increasingly shrewd, hunting for external validation.
— Liang QiweiChasing trends is 1% of success; capability is 99%
Blade of Shadow II deliberately stacked two trends: mobile esports and anime culture. It succeeded at neither. Liang's conclusion: catching a trend accounts for maybe 1% of success; 99% depends on internal capability—whether the team actually has what it takes to execute the vision. External conditions are irrelevant if you're not the person built for this work. No market opens for those not suited to seize it.
— Liang QiweiBrilliant Murong Fu always loses to clumsy Guo Jing
Game Science and miHoYo succeeded through what Liang calls "strong-mind thinking": the conviction that markets aren't fixed, that force of will can reshape them. Liang admits to the opposite—the "problem-solver" mentality: solve what's given, never imagine changing the game itself. In wuxia metaphor, Murong Fu—brilliant, elaborate, overthinking—always falls to apparently simple Guo Jing. True strength is internal, inward-facing, not in displayed talent.
— Liang QiweiIn their own words · checked verbatim
I think hatred and injustice may be the primary drivers of all wuxia works
我觉得仇恨和冤屈可能是所有的武侠作品的主要驱动力
Liang Qiwei1:05
If you're not exposed to great risk, you can only be called a good person—but the knight-errant must endure great risk
你如果不暴露在巨大的风险之内 你只能算是好人 但是侠一定是要承受巨大风险的
Liang Qiwei4:07
Once we expressed this directly as dialogue, we found most players didn't actually buy it. What they rejected wasn't the spirit itself; they saw through our creative intent
但我们把这个直接的台词 以台词的形式表达出来以后 其实我们发现绝大部分的 就是玩家他其实是不认可 嗯 他不认可的点 他倒不是说不认可他这一面的精神 他主要他看穿了你的创作意图
Liang Qiwei33:31
For a good student who only knows how to solve problems, it felt like having your entire life taken away
对于一个只会 做题的人 来说的好学生来说 那就是把他的人生 给夺走了
Liang Qiwei1:54:51
Most of what determines success is hidden where others can't see—it's hidden inside yourself
因为绝大部分的成功因素 藏在别人看不见你的地方 藏在你自己的心里面
Liang Qiwei3:00:53
Successful people, truly strong people—everything about them is internal, turned inward. That's what matters most
成功的人 真正强的人 他所有的东西都是在内部的 嗯 就是都是向内看的 这一点是最重要
Liang Qiwei3:23:06
Figures
| Xu Xiaoping angel investment | 1 million yuan | 2:07:06 |
| Mirage sales | approximately 300,000 copies | 2:25:21 |
| Blade of Shadow I early team size | approximately 20 people | 2:28:28 |
How to listen
Entrepreneurs, content creators, and game industry veterans and investors who want to understand the ups and downs of the domestic game sector over the past decade and the costs of chasing trends.
The first two hours lean heavily into wuxia theory and Gu Long literary analysis; if time is short, skip to the startup inflection point (around 1:50).