In a recent interview, Tencent Games Vice President Zhu Yongyi discussed the company's approach to finding and nurturing development teams, citing Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3 and FromSoftware's Elden Ring as benchmarks. He stated that Tencent places greater emphasis on whether developers have a unique and clear creative vision, as well as their willingness to continuously refine a specific game genre; the team's location is not a primary factor in their evaluation.
For its internal studios, Tencent also aims to identify teams that believe they can become leaders in niche genres someday. Zhu Yongyi believes this goal might be achieved with their current projects, or it may take two or three games to gradually approach it.
Zhu Yongyi cited examples such as Larian Studios progressing through multiple Divinity titles to reach Baldur's Gate 3, and FromSoftware releasing Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne before arriving at Elden Ring. These journeys reflect what he describes as long-term commitment. Tencent holds partial equity stakes in both Larian Studios and Kadokawa, the parent company of FromSoftware.
Regarding risk management, Zhu Yongyi noted that Tencent has many long-running games, believing that the consistent release schedule of such products can help mitigate industry fluctuations. For higher-risk phases like concept design and pre-production, he also suggested scaling down project team sizes.