From BASIC to King of Glory: Yao Xiaoguang’s Game Development Journey

Yao Xiaoguang grew up in Nanchang in the early 1990s, learning BASIC from his father and creating pixel‑art games on a 386 PC, which sparked his lifelong passion for game development.

In high school he built a demo of Diablo using Visual Basic and DirectX, implementing eight‑direction movement, transparency, and the A* path‑finding algorithm, which earned him his first job in the industry.

During university he joined early online game communities, contributed to a “network bomb dog” project for Chen Tianqiao’s then‑startup, and witnessed the volatile rise and fall of China’s early PC‑game market.

After a stint at a power‑plant IT department, he joined the fledgling Extreme Studio, developing the online game Network Knight , and later helped create the MMO Phantom Warrior at Shanda, where he also translated a game‑development book.

In 2003 he co‑founded Tianqing Digital (later NetDragon) and built the Q‑style turn‑based MMO Fantasy Ranger . By 2005 he joined Tencent, leading the development of QQ Speed , the company’s first self‑developed casual racing game.

Following the success of QQ Speed , he helped launch the “Everyday” series (e.g., Everyday Match‑3 , Everyday Runner ) that leveraged WeChat’s platform to achieve tens of millions of users.

In 2014, after a corporate restructuring, his team merged into the Tencent Games group, where they re‑engineered the failing Hero Chronicle into the now‑iconic King of Glory , shifting from 3v3/1v1 to 5v5 PvP and focusing on hero skins and microtransactions.

King of Glory became a massive revenue generator, contributing to Tencent’s record‑breaking quarterly profits and cementing Yao’s reputation as a leading figure in Chinese mobile gaming.

Author: 一剑霜寒十四州