During the gaming industry’s last expansion phase, companies from Shanghai and Hangzhou expanded into each other’s home territories, establishing high-profile branches and releasing high-quality games, which objectively spurred a massive talent migration.

Game Teahouse has recently been following a group of game industry professionals who commute between Shanghai and Hangzhou on weekends. They work in Shanghai or Hangzhou during the week and return to Hangzhou or Shanghai on weekends. What are the benefits of working in a different city? Is the constant travel exhausting in the long run? Game Teahouse aims to use a close-up lens to capture the work and lives of these "game industry migratory birds."

PART I

A Special Forces Soldier's Monday Commute

At six o'clock on Monday morning, a shrill, jarring alarm went off, and Shu Bai reluctantly dragged his still-sleepy body out of bed.

After rushing through his morning routine, Shu Bai opened the Didi app and dashed downstairs. He needed to get to Hangzhou West Station within 20 minutes to catch the 6:40 high-speed train to Shanghai, where he worked at a gaming company.

Shu Bai is one of many game industry professionals who commute between Shanghai and Hangzhou every weekend. He has settled in Hangzhou but works for a well-known game developer in Shanghai. As a result, Shu Bai returns to Hangzhou every Friday to spend time with his girlfriend, then embarks on a military-style commute back to Shanghai for work on Monday.

The high-speed rail journey from Hangzhou West to Shanghai South takes about an hour. As the train came to a stop at the platform at Shanghai South Station, Shu Bai raised his hand to check his watch. Hmm, 8:20 a.m.—it was already rush hour in Shanghai.

Just as planned, down to the second.

After jogging out of Shanghai South, he pulled out his phone to hail a ride and headed to Caohejing, the mecca for Shanghai’s gaming industry workers.

The campus where Lilith and Mutong are located

Shu Bai told Game Tea House that his choice of Hangzhou West and Shanghai South was the result of careful consideration: Hangzhou West is not located in the city center, so the morning commute is smooth and traffic-free; traveling from Hongqiao Station to Caoxi is inconvenient, as it requires a transfer to the subway, whereas Shanghai South is quite close to Caoxi.

By the time Shu Bai finished breakfast and sat down at his desk, it was already 9:30. He let out a long sigh. Although the company had flexible working hours, he didn’t want to arrive too late—especially since he commuted from another city—and give his boss the impression that he was “slack.” After all, the metrics for Shu Bai’s project had been steadily declining, and the atmosphere within the team was tense; it wasn’t a good time to cross anyone.

Although this hectic weekend is something Shu Bai has only been experiencing for a few months, Yu Qi has been doing this for over half a year. She admits that she couldn’t take it anymore three or four months ago and has since cut back on her trips back to Hangzhou.

Yu Qi also got up early on Monday to return to Shanghai for work. By the time she rushed to her desk, she felt as though she’d pulled an all-nighter and was on the verge of falling asleep. “After rushing back to Hangzhou for two weekends in a row, I feel like I’m going to die.”

Opened in 2010, the Shanghai-Hangzhou High-Speed Railway connects two thriving hubs of the gaming industry separated by 160 kilometers. With the fastest journey taking just 40 minutes from Hangzhou East to Shanghai Hongqiao, commuting between the two cities has become a reality. Shu Bai, Yu Qi, and others like them—who make the weekend commute—have blurred the internal boundaries of the Shanghai-Hangzhou Yangtze River Delta urban cluster.

PART II

Creative ways to snag high-speed rail tickets,

A must-try stop on the Shanghai-Hangzhou commute

The Shanghai-Hangzhou High-Speed Railway currently operates 155 round-trip trains daily, with trains departing approximately every ten minutes, effectively functioning like a bus service. However, despite this seemingly ample capacity, the railway is unable to meet travel demand during weekends or short holidays.

Wei Cheng, a gaming investor who frequently commutes between Shanghai and Hangzhou, noted that unless you secure tickets in advance, it’s nearly impossible to buy a ticket for the Friday evening rush hour, “unless you opt for the last train at 10:30 p.m.”

The battle to secure high-speed rail tickets has become a major concern for those working in the Shanghai-Hangzhou commuter sector.

Shu Bai makes it a habit to try to snag tickets every Sunday at 7 p.m., buying his round-trip tickets a week in advance. He sets an alarm so he can jump on them the moment tickets for the Shanghai-Hangzhou High-Speed Rail go on sale. Sometimes, if he’s even a split-second too slow, the tickets sell out, and he has no choice but to wait for a spot on the waiting list.

Besides snapping up tickets in advance, there are other unconventional ways to make it home.

Xiao Lin, who moved from Shanghai to Hangzhou for work after the New Year, never books tickets in advance; he always heads straight to Hangzhou East Station after work and buys a ticket for the next available train once he arrives.

A corner of Hangzhou East

If tickets are sold out, he’ll take a “buy a short-distance ticket and ride the long-distance train” approach—getting on board first and figuring it out later. The aisles, the connections between cars, and the dining car could all end up being his “make-do stops” for the night.

According to Kobayashi’s observations, many of his colleagues have taken rideshares back to Shanghai or used Didi to connect to high-speed trains. In short, to get home, these workers have come up with all sorts of commuting solutions, each using their own unique methods.

Sometimes unexpected work issues are enough to delay Kobayashi’s commute.

Kobayashi and his project team were particularly fond of holding meetings after work, and the reporting process was extremely lengthy. On several Fridays, he didn’t leave the office until after 9:30 p.m., forcing him to take the last high-speed train back to Shanghai, arriving home well past midnight.

Arrived home

In fact, the central government has already begun addressing the issue of capacity constraints on the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed rail line.

Construction on the "Shanghai-Zhajiang-Hangzhou High-Speed Railway," the second high-speed rail line between Shanghai and Hangzhou with a design speed of 350 km/h, is expected to begin later this year. Upon completion in 2029, the line will enable travelers to reach Pudong International Airport from Hangzhou West in just 40 minutes, significantly expanding high-speed rail capacity.

PART III

Game revenue is on a downward spiral—who’s going to take the blame?

Even though the gaming industry’s boom period has passed, Wei Cheng, a venture capitalist specializing in the gaming sector, still maintains his habit of making a trip to Hangzhou every two or three months, with no noticeable decrease in frequency.

Thanks to the spillover effect of talent from NetEase, Hangzhou frequently sees the emergence of intriguing teams or projects that are well worth Wei Cheng’s visit.

One Friday, Wei Cheng traveled to Hangzhou on business. While waiting for his train, he was surprised to discover that a senior lead designer he knew from a major tech company was on the same high-speed train. Upon asking, he learned that this lead designer also worked in Shanghai during the week and returned to Hangzhou on weekends to spend time with his family.

When asked if commuting back and forth every week was exhausting, the lead planner admitted he had gotten used to it, explaining that there were no suitable projects in Hangzhou and no companies there willing to match his salary. “I guess I’ll just stick it out in Shanghai for now.”

Shanghai's West Coast, home to Tencent, NetEase, and ByteDance

Game developers who have left their hometowns are, above all, looking to create high-quality games. Shanghai’s diverse range of game projects offers highly competitive salaries, attracting top talent from across the country to compete for these opportunities.

The project Shu Bai is working on is one of the company’s flagship products; the boss places great importance on it, and it generated solid revenue during its initial launch.

However, the game’s foundation is shaky, and technical flaws in its underlying architecture cause frequent lag, resulting in a poor player experience. The real problem is that this issue stems from legacy code in the underlying system, which has made it impossible to fix.

After being in operation for a long time, players naturally began to voice their complaints, and the game's metrics continued to decline.

The boss saw this and was deeply concerned; he often pulled the producer aside to give him stern advice, and even posed a probing question:

“Is your team just not up to the task?”

As the pressure mounted, Shu Bai could sense that the entire project team was seething with inexplicable anger, with no outlet for it.

The boss scolded the producer, who then took it out on his subordinates when he got back; R&D blamed the publishing team for poor performance, so the publishing team shifted the blame onto the developers; the developers, feeling wronged, lashed out at the designers during the next day’s meeting…

“In a project that’s on the decline, the work atmosphere isn’t going to be all that great,” Shu Bai concluded.

While the Shu Bai project team was still holding its internal "pot-splitting" competition, Yu Qi’s Second Game project had already been disbanded for over half a year.

Looking back, Yu Qi’s emotional journey with this project team went from initially “recommending it to everyone I met—it’s a sure thing” to, after testing, “let’s give it our all; there might still be a chance,” and finally, when the project was scrapped, “it deserved to be axed.”

When Yu Qi interviewed for the project, she learned that the lead developer was a longtime colleague with whom she had worked for over a decade and who had previously created successful products. The game’s concept and direction were in line with market trends and aligned with Yu Qi’s own vision.

On top of that, the CEO told the producer that he wasn’t worried about short-term losses and provided a generous budget, giving her the false impression that the project was on solid ground.

However, during development, the team gradually realized that they had severely underestimated the game’s development complexity and costs. The core creative team had never worked on a mobile game before, so their grasp of gameplay mechanics and asset management was lacking; yet they charged ahead in a direction they couldn’t control, veering far off course from their original vision.

After testing both domestically and internationally, the game’s metrics weren’t looking good, and rumors were circulating that the company couldn’t afford to keep operating at a loss year after year. Sure enough, two months later, the CEO made the call to cancel the project.

The true nature of the project remains shrouded in mystery; only by getting involved firsthand can one truly gauge its true worth.

PART IV

West Lake Vinegar Fish?

Poets have never been stingy with their imagination when depicting Hangzhou’s enchanting scenery. They liken West Lake to Xi Shi, a beauty of unparalleled grace, who looks stunning no matter how she is dressed; they liken the Qiantang Tide to a battlefield of clashing swords and galloping horses, stirring the soul. The rhythmic sound of oars on the Grand Canal paints a hazy picture of the water towns of Jiangnan.

This is probably how Hangzhou looks to tourists.

West Lake in Spring

In Binjiang District, where game developers are more concentrated, a postmodern version of Hangzhou has taken shape.

Around noon, office workers stream out of the office buildings to grab a bite to eat, hurrying to nearby fast-food restaurants for a quick meal. The taste isn’t the main concern—work is.

During his first month working in Hangzhou, Kobayashi noticed that there was a street near the company’s campus lined with small, workshop-style ready-made meal shops that only offered takeout. From then on, he made a point of avoiding ordering takeout at the office.

There are plenty of jokes circulating online that “Hangzhou is a culinary wasteland”—for example, if you open Dianping, the top-rated restaurant in Hangzhou is a McDonald’s. The reality is certainly not like that.

Xiao Lin told Game Tea House that the street food in Hangzhou is of very high quality, with even the basic snacks like xiaolongbao being quite good. What impressed him most was a late-night stall specializing in Chaozhou-style fried chicken—the flavor was absolutely outstanding.

What’s even more interesting is that the owner claims to have worked at NetEase in Guangzhou and operates stalls in both Guangzhou and Hangzhou. Both the menu and the stall locations are the result of repeated testing and refinement. On good nights, his turnover exceeds 40,000 yuan.

A Chaozhou-style fried chicken cart that travels between Guangzhou and Hangzhou; the owner claims to have worked at NetEase in Guangzhou

Even though she often returns to Hangzhou for the weekend, when asked about local delicacies in Hangzhou, Yu Qi scratched her head for a while. “West Lake vinegar fish? But I’ve heard it doesn’t taste very good.”

Compared to Hangzhou, Yu Qi prefers life in Shanghai. She told Game Teahouse that Shanghai offers a wide variety of stage plays and exhibitions every weekend, which always give her plenty to enjoy.

According to statistics from the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, the city hosted over 57,000 commercial performances in 2024, generating approximately 5.17 billion yuan in box office revenue—both figures representing year-over-year increases of more than 20%. Many overseas stars’ tours and internationally renowned stage productions feature Shanghai as their sole stop in China. Shanghai truly lives up to its reputation as a cosmopolitan metropolis.

“Shanghai is definitely my first choice,” said Yu Qi.

Next to Shanghai Wukang Building: A Collaboration Between the Post Office and Mingchao

PART V

Epilogue

The dust has settled on the Shu Bai project team’s “passing the buck” contest, and the direct supervisor who hired him has been reassigned. After the new supervisor took office, he delegated most of Shu Bai’s work to other colleagues, under the pretext of “sharing the workload.”

Having spent many years in the corporate world, how could Shu Bai fail to pick up on the subtext? The very next day, he tactfully handed in his resignation.

Shu Bai’s stint working in Shanghai wasn’t particularly pleasant; new fixed expenses such as commuting and rent significantly dampened the joy he had felt from the pay raise that came with the job change. This time, he didn’t hesitate to return to Hangzhou to look for work.

I still remember the last industry boom, when major gaming companies were scrambling to expand their presence. Companies like Tencent, ByteDance, FunPlus, and Kuaishou all set up shop in Hangzhou, recruiting talent formerly affiliated with NetEase into their own organizations.

The seeds sown by investments made back then have gradually begun to bear fruit over the past two years, and there are quite a few major projects in Hangzhou.

The Grand World Project in Hangzhou

It’s not just the big tech companies that are drawn to Hangzhou. The leader of a small startup team in Hangzhou told Game Tea House that Hangzhou offers the best balance between costs and recruitment, noting, “Overall startup costs in Hangzhou are likely one-third lower than in Shanghai.”

However, for those working in the gaming industry, Shanghai remains just as appealing as ever. The city’s gaming sector is highly competitive, with a high degree of talent mobility, and it is home to a wide array of top-tier projects, creating a vibrant and diverse ecosystem. Shanghai remains the top choice for those seeking to advance their careers.

Come and go—the decisions Shu Bai and others make about whether to stay or leave reflect the real-life trade-offs that gamers face between opportunity and life.