Game Development Giant

Sales of "American Cube" are booming.

Although the four sellers headed by the Schwer Group set the retail price at a terrifying US$8,000 per unit, the merchants in arcade game halls across the country, despite their angry comments, still flocked to buy all the machines. The arcades of American Cube are sold out.

Five thousand units may seem like a lot, but in fact, averaged over the fifty states in the country, each state only has one hundred units.

For the entire huge US market, it is just a drop in the bucket.

You must know that "Donkey Kong" cost only US$2,000 per unit back then, but they sold arcade machines worth more than US$120 million a year.

The current "American Cube" is far worse than them.

Moreover, these businessmen have come to California to see how popular this game is, and they have also seen the miserable scene of arcades without "American Cube".

Isn’t it just eight thousand dollars? Ten days! You can earn it back in half a month at most!

In the eyes of these people, "American Cube" has indeed become a hen that lays golden eggs.

It must be obtained no matter what, no matter the cost.

Even Jester had to lament that Americans in this era are really crazy.

In fact, in the 1980s, under the guidance of Reagan's mercantilism, the United States was as crazy as those giants from 1900 to 1930, or even more so.

There is simply no scruple about the turbulent waves hidden behind this market that looks like flowers cooking with oil.

All this will not stop until Black Monday three years later.

But, this has nothing to do with Jester.

However, a very practical problem also faced Jester.

Insufficient production capacity.

The production capacity of Atari's several factories in Orange can no longer supply the surging buying enthusiasm.

Even for the 5,000-unit order signed with four sellers, only more than 2,000 units have been completed so far. Moreover, after Atari saw the popularity of "American Cube", Jester proposed When we signed a new larger OEM contract with them, they actually raised the price by 30%!

This made Jester furious.

Do you think Atari is the only one in the United States that can produce arcade machines?

However, after searching around, Jester found out pessimistically that indeed, there were many other factories in the United States that could meet his requirements.

But the problem is that either the scale is too small to meet his production requirements. If n companies are found at the same time, it will be difficult to coordinate.

Either the production line needs to be renovated, and it may not be of much use in a short time.

In the end, he discovered with some sadness that the only one in the United States that had a large number of factories that could immediately produce arcade machines without modification was Atari.

In desperation, Jester could only pinch his nose and re-sign a contract with Atari for 5,000 units, plus the previous contract for a total of 10,000 units. For this, Jester had to pay a total of 460 One hundred thousand dollars in fees.

But Jester and his Mars Entertainment can get at least 60 million US dollars in revenue, plus 20% of all profits from the four sales companies.

Despite this, Jester was secretly happy after having just blackmailed those sellers. Being blackmailed by Atari this time was as uncomfortable as eating a fly. He could not tolerate such blackmail.

He can only take advantage of the situation and blackmail others, but he must not let others take advantage of the situation and blackmail him.

He has decided that he must solve the problem of being unable to produce his own products. Otherwise, it will be equivalent to being strangled by someone's neck. It is still a small matter now. If someone takes advantage of him in the future, he will have to think of a way. It's too late.

Also, Jester thought at the same time that he had offended the four distributors of the Schwer Group this time. They had fallen into business difficulties due to the collapse of Atari. I am afraid that this time through his "American Cube" allowed them to take a breather, and the next cooperation will not be so easy.

Looking for another seller?

Jester just sneered. How could these sellers be so simple? They were all the same. Moreover, in history, were there not many software vendors that were swallowed up by publishers?

It is necessary to establish its own distribution and sales network. A game company without its own distribution network can only be regarded as a larger studio, but is far from being called a giant.

The circle of the game industry is not big, especially when the game industry has shrunk to the point of being out of shape. Mars Entertainment quickly caused a sensation in the entire electronic game industry.

A game can earn 60 million US dollars in less than a month. This is not something that any game company can do. It can even be said that even in Silicon Valley, few new technology companies can do it. so.

Even Apple couldn't do it back then.

Of course, it is the consensus of Americans that the gaming industry is dead, so even if Mars Entertainment made the arcade market popular again, it did not attract enough attention, and some people even thought that it was just a return to the past.

Take, for example, Atari's new boss, Jack Trammell.

"What I mean? What I mean is that game consoles are worthless. The future belongs to PC. Anything that game consoles can do, PC can also do, and do it better. And what PC can do, games A computer could never do that, that's what I mean, Atari will never, never, never go back to video games."

This is what Trammell said in an interview with ABC.

After Jester read this report, not only was he not angry, but he laughed happily: "You'd better never come back."

Indeed, the sales figure is only 60 million US dollars, which is not even a drop compared to Atari's annual profit of 2 billion US dollars two years ago, but the problem is that it is not two years ago anymore.

Times have changed.

Nowadays, Atari's game consoles cannot be sold in stores at even 10% discount, and the backlog of game cartridges in the warehouse may not be much less than the ones they landfill in New Mexico.

The entire video game market is now deserted.

Only this arcade machine called "American Cube" by Mars Entertainment was sold out of stock in the market.

Moreover, when the Easter egg hidden in "American Cube" was revealed, it intensified the craze of "American Cube". I don't know how many children would rather skip class to practice their skills, hoping to be able to play on a machine. Fill in your name so that you can show off to your friends, classmates, or admirers.

"Look! I'm the best at playing "American Cube" here!"

Even some unscrupulous profiteers doubled the price of the game currency of "American Cube", but they could not stop the enthusiasm of these crazy players.

In some places, there have even been cases of teenagers stealing and robbing in order to be able to play "American Cube". Because of this, some NC media are still shouting that "American Cube" should be banned from sale in order to prevent chaos in the world.

Of course, this can only be a joke.

All in all, American Cube became a phenomenon.

There are two sides to the story.

Although "American Cube" has become a phenomenon, the future of video games is still not optimistic by mainstream society and mainstream media.

Atari's consoles are still being treated as garbage, and there are still very few people interested in them.

"American Cube" is like a stone surrendered to a pool of stagnant water. Although it stirs up layers of waves, the stagnant water remains stagnant.

But for those who really love video games, Mars Entertainment is like a glimmer of light, adding a glimmer of light in this dark environment.

That's where the hope lies.

When Mars Entertainment used the slogan of "making the best games" to recruit employees who truly love video games to work in this industry that seemed to have no future, it actually received a very enthusiastic response.

These responders, in addition to those game designers who are confused after leaving Atari, there are also a large number of real game enthusiasts.

Some of them are on the East Coast, some in Florida, some in the Great Lakes... These people all came to California from far away.

They want to join Mars Entertainment and make the best games.

They want to prove to everyone that video games are not dead yet.

The recruitment process of Mars Entertainment was set up by Jester with reference to the recruitment process of later Blizzard.

Blizzard's philosophy is very similar to Jester's. There are many excellent technicians in the world, but a person who doesn't love games can't make a good game no matter how high his skills are.

Game companies are not a place to show off their skills, but a place to design games.

The only thing the people here are doing right is making a good game that players will love.

Even if it's just a simple pixel block, as long as players like it, it's correct.

Therefore, the first principle of Mars Entertainment recruitment is, first of all, no matter how good your skills are or how high your academic qualifications are, you must be an avid game player.

Of course, this is only the recruitment standard for software development. As for hardware research and development, Jester doesn’t know much, so he puts his father in full charge. His father has been engaged in the research and development of arcade hardware for ten years. At Atari, He is also very famous among hardware engineers.

The recruitment work of Mars Entertainment is still very smooth. In addition, due to the previous relationship between Jester's father and Mark Saini, a large number of software and hardware designers who had left Atari and had not found a new job joined Mars Entertainment. .

Recruitment in the hardware R\u0026D department has been particularly smooth.

Especially when Jester asked his father to contact the previous R\u0026D team of Atari vcs7200 under the guise of "revenge on Trammell and prove him wrong", those Atari's most outstanding hardware developers , when he knew that Mars Entertainment was preparing to make an 8-bit console that was even better than vcs7200, he left Atari and joined Mars Entertainment without hesitation.

This almost made Trammell furious, but there was nothing he could do about it.

This is a conflict of ideas and an irreconcilable contradiction.

Mars Entertainment, the first day of recruiting new employees.

In a meeting room opened in a warehouse, more than thirty young people who had just entered Mars Entertainment were sitting together.

They were informed that their boss, the designer of American Cube, wanted to give them a brainstorming session before they started working.

I want to discuss with them what games we want to play next.

Almost all of these people are die-hard fans of American Cube. They love the game beyond measure, so they're excited about what's going to happen next.

But now their boss hasn't come yet, and these young designers are looking at everything in this house boredly.

Some of these people have just graduated from college, some are designers with previous experience in game development, and some were just pure video game enthusiasts.

The only thing they have in common is that these people all have the deepest love for video games and all kinds of wild and fantastic ideas.

There are no neat rows of seats in this conference room like other company conference rooms. There are only scattered sofas, various snacks and toys, including Lego blocks, and even this year’s Transformers that just went on sale.

There are even two color TVs. These two color TVs are actually connected to a vcs2600 and a TV that has not yet been sold in the United States. Most people here have only heard of the name FC.

Of course, game cartridges are also indispensable.

These young people find this very novel. Does this company still allow employees to play games during meetings?

This makes these young people a little bit impatient.

But none of these young people who didn't understand the situation dared to touch the two game consoles. At most, they just took some snacks piled like mountains to satisfy their cravings.

At this time, two young people walked into the conference room.

Both of them are young, one has blond hair, looks very shy, wears a pair of eyes, and the other is actually an Asian, with black hair and yellow skin, but is very tall and has a strong body.

But this only made the thirty-odd young people take a second look, and it did not cause much of a sensation.

There are so many Asians in the United States, tens of millions of them on the entire West Coast.

They thought these two were just like them, employees who had just arrived at Mars Entertainment.

Jester and Maxeni looked at each other, with a mischievous smile in their eyes.

Jester shrugged, but Maxani raised his chin and pointed at the FC that no one dared to touch.

Then Maxini came to the FC and turned on the TV.

Jester also skillfully dug out a game card from a box filled with various game cartridges, and skillfully inserted it into the FC slot.

Then start the FC, and with a pleasant electronic sound, the image of the beginning of the game appeared on the TV screen that was still a snowflake, but because it was in Japanese, most of them couldn't understand what it meant. .

But they don't care about any of this.

They looked at the two young people who had just entered the conference room with incredible eyes.

Oh, my-god!

How dare they touch these things casually?

Aren't they afraid of being fired?