Game Development Giant

Previously, Jester felt that he had made two RPG games in a row and wanted to change the style. However, this time someone in his design team also proposed to set up an independent studio, but Jester refused. According to Jester's What I mean is that if you want to set up an independent studio, you must have experience in making independent games. After all, you can succeed.

Although he refused them to set up an independent studio, Jester still agreed to let them make a game as producers first and see the results. After all, the reason why their previous games performed well was because of this. Shu Jester rationally designed it based on the successful experiences of later generations.

Originally, Jester planned to pick up the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action beat-em-up game plan that he had put aside. After all, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon is now popular in the United States. He would use the influence of this cartoon to produce a game. For a game above the standard, I think the sales volume will definitely be good.

However, after Jester saw that their 16-bit arcade base version was an era ahead of home consoles in terms of performance and graphics, he gave up on the idea. After all, Sean Dabbili is now producing "Knights of the Round Table" is about to be developed on a 16-bit baseboard. They had finished their vacation and returned to the company to assign tasks, but it seemed that they had not been assigned any new tasks after a few days. Jed Smith, the director of this team, discussed it with Jester before the vacation, and Jester also I didn't think about it, I just told him to take a vacation and rest first, and we would talk about the specific projects after he came back, and to recruit more people by the way.

But Jester had too many things going on during this period. I forgot about it, and then Jade Smith asked.

But Jester's eyes lit up when he saw this document. He thought it was a good project. He had made so many games before, some for arcades, some for home consoles, and some for handheld consoles. electronic pet, he discovered that he had never made a game based solely on somatosensory aspects.

He originally planned to make a game similar to Taiko Master, but after several discussions with the hardware developers, Jester's requirements were too high. The cost of completing the current hardware is too high, and the gain outweighs the loss, so the plan has been temporarily cancelled. When he thought of the large-scale motion-sensing arcade machine, Jester felt a burning sensation in his heart. He really lacked a deeper understanding of this aspect in his previous life, although in the world he knew, many of the technologies for this super-large arcade machine were actually accumulated through the use of home game consoles.

Now that I thought of this. Jester also felt that he seemed to have lost interest in developing home games for eight-bit consoles, so it might be a good choice to simply try to make such a motion-sensing game. So what kind of game should we make?

After thinking for a while, Jester couldn't make any better decision, so he simply called Jade Smith's people over and asked them carefully. Might as well make a decision.

In the conference room, the entire team of more than 20 people who had returned from Sega, plus seven or eight people who had just joined the company, were very excited when they heard that Jester planned to participate in the development of a somatosensory game. After all, according to Jester, With Te's status in the gaming industry, basically every game he makes is a mess that doesn't sell.

In fact, the discussion process is not complicated. This team has discussed what type of games they will develop after returning to Mars Entertainment no less than ten times, so in the minds of these people, there are still some common opinions, and Jester because of his focus on large-scale I'm not familiar with somatosensory arcade games, so I won't try to mix it up.

In his eyes, the game he makes is not important. To him, he can find suitable prototypes for any type of game in the huge game library in his memory to draw on.

The team that came back from Sega only gave Jester three types of suggestions, namely flying, racing and shooting - this was not beyond Jester's expectations. In fact, although he was not very familiar with it, The arcade motion sensing games of later generations are also mainly based on these categories, but there may also be a sports category, which became popular with the craze of Nintendo Wii motion sensing games.

Jester knows that Nintendo’s light gun on the NES can actually be regarded as a somatosensory game, and that the sales of the nes in the beginning were boosted by the combination of this light gun and the game "Duck Shooting". As for what Jester said at the CES show that there would be a Dreambox, it was just bragging. He had no intention of using it on an eight-bit machine because it was of little value.

However, there are indeed ideas to develop some accessories for the 16-bit game consoles under development, including NES-like light guns.

To be honest, playing "Duck Shooting" at home is indeed a very good choice, especially for young children, who are most likely to get fun from this simple game, although Jester also wants to make a Like Nintendo, they can get games that kids like, but the results are not that good.

"Flying type?"

Jester whispered, and the people around him didn't say anything. They were all waiting for Jester's decision. Their duty was only to explain to Jester what types of products they were sure to make, and as for what type of products they would make. Yes, that's not their responsibility.

This is the job of the game producer.

In fact, in Jester's mind, making flying games is indeed a good choice, because the development of several previous flying home console and arcade games has already stored a lot of experience in this area for this game type. Technology, all of which can be used directly, especially in order to create the most realistic explosion effects. At that time, the development team of "Dawn" summoned all the artists of the entire company and spent several months to use pure hand-painted first , accomplished this task.

Moreover, on the single-chip computer of a large motion-sensing arcade machine, the explosion effect completed by pure hand-painting is definitely much better than that on ordinary arcade machines.

However, Jester himself is not interested in flight shooting games. This does not mean that these games are not fun, but that the scene in which the game is located makes this type of game naturally niche. This scene problem is In the current 2D era, it is not obvious that this kind of platform flight shooting is the mainstream. But in the 3D era, this shortcoming of this type of game will become the most critical reason for them to withdraw from the mainstream game type.

This is why the sales of flight shooting games were so high when the eight-bit and sixteen-bit consoles were on the market. However, once the 3D game era was created by PS on the thirty-two-bit consoles, the sales of other types of games increased after adding 3D elements. has continued to rise, but sales of this type of game have plummeted.

Has the quality of production of this type of game deteriorated? The quality of a game is a matter of opinion, but one thing will not change, and that is when an entire series of games begins to decline, then it is not a question of the quality and level of a certain game, but of the absolute Most players have lost interest in these types of games.

Just like the decline of RTS games in the era when Jester lived, how long did it take for RTS games to go from the king of PC games to almost no one paying attention?

Jester once calculated this. From the time of Dune II and Warcraft I, which were only three or four years old, to the official release of StarCraft II in 2010, it was only a dozen years. RTS also had its own glorious period. Once upon a time, StarCraft and Warcraft III almost became synonymous with e-sports.

Is it because StarCraft 2 was not made well?

Many players who say that this game is not well made and that Blizzard is scum have actually never played this game. Yes, it is almost impossible to copy compared to StarCraft i, especially the Brood War version. StarCraft II may seem a little mediocre in comparison, but this is compared to SC, an almost irreplaceable masterpiece game that has never been seen in the history of RTS, and is even less likely to be seen in the future.

In fact, StarCraft II is the second most fun RTS game in the world. It is an out-and-out masterpiece. The plot mode in it can be said to be a masterpiece. However, the decline of this game is just because It’s just the decline of the big game genre RTS.

The reason why 3D flight shooting games are becoming more and more niche is that in the flying 3D environment, there are not only front, back, left, and right, but also horizontal up and down. This is the biggest difference between them and racing games and shooting games.

Some people may say that these games are of different levels in a 3D environment. How can a game that is not an xyz three-axis game be called 3D?

In Jester's eyes, this is purely quibbling. When controlling a plane flying in a 3D environment, in addition to maintaining the balance of the front, rear, left, and right, it is also necessary to maintain the balance of the up and down, which is not the case in racing games. They need to do this because they are naturally balanced in level.

Such increased operational difficulty will inevitably lead to fewer and fewer players who like this type of game, and will eventually become a niche player.

It’s the same reason that eventually RTS games changed from the most popular game type to a niche.