Game Development Giant

Putting the matter of Ximou aside for now, Jester thought about "Dune".

In fact, from the perspective of Jester who is used to playing many RTS games in later generations, this game is not a very good game. The designer's understanding of RTS games is just that he has just come up with such a concept. , there is simply no way to perfect this game type as much as possible.

What is rts? As the name suggests, it is real-time strategy. This thing is very simple when broken down, as the name suggests, but when broken into pieces, it is very complicated. For both designers and players, Jester couldn't help but think of the rise of the game. Just a dozen years later, RTS games declined as quickly as they rose.

The most important reason for the rise of RTS is the competitiveness derived from its natural confrontation. This game, like the FPS game, is not meant for one person to play. This is a game that exists in In the confrontation, the fun of the game can only be obtained from the confrontation between people.

If FPS confrontation is just a pure sensory outlet, RTS games, whether you are willing to admit it or not, RTS is not just a purely sensory outlet for pleasure, but an all-round, from IQ to The reaction was crushed in all directions. In Jester's memory, there has never been any other game that can surpass the sense of accomplishment that StarCraft once brought him.

The tepid success of "StarCraft 2" later was not because the game was not made well enough. In fact, among all the RTS game series, this game may only be inferior to its first generation. The reason why it is facing That kind of embarrassing situation may just be that people at that time were tired of such complex and complicated games. Maybe it’s the unfriendliness towards new people that makes people resist.

But in short, after the rise of the RTS category for just more than ten years, it finally reached a dead end, even though it once reached the pinnacle of the video game industry.

In any case, now is not the future, now is an era without RTS.

Judging from what Jester recently learned about Sid Meier’s extremely slow progress in the development plan of “Civilization”, next year, after he has finished handling the games he has, he will be almost ready to develop an RTS game. It’s time to type.

Of course, "Dune" is just an introduction. Just because Ximou used the copyright of "Dune" to create the world's first real RTS game, it doesn't mean that it can't make an RTS game without "Dune". To put it bluntly, "Dune" is just a background. Now that the rights to adapt the game "Dune" are not in his hands, it is not difficult for Jester at all. He can just make some changes! Now in StarCraft, it may not be particularly appropriate to express appearance battles because of the graphics, but whether it is the Cold War background of the "Command and Conquer" series produced by Westwood, or the Blizzard copycat "Dune 2" in 1995 "The magical background of "Warcraft: Orcs and Humans" produced by "Warcraft: Orcs and Humans", or the medieval background of Microsoft's "Age of Empires" are both worth learning from.

Actually. Jester is not very interested in the background of "Command and Government" because there are not many things that can be expanded in the future. Instead, he will be ignored because of the background of the Cold War. As for "Age of Empires", it is a very suitable theme for the game. .

But the crux of the problem is here. As a game theme, the medieval "Age of Empires" is very suitable, because it is foreseeable that many people will be able to bring them into the countries and nations that once had a great reputation in history to conquer their opponents. Very immersive.

but. Because "Age of Empires" has the advantage of being based on history, it also has the disadvantage, which is the lack of scalability of specific story characters. In other words, these things are not unique to your game.

The real background that Jester saw was "Warcraft".

Later, Blizzard has used their successful trajectory to point out a clear path for Jester, and the first game of "Warcraft" should not be more difficult to make than "Dune 2", and although "Dune 2" It was a game released in 1993, but according to the current hardware configuration, it would not be difficult to launch it around 1990.

Because it is not a top priority yet, at least for Jester, this is not his next project that will be approved immediately, so he thought about it briefly and made some temporary thoughts in his notes. After thinking about it, I continued to read the remaining documents.

This stack of documents is not thick, but the surprise for Jester is more than just a piece of wood.

After reading for less than an hour, Jester's attention was attracted by a report about an application for issuance. This was an application sent by the European branch. The applicant was also the European branch of Mars Entertainment. To be precise, It is an acquired studio owned by the European branch.

Claudia saw that Jester's plan to set up independent studios in Japan and the United States was very successful, but she did not have Jester's vision in Europe, and could find those things hidden in the soil among all living things. The pearls were reused, or he had the ability to cultivate outstanding designers one after another who could stand alone, so he adopted a method similar to Sony's later establishment of a global studio.

acquisition.

He seconded an investigation team to the U.S. headquarters and asked them to investigate European game companies, both famous and unknown, and then write investigation reports. From these investigation reports, he selected the best and most promising ones. Potential or the most famous to make acquisitions.

And Claudia also accepted one thing from Jester. She didn't just select famous ones for acquisition, and if the other party was unwilling to acquire, Claudia wouldn't force it, Jester told her. , it is very difficult to look at a game company, especially from now on, to see their future. Some game companies that may become famous with one game may become popular with their next game.

This does not mean that we should not acquire game companies that have made good games following the trend, because it is basically impossible for a game company to independently create a game type during its startup period, but it is also possible to just blindly follow the trend. There is no future at all.

What needs to be seen is whether these game companies can reflect their game ideas in these follow-up works.

Although a game is a product, in the final analysis, the process of making a game is still an artistic creation. If a work does not even have its own style and does not reflect the producer's understanding of the game, the company that produces such a work will If they succeed in one game through sheer luck, their next game will inevitably fail.

And this report is about such a studio that basically has no reputation at all.

This report stated that this company had produced a very creative game. When Claudia first reviewed the application report for game development, she saw this development plan for the first time. , he immediately made a decision that surprised many people.

That was acquiring this tiny game studio.

This also caused a lot of discussion in the European branch at the time, because Claudia did not often make such direct decisions on game development due to business reasons, but this time, Claudia The decision was made very decisively and without any doubt.

Later, Jester also asked Claudia why she decided to directly acquire the company after seeing a little bit of game planning at that time? You must know that this small company at that time was also one of the countless game companies that relied on the giant trees of Mars Entertainment and Dreambox, and only the best ones among them would be truly accepted.

Being able to be included under the banner of Mars Entertainment is a great honor for such a small company.

Because the environment and atmosphere of game development in Mars Entertainment is very free, and of course, the competition is also very cruel. For the game studios acquired by Mars Entertainment, so the nanny is better said to be a gladiator businessman, he will give The funds these game studios develop are only preliminary funds, and then they are allowed to develop the games they are best at and enjoy making the most.

Then you are responsible for your own profits and losses.

If the game is well done, then the share will naturally be high and the money received will be a lot. For both parties, it means that both parties are happy and everyone is happy. However, if the game loses money, the parent company will not provide financial support. In addition, if the bottom line of bankruptcy is reached, then Mars Entertainment will disband the studio without mercy, without mercy.

Since Jester implemented this extremely cruel gladiator rule, although a large number of independent studios have been acquired every year, there have also been a large number of studios that have been canceled due to failure, at least in Jester. In Stern's view, many studios that were successful later were disbanded due to the failure of their games after being acquired by him. There are also many studios that did not exist in history and have gradually become successful with his help.

And now this studio that Claudia is interested in...

Jester saw the name of this studio at first sight. It was a British studio with a strange name, using the name of an animal.

It's called bullfrog.

bullfrog.