Game Development Giant

After this matter was dealt with, Jester was once again entangled with Li Jianxi's daughter.

This time, he had no interface, so he had to take this person, who in Jester's eyes was only suitable for little girls, to show his affection for him from time to time, in restaurants around the company.

Most departments of Mars Entertainment have no secrets. The ones that have secrets are just some projects that are being developed in secret. This is not the case for future generations. It is not like the game companies of later generations are following the example of Blizzard, developing a project in secret. The recruitment of staff started secretly, and they signed strict confidentiality regulations. Once the secrets were leaked, they would be fired immediately, and if they leaked the secrets after they were fired, they would have to fulfill their legal responsibilities.

And some things that were often leaked through the uncle's party in the city were spread everywhere among the fans, and in the end, rumors spread, and there was a rumor.

Of course, Blizzard's confidential research and development in later generations has its uniqueness and advantages, but it is not suitable for the present. In other words, after more than 20 years, when media information is so developed, there is no need to use this kind of labor now. Unflattering way.

When Jester led Li Fuzhen to visit the newly established e-sports community division, Jester accidentally stumbled into an argument.

Because he proposed the brand-new concept of e-sports during the carnival. Although many people, or most people, scorned it, there are still many players who are passionate about games and think that this is a matter of course.

They are all a kind of game, and basketball, football, etc. were also invented because of games. Why can these be openly named as sports and appear in people's careers, but video games cannot?

Nowadays, even in Europe and the United States, contempt for video games can be seen everywhere.

In the past, before Jester was reborn, he had watched documentaries about this aspect. It is to introduce the general environment faced by video games and even e-sports from this time until 2000. At that time, even Europe and the United States scorned the so-called e-sports.

It was not until 2000, when the e-sports player community formed, developed, and grew into a force that cannot be ignored that e-sports was truly taken seriously.

The biggest reason why a game can become a competition is because of its community nature. Twenty years later, there are tens of thousands of fans who are willing to fly and travel countless thousands of miles to the United States in order to watch a game played by the top players of a certain game, and then do it for the players they support. Screaming and cheering, watching their supporters lift the trophy.

What is the essential difference between this later sports competition?

sports. It is a process of comparing strengths and weaknesses, but when Jester criticized it the most, e-sports could have developed better, but because it was in the first golden age of e-sports. Whether it is StarCraft or Warcraft, Blizzard has not made much contribution to the promotion of e-sports. In other words, Blizzard may have made a contribution. But it didn't have the desired effect.

\u003csThe valve that I own has also not chosen any better method.

It was not until later that Valve finally found a way to build a healthy, reasonable and complete e-sports community. No one knows what the end of this road will be, but at least from the beginning, this is a healthy road, at least compared to the previous one. Those are much healthier.

This is crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding is based on Valve's poor spectator mode on Dota 2, and its good and far more developed network conditions than before. Has no one thought about this before? Jester didn't think so, just because under the conditions at the time, this approach was tantamount to whimsical.

Why this road is healthy is because it involves players from the entire community, making players in the community no longer a bystander but a participant.

This change in identity is crucial.

Did Blizzard really not have the idea of ​​making StarCraft a big game before?

Not necessarily, you know, not long ago, Blizzard spent nearly 30 million to create a competitive event for Blizzard games. Jester can’t remember the specific name, but the result of this season was just now. It started with great momentum, but in the end it was just a stone still in the water, just making a splash and listening to the sound. The only difference was that it was not a stone, but a gem.

But essentially it's the same.

Blizzard certainly had the idea of ​​promoting "StarCraft 2" at this time, but it was already the twilight years of RTS. Even though "StarCraft 2" itself is really an excellent RTS, it is also a game of this type. In his later years, more new generation players are not friendly to novices who have just entered the industry because of the complexity of this kind of operation. Moreover, in a short game, it is almost impossible to get the pleasure of the game, and instead they will be beaten by their opponents. Which new player would be interested in a game that uses various black technologies to humiliate people?

However, this way of developers doing everything themselves and then creating a closed environment is not a healthy development path for the e-sports community. Such a community does not allow players in the player community to participate. This kind of deformed E-sports plans will not succeed in the Blizzard era.

It is no longer possible to succeed in the Riot era.

On the contrary, the path of Valve pointed out a direction for everyone. Although Blizzard later did not completely adopt the path taken by Riot, Blizzard has quietly begun to form a benign and healthy player community. .

But these are just fragments of Jester's memories that flashed through his mind. For the current Mars Entertainment, they don't even have any reference significance. Now they want to maintain this image. E-sports, which is as weak as a newborn baby, must be as barbaric as it was in the beginning.

Of course, for personal reasons and also because it is a replacement for the player community, Jester will be more concerned about it than Blizzard was at the time.

Although organizing the competition entirely at his own expense, this method of only input but no output is not in line with Jester's consistent concept, but he also knows that if he wants to achieve something like Valve did later, rely on crowdfunding. Not only can you collect a large amount of bonuses, but you can also make a lot of money yourself, which must be accumulated.

Jester likes Blizzard very much because they have produced countless classic games and brought countless joy to people including Jester. They have made great contributions to video games and even e-sports. The great contribution is also obvious to all.

However, Jester doesn't like Blizzard's attitude towards the player community.

In fact, as long as you know about the past, you can see that Blizzard has a cold attitude towards the player community. Their philosophy is that we make games and you just play them. As for how we make games, it is none of your business. Originally, in the professional field , for mature game designers, this concept may not be wrong, but if you think about it carefully, especially with reference to real cases, it is not actually the case.

The most obvious thing is that a comparison is needed. In the future world, as a single game company, not many can compare with Blizzard. EA and Ubisoft are publishers, and the one to compare with them is Activision, so I chose Valve It should be a more suitable choice.

In fact, in the future, these two companies will often be compared because they have made huge contributions to e-sports, and the games they produce are all based on quality.

If you understand the stubborn problems of CS, you may not be unclear about the history of CS. This is actually just a mod-like thing made by fans based on the "Half-Life" module. In other words, it is just a derivative of "Half-Life", but After the game first became popular, Valve quickly captured the huge business opportunities hidden in this mod, so Valve directly absorbed the two producers into the company, achieving a win-win situation.

Looking at Blizzard, this is why some people often compare these two companies, because these two companies do have a lot of contrasts. \u003caThis game type first appeared in the first part of "StarCraft", but let's not talk about these for now. I will only talk about Dota in "Warcraft 3". From the beginning to the development and growth of this game, many, many people have experienced it. The hard work of people who love this game.

During this period, he defeated many competitors, and finally became the most popular map among all the maps in the "Warcraft 3" map editor, and more and more people played it, and in the end it was even more popular than playing "Warcraft 3". 3》There are even more people.

It's impossible for Blizzard not to see this phenomenon, and it's impossible for Blizzard not to be interested in this game.

The results of it?

Blizzard chose the completely opposite approach to what Valve did with CS back then. You know, Blizzard was at their peak, both in terms of real-time strategy and wow.

They have no shame at all and forcefully announced that the copyright of Dota belongs to Blizzard. This makes the scum want to negotiate with Blizzard to develop Dota into a real client online game. This person has made the greatest contribution to the Dota game type. The producer was furious.

Of course, Blizzard expressed disdain for the anger of a player, and directly took this person who made a huge contribution to the promotion of the World of Warcraft map to court.

The result is well known to everyone. Because of the fierce battle between Blizzard and Ice Frog, some people who claimed to be the original producers of Dota took advantage of the chaos and launched a game that was purely a copycat of Dota and far inferior to Dota. ,Famous overnight.

Just imagine, if Blizzard didn't have that war with Ice Frog at that time, but could cooperate sincerely, there would be nothing to do with the original production team. (To be continued...)