Game Development Giant

But things didn't change. The fact is that the fierce battle between Blizzard and Ice Frog caused them to lose their almost monopoly on the e-sports market.

In fact, they couldn't even hold on to the second spot.

The two completely different attitudes of Blizzard and Valve towards the player community have also led to completely different development trajectories of the two companies 10 years later. Of course, the greatness of Blizzard is not that they only know how to be arrogant and stubborn. The great thing about this company is that it is good at absorbing its own shortcomings, so their subsequent policies towards the player community have become obviously much kinder.

They even learned to interact with players in the community. For example, in the expansion pack of Diablo 3, they allowed players to design an extremely powerful legendary equipment in the player community, and it was officially added to the game.

This design was very successful, and Blizzard, having tasted the benefits, tried again in the subsequent carnival where players designed equipment.

Of course, although Blizzard has been criticized for many things, Valve is not much better. Since the success of Steam, Valve has been completely passive and takes ten months off out of twelve out of the year. Maybe only they can do this kind of thing. Who said all capitalist bosses are vampires? I think the boss of Valve is a philanthropist.

Of course, for players who like Valve games, they may have to scold their mother often for such a lazy and unprogressive game company.

Although Blizzard often skips releases and breaks their promises, at least they are developing the game from beginning to end.

These are some memories that flashed through Jester's mind quickly. When he came to the e-sports division, the scene of the argument he saw was about the prize money of a competition that Guan was going to organize next. One party It was proposed to continue with the Carnival's $100,000 policy, but objections were immediately raised, and their objections were so convincing that they could not be refuted.

"If such a low-level competition requires a prize of 100,000 US dollars, then how much prize money should we prepare for next year's carnival?"

The person who said this was a young man with blond hair. As soon as he said this, everyone present fell silent for an instant. Jester heard the same sentence, but no one questioned what he said about next year's carnival—— Because this year's carnival was so successful, it is almost inevitable that the second one will be held next year. At a recent company R\u0026D meeting, Jester mentioned this in a joking tone.

Of course, the popular e-sports events at the carnival will continue to be held, and after the first success, of course it will attract more players to participate in the next one. In addition, the bonus this time is one hundred thousand US dollars, and the next one obviously cannot be lower than this one, this is a huge expense.

The most important thing is that this kind of competition has just started, and it is impossible to get reliable sponsorship. Most of them are local competitions, and the total prize money is only one or two thousand US dollars. Even so, if you are willing to hold it There are also very few people competing.

Plus now eSports. Basically, it is a deformed project, a project with only input and lack of output, but it is not done or cultivated. It's impossible, after all, without current training, there would be no future success in Jester's previous world. It took ten years for e-sports to really start to be cultivated after 2000. Only when conditions in all aspects mature, will this industry, or this community, be truly perfected.

This road is very bumpy, and many people can't understand why Jester insists on doing this when he goes back.

There is certainly a promotional element in it, but more importantly, Jester really wants to cultivate a complete e-sports community from the prehistoric era of video games. Jester knows the power of e-sports, and the age-appropriate Once players like this project, they really like it, just like football, if they say something that doesn't fit the situation very well.

Just like what Shankly, the legendary coach of Liverpool, said, football is not life and death, football is higher than life and death.

E-sports will be the same.

Just when everyone was silent, Jester knocked on the open door and attracted everyone's attention. Jester was not a stranger to everyone in the company, although Jester Stern doesn't often show up outside, but within the company, he often visits various R\u0026D departments to understand the development status of different projects.

Moreover, Jester will definitely attend the monthly high-level meeting and the quarterly all-staff meeting.

The people being discussed in the e-sports division are not just employees of the e-sports department. One of the characteristics of Mars Entertainment is that the atmosphere of discussion is very free. As long as there is nothing wrong with one's own project, according to the company's regulations, the company encourages participation As for the discussion in his department, in the current room, there are at least five or six people from other projects discussing it.

They heard the knock on the door and looked towards the door.

They saw Jester leading a beautiful Asian girl with black hair. They all knew that Jester's girlfriend was Claudia. After seeing Li Fuzhen, they all showed some weird expressions, but Jester didn't Why do you care? He smiled at everyone, and then said to the young man who just said that if a secondary competition like this now costs 100,000 US dollars, how much would the carnival competition cost.

"The carnival can be raised to two hundred thousand dollars."

After saying that, Jester himself burst out laughing first, while others didn't know what Jester meant by saying this, so they could only look at Jester with some weird expressions.

Jester laughed a few times and saw that no one agreed with him, so he knew that no one understood his cold joke, so he retracted his smile in embarrassment, clapped his hands, and then said: "Actually, I don’t mean to increase the carnival competition prize money to two hundred thousand US dollars. I am just a metaphor-I mean that we need to make a complete competition gradient. Assume that the carnival is the annual total. The finals, the highest level competition, then how should the divisional competitions in other regions be set? If the prize money for the finals is two hundred thousand US dollars, I am just a hypothesis, then how should the prize money for the divisional competitions be set?"

Seeing that what he said attracted everyone's attention, Jester continued without any pause: "Moreover, building a complete and healthy e-sports community will be the future of our company in ten or twenty years. , a plan that will continue for thirty years, I will personally spend one million U.S. dollars every year to form a special foundation, and invest no less than one million U.S. dollars every year, but to build a complete The ecosystem is not only something that I can do alone, nor is it something that we as a game company can do. We need to involve more companies. Only in this way can we make this ecosystem into an ecosystem that only has Only by investing in industries without returns can this community truly develop."

As Jester continued to speak, his speaking speed also became faster and faster, and it was obvious that the people present were also infected by Jester's own emotions, and many people's blood boiled with excitement. It seemed that Jester What Sturt described to them was a magnificent future that was bound to be realized.

And Jester didn't just talk about luxury. After using an exciting tone to talk about the e-sports industry, he immediately poured a bucket of cold water on the employees who had just ignited the excitement. .

Jester changed his voice and continued: "Don't be happy or excited first. First of all, you must understand how difficult it will be to complete and achieve results. Even those of you who are determined to do it, You may have to endure years of loneliness and no one understanding you. What you say now doesn’t mean anything at all, but it doesn’t mean you won’t be able to get rich rewards in the future. Think about the scene when football and basketball were just born. Now Electronic games, or e-sports, were what they were at that time, simple, crude, primitive, and not worth mentioning in the eyes of many people. However, the same was not true for football back then? Who can be sure about the future? "

As he spoke, it seemed that he was truly expressing his feelings. Perhaps he couldn't control his emotions. As he spoke, Jester couldn't help himself. He stretched out his hand and once again returned to the extremely excited tone before: "You don't need to say anything now, I just need you to do something. We just need to know that what we are doing is something that others have never done before, and it is also something that others have never thought about. If you change the sentence, it may be To describe it in such a way as to be scolded as being ignorant of the heaven and earth, it means that we are creating a new world."

"In the country across the Pacific Ocean, there is a great writer named Lu Xun. What he said is very reasonable and I like it very much. There are no roads in this world, but there are many people walking there. It has become a road. We are the pioneers who open up a road in the boundless, even dark wilderness. In the near future, or the distant future, ten or twenty years later, many of you will Maybe you are no longer engaged in this industry, but you will not regret for wasting your years, nor will you be ashamed of being unknown, because you have dedicated your most precious years to a most memorable period - you Showing others a way, even though it may be the right way or the wrong way.”

"Although we can only be a spark, we can certainly start a prairie fire."

Jester's last words were almost blurted out without any specific thought, and they were simply a subconscious roar. (To be continued...)