Game Development Giant

Finding out that you are wrong is not the key. Many people say that they are wrong after they are wrong, but they are completely indifferent and continue to make mistakes. The most critical point is to dare to make decisions.

It was during this interview that Josh talked about a very fatal game in the original version of Diablo 3, which was the issue of the auction house.

Before talking about this issue, the first thing you need to know is why Blizzard set up ah in Diablo 3. This is a very critical issue. If you don’t understand it, you will not be able to understand this interview. Many people say that it is Blizzard wants to find profit points for Diablo 3.

Of course, I can't deny it, but what I need to explain is that if Blizzard really wants to charge a handling fee, then why does he need to add gold coins? In fact, the vast majority of people use gold coins instead of cash. It is precisely because of the power of this trading system that a game that originally wanted players to farm monsters has turned into a game where players farm the auction house. .

Of course, the original version of Diablo 3 had many shortcomings, and the original production team made many unforgivable mistakes. In the video, Josh said a lot, so I won’t list them all here.

Let me just talk about how Blizzard made the decision to deal with ah.

Josh said so.

That was after the release of Diablo 3 on the motherboard. At a discussion meeting held by Blizzard executives, after discussing several issues about Hearthstone and Storm for more than 20 minutes, Mike, one of the founders of Blizzard, Mo Huai Mi saw Josh's absent-mindedness, so he asked him for his opinion on the auction house.

Josh also defended himself in the interview. He said: "I have been absentminded just now, and I was confused. I can use a perfunctory answer to explain it. For example, 'Okay, we can make some adjustments. In our hands There's been a lot of input on how to tweak the auction house, what adding transaction limits would add to a whole lot of complexity in the system, etc."

"The senior management should also be satisfied with this answer, but I wanted to tell them what I think is the right thing, so I said, Mike, I think we should close the two auction houses for cash and gold coins. Players come to play Diablo to cut Strange."

When he said this, he showed an interesting expression. He seemed to smile slightly proudly, and then continued: "Do you know what the most exciting part was at that time?" After he asked the interviewer this question, he did not wait for the interviewer to answer, but explained himself.

"Twenty minutes later, everyone in that conference room unanimously agreed. There was no quarrel between the operations and design departments. No, every Blizzard person knew that the most important thing for a game was Maintain a polished gaming experience. A game like Diablo is meant to be a monster-killing and grinding game, nothing more.”

"So three days later we announced we were saying goodbye to the auction house and we were officially closing six months later."

When he finished talking about this, Josh looked pleased with himself.

This is the most important reason why Jester has always liked Blizzard. It is not just that they can make games that players like. It's the reason why they were able to produce this kind of game. Even if the game was unsatisfactory and unsatisfactory for various reasons when it was first released, they would not have any thoughts of giving up on the game.

It was originally called Torchlight 2 when Diablo 3 was released. If you watch it again in 15 years, will there still be any sound? Poe, who was said to be popular in Diablo 3 in the first place, do you think how many people will still be playing it in the next five years?

Facts speak louder than words, in general. Sales don't lie. Jester has witnessed Diablo 3 go from a failed opening to a fairly good mid-game. What makes him most regretful is that there is no way to see the second expansion pack of Diablo 3. Make this game more perfect.

In fact, the development process of Diablo 2 is also like this. What really put this game on the altar is precisely because of Blizzard's updates again and again. Diablo 2 in 1.09 and 1.10 are not the same game at all, and 1.10 and 1.10 are not the same game at all. 1.12 is a completely different game again.

But now Seve Dabowater's temporary failure is nothing in Jester's eyes.

He just made the same mistakes as Blizzard's original development team of Diablo 3. They were too arrogant, too arrogant, and too self-righteous. But it's no wonder that Blizzard was at their peak when developing Diablo 3. They It is inevitable that such thoughts will arise.

Now Jester thinks about what Jaylen, the game director of the original Diablo 3, said at that time, and it really makes me laugh or cry. At that time, Jaylen's argument was completely about having fun, not playing, and there were so many players. Kneel down and lick, this is a disease. If you don't treat it, reality will tell you where you are wrong.

This is what Jester took as a warning.

As long as you know your mistakes and then change your ways, in Jester's eyes, it's like Blizzard learned from the pain after the failure of the original version of Diablo 3, and immediately fired the cancerous brother Jaylen, and then began to search for it. The crux is to reform.

The current Seve Dabowater is the same in his eyes.

Before Seve Dabowater started the development of this game, Jester discussed with him several times what kind of game he was best at making, and finally came to the conclusion that it was a shooting game with a weird style. When Jester was designing "Chief Balotelli" with him, he once briefly mentioned some of the exaggerated styles in "Metal Slug".

But this time, Jester asked Dabowater to start over with "Metal Slug."

This game is New Japan's representative work on side-scrolling shooting arcade games. It was also one of their works in the mid-1990s. It can be said that at the end of the period of side-scrolling shooting games, such a game was still able to be produced. Successful games are rare.

The arcade baseboard used at that time was also a 16-bit baseboard. It can be said that it is not very different from the latest arcade base versions of Mars Entertainment, Sega, Namco, and Capcom. In addition, New Japan Project is now He was already planning to rebel and surrender to Sony, so Jester planned to use this game as a reference and let Seve Dabowater produce it, which was considered a peace of mind.

Now Jester has long passed the stage where he still needs to copy games intact. The level of his current game developers exceeds that of New Japan Project countless times. For such a team, there are technical problems. It has never been a problem. Any technical problem can be solved by taking time. It is nothing more than the length of time it takes.

The most important thing is an idea.

With a suitable idea and a reasonable framework, then there will naturally be an artist association to plan and a program to completely flesh out the skeleton. In fact, apart from the idea, it has nothing to do with the original game. relationship.

The game now completed by Seve Dabowater was started based on this idea.

Arcade games are not as popular as home console games now, so the highest-level producers in the company are not very willing to make arcade games. Of course, it is not ruled out that some people just like arcade games, but Seve Dabowater is definitely Not this kind of person.

However, he also knew that as a beginner, he was definitely not qualified to start from a console game.

Although Jester had promised him to choose by himself, whether it was a home console game, an arcade game, or a PC game, after weighing the pros and cons, he chose the arcade as the starting point for his new start, just like his " Sheriff Balotelli".

It also started from an arcade and led to success.

"Is this the game you just finished?" Jester came to an arcade in the development room and watched another staff member operating the characters inside to play the game for testing. The characters and levels have nothing in common with the "Metal Slug" that Jester has played. It can only be said that they are somewhat similar in terms of picture style, which is an exaggerated style.

The same is true for the background setting. Jester originally dictated the background setting of the original "Metal Slug". Of course, the background setting is inherently irrelevant.

After hearing Jester's words, Seifer Dabowater nodded and said: "Yes, because they are all newcomers, our research and development speed is not fast. Originally, it was like this kind of project that was not too big. Arcade games, an experienced development team, may only require less than two-thirds of our time, but the more time we spend, the more time we spend, the more time we spend, that is, we are more serious about some details, and bugs There are relatively few, at least from our debug, we haven’t seen any particularly big loopholes.”

After hearing this, Jester just nodded and did not comment directly. Instead, he looked directly at the demonstration of the game by the developer next to him. He watched it for nearly 20 minutes before Jester proposed that he would try it out personally. You can't tell anything by looking at it.

Half an hour later, Jester clapped his hands and left the arcade game machine loaded with "Metal Slug".

He smiled and said to Seve Dabowater: "It's an excellent game. The style should be in the same vein as the original "Chief Balotelli". I found that you are still good at making such games." With that, Jester paused for a moment and then said.

"Are you interested in porting it to dreambox2?" (To be continued...)