Game Development Giant

Jester knows that the influence of GDC in the gaming industry in later generations can be almost equal to the Oscar in the film industry, the Pulitzer in the journalism world, the Nobel in the science world, and Fields in the mathematics world.

In the future, being able to win the best game of the year selected by GDC is almost the highest evaluation a game can receive.

Like decades later.

No matter how many media outlets your game receives, if you don’t get GDC’s Best of the Year award, it’s still useless. When you are talked about by people in the industry, or even when players brag to each other, It's just a bit weaker than GDC's best game of the year.

The GDC Lifetime Achievement Award is the highest honor a gamer can receive.

In Jester's memory, the experience of every person who has won this award is a legend that can be written into a novel.

However, for Jester, it is inevitable that he will receive the GDC Lifetime Achievement Award in the future. It is just a matter of time. According to Jester's estimation, the first few awards may be given to those who were born in video games. This award is given to those who really brought video games to the eyes of ordinary people in the early days of the game.

For example, among this year’s candidates, Jester feels that the founder of Atari has the highest chance of winning.

time flies.

After Jester was busy with the wedding, he returned to the United States alone.

Originally, he wanted to return after finishing some trivial matters with Claudia, but Claudia persuaded him, knowing that he was currently busy with work. Not only did he have the research and development tasks of two games, but he also had to deal with The e3 exhibition was about to open soon, so Jester was forced to return first.

It's been about a month, and the development team of "Foreign Land: Torment" has been working very quickly.

At least judging from the work progress that Jester returned to see. He was quite satisfied. Of course, the "Foreign Land Requiem" working team said it was onerous, and it was indeed onerous. It was difficult but not difficult. The main work of the current development team, or in other words, besides making characters based on Jester's character design, In addition to the art of vertical painting.

Probably the remaining 90% of the work is done by planners and story editors who then fill in the complete content based on the plot outline left by Jester.

Make rhetoric more beautiful.

"I don't know why the boss attaches so much importance to this niche game, even if there is a bet with Richard Garrett. There is no need to make an American RPG. Let's not talk about how difficult it is to make an American RPG. As for their audience's resistance to other games, even though Boss has had countless successes in other game types, and has even created countless new game types, the problem is, this is not a new game type. In this genre. But there are countless successful works..."

In the past few days after Jester returned from his private island, he kept hearing people in the company talking behind his back about his importance and investment in "Peña Requiem".

In fact, this is also very easy to understand.

Because it is indeed difficult to make American-style RPGs, and it is also difficult to satisfy players, let alone sell high sales.

Among them are members of the development team who are preparing to develop "Warcraft: Humans and Orcs". Of course, they had reason to say so, because Jester originally revealed to them that within the past six months. He just planned to make this game.

The production plan for the game "Planetary Requiem" was a temporary addition and was not part of Jester's plan at the end of last year.

After Jester returned to his office. First, he wrote a general framework for the simulation game he had thought about running an island on his own private island. Of course, he wrote both modes in full, and then sent the design below. Go inside the group.

Nowadays, Mars Entertainment is a big business. Not counting the independent studios, there are only a dozen direct development teams. Of course, these teams are large and small, some have outstanding people in charge, and some have experience and experience. Underqualified.

In such a situation, it is impossible for every development team to develop a game worth mentioning.

And it is impossible for Jester to constantly find so many games from his mind to play for his subordinates. It is not that he is unwilling, but it is completely unnecessary. In fact, many games can be successful in history, but only Just an idea.

Besides, there weren't that many games in Jester's mind to squander his money.

Besides, he is not cultivating a team to be puppets. What he needs is their understanding and understanding of the game, so as to develop better games.

In fact, in recent years, there have been too many games that did not exist in the original history. They have been put into the market under the research and development of these development teams of Mars Entertainment and have received many praises from players, which makes Jester very happy.

Of course, again, with so many development teams, it is impossible for every one of them to have a good project waiting to be produced.

Sometimes, after a previous project is completed, and after a vacation, the next development plan needs to be considered, which basically requires a month or even several months of meetings to decide. How can someone like Jester After a project was developed, the people in the development team came back from vacation, only to find that their boss had come up with several new development plans.

Therefore, when Jester’s detailed information about a new business simulation game was passed on from layer to layer.

Many development teams interested in developing this genre directly requested to develop this game.

As for how they are separated, Jester has no control over it. Now he is thinking about the development team of "Warcraft" and the gossip behind "Alien Torment". After all, for him, he The most important issue for the two development teams that are directly under them is not the progress, because the progress is sufficient anyway.

It's a matter of harmony.

To put it bluntly, RTS is indeed a very popular game now, especially in PC games.

As for American RPG, it is not a very popular game type in terms of PC games. In other words, it is a niche.

In the eyes of many people, it’s not that you can’t do niche games, but that you shouldn’t spend too much energy on them, because investment and gain are not directly proportional to niche games.

But what about the niche?

Can't we do niche games? Can’t niche games achieve huge success? Not necessarily.

At this time, Jester remembered something in his memory.

This incident is actually quite unexpected.

Jester closed his eyes and carefully thought about this incident deep in his memory in his mind. This was probably more than twenty years later, when the public beta of Blizzard's MOBA game "Heroes of the Storm" had just begun, and Penguin hired a large number of people. Troopers attack games on various websites.

Among them was the largest Blizzard fan in the country at the time, which was also the gathering place for Blizzard and the storm area of ​​a certain National Geographic Forum.

Because black is really too brutal and has no lower limit.

Then Zhang Dong, who was the domestic Blizzard marketing director at the time, was of course also a fan of Blizzard games. He used his own account to post a post in the storm area of ​​the Blizzard forum at that time to explain his views. It may be a little biased to say that it is an opinion, but it is generally a review and summary of his work at China Blizzard in the past two years.

It can also be regarded as a way to increase confidence for the game "Heroes of the Storm" and for myself.

In fact, regarding the game "Heroes of the Storm", Jester was quite surprised, because judging from the naming convention, or whether it is helpful for the later promotion of the game, the name of this game is actually not the same. What a great choice.

It's not that the name is bad.

If this name alone is ignored, the game name "Heroes of the Storm" is still considered to be above average.

But the problem is that there is really no way to associate this name with Blizzard’s glittering brand. Although no one can use the name Dota alone after the lawsuit between Blizzard and Ice Frog is over, but Blizzard was originally called all- star, that is, Blizzard All-Stars, is obviously much better than "Heroes of the Storm" alone.

Because the name Blizzard All-Stars clearly allows players to know immediately, oh, this is such a game, and there is no need for any explanation at all.

And "Heroes of the Storm" obviously cannot do this.

Of course, for players or fans who really know Blizzard, they will know immediately why Blizzard finally called this game "Heroes of the Storm". This also reflects from another aspect that Blizzard is not only It is a commercial company, but it still has a strong human touch.

Or to put it another way, this is what Jester liked to tell people in later generations.

It's just feelings.

Not only gamers have feelings, but even game companies also have feelings, and their feelings are even much deeper than those of others.

Needless to say, you can know that changing the originally established "Blizzard All-Stars" to "Heroes of the Storm" will make Blizzard invisibly spend more money to promote this game to reach the previous level. a publicity effect.

As for why.

In fact, it's very simple. It's because Blizzard has the best art design team in the entire world's gaming industry, whether it's console or PC, more than 20 years later.

It's the Son of the Storm.

The meaning of Heroes of the Storm is simple and clear. (To be continued...)