Game Development Giant

How to ensure execution and complete construction of the entire world?

This is an eternal topic, within a limited budget, to make the entire world view more complete, rather than simply stacking content. Overly loose content will result in the game not being full enough.

Developing a masterpiece is definitely more than just a collection of graphics or content.

If only that was the case.

Then it would be too simple. You must know that this is an industry in which only 0.1% of people can do it and may not be able to succeed. However, these people have, even if Looking at the entire human society, it is considered the highest paid job.

Let’s change the question, what kind of planning or game design can be implemented well?

As a team, planning is not enough to just execute your own ideas. A friend of Jester’s who used to be a planner once said very seriously when he wanted to make his own independent game after graduation: Don’t think about it. Not to create a world, but to dance with shackles within the limits of one's own permission.

At that time, Jester was somewhat disapproving of his friend's advice.

However, if I think about it carefully now, in fact, under the domestic situation at that time, if you want to make games, you still have to do this to achieve success.

In fact, this should be viewed from two sides.

It seems that many people think that the most important thing in RPG games is the construction of the world. Many people will cite "World of Warcraft" as an example. Of course, this is undeniable. The worldview structure of "World of Warcraft" is indeed **To the point where you have no friends.

Almost all players will be attracted by its worldview structure that is almost like the real world when they play "World of Warcraft" for the first time.

However, sometimes, there is one thing to consider.

MMORPGs are different from RPGs.

Before the birth of "World of Warcraft", a landmark game in the history of mmorpg. No one thinks that online games can still do this, so everyone is full of fun in this world and exploring this world. However, the characteristic of online games is that they are online for a long time, even for a long time, such as several months. Time is in the game.

When they first start the game, faced with an epic world view, players are naturally willing to explore it.

But what about a month later?

Therefore, in the MMORPG after "World of Warcraft". The structure of the worldview has become the least valued thing by planners, because only the first one can give you that kind of shock and emotion, and the subsequent ones, no matter how well done, will not work.

However, stand-alone RPG games are completely different from mmorpg games.

Because compared to mmorpg, where the game market uses years as its unit, the game time of a single-player RPG may be more than a hundred hours at most, such as "The Witcher 3". Even if you want to experience all the branches, one hundred and twenty hours is enough.

In this kind of game time, which is not too much compared to mmorpg, this kind of exploration. is meaningful.

Don't talk about Lao Gun 5. Lao Gun 5 is about playing mods, not about the structure and exploration of the world view.

What would happen if someone in China proposed games like Lao Gun 5 and "The Witcher 3"? Almost 100% possible. He was shot immediately.

The reason is also very simple.

The investment in this game is so huge, tens of millions of dollars. Even if it is calculated based on national conditions, it will cost 100 to 200 million yuan. If you invest such a large amount of money, how can you ensure user retention? How can you ensure user payment rate? You can't guarantee anything. You're talking nonsense to me.

There is no way to value a work of art before it is designed. Whether players will pay for it has always troubled the bosses of domestic game companies. Well, if according to some people - there are so many idiot fans that the bosses of these game companies have no motivation to proceed. Take risks and innovate.

It's not about money at all.

Why, it's very simple, Jester knows one thing.

Several friends were discussing and playing together. One of them was an angry young man who worked on domestic games, and the other was the product manager of a game project at Tencent. This domestic angry young man often mocked the product manager of Tencent. He once asked the other party this of.

"Suppose I am an investor now and give your team 100 million to play with and have a deadline of 5 years to make a well-received and popular game. It is now 2015. In your plan, when will you start testing this game? Is the game fun?”

The Tencent product manager responded dismissively.

"One hundred million is very few. If we set up a full-time team, our company can have at least 150,000-200,000 fresh graduates a year. This is the bottom line! The dedicated team of Warcraft has about 300 people. Based on this, we calculate the average team The annual income of personnel is 250,000, so the annual salary expenditure of 300 people is 75 million..."

The answer is very practical. 100 million yuan is enough for one year's salary plus some research and development expenses. It may not be completed in one year. But hasn't this Tencent game product manager ever thought about it? CDPR made "The Witcher" 3》How much did it cost?

Your employees are not as capable as others, so why do you spend so much money raising some trash? And he is a waste who does not know how to make progress.

Of course, the people in CDPR are a group of willful dreamers. In the eyes of many domestic industry insiders, these people are idiots, but making games is originally a matter of realizing one's dreams, so, okay The game is really something only dreamers can do.

A group of people who cannot dream, dare not dream, and are unwilling to dream have no right to say that I am playing a game.

Think about it, if it wasn't a dream, how could a group of people who started off by piracy and made a small amount of money by distributing games, and a dozen otakus who had never made a game, without hesitation to make a game they really like? Woolen cloth?

Of course, then again.

How to create excellent works in an environment where you can't even pass the project establishment stage? To put it bluntly, Chinese game manufacturers have already dropped the word "high quality" when establishing projects.

They self-castrate too thoroughly.

They simply don't agree with how cool it is to make a game that makes everyone stunned.

They think this is sb.

Most of these gamers in the Chinese gaming industry are accustomed to referring to data such as retention rate, payment rate, and user payment rate.

But these things do not represent the gameplay, or whether the game is fun or not. The products produced under this system can only be weird. Of course, the most amazing thing is that Chinese users still pay for it.

It is absolutely true that the market determines the direction of capital.

Therefore, in fact, if domestic games really have a future in the future, it must be a forced revolution, a revolution from the bottom up, and it will definitely not be due to the awakening and decay of the game companies themselves. It is impossible for the Chinese class to awaken itself. It is impossible for domestic game developers to stop eating shit on their own. Just look at the historical evolution of our country in the past hundred years.

How can you expect a group of people who talk about investors, KPIs, breadwinners, and performance appraisals to think about how I can make money just standing?

You can even look closer.

Atari collapsed.

In fact, the talents of one of the most powerful game companies in China are, to put it bluntly, at the level of robots for automated production lines: they seem to have the most advanced design, the highest quality workmanship, and the most perfect software control. If you give them a design drawing, they can do it. The finished product is a hundred times more precise than the author of the design drawing.

However, a robot is a robot. Not to mention designers, even craftsmen cannot reach the realm. Even if the things they make are beautiful, they themselves cannot even understand what they have made.

Jester stopped reminiscing. These were some of his future experiences. He felt that for a designer, ability is not the most important thing.

The most important thing is that you will never make a piece of shit for these people to eat just because there are many people willing to eat it. This is immoral and will make you go to hell after death. Even if you have a little bit of shit, you will never eat it. All consciences will feel ashamed.

Moreover, the current world gaming environment is in a very confusing state.

There are two kinds of people who are in short supply.

Although the Atari Impact has passed, the lessons brought by the Atari Impact need to be remembered. The reason why there was the Atari Impact was because the game environment at that time lacked a large number of these players. Two crucial roles.

One kind of person is a professional who knows what a game is, and the other is a manager who knows what a professional is.

Don't underestimate managers.

In a large R\u0026D team, this project can run smoothly. Perhaps an excellent project manager can increase the progress and speed of the entire project by 30%.

Jester had an idea.

It was about the University of Southern California asking him to give a speech about games to the new students in the first class of the semester. He took out a piece of paper and began to write on the paper very quickly, and the content was also It's not profound, just talking about 'why I want to make a game and what kind of game I want to make'. "

In the past few days, in addition to completing the speech he was preparing to give at the University of Southern California, Jester has been paying attention to the development of his game. Although the development process is going very smoothly, there are still some small problems that arise from time to time. , but overall, it was relatively smooth.

Other things that Jester is more concerned about are probably the matter of Miyamoto Shigeru going to Japan to recruit people. (To be continued...)