Game Development Giant

"Can you tell us about the game you just mentioned? What kind of game is it? Tell us about its background and other similar things..."

The first person named to ask a question gave Jester a difficult question to answer.

There was silence at first, then Jester frowned and showed a thoughtful look, and then replied: "I won't reveal anything about the plot of the game yet. In fact, there is no way to reveal it, because the current game has not yet progressed. This step, in fact, what this game needs to do at the beginning is to complete its system framework, and the first thing we need to know is what we can do and what we cannot do.”

After speaking, Jester shrugged his shoulders to the fans in the audience.

"So, I have no way to answer this question, because the plot of the game does not exist. As for whether it will exist in the future..."

When Jester said this, he smiled mysteriously.

"That's not necessarily the case."

This sentence once again caused an uproar among the fans in the audience. They did not understand the basic meaning of what Jester said. What he said before was easy to understand. It was nothing more than the meaning of this game. At the beginning of development, we did not consider the plot. Instead, we first considered how the system and framework of the game were structured. After these were resolved, we then thought about how to design the plot based on what could be accomplished.

However, Jester added that sentence at the end, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything?

Could it be said that this is a game without a plot?

How can you play a game without a plot?

Soon, the second player whose name was called asked questions about what Jester just said.

"Jace, what did you mean by what you just said? Does it mean that this is a game that does not need a plot? But from your description just now, I seem to think that this should be an RPG game, right? RPG game Don’t you need a plot?”

"this problem……"

Jester spoke with a smile this time, but after saying a few words, he stopped talking and remained silent for a while, looking at the expectant eyes of the players present.

"...I can't say yet, it's just an idea that I'm not sure about yet. So I can't comment at the moment, but I want to correct one thing. Who told you that my new game is an RPG?"

Not an RPG?

This actually made the players present look at each other.

When you gave your speech just now, the game mode you described was that of an RPG game. Why is it not the same now?

Fortunately, this time, Jester did not let the players below the table take the initiative to ask. Instead, after everyone's confusion and surprise, he explained on his own: "This is actually an attempt of mine, I think. The current game The classification method is a bit outdated. Don’t you think that all games are divided into RPG, Act, FTG, FPS... Don’t these categories become a bit monotonous and boring?”

Jester's words once again aroused everyone's curiosity.

This way of classifying games has long been deeply rooted in people's hearts with the popularity of games over the years. Everyone thought it was good, nothing monotonous or boring.

At least for many people, looking at the game category, they can tell whether they like this type of game or not.

Basically there are not many players. I will be interested in games of all game categories.

Looking at the puzzled looks on everyone's faces.

Jester still smiled and said seriously and carefully: "I was thinking before that there are so many game categories now, all kinds of them. It is conceivable that in the future, such game classifications will There will be more and more. There will even be so many that most people can’t tell how many game categories there are. At the beginning, I thought such a classification was very good, especially for us developers.”

"Do you know why I say this classification method is very good for developers like us?"

In the middle of his words, Jester asked a question casually. He glanced at the puzzled expressions on everyone's faces. He had no intention of asking anyone to answer. He just paused for a moment and looked around the scene. He continued: "Because, after we divide the games into categories, we can easily get games of this type from players who like this type of game. What do they like about this type of game? What do they like most? And there are With this feedback, we can make better games of this type."

"Because we have already figured out what players like about this type of game, and if we make a game of this type based on what we have already figured out what these players like, how can it not be detrimental?"

"but……"

Jester, who was talking eloquently, suddenly changed his tone.

"After thinking like this for a long time, I found that many designers no longer think about how to design games. They don't think about why I do this and whether it is fun or not. Instead, they just look at the statistics. The information, oh, these are the things that players like, these are the things that players support, blablabla, and then based on these, functions are added during game design.”

"Over time, these designers will no longer think independently and don't know how to make a game. When these cookie-cutter games are made more often, players will play more. After their interest began to change, they suddenly discovered that what they had previously believed to be truth suddenly didn't work, and players suddenly didn't buy their account."

"They even cursed loudly that what they were doing was bullshit and rubbish, that they hadn't made any progress in so many years, that they were rotten, dung, and so on."

"But these developers are still very curious. They say, the game we make is still the same. It even has better graphics and smoother graphics than before. I have also added some new actions. Why is it so clearly not as good as it is now? The game has been loved and supported by fans and has been praised to the sky. Now this game with a better name is going to be scolded?"

"They don't understand, so, they die."

Jester finished speaking with a smile, and the previously noisy venue fell silent: "Do you think what I said is a bit alarmist? No, because this is in Mars Entertainment. In the past period of time, people often What happened was that some of the first and second games sold well and had great reputations, but then the third and fourth games failed one after another and were abandoned by players. Then the studio was disbanded, the staff was fired, and they just died."

"To be honest, this is a very pessimistic and disappointing thing. I even thought of some very bad things after seeing many cases of this happening."

"Do you know what I thought of? Or, what can you think of?"

Jester asked a question again. He looked at the people under the stage with sharp eyes. He seemed to really want to see someone raise their hand to answer, but he waited for about forty or fifty years. For a few seconds, there was silence below the stage, and everyone looked at him closely with almost the same eyes.

"Okay, let me tell you, I don't know how old you were when you first came into contact with games. One of the home game consoles I personally played was Odyssey..."

When Jester said this, a burst of cheers suddenly broke out from under the stage.

This is a resonance they have with Jester.

"Yes, Odyssey, a home game console earlier than Atari. I don't know if you can still recall their games at that time..." After Jester said this, he paused again and listened. Listening seems to be carefully listening to what the players below the table are saying, and the players below the table are indeed saying something.

"That's right, that's right."

Jester obviously understood what some players meant.

"It's the kind of game where we need to put a plastic film with patterns on the TV screen ourselves, and then there is only a moving light spot on the TV screen. We even need to read the manual that comes with Odyssey. A video game that can only continue by filling in the story inside... Seriously, who among you still thinks this is a video game?"

There was a burst of laughter under the stage.

"However, when I played it for the first time, I really had fun. I even had an idea of ​​how such fun things could exist in this world."

Jester nodded vigorously as he spoke.

"That was indeed my idea at the time... Okay, back to the topic, back to the question I mentioned before, what I was thinking about at the time was that the games like Odyssey and Atari's later ones made the entire video game industry regress. Origin's ET, this game has been used as a lesson over the years, and everyone is familiar with it. I was thinking at the time, even if ET is bad and difficult to play, it is still more fun than those in the Odyssey period, right?"

"But why can we cheer while playing those games in Odyssey? How could there be such a magical thing in the world, and yet we will spit on him, curse him, curse him, and wish we could step on ten thousand animals on his corpse? Feet, so that he can never stand up again?"

As he spoke, Jester laughed.

"Actually, I personally have a very interesting idea. I think if twenty or thirty years later we go to the desert of New Mexico, go to the area where Atari buried those ET cassettes, and reinstall them. It would probably be interesting to dig them out and let them see the light of day again, so that players decades from now can revisit this period of history that is crucial to the entire history of video games, right?"

As soon as this paragraph was finished, the players below the stage burst into laughter. (To be continued...)