Game Development Giant

How to develop a massive game.

This is the first problem that Jester has to face now, because the number of game development teams in this era is far less than that in later generations, and the game system is much simpler than that in later generations. For example, a An RPG game is an RPG game. If in future generations, if a sandbox RPG game does not add various gameplay methods of other types of games, then how can it be embarrassing to call itself an RPG game.

For example, action elements, first-person shooting elements, etc.

Most of today's development teams develop in such a development environment. In a development team, dozens of people are coordinated into a huge team, and then the programmer is responsible for part of the program, and the artist is responsible for part of the art. , However, this kind of development method is suitable for some games with simple systems, that is, in the current development environment.

But in Jester's eyes, it is impossible for a team of more than 200 or even 300 people to develop what he is going to do with such a bunch of people piled together.

Such a multi-system game must also be split during development.

In this regard, Jester can obviously learn a lot from future game companies. For example, Ubisoft's global studio can develop a game with a thousand people at the same time, and these thousand people can even develop a game on the earth. More than a dozen countries.

Another example is during the development of "Star Citizen".

It means to subdivide the game into many independent games and then develop them. After these independent games are developed, these originally independent games will be brought together to make them into a unified and harmonious game. Although "Interstellar" Citizen" Jester doesn't know whether it is a success or a failure, but its research and development method is worthy of Jester's reference.

For example.

Star Citizen will feature their dogfights. Separate it and let a development team take charge of making a game similar to an arena mode.

Also, separate the management part of their MMO and let an independent development team develop a similar MMO framework so that players can use this separate framework to establish a company and operate it.

In "Star Citizen", there are many such subdivided systems.

A large number of ideas were split up and developed, and each project even had its own name and codename.

In this way, the original one is extremely complicated. Games that seemed impossible to complete turned into dozens or dozens of separate games that didn't seem that difficult to develop. Then, the most difficult thing for the development team was to develop these separate games. The sub-systems are combined into a complete overall system that can be operated collectively.

For example, in his sub-project.

The single-player plot project is called "Fourth and Second Alliance", but in fact this Fourth and Second Alliance is also part of the MMO game. The specific model is quite complex and difficult to explain in one sentence, so I won’t go into details.

The fps project is called "Space Marines".

The planetary surface linkage project is called "Planet".

And so on, and so on and so forth. These are all things that can be run independently to provide players with experience. According to many people, these things can even be used independently to create a 3A-level work. The reason why "Star Citizen" can continue to crowdfund so much money from players is because they continue to release subsystems like this for players to try, constantly enhancing players' confidence. . Of course, they are most famous for selling boats.

This kind of development idea is very worthy of reference in Jester's eyes, and it is also what he plans to adopt in his new game development process.

Such new development ideas, which have never appeared before, are naturally discussed at the first development meeting.

Before the first development meeting of the project codenamed 'Era' by Jester began, Suzuki Yuya ended some of his trivial matters in Japan and rushed to the United States in advance. In fact, the original plan was for Jester to let Suzuki Yu went to junior high school to meet them, and the location where the first development meeting was to be held was also in Japan after the junior high school trip.

However, due to some things, the visas of several people in the team were not approved, so Jester simply ended his trip to the country temporarily.

I plan to carry out this plan after the GDC is over.

Therefore, Yu Suzuki came directly to the United States to participate in the first developer meeting of the ‘Era’ project.

So far, Jester has only relied on resources and his lofty status in the video game industry to recruit a team of less than a hundred people. The members of these teams are not only limited to Mars Entertainment, but also include One-third of the members are elites from many other game companies.

They were all impressed by Jester's shocking speech at the carnival and the incredible game he described. They resolutely quit their current jobs and came to Jester's development team.

Some senior programmers have not even worked in games before. Many of them are from Microsoft, IBM, and Apple. They are the best talents in these companies, but they are also game enthusiasts. They are also extremely eager. Yes, I want to participate in the development of a great game like Jester said. I hope to do my part in this game that will definitely become a legend.

In fact, although many people questioned, ridiculed, and scorned Jester's new game plan.

But, same thing.

How many people hate him, there will be how many people love him. This is also a truth that will never change, and this is also true.

However, it is impossible for nearly a hundred people to participate in the first development meeting. First of all, it is not necessary. Secondly, the first development meeting discusses from a strategic level what kind of game this is. , how it should be developed, only requires some senior leaders of the development team to have a clear concept, in such a large project.

It was necessary to make sure that there was only one voice, and Jester was confident that his authority could suppress all dissenting voices.

To Jester's surprise, Hideo Kojima temporarily stopped the development of his next-generation hide-and-seek game and voluntarily joined Jester's development team.

However, Jester thought about it briefly and understood that the model under development had to be re-developed a second time in order to achieve the functions he required. During this time, Hideo Kojima was also idle, so, He might as well change his thinking, and the game Jester described was indeed the game that Hideo Kojima longed for.

A cinematic narrative style game.

"Is the development of the game going well?" Jester met with Hideo Kojima before the meeting.

To be honest, Jester has indeed not talked to Hideo Kojima about games for a long time. First of all, both of them are very busy. Secondly, Hideo Kojima and his team are a team in Los Angeles. The Hardware Development Center conducts game design work, and Jester spends most of his time at the Mars Entertainment headquarters outside Los Angeles.

Therefore, the two of them didn't have much time to see each other.

Although we always meet a few times during high-level meetings every year, there are not many opportunities to take time to chat alone.

But despite this, many people still know the relationship between Jester and Hideo Kojima.

Hideo Kojima is the producer that Jester values ​​the most and values ​​the most. Although Jester has not said it explicitly, it can be clearly seen that Jester’s attitude towards Hideo Kojima is obviously higher than that of Sakaguchi. Boxin and Naka Yuji, the current popular designers who were also discovered by him, need to pay a lot of attention. Mark Saini once asked about this.

Why do you like Hideo Kojima so much?

Although "Metal Gear Solid" is indeed an amazing game, the FF series created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and the games developed by Yuji Naka have no success in terms of sales, reputation, and the loyalty of players and fans. , all far surpassed Hideo Kojima.

Moreover, Hideo Kojima has not developed any games in the past few years.

This made Mark Saini extremely confused as to what Jester was thinking, and Jester's answer was not very satisfactory to him.

Jester just smiled calmly at that time.

Said this sentence.

"Mark, in my opinion, Hideo Kojima can become a symbol. He has such potential, while others can only become an outstanding, or relatively outstanding, or at best an extremely outstanding game designer at best. It’s just a teacher, this is not the same type of person.”

And Mark Saini will not be persuaded by Jester in this way.

He asked back then.

"You can see so many things with just one game by Hideo Kojima?"

Jester could clearly hear the sarcasm in Mark Saini's tone, but Jester didn't pay much attention at the time. He just answered with a very indifferent expression but in a very firm tone: "Yes."

"I've put you in a difficult position during this time."

Seeing Jester, Hideo Kojima said embarrassedly. In fact, he also knew some rumors in the company, but Hideo Kojima did not want to refute it, because the entire Mars Entertainment, except for him and his In that small team, no one else except Jester could understand his ideas.

In fact, even why Jester was able to understand many of his thoughts so much surprised Hideo Kojima. (To be continued...)