Game Development Giant

"Dark Soul" is a game where you can die in one step, or the perverted Japanese self-abuse "Cat Leo" is a game where you can die in one step.

Many people find it difficult.

Indeed, if you think it would be difficult to die, then it is indeed difficult.

However, what you have to understand is that the designer of this type of game intends to make you die. All his designs are to make you die. Moreover, there is still no way to avoid this kind of death. Why?

It's very simple, because this kind of game is a back-version game. You will know how to get through it after dying once, and then move forward a little bit next time... and this cycle will be ok. In fact, isn't this the case with the FC games, arcade games, and flight shooting games we played when we were kids? As long as the backboard is familiar, what's so hard about these games? In fact, there are almost no easy games on FC. Why are they being played by a group of elementary school students until they can pass the level without dying?

Finally, discussing difficulty is actually of little significance. Making it difficult for the sake of difficulty is not benign.

The designer can make a boss that you can't get past no matter how hard you fight it. Is this difficulty considered awesome? Is this kind of design excellent?

If this is considered awesome and outstanding, then it won’t be so difficult for domestic games to rise.

The really good approach is: it is suitable for the public and can attract more players to play; it is highly difficult and research-oriented, and it even feels like it is not the same game as the public. This is the way to make a good action game. Jester personally thinks that the first game "Devil May Cry" did this best, although relatively speaking, he prefers "Ninja Dragon".

Hideki Kamiya is really a genius. The first game he designed for "Devil May Cry" is easy to get started with and highly difficult to study. Of course, it also has its shortcomings, which is the theme and dark style. In fact, the public players are not very interested in it. interest.

On the other hand, both "Monster Hunter" and "Ninja Dragon" are difficult to get started. Many light players can't accept it, and there is no way to experience the thrill that action games bring to them in this type of game. Their success lies in their good researchability. Core players and game critics like it, and once they like it, they can't accept it. If you get on it, you will love it to death.

Jester thought a lot.

While thinking about it, he wrote down the things that could be written down on the paper. These were all the memories in his mind about future action games. It can be said that all his understanding of action games were written on these pages. The paper with the writing on it.

The papers are arranged in a messy manner on the table. After Jester finished writing, he was a little surprised that he actually spent so much time writing in one breath.

And he looked at the double cup of coffee next to him.

He remembered that this was a cup he had just brewed before he started writing. It was still too hot to drink, but now he reached out and tried it. It had become cold, and the sky outside also dimmed, and Jester finally became conscious. Well, he may have been writing here for a whole afternoon, but he didn't even feel the passage of time. While thinking about it, Jester collected the messy documents scattered all over the table one by one.

Then he read it carefully.

Because he had a lot of things in his mind at the time, many of which were future games, and some of them happened inadvertently. Maybe just what I wrote will make people feel confused.

Therefore, some deletions are inevitable.

After all, he had sorted it out and was going to hand it over to Itagaki Tomonobu. Let him develop 3D combat-oriented action games on the next generation of consoles, a new type of game that will only appear in the next few years. His more than ten pages are almost equivalent to a martial arts secret book at the level of the Nine Yin Manual.

Of course, only by truly understanding the essence of the different styles of action games written in it can we create an action game that is astonishing and impossible to shut up about.

But for now, this thing is still a bit too early.

Because the functions of current home consoles are seriously insufficient, what is written on this thing is just a pile of waste paper in this era and has no existing value. Therefore, Jester browsed it and determined When there was nothing disclosed inside, he put it in a folder, then took out the key and opened a locked drawer.

Put this folder in.

Inside this drawer, there are five or six neatly arranged folders of different colors. These are some of Jester's experiences that he wrote down when inspiration suddenly struck him.

They are all new types of development ideas for future games, just like the analysis and understanding of action games he just wrote. Of course, some of them are what he is going to show others, and some are also He just keeps it for himself for easy reference in case he forgets.

This time, after Jester put in his analysis of action games, he glanced into the drawer. His eyes paused for a moment on a white folder. Then he picked up the folder and opened it. After reading it carefully, I found that what was in this folder was an article he wrote over a year ago about the development, types and production plans of future online games.

Jester did not read it carefully, but just glanced at a few pages and put the white folder back into the distance.

Then, the drawer was locked.

It is already November 1991. As the Internet age is getting closer and closer, it is indeed time to accumulate experience for the development of online games. In fact, for more than a year, Mars War has The development of the Internet is very rapid. From the beginning, I could only play some card games such as bridge and chess on it.

Nowadays, several real-time strategy games from Mars Entertainment can be connected smoothly through the Internet.

Of course, it's not just real-time strategy games from Mars Entertainment.

From the beginning, Jester did not intend to make Mars Battle Network a closed platform like Blizzard Battle Network, with his own games on it, because this idea was too shallow.

You know, Blizzard launched Battle.net much earlier than V Club. However, the important position of V Club's steam platform in the history of games is far beyond what Blizzard can compare with. It can even be described in one unkind word. The importance of the steam platform cannot be overstated.

That is, without the Steam platform, PC games would have died ten years ago.

This is not alarmist.

The historical significance of the steam platform is so great. Many people feel that more and more game manufacturers are paying more and more attention to the PC platform because PCs have higher performance and are easier to develop than console games. In fact, this is unreliable. The real reason for his remarks is actually very simple, that is, steam provides a reliable platform for these game manufacturers, especially those independent game manufacturers.

Provide players with a convenient platform.

Therefore, when Mars Battle Network was able to allow RTS games to smoothly conduct online battles, Jester immediately contacted other companies that have released more popular games, such as a company under Vizhen in Las Vegas. A studio in Vegas developed a sci-fi RTS game that was very popular. Even when it was first released, its popularity was so hot that it even tended to overwhelm "Age of Empires".

However, after the release of "Warcraft", the crown of the most popular RTS game has returned to the hands of Mars Entertainment.

Jester had really heard of this studio, and it was Ximu. Therefore, Jester immediately contacted Weizhen Company and proposed his intention to them, just to ask if they had any If you are interested, Mars Entertainment's Battle Network carries their games, and on their Battle Network, you can conduct online battles through their Battle Network platform.

Of course, the server still needs to be prepared by Wei Zhen himself.

Although Wei Zhen disagreed at first, because they would need to spend a lot of money to purchase a server, and although online online battles were theoretically fine, after all, they had not had any contact with them before, so they would definitely be involved in one There was a lot of trouble at first.

This science fiction-oriented RTS game from Ximou was released at the beginning of this year.

It's the end of the year now.

The most popular period of a game has long passed. At this time, it is said that online battles can be carried out through Mars Entertainment's Battle.net platform. Although it can add some new purchasing users, the number of purchases should not be large.

At that time, Jester did not force anyone to force him. He only needed to let others see that this online battle function could really attract countless people to participate. Then other developers would naturally follow suit. After all, no one has trouble with money.

Therefore, new patches for "Age of Empires" and "Warcraft" were released through the Internet. Then, with the activation codes in these two games at that time, you can add these two games to Mars Battle Network, and then use Mars Battle Use the networking function of the Internet to conduct online battles throughout the United States.

Jester excitedly mentioned this news at the carnival two years ago.

Unfortunately, the network conditions at that time really did not allow it. Mars Entertainment spent a whole year just debugging the network to enable chess and card games.

Players had almost forgotten about this news, but they didn't expect Mars Entertainment to give them such big news before this year's carnival.

Mars Entertainment also took advantage of this big news to successfully shift the focus of current players and media on one thing, which is the question of how far Mars Entertainment's 'Era' project has progressed. (To be continued...)