Game Development Giant

They couldn't help but be surprised.

Because before this, they never thought that any reliable game could be developed in that wild land of games.

Although Fu Zan is very valued by Jester, he is still Fu Zan alone.

Developing games has never been something that one person can do. It might have been possible a few years ago, but these large-scale games now require at least a dozen people to get the project approved. Otherwise, it will take too much time and the gain will outweigh the loss.

Players are very satisfied with the quality of "Sword and Demon Record", and even queued up for the E3 trial second only to "Quake 4". When they accepted the survey feedback arranged by Mars Entertainment, they finally Two questions I like to ask are, when will this game be released? The second one is, is Diablo 2 better than this game?

Diablo 2 must be better than this game, and surpass it across the board.

This was the decision that Bill Rogge made after trying out "Sword and Demon", because they couldn't afford to lose this person, and the level of Diablo 2 that the players had been anticipating could not be as high as this copycat. Bar.

Therefore, some settings that were originally intended to be used in the expansion pack, such as rune language, were all filled in during the development process.

Jester has not developed a single game in the past few years, so no matter whether it is GDC or VGA award nomination, he has nothing to do with it. Although this year is only halfway through, it is estimated that he will not have any games coming out this year, so , this year’s two major awards probably have nothing to do with him.

However, he was asked for his opinion during the Lifetime Achievement Award last year.

For example, candidates will be asked for their opinions when nominating. Only if you agree to accept the award will the organizer nominate you. Otherwise, if you don’t accept the award after being awarded it to you in the end, then the organizer will be embarrassed and humiliated.

In the past few years, Jester had agreed. That was because he knew that the possibility of what he could get at that time was not very high. He was purely a person who accompanied the prince to study. However, starting from last year, this was not necessarily the case. There are no more people who were eligible to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award before him. In other words, he has been a favorite to win the award since last year.

But when Jester considers this problem, first of all, he is too young, which is not the main problem.

The main problem is that he has not played any games in the past few years. In his own opinion, he is not suitable to win this award. He feels that the most suitable time for him to receive this lifetime achievement award is when his "Era" is released and sweeps the crowd on GDC. And then at the same time, those lifetime achievement awards, that would be prestigious enough.

Therefore, Jester explained his situation, saying that he was before the release of ‘Era’. I won't accept any awards. Of course, the excuse I used is that I don't want to distract myself from other things.

It's already 1994. Major hardware manufacturers have also begun to reveal information about their new hardware intermittently. Both Sega and Sony are competing overtly and covertly with Mars Entertainment in this regard.

Akari, it must be various advertisements, various product introductions, and various press conferences.

And secretly, they are wooing third-party manufacturers from each other.

When the World Electronics Association was established, it gave those third-party manufacturers enough choices. They could choose any one of the three hardware vendors, or all of them, for game development. In other words, on the game development platform, There are no restrictions on them. Of course, once the game is developed, it cannot be released just because you want it to be released.

It still has to pass the test on the host and reach the quality level they require.

In order to compete on the new console, the competition for third parties has become fierce. Mars Entertainment is a little behind, but Sega or Sony have made a lot of offers to the third-party developers they want to win over. It’s an offer that no one can refuse, even to the point where they can’t make any money.

This is something Mars Entertainment cannot do.

Jester's business philosophy is similar to Nintendo's original decision by Hiroshi Yamauchi that it would never sell hardware at a loss, and he also stipulated this.

This is a bloody lesson Nintendo has learned.

Therefore, although the conditions offered by Mars Entertainment are somewhat more generous than those of the previous Dreambox 2 era, they are completely uncompetitive compared to the sky-high prices offered by Sega and Sony.

The most important thing is that the console generation depends on each generation.

For any platform, the beginning of a new generation starts from scratch, and the achievements of the previous platform are likely to disappear.

Regardless of the previous situation, the market share of one console was still dominant.

It is very likely that the new generation will be surpassed soon, so this is why these third-party manufacturers are willing to follow Sega or Sony, because the advantages of Dreambox 2 are difficult to accumulate on Dreambox 3.

Moreover, the most important reason is that both Sega and Sony have launched their new consoles. Even Sony announced the name of their next-generation game console half a year ago, which is called ps2. Moreover, It also demonstrated the 3D effect on PS2, which was excellent and completely ahead of the current era.

Although it is a bit worse than the previous video released by ‘Times’.

However, what "Times" announced was CG after all, not a demonstration of the actual machine. It is natural that there is a gap between the two.

"Obviously we need to confirm the intentions of Capcom and other companies." Jester said at the high-level meeting, rubbing his aching head.

His words were also recognized by many people.

Some second-rate Japanese game companies have an inextricable relationship with Sega or Sony. This is also a characteristic of some Japanese companies, that is, they have close internal relationships, but this relationship does not mean that there are no loopholes.

For example, since 1984, the Japanese branch of Mars Entertainment has been operating in Japan for ten years. At least it has a pivotal position in the game industry. If Mars Entertainment gives the reason why it is different from Sony or Sega, or even If the treatment is slightly worse than theirs, there are still many third-party companies willing to come.

However, Mars Entertainment was unwilling. (To be continued...)