Game Development Giant

A few days later, Jester held a grand farewell party for Carmack at the Mars Entertainment headquarters.

This was a grand event that almost the entire Mars Entertainment staff participated in.

Because to them, Carmack is like Jester, a legend of Mars Entertainment. Of course, this also makes many game companies more ambitious. They desperately want to get Carmack, who has resigned from Mars Entertainment.

However, they never got the reply from Carmack they hoped for.

No matter how favorable terms they offered to Carmack, Carmack never responded, which also gave them some hesitation. Is it really like what Jester said, that Carmack doesn't plan to make games in the future? But if you think about it more carefully, Carmack has been playing games with Jester since he graduated from high school. Apart from playing games, he has never done anything else. He actually likes to go to the racing track and race with others in his spare time.

But it’s impossible for him to be a professional driver.

Therefore, they thought for a long time and still felt that Carmack would continue to do game development. After all, Carmack was good at this and did it very well - even if he did not do game development and specialized in 3D engine development, Okay, you know, the reason why Mars Entertainment is so popular in the field of 3D games is that their engine is several generations ahead of other companies.

Mars Entertainment developed the 3D engine early and invested a lot. Naturally, it has accumulated more technology than other companies.

But Carmack is an absolute treasure trove of technology, especially in terms of 3D engines. It can be called an encyclopedia. Even if Carmack plans to make the engine himself and then license the engine, major game companies feel that they can invest in each other. .

Maybe it will have miraculous effects in the future.

But after Carmack finished the farewell party Jester held for him, he disappeared. According to his friends, Carmack went traveling again, this time without any specific destination. Because according to Carmack, he has had little time to rest in the past few years and basically spends his time on engine development and game production.

He didn't even concentrate on playing games other than himself.

so. He plans to travel around and do some things he wants to do during this period of time. As for the next things, he will have to wait until he finishes this period of rest.

The latest news is that in Hokkaido, Japan. Carmack was once met by a reporter from a local gaming publication in Japan. This reporter had interviewed Carmack at the headquarters of Mars Entertainment and knew Carmack, so he had a little chat with Carmack.

Only then did the outside world know Carmack's whereabouts during this period.

But it was not that easy to contact Carmack. By the time the major game companies heard the news and rushed to Hokkaido, Carmack had no idea where he was.

Moreover, this is not the most annoying thing for major game companies. In fact, many game companies have no expectations for recruiting Carmack. What they hope is to recruit people who will leave Mars Entertainment with Carmack. other people. After all, the rumors of Carmack's resignation this time were due to differences with Jester on game production concepts.

The game production philosophy represented by Carmack is definitely not his alone. This is a battle of ideas for an entire type of game. There must be many people who share the same game design philosophy as Carmack.

Since Carmack resigned directly, they did not believe that other people with the same design philosophy as Carmack would not resign.

These people may be nothing to Mars Entertainment, but to other game companies. Maybe they are outstanding talents, and the people who were previously produced by Mars Entertainment have also proven themselves in different companies, at least in terms of game design. They are indeed good enough.

However, the wave of resignations they expected did not come.

In fact, some people did have the idea of ​​​​going with Carmack after learning that Jester agreed to Carmack's resignation. To these people, Carmack was like a mentor.

However, at the farewell party, Carmack specifically told them the reason why he left Mars Entertainment.

It's not because he disagrees with Jester's philosophy - in fact, Jester has not stopped the development of old-school FPS games within the company. For example, since Jester mentioned it once in the player community, it has been repeatedly mentioned by many media Mentioned "Team Fortress", although this is just a MOD, as long as this MOD gets good market feedback.

Then a brand new game can be started immediately.

In fact, the design ideas and design planning of "Team Fortress 2" are almost completed within the FPS development team.

Carmack told the people he taught that the reason why he left Mars Entertainment was simply because he had lost the strong passion for engine and game development that he had before, and he himself believed that losing Without such passion, we still have to insist on developing games and engines. It is half the result with half the effort, more gain than loss, and we will not produce any convincing products.

After all, you still have to be passionate about making games.

Moreover, Carmack also clearly told his loyal fans that his next job will definitely not be to continue developing games. In fact, he has already thought of something that is more exciting to him.

As for developing games, whether you want to continue developing old-school FPS games or other types of games, staying at Mars Entertainment is the best choice.

It is precisely because of this that after Carmack left Mars Entertainment, Mars Entertainment did not see a large number of resignations.

Things are changing rapidly in the world, and this is also true in the video game industry. Although the matter of Carmack's resignation was aroused for a month or two, after three or four months, Carmack could not be contacted, and there was no new news about Carmack. After the news about Mark came out, the matter gradually cooled down.

In fact, Mars Entertainment, which has entered the team development mode, has already broken away from the workshop-style working mode. The departure of a producer will not have much impact on the entire team. It is not true that there is no impact. Not exactly, for example, the recent development of the Unreal X engine. It has been delayed for a while, and this is also the last engine named after Unreal.

Carmack participated in the development of the previous N Unreal Engines.

Although Unreal So this is also the intention of the entire engine development team, to permanently seal the Unreal engine code name to commemorate Carmack's departure. After all, among these people. It was Carmack who taught me step by step how to develop a 3D engine.

As for the engine codename below, they have also thought about it, and it was also Jester’s suggestion. The next engine they will develop is called ‘Frost’, and the design plan for Frostbite 1 has also been started.

After the development of Unreal X is completed, Frostbite 1 will also start development.

In fact, although Mars Entertainment develops engines frequently and invests a lot of money, after all, it is the development work of an engine. It is a arduous task close to a marathon in as little as two years and as long as four years. It requires a lot of money and a lot of time. However, some engines before Mars Entertainment, such as before Unreal X, which is now Mars Entertainment, Internally, especially Unreal 4 used by the FPS development team, is currently the most powerful engine within Mars Entertainment.

And before that it was Unreal 3. You have already opened a license for external use, and you can receive a very large licensing fee, and it will also be derived from the other party's game sales. Take a portion, probably ten percent.

This is also a huge number.

And there are many companies that need this kind of authorization. After all, not every game company can build a powerful 3D engine.

And without an excellent 3D engine, there is no way to develop excellent 3D games.

Especially after seeing the 3D effects produced by Mars Entertainment's games. They can directly lose the idea of ​​making games of the same type, just like G Fat in Jester's Memory. In the original world, G Fat, who resigned from Microsoft, wanted to make games as the ultimate fan of the Thor series. Of course, he must choose his favorite FPS game.

But no matter what, when he was ready, he saw the demonstration video of Thor 3, and he immediately had a desperate idea.

Because it is simply impossible for him to achieve such an effect.

After dragging on his friends, G Fat got the Thor 3 engine from Carmack, and then he made "Half-Life" that will go down in history. If there was no "Half-Life", then There would definitely be no "Counter-Strike", there would be no STEAM, and there would be no Valve, which later supported the PC gaming sky, and almost saved the entire PC gaming industry, as well as the group of brainless V fans.

Speaking of which, there is actually an interesting fact.

What impressed Jester the most was that he was a fan of Valve's DOTA2 and "Heroes of the Storm."

After the official launch of "Heroes of the Storm", IGN gave a rating of 6.5. This rating incident caused an uproar in the industry. Later, Blizzard added a 6.5/10 to the arena mode of "Heroes of the Storm". Easter egg to mock IGN for this incident.

How does this matter relate to DOTA2 fans?

It's like this. The editor who rated "Heroes of the Storm" at IGN is a DOTA2 fan. He was dug out how he reviewed "Heroes of the Storm" - he only played a dozen games of human-computer mode. battles, and then lost 70% of the games, and finally came to the conclusion that the game only had a score of 6.5. After that, IGN was ridiculed by the industry and had no choice but to delete this score.

In fact, for a game, as a designer, you must first understand how the designer designs the game. Any game is for fun, so a good game will not be unfun. game.

So is Heroes of the Storm fun?

As a single player, this game is really not fun.

But how could a game company as experienced as Blizzard make such a mistake?

In fact, they are not developing a game that is not fun. When designing this game, the designers of this game did not regard the participants as gamers. When they were designing, they always considered It is believed that the participants of the game are a team of five people.

All the gameplay in this game revolves around what a team does, not what you do alone.

Designers naturally regard a team as a harmonious whole. They will act like an arm and give orders, but in fact, this is simply impossible. There are five individuals participating in the game, not A whole.

This is crucial to the gaming experience.

Therefore, "Heroes of the Storm" has become such a game. When five people play black together, this game is full of fun, tactics, and variables, and it is extremely exciting to play. But when one person matches, the game process Most of the time it is extremely sadistic.

It doesn't matter, the most important thing is that when the game is played as a team to get a good experience, the development team has not taken any methods to effectively improve this team experience.

Moreover, because this game has no economy and no personal data statistics such as positive and negative, it pays more attention to a player's judgment of the situation and the choice of map resources. Therefore, it will be very difficult to conduct MMR statistics.

In other words, according to the previous MMR method, there is no way to judge a person's true level.

Only then did a large number of novice players at Rank 1 appear.

Can you imagine that most of the people with a score of 5,000 or above in DOTA2 are noobs? Can you imagine that more than half of the champions in LOL are noobs?

In "Heroes of the Storm", many people in RANK1 are just noobs.

There is no need for Jester to worry about the engine. Jester has naturally devoted himself to the development of his new game during this period. The development of the DEMO version of "Monster Hunter" is still very fast. It is just a gameplay. The test was also very simple to make. After the review committee played it, they all agreed to Jester’s proposal to develop three games at the same time without much thought.

In fact, it cannot be said that three games were developed at the same time. To be precise, one game was developed first, which was the Western mythology version of "Monster Hunter". This team was led by Jester himself, and the other two games were developed at the same time. , one in the style of "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" is the responsibility of a team of domestic designers, while the Japanese-style one is the responsibility of a team of Japanese designers.

These two teams were not working on the Western Mythology "Monster Hunter" at the same time as Jester was responsible for it, but the two teams worked together with Jester to develop the first "Monster Hunter", and when they got familiar with them After deciding what kind of game they want to make, they will be responsible for their own project team alone.

In other words, at the beginning, only Jester's own development team was responsible for development, and the two development teams outside the company were still in the learning stage. (~^~)