Game Development Giant

Even though Jester thought so, he would not say anything to Suzuki Yu.

Because according to his status, no matter what he said, it was inappropriate.

Moreover, all he knows are things in his memory, and this world is a changed world after all. To what extent Yu Suzuki's "Shenmue" can achieve, that may be something only God knows.

Maybe this time Yu Suzuki can turn decay into magic and make "Shenmue" a masterpiece that not only has good reputation but also has enough sales.

All this is uncertain.

After all, Yu Suzuki was starting from scratch, but he is not starting from scratch now.

Ever since he missed Ximutou last time, Jester told his assistant that if there is another medium-sized or above studio in the industry that is about to be acquired, he must use special standards to notify himself so that he can Among a pair of files, I found it immediately.

Because Jester usually has to deal with too many things.

He generally wouldn't read some less important documents in person, and would just hand them over to the departments below to handle them very well.

When Jester was looking through the documents provided to him by his assistant today, he found several documents marked by his assistant with special marks. Most of them were normal and were submitted by subsidiaries that required his approval. Files coming up.

But one of them is indeed about the acquisition of a gaming company.

It's not that Mars Entertainment wants to make an acquisition, but a newly established game company called Take-two wants to acquire a game company called DMA that is somewhat famous in the UK. This company is very famous in Scotland. They have produced a game before. There is a game that sells well in England, called "Chase and Escape". It can be regarded as a 2D sandbox game, and the gameplay is still very rich.

Of course, this is just the beginning of their fame.

If it were just based on such works, then the acquisition of such a company would not be eligible to enter Jester's eyes. The reason why their acquisition matters were selected by Jester's assistant and presented to Jester was because this company has a currently best-selling game - GTA.

Jester told his assistant that he should always pay attention to all the developments of the GTA game. Especially from this game company.

If there is any movement, you must report it to yourself as soon as possible.

The report in Jester's hand is very thick, with about twenty pages. It not only has a detailed introduction to the Scottish game company called DMA, but also the details of the company called Take-two that wants to acquire DMA. introduce.

Compared to Scotland and even the entire European gaming community. For DMA, which is somewhat famous, this game company called Take-two is somewhat unknown in the United States.

This company was only established last year, and it hasn’t even been established for more than a year. The boss of the game is a young man named Ryan, who is less than thirty years old. He is a rich second generation. His father is A very famous publisher, he owns several famous publishing houses and is also a founding member and major shareholder of a famous large polo club.

But Ryan’s father, Pete. He was arrested because of previous tax arrears.

After Ryan spent all his money and paid off the taxes he owed, he felt that he should do something instead of living like he usually did. In addition, he was very interested in video games, so he founded a game company.

The name is Take-two.

However, this company does not have a good reputation in the industry because the games they make are restricted games.

The games they produce and produce are well-known in the gaming industry for their violence, gore, and pornography, and are not accepted by the mainstream gaming industry, whether it is game production companies or gamers.

DMA's GTA series is exactly a game of this style, so this time the rich second generation wants to acquire DMA. Get the GTA brand and the excellent development team under DMA.

At this time, DMA's parent company was called BGM, and DMA was just an interactive entertainment department of him at the beginning. Because BGM's current business situation is relatively bleak, they also have the idea of ​​selling DMA to get some money to save the parent company, so they contacted Ryan from Take-two.

It can be said that the man is affectionate and the concubine is interested.

It took nearly two hours for Jester to carefully read the 20 to 30 pages of documents from beginning to end, gaining a very detailed understanding of the two companies of this era.

certainly. Jester had naturally heard of Take-two, but that was in the future.

T2 at that time was not a game company of the same magnitude as T2 now.

More than ten or twenty years later, T2 has basically become the top three game companies in the United States, second only to Activision Blizzard and EA.

In this era, T2 was just a small player with a bad reputation. Even its distribution channels were incomplete. If Ryan's father had not had his own publishing channel before, their games might not have even found a reliable publisher. Publishers are hard to find, and even if they are found, based on the style of their games, not many publishers will treat their games as heavyweight products.

However, in this era, in the triangle relationship between developers, platforms, and publishers, the most powerful ones are naturally the platform developers, because without a platform, there will be no games. Secondly, there are publishers, because only publishers can replace games with real products. of US dollars, the one with the lowest status may be the developer.

Because when developers make games, they first ask them to find a publisher. Only if the publisher is willing to release their game can their game be sold. Otherwise, they have to find a way to do it themselves. sold.

After Russian and Japanese publishers want to release this game, they will naturally give discounts to the partners they value. For example, after deducting the platform royalties, they will give the developer 40-60 points. They only Get four copies, but if it's a developer they don't value, and this game is a dispensable work for this publisher.

Then the share ratio may be very harsh.

Probably five to five at most. It is even possible for the publisher to directly take over the hair-styling rights of the game at a buyout price.

In short, the platform side is the best, but building a platform is also the most difficult. We have now passed the pioneering era of video games. During this period, if you want to build a brand new platform and make this platform sufficiently competitive, you will have to spend a lot of money and drugs. Three years later, Sega collapsed, and Microsoft officially entered the video game industry. It suffered losses of more than one billion U.S. dollars for several consecutive years, and even exceeded two billion U.S. dollars in the first year.

What does this mean?

This means that if you want to join the game now and participate in the platform, which has the most say, you must have at least 10 billion U.S. dollars in capital to be qualified.

What about being a publisher?

This is a bit simpler, but it will basically cost more than one billion US dollars to build a distribution network.

These are all basic investments. It's the real deal, no fraud.

This is why platform developers and publishers are great, because everyone can do games. According to Carmack, don’t complain about your failure. Success in this era couldn’t be easier. A refrigerator of Coke and pizza, a machine For a computer, one network cable is enough.

In other words, everyone can play the game. As long as you want.

This is not the case with platforms and distribution channels. This is why after a game is released, developers can take up to one-third.

And T2 has connections with several publishing companies because of its predecessor. Therefore, for them, the game distribution channels are ready, which also allows Ryan, a rich second generation, to get a big advantage, so although their game style is vulgar. But this year has been pretty good. After all, all genres are supported by players. Some people like high-level games, while others like vulgar games.

This is understandable.

But Jester doesn’t want T2 to get DMA, the future Rockstar.

Jester is a loyal fan of Rockstar, not because of the GTA series. In fact, Jester dislikes GTA. The reason why he became a fan of Rockstar is because their other game can use greatness to The game of calling - Red Dead Redemption.

It goes without saying how great this game is.

Jester was not familiar with the history of Rockstar, but he knew a little bit about it.

He knew that in the original history, this year, T2 successfully acquired DMA, and then the two founders of Rockstar, the Hausen brothers, came to New York and established a game studio called Rockstar. Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and another member of the DMA, is called Northern R Star.

To be honest, GTA3, the game that made Rockstar truly a palace-level game development studio, was also a difficult work to produce.

At the beginning, in the early stages of the development of GTA3, it was actually very unsatisfactory.

The two House brothers also knew that in order to make an American gangster game that would be acceptable to Americans, they had to be very familiar with the lower class society in the United States, and they were British and native British people - born in the United Kingdom. Go to school in the UK, grow up in the UK, get a job in the UK, start developing games in the UK.

There is a big difference between the UK and the US. People in our country like to talk about Europe and America. In fact, there are more than ten or twenty countries in Europe and America, and there are great differences between different countries.

Just like Europe and the United States often refer to Asian styles, generally speaking they refer to the three countries of East Asia.

However, although the three countries in East Asia all have cultures inherited from Confucianism, their respective styles are also very different.

Chinese style is Chinese style, and gentle style is gentle style.

Ink is ink.

It's all completely different.

The same goes for Britain and the United States.

Therefore, before the two House brothers develop a game, the first thing they need to do is to understand the bottom society of the United States and what the dark side of the bright society is like.

Therefore, they watched countless documentaries and related movies, greedily absorbing everything about this aspect.

How hard are they working to do all this?

Later, when the House brothers came out to do a show, they said this. At that time, in order to save time, the two of them took turns. Each of the two of them worked on a 12-hour shift. When they realized that they felt like sleeping, they also took turns. One of them immediately continued to watch.

Moreover, in order to let both parties know what they were looking at and to facilitate subsequent reference, they forced themselves to take notes.

And how many notes did they take?

These later notes are still kept at the R-Star headquarters. Stacking all their notes together can fill a ten-square-meter room. Isn’t it scary? Isn’t it better than many people’s life from birth to death? , all the books you have read combined are much more?

However, extraordinary people are those who do extraordinary things. If they want to achieve great things, they must do great deeds. This is inevitable.

Jester doesn’t want to comment too much on the GTA series.

But for these two brothers, Jester has great admiration for them. Although they may not succeed after 100,000 efforts, if they succeed after 100,000 efforts, then this success is definitely worthy of everyone's admiration. of.

Thinking of this, Jester immediately called his assistant.

"Contact me BGM and DMA. I want to talk to them in detail about the sale of DMA Company. If it is convenient, I also want to meet with several major developers of DMA Company." ——The House brothers and their programmer Mr. Donovan, if they don’t have time or it’s inconvenient to come to the United States, I will go to the UK in a few days and I will definitely visit them in person.”

Jester briefly gave his instructions to his assistant, and Jester believed that his assistant would definitely be able to do this well.

The full name of the Donovan Jester mentioned on the phone is Terry Donovan.

He is a middle school classmate of the House brothers and a computer genius. If the House brothers have miraculous talents and amazing perseverance and perseverance in game design, then Donovan has the ability to combine these two brothers. Talents with the amazing ability to transform electronics into reality are extremely rare.

And Jester also believed that he had the ability to persuade the other party to join Mars Entertainment instead of some other company.

Because Mars Entertainment has such a unique appeal in the current industry.

Regarding this, Jester is extremely confident. (~^~)