game development designer

Chapter 261 The Choice of Freedom Needs
To use a relatively clichéd phrase to describe the domestic Tianhe network, it has been imitated, but never surpassed.

Whether it's the famine in the early days, or the survival path later, DNF games have always been imitated by domestic counterparts. Some of them failed and some succeeded, but none surpassed them.

Even Wangyi's most successful chicken-eating mobile game has captured the three elements of low configuration, mobile terminal, and free, and successfully attracted a large number of players, but it has not reached the height of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

However, if you look at it from the perspective of collecting money, Wangyi is still very successful.

As for why the games of Tianhe Network can be so successful, in fact, the teams of various companies have also analyzed it internally, but in the end they were all helpless.

Because this model is basically impossible to replicate.

In addition to the excellent quality of the game itself, and the excellent creative gameplay of the game, what really makes the games of Tianhe Network flourish is the rights owned by its operation team.

Other game manufacturers, such as Wangyi, Shengda, and some small and medium-sized game manufacturers, although they also have operation teams, they all have a strict KPI assessment system internally.

Moreover, its operation team is usually not a fixed operation team, but a short-term orientation. When one project is completed, it will work on another project.

In addition, in order to maximize the benefits, for example, various so-called activities are used to attract players. Although it looks great, the event rewards are actually useless at all, and the progress of the game version is forcibly suppressed.

These are all common things, and it's not that there is no operation team that really considers players, but these people will generally lose their jobs very quickly.

However, there is the successful example of Tianhe Network in the front. Not all companies in China follow the original strategy of killing chickens and taking eggs. Some small game manufacturers, or studios, have begun to follow the strategy of Tianhe Network and take the long-term. Catching big fish makes the game more conscientious, not the kind where you can't play comfortably without spending money.

Regarding the domestic game environment, Chuhe certainly didn't know what was affected by his own reasons.

In the office of Heiguang Studio, sitting in front of the computer, looking at the proposal that has been revised many times, Chuhe is continuing to revise.

When it came to the project of Red Dead Redemption, Chuhe discussed a lot with him after confirming the project.

A sandbox game, a big free and open world.

This is the game design set by the team, but it cannot be called a sandbox game completely.

From the beginning, the market was dominated by online games, and then multi-line games appeared, which are commonly known as multi-ending and multi-choice games. Players can make various options in the game, thus affecting the final ending.

For example, Gu Jian Qi Xia, although he has come up with a design such as the rebirth system, but despite the beautifully polished shell, it is still an irregular and linear game design.

The pursuit of freedom is actually a human nature, and it is the same in games.

Previous games were restricted by technology and design concepts, and were mainly online games.

But in fact, it has appeared as early as the last century. In 1983, a game called Elite appeared. The extremely in-depth development concept and leading technology allowed it to show a free game world, in which players can Free movement and choice are no longer the maze shooting in the past. To describe it in words, it is like an open universe.

Of course, what I’m talking about here is just the design concept of the game. If we talk about gameplay and so on, it’s estimated that there are no players who can calm down and enjoy the happiness brought by such a game, but have already accepted the bombing of 3A-level screen games It is difficult for players to face a game composed of pure lines.

From linear to free, almost any manufacturer seems to emphasize when making games that our games are very free, and you can do whatever you want.

For example, when you are at the first level, you can directly fight the final boss.

But there are gains and losses. When players are playing free sandbox games, excessive freedom will also make the story of the game become scattered, especially for games that are not defined by free sandbox storytelling. Join After entering the sandbox mode, if the player cannot be satisfied with the free exploration, it will be superfluous and turn the advantages into disadvantages.

Because in the free sandbox game world, it is very difficult for players to listen to you tell a good story. The attribute of freedom will make the atmosphere created by the original game disappear, and the player's sense of substitution will be reduced. to freezing.

Think about it, in the game, the village head in front of you kneels on the ground and entrusts you to hunt down monsters to save the village, and then when you take out the Gwent card, the village head was crying and begging for help a moment ago, and then the next moment The second is "No one in this village can defeat me"; or your wife was killed and your son was abducted, but you are addicted to picking up garbage in the wasteland world; After waking up, he was addicted to human trafficking.

A story-telling game combines self-exploration, then these phenomena will inevitably appear, which requires a choice between trade-offs and trade-offs.

What Chuhe has to do now is to think carefully about how to allow players to immerse themselves in the game world to the greatest extent without peeing, and experience the fun brought to them by the creators of the game world. .

"Except for temporarily shielding other sidelines and mini-games that are not related to the mainline when performing mainline tasks, it seems that there is no better choice." In the black light studio, looking at the problems pointed out by Chuhe and modifying them The planning book, Gabriel thought for a while and said.

There are many things that cannot be done if you want to. There are too many things to consider, and there are too many places to compromise.

Often in a game, adding a cool idea will make it a masterpiece, but adding two cool methods may make it a bad game.

This is all possible, and at least for sandbox open-world games, how to immerse players in the story to the greatest extent is a direction worthy of research by game makers, but at least for now So far, even Chuhe has no way to give any very good solution.

Even Hideo Kojima did not. In Kojima Studio in Tokyo before, Chuhe played the trial version of Death Stranding. Although he did not experience all the gameplay and plot, Chuhe still had a number in his heart. .

That is, Hideo Kojima chose the latter in terms of a higher degree of freedom and a complete degree of story substitution.

"Let's do it slowly. We have sufficient development funds and time to polish the game slowly. I believe players will understand us." Chu He closed the planning document, took out his mobile phone while talking, and sent the The post-processing video for myself was sent to Twitter and Weibo.

　In fact, what impressed me the most about The Witcher 3 was not the Gwent card, nor the full-level white wolf in the previous game who turned into a war scum, but the dignified demon hunter who jumped from a height of about 2 meters and fell to his death. .

　　
　
(End of this chapter)