Game Development Giant

Does Jester want to develop a game like Nintendo's Action Game 52 in 1, which players dubbed the worst game in history?

Of course not.

Therefore, Jester can only try his best to control the reputation of the games sold on Dreambox. Nintendo did not decline because of Action Game 52-in-1. That was just because their competitors at the time were vulnerable. That's all, and this also exposed one thing, that is, Nintendo never took players into consideration from beginning to end. In other words, Nintendo's purpose of making games is only to make money, and the purpose of making good games is also Just to make more money.

This is not entirely in line with Jester's philosophy. Of course, Jester also wants to make money from games, but he wants to make games that do not disappoint players while making money at the same time, not Nintendo's way of making good games. Just to make money.

Of course, sometimes designers will conflict with some players’ understanding of what an excellent game is, and they need to make trade-offs. Games are similar to food. Good or bad is a very subjective dynamic. Everyone has different tastes, styles, or acceptance and understanding of things.

Lin Hong said this in Shanjia Qinggong, Jester thinks it is of great reference value.

“Food has no definite taste, but the food that tastes good is the best.”

When it comes to games, this means that there is no certain standard for whether a game is good or bad, but for every player, as long as it is what they like to play, it is the best game. There are many such examples. For example, many people say that GTA5 is a masterpiece, but many people are disgusted with the promotion of violent elements in it and think that the game's three concepts are not correct. I deeply hate this game. For example, some people think that Fairy Sword is a masterpiece, but many people think that this is just an average game among its contemporaries. It only stands out a bit among domestic games, but it is also It’s just that domestic games are too weak. If you don’t believe it, look at its sales on the Sega SS. It’s appalling! It shows that the player's eyes are sharp.

Some people think it's good, some people think it's bad. This is all natural. No designer can design a game that everyone likes. Even if there are many people who like to play, everyone will be right.

However, the tastes of most people can still be controlled through design, because the tastes of most people are not that weird, and their understanding of good and bad must be popular and mainstream. Designers should always pay attention to this matter when designing games.

If I design it this way, will it be acceptable to the vast majority of players who like this type of game?

This is what Jester often told his designers when developing games. On the contrary, Jester rarely talks about how to design games specifically now. Although he still has countless classic games in his mind that he can learn from, these things belong to others after all. For the designers under him who have gradually become mature, some of their things may not be unexpected, but they are currently limited by various appearance reasons. Just didn't think about it.

On December 25th, in the North American game console market, Sega's MD 16-bit home games showed very strong sales momentum. Jester was in the office almost every hour, popular Employees in the distribution and sales departments of Mars Entertainment will send their news back non-stop.

After Sega's new console began to fully exert its efforts, especially during the Christmas season, Dreambox's weak performance was obvious to all. Although it was not very serious, its shipment volume last month was almost overtaken by MD. Ping, up to now, half a day has passed, and the total sales volume has been directly beaten by the other party.

Even if Jester thinks about it, if Dreambox hadn't been accumulated for more than four years, with a deep foundation and many games, it would be able to attract a large number of players. Maybe, maybe, they would be like NES, being given away by Sega's MD. It was crushed directly into pieces.

Looking at the report just handed over in his hand and seeing the two game consoles ranked first and second, Jester also sighed. The era of eight-bit consoles was really over.

Compared with Dreambox, which is ranked third, the sales figures of nes, which is ranked fourth, cannot be ignored. And before this Christmas season, Nintendo obviously also expected this. They don't pay much attention to this Christmas season, and even cut down a lot of the necessary publicity before the Christmas season every year.

Maybe they have also concentrated most of their R\u0026D efforts on the new console.

Jester is doing this himself now. Of course he can understand Nintendo's thinking. Moreover, Sony, which is now officially cooperating with them, will not allow Nintendo to continue to focus its research and development efforts on es. Doing so will not only waste development efforts. , the most important thing is that by doing this, Sony will not get the slightest benefit.

Sony will certainly not be willing to do anything that is not beneficial.

What's more, there are ambitious people like Ken Kutaragi, and Norio Ohga, the second-in-command who wants to do something different at Sony.

No one wants to live in the shadow forever. Norio Ohga is a very proud man, but his predecessor Akio Morita is almost a god-like figure to Sony, and his status cannot be shaken. It can be said that the reason why Sony has been able to develop from a small family workshop to a world-class super enterprise is that he is not advisable.

As for the idea of ​​​​surpassing Akio Morita, Norio Ohga has never had it, and it is too unrealistic. However, reality is always more unpredictable than fiction. In the history that Jester is familiar with, there may be no such thing. One would think that Sony Computer Entertainment, which originally started out of the ambition of a small person like Kutaragi Ken who was mixed with a little bit of anger or revenge, in Norio Ohga's eyes, turned out to be Sony's market value reaching its peak around the year 2000. the greatest help.

Also after Sony's overall decline, when even Sony's proud home appliance department was languishing, there were only a few departments that could stir up Sony's banner.

This was something Norio Ohga never expected when he made the decision to ‘do-it’.

Of course, these are just the memories in Jester's mind. At least in this world, this situation is completely different from the situation in his memory. Now Sony has cooperated with Nintendo in advance, and Sony has actually achieved this The initiative in cooperation is unprecedented in the history of Ziah.

In the original history of the cooperation between Nintendo and Sony, Nintendo took the absolute initiative from beginning to end, while Sony was just a subordinate. Of course, Nintendo's dominance in the video game industry at that time was much greater than it is now. Mars Entertainment is much stronger, and Sony may not have the current idea of ​​​​attending in person, and some just want to promote their CD-roms.

Therefore, it is inevitable to make certain steps back in terms of cooperation with Nintendo.

But it’s completely different now. From Sony’s actions, we can clearly see their ambitions for the video game industry. Even Sony has been quietly acquiring some game development companies recently. At least Jester has gained from his own According to what we have learned from the channels, at least three independent game companies with good development capabilities have already entered the arms of Sony.

And it makes no sense for him to get such news. In the Japanese gaming industry, Hiroshi Yamauchi, who has at least ten times the connections and connections behind him, does not know this news. The reason why Nintendo and Sony were able to negotiate with such a low profile before The cooperation was of course due to Nintendo's own lack of R\u0026D capabilities and it was impossible for it to launch its own 16-bit console at the same time as Mars Entertainment and Sega.

The more important reason is that Hiroshi Yamauchi discovered that Sony lacks game development capabilities. In other words, at most they can produce a powerful enough game console, but they cannot develop games that can fully utilize the performance of this game console. , and Hiroshi Yamauchi, who has been engaged in the game industry for many years, knows much more about the game industry than Sony.

Sony is still making game consoles with the same thinking as they do for making electrical appliances. They believe that as long as our game consoles have good performance and strong functions, there will naturally be no shortage of people to develop games for this game console, and it will naturally sell well. But they ignored the most critical issue.

Game companies develop games for a game console not just because the performance of the game console is good enough to allow us to play better - in fact, there are designers or designers who wholeheartedly just make the game better. Design firms are extremely rare.

This is only their sufficient and unnecessary condition, that is, they will use this as a reference when the necessary conditions are the same.

What Sony lacks is its own game development team that has always been strong enough, and Nintendo just has such power. Therefore, in the process of developing game consoles, Nintendo's forbearance is just a concession. When it comes to the official release, I So now the situation between Sony and Nintendo will be completely reversed.

But the premise is that Sony doesn't find the trick. (To be continued...)