Game Development Giant

Over the past twenty years, these characters that are familiar to players have been created from scratch, from small to large, from weak to strong. ”, from the prototype with only Samwise, to Wang Wei’s Ninth Son of the Storm, and before Jester’s time travel, this team has expanded to more than a dozen people.

It can be said that after more than twenty years.

Every artist in the industry dreams of entering this holy temple in the hearts of artists in the entire video game industry.

For example, Jester knows several artists from domestic game companies. They only have one idea about Sons of the Storm, and that is that their senior Wang Wei will one day become a member of this team.

And Jester is now forming the team Sons of Mars within Mars Entertainment.

In fact, it was the inspiration from Blizzard’s Sons of the Storm in later generations. Of course, the current Sons of Mars are also extremely powerful. It can be said that in the world of video games, major companies obviously do not pay too much attention to art. Mars Entertainment’s Sons of Mars is one of a kind.

Of course, the founder of Blizzard in later generations has been taken into his own pocket, and in order for Blizzard RTS to dominate the world, the king of RTS has also started an internship in his own company. Basically, it is impossible for Blizzard to appear in the future. .

And Samwise Didier, the soul figure in the Future Sons of Storms and the founder of the Sons of Storms, is now living like a fish in water in the Sons of Mars.

Jester shook his head.

In fact, these things were a bit far-fetched and had nothing to do with the content of Zhang Dong's post that he wanted to think about.

But it just happened out of curiosity, so I thought about it deeply for a while.

Jester still clearly remembers that he was browsing the posts with some boredom, and suddenly saw the one that was redlined by the moderator. At first glance, it turned out to be someone from Blizzard who came to restore it in person. You know. Although this is not the first time this forum has been exposed, it is still an extremely rare and legendary event.

And it was the post that was written very simply and introduced the poster's experience as a marketing director of Blizzard's marketing department for at least two years that shocked Jester.

It made him feel how a truly niche game, and even a small-level game, could reach the top unexpectedly in the end. In fact, Zhang Dong did not need to describe the situation in the post, Jester was very clear.

Although Zhang Dong’s original intention of writing this post was to cheer up the underappreciated game “Heroes of the Storm”, in the post, he mainly wrote about “Hearthstone” at the beginning. There are no games that are promising, because even the difficult situation at the time has been over, let alone a small scene like Heroes of the Storm.

It is precisely because Jester experienced the situation at that time that Jester felt more deeply about that post.

What was the situation like at that time?

It was only Jester who came into contact with it. Not long after Hearthstone was in closed beta, Sina Games made a program to discuss Hearthstone. They were not discussing the advantages of Hearthstone. Instead, they made wild claims on the show that the game would not survive for more than a few months, and the remarks were very strange. For example, this game is just for those who have never played a card game, but it lacks depth. After playing for a long time, these players will leave.

For another example, it is still in the Hearthstone area on this forum where many people gather.

The moderator of a certain game area openly spoke nonsense in the forum. It was said that this game would not survive for three months. Of course, Jester knew the situation at that time. Needless to say about other forums, I’m just talking about this forum, which is the largest concentration of violent abuse in the country.

There are only a few information compilation posts and blue post translations and reposts. Basically, very few people participated in the discussion. Almost this game type is not accepted by players, and it is only accepted by Baobai. Jester is also very interested in this game. I really like the game, but I'm a little worried about it.

But Jester was different from these people at the beginning. After he got the internal beta number and played the game Hearthstone, he concluded that this game would definitely become popular.

Because this game has all the makings of a successful game.

Of course, even though Jester thought so at the time, when he truly understood the entire process of this game from insignificance to greatness, and its grandeur, Jester would still take a breath, because this game is so popular in the world. According to Activision Blizzard's financial report for the first quarter of 2015, there are games with 30 million players.

At the beginning, it was just a team of ten people who burst out an inspiration that was not valued by others while chatting.

Of course, one of the more important things about Hearthstone's success for Blizzard is that players like Jester who really like extraordinary games don't want to see it - after seeing that small-level games can also make huge profits, Blizzard has no hesitation. The development of the Titan project, which had been underway for seven years, was halted.

This makes countless fans like Jester sad.

In that article, Zhang Dong also talked about the various embarrassments he encountered when he first joined China Blizzard. Because Jester has read this post many times, some of the paragraphs in it now, he You can even retell it.

Jester closed his eyes again and began to recall the post he had read.

Zhang Dong said this in his post at that time.

When I first said that I wanted to join a certain company, I originally wanted to work on Storm. Two years have passed, and then suddenly a new product called Hearthstone was released, so I started working on this first. I just came here There are a few things that impressed me the most...

The first thing was at the gate of Ducheng WCG Junior High School Division. I heard a man named Edison holding a cigarette and complaining to the then e-sports manager that Wy was not committed to StarCraft and StarCraft was going to be over. I stood beside him quietly. Listened for 15 minutes...

The second thing is the Hearthstone press conference announcing agents.

Now you may not be able to imagine how shabby the situation was at that time - the press conference announcing Diablo and Agent of Storm was at the Golden Game venue, with tens of thousands of people watching, tens of thousands of people cheering, and even more in front of the computer screen. Ten times that, but I bet most people don’t know where the Hearthstone press conference to announce agents is.”

“I very clearly remember the main theme of the media gathering with no more than 50 people present: World of Warcraft is old, StarCraft is over, and Blizzard’s father has now changed to a mobile card game to make money... I still remember it very clearly. The editor-in-chief of a well-known large media never asked a question about Hearthstone from beginning to end. He kept chasing Brother Riqiang to ask how many people have afk in World of Warcraft recently or when will the next expansion pack be released. Brother Riqiang is the vice president of NetEase. NetEase’s vice president in charge of Blizzard’s business.”

There are enthusiastic reporters who keep asking, do you think this looks like Magic: The Gathering, like Yu-Gi-Oh!, or like Warcraft TCG?

This is something we have no answer for.

And the last one was when I was interviewing. At that time, many people like me who went to Blizzard China for interviews would ask a question, when will Diablo 3 be released?

I remember this matter very clearly. After I asked, a senior leader who interviewed me took a deep look, was silent for two seconds, and said something meaningful with a very serious expression. , do you think there is hope for selling this kind of box game in China?

I'm also speechless.\u003cvThe temporary host of Xiaoxianrou——Bi Gang Leader Xian. Not as good as Long Gerou - he couldn't even recognize all the cards. There was only one outside spectator at the scene, his name was Feng Yichi.

As for who Feng Yichi is, I think everyone who knows the game League of Legends will know it. Since then, I have always believed that the people in the LoL project team have unique vision and have never criticized LoL.

At that time, the main theme of the NGA Hearthstone section was 'This funny face-seeking game deserves to be called e-sports?' Today, the hot posts in the NGA Hearthstone section are, 'Starting from South Korea's victory over Europe and the United States' and 'I learned a lot from watching the game. ', what you are talking about in the storm area today is whether you can talk about KFC and McDonald's. I am tired of eating. Two years ago, when a bank was talking to us about Hearthstone co-branded credit cards and about signing the contract quickly, their boss came out and said, 'This I don’t know how long I can live playing card games on mobile phones, and then there will be no more.”

Of course. The credit card has been negotiated and will be issued soon, but I personally think it's ugly. After all, the aesthetics of banks are a bit different from us ordinary people.

Today, Storm has its own e-sports stadium before the open beta. Hundreds of people from 64 teams are preparing to participate in the gold match. When we did the first China-US competition, we didn't know if there were 64 Hearthstone players across the country. The most common scolding line in my Weibo comments is, you are awesome, you are worse than dogs without Blizzard, I am giving face to Blizzard, not to you, do you understand?

I have never felt that I am awesome. Hearthstone's global sales of 30 million are Blizzard's father's products. Diablo's 1 million units in 10 days is Blizzard's brand. The only moment when I felt that I was worthy of this salary was when I was called Edison People can now hold a competition called Lei Feng Cup and get sponsorships to support themselves. It was Xiaose who was shocked when she found out that there were 500,000 or 600,000 people in her room during the live broadcast of WCS in the middle of the night. Of course, the water content of Douyu Everyone knows that it was Magic Wind who fought his way through the siege in Korea until he won the championship, and it was the European players who asked, can we win the Ferrari if we win?

Foreigners even left messages in the Twitch live broadcast room of the Storm pre-season game, saying that I think estar can defeat the world... They all say that Blizzard games should be popular if they are not popular. They are agent garbage, StarCraft, Hearthstone, Diablo, Storm, I haven’t caught up with a Blizzard game that was optimistic from the beginning in China.”

“When it comes to getting started, nothing is more difficult than Hearthstone.”

Jester recalled this post that was very deep in his memory from beginning to end, and then he opened his eyes again.

Yes, even low-level games like Hearthstone can be very successful in the future, but what about the difficulties faced by American RPGs? Suddenly, Jester was filled with confidence.

Isn't it just a niche?

Little people often make history. (To be continued...)