Game Development Giant

The power of emotion is very powerful.

However, there are also drawbacks to this. In many places, you need to be extra careful after selling your feelings.

Because it is something that everyone is looking forward to, if the product is not good enough and cannot satisfy the players, then the blow to the manufacturer will be very big.

Jester carefully thought about what sentiments in his company were worthy of speculation.

I am not responsible for the sequels of my own games. They are basically very popular products. A new game will be released every once in a while, because these are basically the guarantee of sales. I make reports every quarter. When a game like this is released, the report will always look better.

There were many other games, and it was impossible for Jester to remember them all at once, so he just left this matter to his subordinates.

But you can’t just sell feelings.

In fact, there is nothing that can be done about Sony's almost always selling sentiments at its 15th Five-Year Plan press conference.

Because their first-party studio's development plan happened to be a gap period in the past six months, they could not produce any particularly eye-catching works. In addition, they surpassed Microsoft by almost double in previous console sales. The figures are enough to make Sony confident.

And Microsoft has come up with works like halo.

Basically, halo fans will definitely join xbo. These people are not Sony's target in the first place, so if they give up, they will give up.

Moreover, there will be Cologne and Tokyo game shows in the second half of the year.

Although Sony has announced that it will not participate in the Cologne Show that year, as the second largest sales place for games, Sony will not give up the European market under any circumstances. Although they have announced that they will not participate in the Cologne Show, they still have to participate in the Paris Games Week. .

Not to mention the Tokyo exhibition.

Although the Tokyo Show, the world's second largest game show, has fallen dramatically in recent years, especially a group of Japanese manufacturers that almost turned the Tokyo Show into a mobile game show, but. After all, Japan is Sony's home field, and the PS series consoles have been the focus of Japanese games since Sega withdrew from the console market and Nintendo became popular. Therefore, it is impossible for Sony not to pay attention to the Tokyo exhibition.

There are still two major exhibitions in the second half of the year, plus Sony's own annual awards, it is impossible not to leave some trump cards.

Although it is said that the game will be difficult to appear in the second half of the year.

However, there is always no shortage of big news. And Sony does have a few secrets in hand, but they didn’t announce them at E3 because the news about FF7 and Shenmue 3 was already shocking enough. There are two super gods pushing the bottom. To be honest, there is no chance that there will be more. What news could be more joyful and shocking.

Jester said that it is impossible to have such extreme consumer sentiments as Sony and not take any useful information.

This is not due to Sony itself, but because there really is nothing to take out in the second half of the year, but it is different for itself. While selling feelings, it must be paired with practical content.

This is the most perfect way to hold a press conference.

In fact, it's not that Microsoft doesn't want to sell sentiments. After all, even fools know it. The feelings that touch the deepest strings in the player's heart, coupled with the practical information that can be obtained immediately, will definitely have a greater impact on the player than the practical information alone, but the problem is. Microsoft is not Sony, it has no feelings to sell.

The carnival schedule is nothing to think about.

With the experience accumulated in the first two sessions, planning the third session will be even easier.

For Jester. The most difficult thing was actually the first one. After all, Mars Entertainment had never held such a large-scale game party-style exhibition at that time, and most of the people were inexperienced. Although some people who wanted to join were recruited, after all, These people are also in the minority.

During the original internal meeting and discussion, someone asked whether we could find a specialized company to handle this matter.

It turned out to be a response from many people.

After all, it would be much easier for you to find a specialized company to organize the carnival. They would arrange everything for you, but Jester rejected this proposal flatly.

The reason is simple.

Carnival is our own Carnival, even if it is the hardest thing to do, we have to do it ourselves.

This kind of persistence is indeed very effective.

There is less than a month left before the opening of the carnival, but everything is well prepared and the venue has begun to be set up. The location is still at the Anaheim Convention Center, because the carnival is held every year, plus some other important events. Since game release activities are all arranged here, this convention and exhibition center has basically become the home of Mars Entertainment. When many players mention this convention and exhibition center, they can immediately think of Mars Entertainment.

Previously, Mars Entertainment spent a lot of money on the ubiquitous advertisements for Planescape: Requiem.

Coupled with the overwhelming and disgusting evaluation articles of Qiuqiu from various media, it has made more fans who are not Mars Entertainment fans pay attention to the upcoming Mars Entertainment Carnival. Get excited.

But it's like every year.

The ticket prices for the carnival are getting higher and higher as the opening gets closer.

Because the tickets for the carnival are all pre-sale, at the beginning of the year, all 30,000 tickets were sold out. The original tickets of 500 US dollars have now been sold to 2,000 US dollars. Of course, this is still Far from the highest price for a carnival ticket.

According to previous experience, carnival tickets have sold for a super high price of US$4,000.

It's simply sensational.

Although Jester's own games don't have much emotion to sell, he can definitely draw the pie. Just like, Mark Saini used a CG picture to brag to the players at the previous E3 exhibition. It is the same as the 3D game screen in the future.

He can also draw such a big pie for players in this way.

Of course, this cake must be beautifully drawn. No one knows whether it tastes good or not until it is made, but it must make the player look very delicious.

In fact, Jester already had a rough idea of ​​the junior high school-style game he wanted to make.

First of all, Jester named it a heroic game, not a martial arts game.

The chosen background is Spring and Autumn.

An era of contention among a hundred schools of thought.

Type?

That was naturally the type of game he had always wanted to make since he first started making games.

Shenmue...

Jester repeated the name of the game in his mouth, then balled up a piece of paper with his name written on it, and threw it into the trash can.

What he wants to do is a game like Shenmue.

Of course, Shenmue chose a modern background, while Jester chose an ancient background.

It is also his favorite Spring and Autumn period, when hundreds of schools of thought contended, heroes gathered together, the era when knights used martial arts to break the law, and the era when the heroes of Yan and Zhao were generous and tragic. Moreover, when choosing a sequel in the future, you can also choose the Warring States period as the background. It is really the best. but.

It is impossible to complete a game like Shenmue with the current functions, and we may not even know whether the next generation of consoles can complete it.

Jester carefully recalled the information he remembered about Shenmue in his mind. Because he is a fan of Shenmue, he remembers it relatively clearly.

This game was a very ambitious project proposed by Yu Suzuki in the mid-1990s. It was so ambitious that it redefined the rules of the game industry. Later, in the memoirs of a senior Sega executive, it was mentioned that Suzuki Yu was very ambitious at that time. The scene when this plan was proposed at the high-level meeting.

At that time, this plan was called the Buckley Plan by Yu Suzuki. In order to launch this plan, he first recruited professional architectural designers, Hollywood film crews, and geniuses in the Japanese animation industry. Even the name of Shenmue came from his own name. It can be said that this is not only an unprecedented plan, but also Suzuki Yu's understanding of the game.

His most coveted game.

The amount of investment in the game was very huge. At that time, the investment in Shenmue 1 was as high as 70 million US dollars. This was a Guinness record at the time, and this record has been maintained for a long time. Many years later, the game style created by Shenmue Only one of the successors, gta4, broke this investment record.

If you don’t understand what 70 million US dollars is, you can make a comparison.

The development funding for The Witcher 3 was only $35 million.

The Witcher 3’s US$35 million was in 2015, while the Shenmue series’ US$70 million was in the mid-to-late 1990s.

Although Shenmue was a project initiated during the Sega Saturn period, because the game was too huge and the functions required were too terrible, it was not completed until the Sega DC.

But it's a pity that because the design concept is too advanced, and Sega DC is too disadvantaged against PS2, even with a super masterpiece like Shenmue, it still inevitably ends up losing in the end. You know, it was launched on DC at that time. The monthly new works are only a fraction of those of PS2.

In the memory article written by a Sega executive that Jester had read, he recalled very movingly the scene when Yu Suzuki proposed to start the Shenmue project.

Suzuki Yu silently played a short demo of a certain game he developed alone during a Sega meeting to discuss the future development direction of Saturn. He was smiling, sitting in his seat, and quietly observing the faces of everyone watching the demo. Their expressions changed from calm to surprised, and then their mouths opened wide, with disbelief in their eyes. Suzuki Yu was very satisfied, and everything was as he expected. (To be continued...)