Game Development Giant

Everyone in the audience was attracted by what Jester said.

When Jester said that the development time of this game would be very long, everyone held their breath, with extremely curious expressions on their expressions.

And Jester's next words did not disappoint them. To be precise, Jester's next words really surprised them. They even burst out in exclamation involuntarily, and at the same time, the look on his face Almost in an instant, curiosity turned into disbelief.

“According to the current conditions, whether it is hardware or software, I know that completing such a game is tantamount to wishful thinking. Therefore, the development time I envision for this game may be as long as five years. , even six years, it may be longer, and I have only made a preliminary estimate of the R\u0026D funds to be invested, which will probably not be less than 200 million US dollars.

Jester finished these words in a very calm tone, because he had thought about these in his mind countless times and weighed them countless times. He really wanted to make such a product that would make everyone feel that this The correct way to open the world should be a game like this.

And sandbox games with a high degree of freedom are indeed the best choice.

Although making a game like Resident Evil on future consoles is enough to shock the world, making a game like Final Fantasy 7 can indeed completely change the creative thinking of the gaming industry.

Indeed, it was precisely because of Resident Evil that the unknown Shinji Mikami became famous and eventually became a master of horror games. It is also true that it was Final Fantasy 7 that made Square Enix famous in Europe and the United States and made Sony famous. PS has completely gained a foothold, and even affected future game development ideas. These games have indeed received a great response.

However, Jester still felt that it was not enough.

Because what he wants to do is to introduce the culture of a strange country. A comprehensive introduction of ideas to a group that knows almost nothing about this country's culture and ideas.

Although Jester previously believed that as long as the game was good enough, it wouldn't be a big deal even if he didn't understand the culture.

For example, The Witcher 3.

But in fact, although Poland has been the base of piracy in Eastern Europe after the Cold War and has a low income level, in fact, Polish culture is still part of the culture of the Western world. Needless to say, they have Marie Curie who can be ranked in the history of human science. Among the figures in the top twenty or even the top ten, even in history, they still had Polish Hussars. They had been the shield of Catholicism, the strongest line of Eastern defense against the pagans.

In other words, they also belong to the Christian cultural circle.

Therefore, there is no problem in Western society in accepting Polish culture. There will not be too many barriers. Even if there are barriers and surprises, they will be easily understood and accepted.

Just like we can easily understand the culture of East Asian countries, because it is like a Christian cultural circle. There is still a Greater China cultural circle in this world.

But here's the problem.

It is not that simple to get people in the Christian cultural circle to accept things from the Greater China cultural circle.

This may be somewhat inaccurate. To be precise, it is very difficult.

Just like many Japanese games, such as Dragon Quest, Japan's national game, it is so popular in Japan. It is deeply loved. In Jester’s memory, this game is also very popular in China. However, in Europe and the United States, this game does not want to be as popular as its equally famous Final Fantasy. To say that it is not that popular is still a cover-up.

To be precise, this game basically does not have many fans in the European and American world. The reason is very simple. This game is too Japanese.

Therefore, although Europeans and Americans can accept games from Japanese companies and even like them very much, the games they like are very popular and do not have a particularly obvious cultural style. It can even be said that they are more Western-oriented games.

For example, Monster Hunter, which is very popular in Japan and China and is ridiculed by some as the number one game in the universe, is a best-selling masterpiece that can sell one or two million units a week in Japan, but its sales in Europe and the United States are disastrous. This is also the reason. The reason is that the style is too Japanese.

Therefore, he wants players in the European and American world to accept the game he wants to make. It is impossible to do it without a lot of effort. In fact, this game must not just be regarded as a good game. Because anyone can make a good game, you can make it yourself, Sega can make it, Sony can make it, or even any third-party company that is willing to invest enough energy can make it.

What I want to do is a game that other companies will never be able to make in a short period of time, no matter how hard they try.

A game where no one who sees this game, or even just hears his plans for this game, will call him a lunatic for overestimating his abilities. This is what he wants to do.

Therefore, he came up with such a game plan that even he himself felt was a little premature.

Because Jester knows better than anyone else that the game he is describing, if completed according to current technology, is about the same difficulty as trying to refine the elixir of life or the philosopher's stone. Basically, impossible.

Therefore, he asked the hardware development department to do everything possible to improve the hardware skills on the next-generation console, even using previous solutions that were abandoned because they might affect the difficulty of development. That's why he said This game will take up to five years to develop, with a development investment of at least $200 million or something like that.

This is not bragging, he is telling the truth.

But precisely because what he said was so true, after hearing what he said, the fans below the stage obviously found it difficult to accept or understand what they just heard from Jester's mouth. The words spoken in.

A game?

At least five years of development?

At least $200 million in development funds?

How many people are needed?

Just when such an idea popped up in everyone's mind, Jester immediately answered their questions in the following speech.

Although I have not carefully calculated the size of this development team, based on my own previous experience, it is not impossible that the number of people in this development team will be at least two hundred or more, and even reaching three hundred people is not impossible.

As Jester finished speaking, there was another gasp from under the table.

Including Hayao Nakayama and Yu Suzuki, who looked a little uncomfortable after hearing what Jester said on the stage.

It takes three hundred people just to develop a game?

As the president and head of Sega, Hayao Nakayama naturally knows the size of a game development team. Generally speaking, some small third-party development companies are not very accurate when they are called development companies. In fact, they are just some that have just been established. See The game market is booming, and the number of people in the studio who want to get a share of the pie varies from one person to several people who know each other, but generally there are no more than five or six people, and they only make some very simple small games.

The investment in developing a game, excluding some hardware losses and labor, is several thousand dollars.

Like some larger third-party game development companies, the size of their development team may not be much larger than that of these small studios that cannot even be called formal. It may only have five or six people, or even eleven or twelve people. Scale, after all, these game companies also developed from these informal studios, but they did not develop slowly.

The current game market is a market of survival of the fittest. For those small studios, one game or two games at most. If they do not make any money, they have no way to continue investing in research and development, then it is a dead end.

Even though the game market is so hot right now, there are countless game companies that have made a lot of money from the success of a game.

But in fact, the number of dead game companies is dozens of times higher than this.

In fact, the vast majority of game development companies cannot even pass the review of the host platform company and achieve the qualifications to sell their own games on the platform.

Although the scale of these small third-party companies is not much greater than that of studios that can only be regarded as garage companies, their investment in games is much greater than that of these informal studios, ten times. It is a minimum, and the investment in the research and development of a game ranges from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Therefore, the games they develop are much more sophisticated than these small studios.

Of course, it doesn't mean you can definitely buy it if it is sophisticated, players will buy it. Likewise, if a few games fail, they will not escape the fate of death.

And for some third-party development companies that are not inferior to their first-party developers in scale, such as Capcom and Konami, their development investment and staff size for a game are the same as their first-party developers. Groups are almost the same, and even some very popular games, their investment will be more, but even so, the development cost of a game is hundreds of thousands of dollars to just over a million dollars, more than 20 or more than 30 dollars. developers are enough.

Even the current development team in the industry can reach 30 people. Not counting the development team of Mars Entertainment, there are not many in the entire industry.

What kind of game is he going to make?

It was precisely because he knew this that Hayao Nakayama could not help but ask Suzuki Yu next to him with a trembling voice, because the development team of several hundred people was completely beyond his understanding. (To be continued...)