Game Development Giant

Sandy Weill contacted him about the acquisition of Apple's shares, so Jester didn't need to worry about it himself.

He just needs Sandy Weir to make an agreement with someone and then he can pay for it.

Things that can be solved with money are not problems at all in Jester's opinion.

The meeting with Steve Jobs was also a pleasant experience for both parties.

Although Jobs is too proud, even a little proud and arrogant, and Jester doesn't like him, it does not prevent this person's ability from being really outstanding. He is the best product manager in history. This is a sentence that puts The words are extremely suitable for Steve Jobs.

The next thing is to concentrate on developing the game and get rid of all selfish distractions.

My job is still a game designer, and making good games is the most important thing. If I want Dreambox 3 to be released a year later, I have to lead this generation of consoles to face the strong competition from Sega and Sony. The difficulty cannot be said to be small. Only when the game's lineup is strong enough and can be recognized by the players, then it is the source of victory.

Time passed like this day by day.

As December approaches, Sony's promotional activities for the PS2 have almost reached their craziest stage. On the streets of Los Angeles, you can basically see slogans about the PS2 everywhere. For the success of the PS2, Sony can say this this time. No expense was spared, and this is still in the United States. It is said that Sony regards Japan as their own territory.

Promotional activities in Japan were even more intense.

In particular, Sega also plans to expand their market in Japan this time. After all, Nintendo and Mars Entertainment previously dominated the Japanese market, and they had almost no foothold. After Nintendo withdrew from the gaming industry, the two of them quickly took over. The market gap left by Nintendo can be regarded as being able to compete with Mars Entertainment in the Japanese market.

Moreover, Mars Entertainment is an American company after all. Although their Japanese branch has a history as long as their American company, in the eyes of many Japanese, they are still an American company.

The Japanese are a very exclusive and conservative people - if Jester hadn't entered the Japanese market early, and he had indeed produced a large number of god-level games, he would have completely exceeded Nintendo's game camp. It's just a level, I'm afraid, he really can't have the current performance in the Japanese market.

However, the current market share of about 30% should be the limit of what we can do in the Japanese market.

Those other Japanese players. Belongs to the stubborn part.

No matter how good your game is, even if it is designed specifically for the tastes of Japanese players, they probably won’t appreciate it. Just like Microsoft’s Xbox Japan Guide back then, they spent a lot of money and even invited Toriyama. Naru, a Japanese figure like Hironobu Sakaguchi, a legendary cartoonist and the creator of DQ's character design. One is the father of the legendary game designer FF, who created a Japanese-style RPG specifically for Japanese players.

It's almost perfect, for a Japanese RPG.

However, Japanese players still don’t appreciate it.

To be honest, Jester attaches great importance to the Japanese market. It's not so much the console market as it is the handheld market.

The host market is currently able to maintain a market share of 30%, and Jester is very satisfied, in fact. According to their internal predictions, it will be released a year later this time, and Sony and Sega are competing at home. In particular, Sony's brand and sentiment awareness in the minds of Japanese people is still very strong, so it should have a very bad impact on their Dreambox 3.

It should be a good result for the new console to be able to maintain 20%, and then use the five or even six-year console life cycle to expand the market share to 30%.

The handheld console market is now basically dominated by Jester.

Until others are willing to enter this market, basically, I will continue to dominate this market.

Moreover, compared with the sales volume of the European and American markets of consoles, which are higher than those of the Japanese market, in the field of handheld consoles, the Japanese market is not only on par with the European and American markets, but even slightly surpasses it. This situation is also combined by Jester. The conclusion that can be drawn from the history in my mind is that the Japanese handheld market will surpass the European and American markets in the future.

Become the main position.

Moreover, Jester has basically completed the layout of the handheld console. Whether it is the Mario series or the PM series, with these two killer features, the handheld console market has basically been captured by 70%.

The remaining 30% is the mh series that has not been released yet.

It's not that Jester doesn't want to make the mh series. After all, it is because of this game that Capcom can survive in the future. It can defraud players of money by making a few money-making spin-off games, and even the engine does not need to be changed. , any player can accept it.

But the current handheld function does not allow this kind of game to appear. It can be tried on the next generation console first, but the possibility is not high, but even if it is done, there is no time off now, especially My own development plan has basically been determined. After developing 'Era', what I want to do is to prepare a motion-sensing game specifically for the next generation of consoles.

And wow too.

Write this idea down first, and then develop it after you have the right candidate. That's all you can do.

For Jester, the handheld market can be controlled by him for a long time. At least until the big wave of mobile games comes, he can always dominate this market. Even if Sony releases the PSP, there is nothing to worry about. , Satoru Iwata relied on the great dual-screen design of the NDS to overwhelm the PSP with MH and GTA escorts.

Not to mention myself.

If Sony doesn't come, that's all. If it comes, they will be ruined.

As for the later PSV, it was indeed Sony's ambition, and it was indeed an excellent handheld console.

However, they were born at the wrong time, as they appeared at the dawn of the mobile gaming boom. In addition, they lacked the support of powerful handheld masterpieces. As a result, their position was extremely embarrassing. Not only were third parties unwelcome, including Capcom. Even Sony itself doesn’t pay much attention to it.

On the other hand, some otaku games like this platform very much and like to publish some games on it, but what is the use of this?

It can be seen from the incident of psv that it will be a matter of time before handheld consoles are replaced by mobile phones. Even Nintendo at that time was extremely worried. After all, handheld consoles are almost the lifeblood for them.

Putting these thoughts aside for the time being, Jester drove through Los Angeles and then drove to his company's location. Not only can you often see many PS2 advertisements along the way, Sega's advertisements are also not to be outdone. After all, Sega's player base in the United States is still very large, and North American players really like Sega's hard-core style.

Even in the era of Nintendo, Sega's market share in the North American market was not inferior to theirs, and even slightly exceeded them.

But now that Nintendo has withdrawn from the gaming industry, there is no use saying this.

But compared to Mars Entertainment, which is the only one in North America. Sega is still a bit unsatisfied.

In the current world game market, the largest ones are North America and Japan, followed by Europe, and those in South America. The Australian market is considered a small market. One is due to widespread piracy in South America, and the other is due to the small number of people in Australia. Therefore, these places are not the launch locations of the consoles of these two companies.

This Jester's plan is the same.

In this era, it doesn’t make sense to distribute products all over the world at the same time. It is better to concentrate on distributing goods in major markets now.

First North America and Japan, then Europe. When everything is ready and the market stabilizes, South America and Australia will be considered.

When he arrived at the company, Jester could also feel that the expressions of the company's employees had become a little solemn. Jester was a little strange. He casually asked a few people and found out that this was because it was December. , ps2 is about to be released, but their console can only be released a year later, which makes them a little worried, and Jester has nothing to do about it.

After all, others have already started developing games for the new console, while nearly half of his staff still have to develop games for the old console. This must make some people feel uncomfortable.

But there is no way, the old console has a large number of players.

Even after the new console is released, some development work on the old console cannot be stopped.

Some games can be developed on both new consoles and old consoles, so both versions need to be produced.

This kind of development process will last about one year and two years. It is not just like this now, but even many years later, in the era of ps4, it will be like this for many game companies.

The morning routine was the same.

Make improvements strictly according to the plan that has been prepared long ago. In fact, many people, such as many players, will think that game development is a job full of creativity and imagination. In fact, this is true, but Also wrong.

how to say.

At the beginning, the brainstorming style discussion was indeed a process where the imaginations of countless people burst out. Countless ideas and ideas were crushed and flattened during the discussion process, and then merged into one, becoming one New ideas, new plans, and a cross-game development plan were born in this way.

Of course, when developing games, there are countless developers, not just planners, but also programmers, artists, and even chefs cooking in the kitchen. If they have any good ideas, they can put them forward, but in the end Whether to use it or not depends on the situation. If it can be modified simply, use it directly. If you want to use it, you will need to make a lot of changes.

I know that doing this may make the game better, but at this time the game is already halfway through development.

It is obviously impossible to start over.

So you have to give up on this.

But in general, although a lot of inspiration will be born from time to time during development, those inspirations that are really amazing are basically only in the early stages of game development, when it is convenient to modify the initial development plan. , after the game was halfway through development, it was basically put on hold.

Halfway through development, unless the producer or the entire development team is determined to start over.

Otherwise, we won’t go to great lengths to modify the development ideas or concepts, because the game is likely to be inconsistent and disharmonious. It may seem like there are some great ideas, but in fact , the game created makes people think that it is not the case at first sight.

This kind of thing is not uncommon in the history of games.

Therefore, now is the development of the 'Era' project, which is the work on the plan. For the current 'Era', whether it is creativity or inspiration, or to put it in a more advanced way, it is the creation of the game. The sex game has done enough, so much so that even just analyzing the impact of this game on the entire game industry can become a very good doctoral thesis.

Therefore, completing the game on time according to the original plan is more important than anything else.

Jester has rarely come to the company's lounge in the past few years. The current lounge is several times larger than when he first planned to build it. Basically, he comes here to rest after lunch or after being tired from work.

While Jester was eating today, he happened to hear someone say that someone had made something very interesting, and it was becoming popular in the lounge at this time.

Out of curiosity, Jester went to take a look.

When he came to the lounge, he saw many people watching something around several computers.

The motherboard interfaces of these computers have all been modified. Mars Entertainment is not short of such technical geeks. They have trained the controllers on the motherboards of the computers. When Jester went over to take a look, the others saw the big boss arriving and all started to panic. He took the initiative to give up a road so that Jesternen could see clearly.

As a result, what came into Jester's eyes was very surprising and familiar to him.

This is a game editor. To be precise, this is a game level editor. You can edit the levels yourself and then start the game.

The game is the editor of Balotelli, the best-selling game in the Mars Entertainment series. The person who is currently operating on the computer is editing the game levels by himself. From the words of the onlookers, it seems that he has finished editing the levels by himself. After that, I started to challenge myself. Some levels were very difficult. The level that many people edited yesterday was simply insanely difficult.

After looking at this thing.

A game suddenly popped out of Jester's mind.

Isn't this Mario Maker? (To be continued...)