Game Development Giant

Jester knew that Li Kewen was in poor health.

Moreover, uremia is not a particularly difficult disease to treat in the United States in this era.

Before coming to the United States, Li Kewen's family also explained Li Kewen's physical condition to Jester. Jester had known about it for a long time, so there was no doubt about it.

In fact, Li Kewen's family had previously planned for him to undergo a kidney transplant in China as soon as possible. However, firstly, it was difficult to find a kidney source. Moreover, after all, domestic medical conditions were somewhat different from those abroad. Some famous surgeons, It may be necessary to have a trust relationship arranged, and Li Kewen's condition has not worsened, so a kidney transplant has not been performed.

After Jester found out about this, he was very kind and righteous.

He said that he would arrange a kidney transplant for Li Kewen immediately after arriving in the United States. However, Li Kewen's family was worried that the medical expenses in the United States would be too high, but Jester gave up the idea.

The first is that as a future student at UCLA, he has medical insurance.

Secondly, even after the insurance, the cost was still very high, and Jester promised that he would bear it. This also made Li Kewen himself and even his family very grateful to Jester, and even gave birth to Li Kewen. A feeling of dying for a confidant.

By the way, Kewen, your kidney source has been identified. Your kidney transplant will be arranged probably in October this year.

Jester informed Li Kewen of the news.

After hearing the news, Li Kewen's excitement was indescribable. For him, uremia is a disease he has been fighting since he was a child. Now that there is hope of a complete cure, he said it would be impossible not to be excited. Yes, his eyes were filled with tears, and he wanted to say thank you, but suddenly he felt that the word thank you was too slight, and there was no way to express his gratitude.

You don't need to thank me. For me, I am investing in your future, and I am optimistic about your future.

Jester comforted her like this.

Time passed very quickly, and soon it was November of 1999. According to the habits of previous years, Mars Entertainment will generally hold a carnival at this time, and this year will be no exception.

The competition for next-generation consoles is now almost fierce.

Sega was ahead of the curve, even not so long ago. They announced that the development of their first-generation DC prototype has been completed and can officially enter the testing phase. During the testing phase, the design and hardware performance will be continuously improved. Sega even announced that, as expected, Next year, they will release their new console.

In fact, the reason why Sega is so impatient is because their SS can't keep up with the rhythm of this console melee.

The first is Sega's choice between 2D and 3D. They made the wrong bet.

This is destined to make it difficult for them to achieve satisfactory results in this generation. Although in the first two years, their sales lagged behind Mars Entertainment's Dreambox 3, they still had an advantage over Sony's PS2.

Relying on their strong R\u0026D capabilities and extremely loyal Sega fans, they are still able to hold on to a territory that belongs to them.

But as Sony acquires a large number of first-party studios, as they woo Japanese game companies, and as 3D game development technology becomes more and more mature, Sega's shortcomings in this area will no longer exist. Revealed once and for all. Therefore, in the past two years, their SS sales have begun to decline significantly, even recently. Their console sales were overtaken by Sony's PS2.

This makes Sega people have to come up with their new console as soon as possible to deal with this situation. Moreover, with the shrinkage of the arcade market, Sega has always thought that they have no worries. Sega also feels a very urgent crisis, which represents them. The transformation must be successful, even if it is to come up with a successful console, it is something they must complete at this stage.

For body sensation. Sega's investment in large-scale arcade machines is much deeper than that of Mars Entertainment. In terms of somatosensory, at least the research on arcade-type problems is also more in-depth.

However, there are still some differences between the somatosensory experience on home machines and the somatosensory effects on arcade machines, and they cannot be easily applied.

Moreover, Sega is not too optimistic about the potential of motion sensing at this stage, but they are optimistic about the potential of motion sensing in the future. Sega still insists that at least in the next era, games will still be dominated by 3D games. As for the next It's hard to predict what the situation will be like in a generation. It may be that somatosensory will arise, or it may not.

The advantages and disadvantages of its physical game are obvious.

After all, having made somatosensory games on arcade machines for so many years, Sega still consciously has some say in the research of this type of game.

Somatosensory can extremely profoundly enhance the player's sense of immersion when playing games. This sense of immersion is completely unimaginable for players who just play with a joystick or controller.

But the weakness is also here, that is, it is difficult to play a game like this.

Many players may find it fresh when they play it for the first time, and feel that such players are unparalleled, but after playing it a few times, they will feel that the freshness is no longer there. It is very difficult to make a somatosensory game fresh. .

Sega doesn't know if Jester, Shigeru Miyamoto and now Mars Entertainment have this ability, but they know that even if they have this ability, it will take a huge amount of time.

Therefore, Sega has focused all the main performance of their new console DC on 3D.

Especially this time there is also Shenmue by Yu Suzuki.

This is a more ambitious work than Jester's The Hero a few years ago, and even in the eyes of many people at Sega, it is an even better work. Suzuki Yuya firmly believes in this, and Shenmue is indeed He devoted all his efforts and invested nearly 100 million US dollars in development. Of course, compared with the 200 million US dollars in research and development investment of The Hero, the 100 million US dollars in promotion expenses is an extremely astonishing figure even now.

But that's because of the times.

That was the first time someone tried to make a sandbox game. It was started from scratch, and because of functional issues, a huge amount of money had to be spent on research and development time and investment.

This has resulted in high R\u0026D funding for this game.

This was actually no longer the case when Shenmue was being developed. First of all, with the introduction of Heroes as a guide, Suzuki Yu and his team are no longer like a blind man touching an elephant quietly in this type of game. Instead, you can plan out a complete game structure from the beginning, whether it is gameplay or other aspects.

This alone saved at least one-third of the investment for Shenmue.

There are of course more other places to save investment.

But even so, the game Shenmue still costs close to $100 million in development investment. This number is also astonishing. In fact, it can be seen that Sega has the courage to invest so much money in a game.

There is also a share of Jester's contribution to this.

That is the kind of phenomenal phenomenon caused by the game Heroes, which can significantly increase the purchase price of a game player. Many players even bought Dreambox 3 just for the game Heroes, and some even Many people who were not gamers before started to buy game consoles to experience the fun of games only because of the sensation caused by The Heroes at that time.

It is precisely because of this that Dreambox3 can be unstoppable from the beginning. ruled for a generation.

Sega believes that this process can be replicated.

And they also placed their bets on Yu Suzuki. Suzuki Yu's talent is undisputed and he is one of the best game designers in the world. Moreover, he also participated in Jester's Heroes project, In particular, the combat system of Heroes is basically from the hands of Yu Suzuki, although Yu Suzuki later came back to play Sega's VR Warrior series to restore its reputation.

But his disciples still stayed in the development team of Heroes until the entire game was developed.

It can be said that Yu Suzuki's Shenmue development team. In fact, apart from Mars Entertainment, they are the only development team in the world that has such a large-scale sandbox game with a large architecture.

This is where Sega's confidence lies.

As long as Shenmue can be a big success, then DC can be a big success.

It will be very difficult to defeat Mars Entertainment in the next generation, and Sega is also very open-minded. Because Mars Entertainment's software research and development capabilities are too strong now, but with its victory over Sony, it shouldn't be a big problem.

So during this period, Sega is also trying its best to create topics about DC and Shenmue. Attract more people's attention.

Suzuki Yuya has high hopes for this game, which is where his entire game idea is entrusted. Therefore, although he didn't like to be interviewed at first, he still accepted several interviews for the future of this game.

Of course, players’ expectations for this game are also unparalleled.

Japanese players are still second.

After all, Japanese players prefer the previous Nintendo and the current Sony series. For Sega and Mars Entertainment, they will even choose Mars Entertainment when choosing between the two. It is simple, because Mars Entertainment has Shigeru Miyamoto.

But for European and American players, Sega is the second largest game company after Mars Entertainment.

Because they have more than 20 years of arcade influence, almost all European and American players have been exposed to Sega games in their childhood.

It is not an exaggeration to say a word of sentiment.

Coupled with the huge influence of Suzuki Yu and his games in Europe and the United States, the entire European and American player community is still full of expectations for Shenmue. Even the comprehensive game discussion board of the Mars Entertainment player community allows discussion of all In gaming circles, players often discuss some Sega games, especially Yu Suzuki's games, which are often mentioned.

Shenmue is certainly the most discussed.

Even Jester personally came to this forum to reply to questions about Shenmue because some people said that Suzuki Yu borrowed a technical team from Mars Entertainment when developing Shenmue. Otherwise, it would be like Super Large-scale sandbox games are probably not something Sega can complete.

However, Jester himself denied it in the post.

He said that he did discuss the game Shenmue with Yu Suzuki, but the discussion was not in depth. In fact, his understanding of this game is not much better than that of outside players.

After all, for such a major project, Sega's internal confidentiality is still very strict, and of course he, a person from the 'enemy' game company, cannot know too clearly. As for technology and other things, these are all things that have no trace.

Moreover, Jester also said that Sega's development power is actually very strong.

But because it is too scattered.

If Sega can gather the power of their seven subsidiaries, it may be enough to be on par with the development capabilities of Mars Entertainment headquarters.

There are two things that attract the most attention at the Carnival.

One is a new game, and the other is the finals of the World E-Sports Competition, a game owned by Mars Entertainment. The prizes for games are getting higher and higher. This year, the project with the highest prize money has just been released and it has become a game less than three years ago. The most popular PC game Counter-Strike, and the championship prize of this year's Counter-Strike finals exceeds 5 million US dollars, and the total prize money of this project exceeds 8 million.

Mars Entertainment even sold the TV broadcast rights to the Counter-Strike World Grand Prix Finals for a broadcast fee of up to three million US dollars.

Naming rights were also sold for a million.

Even some sports media said that there are not many projects that can compete with e-sports in terms of prize money.

Of course, in terms of influence, e-sports still cannot be compared with normal sports. Even in the United States, many people still think that playing games as a career is not a serious job.

Jester also knew that this kind of ideological reversal would take time.

The current situation is much better than in the original history. In the original history, there were not even such large-scale e-sports competitions at this time, and there were only some small fights. Jester remembers watching After an expansion pack, people from Riot Games recalled how current e-sports is different from previous e-sports.

They said that more than ten years ago, people did not accept e-sports at all, but more than ten years later, a game competition can attract players from all over the world, traveling thousands of miles to come here. Watch.

It can even fill venues with tens of thousands of people.

The changes, especially the changes in concepts, are astonishing. (~^~)