Chapter 832 Sega's Sandbox Game
During this period, Sega has also been constantly revealing some details of their large-scale new games.
Yu Suzuki also talked about his game called "Shenmu" in many interviews or other occasions. Jester watched some of it and felt that Yu Suzuki compared himself to the original actual situation, his understanding of this type, that is, the sandbox game is a step further. After all, in the original history, Yu Suzuki was a pioneer.
There is no road ahead of him, no one told him to guide him, how to walk the road ahead.
Therefore, it was extremely difficult for Yu Suzuki to do "Shenmu".
From the start of engine production, they have to try countless times, and after experiencing countless failures, they have taken the first step. Everything is the most difficult to do, and the first time is also the most difficult to succeed.
This is how "Shenmu" opened in the original history. Yu Suzuki's game has a good idea, but the biggest mistake he made is that the game has been built and built a perfect and wonderful world. But how should you let players play games in this world?
After all, games are games, not reality, so in the game, there are many settings and many things on the system to guide players.
This is not done well in the original version of Shenmue.
Of course, the game later needed, and after the experience and lessons that Shenmu brought them, they naturally could do better, but it was very inappropriate to say that they were better than Yu Suzuki and others based on this alone.
This time, Yu Suzuki participated in the design of almost the entire "Haoxia" game combat system in the opening group of Jester. Although at the last moment, due to internal affairs of Sega, he was urgently recalled to Sega headquarters to re-engage the VR warrior series, he still asked his proud disciple Minoro Natsuki to join the production team to complete the entire production process.
Jester has no intention of hiding his own privateness. For Natsuo Minami, he not only lets the other party participate in the opening of the combat system. Even some other subsystems, as long as Natsuo Minami is interested, Jester can let him visit and study casually, and even let him be responsible for part of his work.
Sega recently announced that "Shenmu" will be their next-generation console game. Sega is also confident about this game, calling it an attempt by Yu Suzuki and the entire Sega company to join forces. It will be a more shocking game than "Haohan", and Sega believes they can do this.
In the past two years, "The Legend of Heroes" has been pressing on everyone's heads like a monument.
Whether you admit this game or don’t like this game, you can’t deny the impact of this game on the current gaming environment.
It is true that "Hao Hero" is not the first 3D game, but its impact on the current 3D gaming industry is not inferior to the shock brought by "Thor Hammer".
If "Thunder Hammer" told others that the 3D game world was so wonderful, then "Haoxia" told everyone how wonderful this world is, what a designer can make this world look like. What a player can do in this world - "Haoxia" has made an almost perfect answer.
Of course, players are fond of the old and new.
Two years have passed, "Haoxia" is still the only large-scale 3D sandbox game on the market. Although other game companies are also very excited, they are not very brave to ask them to rashly invest huge amounts of money to open a game like this. Of course, because of ready-made examples, the cost they need may only be half or even one-third of the original Mars Entertainment.
But if you invest tens of millions of dollars in the opening of a game, there are no need to mention this era, even fifteen years later, few game companies have such courage.
Sega is the first company after Mars Entertainment to announce that they will also open this top 3a sandbox game.
So. They have a very high reputation among players.
In addition, Sega has many fans in Europe and the United States, and the large number of fans accumulated from the arcade era is very beautiful for Sega.
Moreover, in the field of hard-core action games, Sega is currently the only one. Players who like this type of game also recognize Sega's brand. Now Mars Entertainment has Itagaki Forest and can compete with Sega in hard-core action games, but this is the only one.
Sega relies on their deep accumulation in this type of game, and Itagaki Matsushi relies on his outstanding talents in this type of game, but in the final analysis, it is indeed the weakness of Mars Entertainment in this regard. But then again, although fans of hardcore games are loyal, fans of this type of game also account for a small number.
Just like "Monster Hunter" made by Jester, essentially, this is a hard-core action game. Because it operates the naturally existing doorbars on it, this will cause a large number of players to be isolated outside the door.
This is also impossible.
Players are naturally extremely expecting "Shenmu". Since Jester announced that in a short period of time, Mars Entertainment will not restart the opening of such a large-scale game project again, players have placed their extremely anticipated eyes on Sega and Yu Suzuki.
As a host manufacturer, Sega also feels that they need to have a killer weapon in their hands when the next host battle comes. Otherwise, the result may still be the same as this time, and they will be defeated by Mars Entertainment.
To be honest, in their first year of sales competition with Sony's P2, although they are not as good as Sony in the Japanese market, the gap is limited, but in the European and American markets, their sales can be completely ahead of Sony's. However, since the release of the DreamWave X3 of Mars Entertainment, coupled with the epoch-making game "Hao Hero", it has almost reversed the entire market.
From the performance of the first month, Sega knew that it might be the top player sales in this generation, which could last for up to one year. However, it was unexpected that Mars Entertainment only took half of the time, which was half of Sega's prediction, and it completed the sales increase. This also shocked Sega. They always believed that this was because the extremely outstanding game "Haoxia" played a very important role in it.
So, after several thoughts, and Yu Suzuki is full of confidence in opening such a game, and relying on the arcade sales of VR Warriors, Sega has made a lot of money in recent years.
Shiroozuo Nakayama said in an interview before that the VR warrior is Sega's most important work. They rely on the VR warrior's profit, and they will not do anything even in three years, and the aristocratic family will not lose money. You can know how important the VR warrior is to Sega.
And how high Yu Suzuki's status in Sega is.
So, Sega agreed to Yu Suzuki's plan for "Shenmu".
Yu Suzuki is also very ambitious for this game. Of course, what he wants to do is his own "Shenmu" instead of "Haoxia" 2, although the game "Haoxia" is deeply enlightening for him.
But what he wanted to do was his own "Shenmu", not someone else's game, so for this game, Yu Suzuki really wanted to make something different.
Jester also knew this. He also liked the concept of opening games the most. What he didn't like was the same game. Playing a game is equivalent to playing all the games. Although sandbox games have become popular in later generations, the real core players still disdain for such sandbox games.
They have a special name for this type of sandbox game, called industrial sandbox.
What is an industrial sandbox?
As the name suggests, a huge production like a 3D sandbox game, whether it is a production team or what players expect, this game will actually be seen as a work of art. What they want to see is a unique game, rather than other games, whether it is gameplay or system, no matter how you look at it, it is a twin thing.
First, it was like a finished product from the industrial assembly line, with no surprise or meaning at all.
Although you look very good from industrial finished products, you can't feel any aura after you come into contact with it.
The most typical industrial sandbox manufacturer may be Ubisoft.
How to say it? French companies always have a romantic atmosphere, which is true. Ubisoft's inspiration is sometimes very good, especially they are very good at finding inspiration from other small productions and then making them bigger by themselves.
For example, they got inspiration from "Ark", a multiplayer online survival game that was very popular in the second half of 15, and then opened the Fc, which is far crying, and is more famous for its new work "Barrief Age". In this game, players can tame a variety of wild animals, such as directing wolves to bite enemies, riding mammoths, using owls to see enemies, etc., and taming saber-toothed tiger cats...
It sounds like it's the Lexus legend.
However, there is a very big common problem with this kind of sandbox game from Ubisoft.
That is what I said before, the traces of industrial sandbox are too obvious, even more obvious than those of EA's games.
Ubisoft Sandbox is basically produced in the same mold, with massive but boring collection elements, a large number of side tasks but only a few types. The game process is basically to climb commanding heights to open the map, occupy the enemy's stronghold to unlock the branches and equipment, collect variously in the middle, and then occupy the next commanding heights... Repeat the cycle, and you can basically experience more than 70% of the game content in the first few hours. By the way, add a very short main plot.
This is basically everything about Ubisoft's sandbox.
So, for Ubisoft’s games, when you look at their promotional CG, you will find that, wow, this idea is very, everything is beautiful, but after you really play it, except for a little innovation, the rest are all Ubisoft’s ancestral sandbox to make up the content.
This is true from Assassin's Creed to "Crying Away".
So many people joke about Ubisoft’s game, and it’s almost done when you watch others play it.
Of course, as an industrial product, there are also the benefits of industrial products, that is, you don’t need to worry too much about the quality of this game, because the characteristic of industrial products is the quality issue. He will not be too surprised by Donnie, but it will not disappoint you too much. He will always be within a suitable value range. It also requires a certain chance of appearing works like ug.
Not representative.
Yu Suzuki didn't want to make such a game. Although he was familiar with the entire production process of "Haoxia", what he wanted was not to copy the opening process of "Haoxia", but to have his own things in it.
Therefore, it took a lot of time to start the opening of "Shenmu" in the early stage. Now a year has passed, the opening team has basically been formed. The initial team has a scale of nearly 100 people, which is already the largest team that Sega has ever formed. In fact, if Jester had not formed a team of more than 300 people for the first time when "Haoxia" was launched, then the largest team of Mars Entertainment recorded is the same as the 100 people.
Even when the three versions of Jester's "Monster Hunter" were opened at the same time, the total number of people did not exceed one hundred, but only about eighty.
Moreover, in the future World of Warcraft, Jester was not planning to use a scale of 150 people. At that time, Blizzard's O-Travel team was about 100 people. It was not that Blizzard could not form a larger team, but this project, about 100 people was actually the most efficient scale.
Sometimes, the game is opened, not to say that the more people there are, the more efficient it is.
When Sega was preparing its own 3a sandbox game, Sony could only be jealous because Sony's background in electronic games was far behind Sega and Mars Entertainment.
Although they have acquired many third-party studios over the years, they have become first-party ones.
However, most of these studios are small and medium-sized studios, and they do not have the ability and experience to open games of this scale.
Game development does not mean that if you merge several small and medium-sized game companies and merge three teams of thirty people into a team of 100 people, then you can do a top-level project that requires a team of 100 people to start. This kind of team formed rashly without a small core team has no efficiency at all. (To be continued.)
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Chapter completed!