Game Development Giant - Chapter 838

c832 Sega’s sandbox game

During this time, Sega has also been continuously revealing some details of their super-large new games.

Suzuki Yuya also talked about his game called “Shenmue” in many interviews or other occasions. Jester read some and felt that Suzuki Yuu was not as good for this genre compared to the actual himself. The understanding of sandbox games is deeper. After all, in the original history, Suzuki Yu was a pioneer.

There was no road ahead of him, and no one told him or guided him how to take the road ahead.

Therefore, it was extremely difficult for Yu Suzuki to make “Shenmue”.

From the beginning of the production of the engine, they had to try countless times. After experiencing countless failures, they took the first step. The first time is the most difficult for anything, and the first time is also the hardest to succeed.

The development of “Shenmue” was like this in its original history. The big idea of ​​Yu Suzuki’s game was good, but the biggest mistake he made was that the game had already been built to build a complete and wonderful world. But how should you let players play in this world?

After all, a game is a game, not reality. Therefore, in the game, a lot of settings and system things are needed to guide the players.

In the original Shenmue, this was done poorly.

Of course, in later games, with the experience and lessons Shenmue brought to them, they will naturally be able to do better, but it is very inappropriate to say that they are better than Yu Suzuki and others just based on this.

This time, Suzuki Yu was involved in almost the entire design of the battle system of the game “Heroes” because he was in Jester’s development team. Although at the last moment, due to internal affairs at Sega, he was urgently recalled to Sega headquarters to take charge again. He started the development of the VR Warrior series, but he still asked his favorite disciple Norihiro Nagoshi to participate in the entire production process with the production team.

Jester had no intention of hiding anything, and for Nagoshi Nohiro, he not only allowed him to participate in the development of the combat system. Even for some other subsystems, as long as Nagoshi Minhiro is interested, Jester can let him visit and study at will, and even let him be responsible for part of the work.

Sega recently announced that Shenmue will be the launch game for their next-generation console. Sega is also full of confidence in this game, calling it an attempt by Yu Suzuki and the entire Sega company to combine all their efforts. This will be a more shocking game than “The Hero”. Sega believes they can do it. to this point.

Over the past two years, “The Hero” has been weighing on everyone’s heads like a monument.

Whether you admit this game. Even if you don’t like this game, you can’t deny the impact this game has on the current gaming environment.

It is true that “The Hero” is not the first 3D game, but its impact on the current 3D game industry is not inferior to the shock brought by the original “Quake”.

If the original “Quake” told others that the 3D game world is so wonderful, then “The Hero” tells everyone how wonderful this world is. A designer can make this world What does it look like. What can a player do in this world? “Heroes” has given an almost perfect answer.

Of course, players love the new and hate the old.

Two years later, “Gallant Heroes” is still the only super-large 3D sandbox game on the market. Although other game companies are also very excited, they have to rashly invest huge development funds to develop such a game. Then they don’t dare to do it. Of course, because they have ready-made examples to learn from, the cost they need may only be half of the original Mars Entertainment. Or even a third.

But tens of millions are invested in the development of a game. Needless to say, in 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 develop this top-level AAA sandbox game.

so. Their reputation among players is very high.

In addition, Sega itself has many fans in Europe and the United States. The large number of fans accumulated from the arcade era is very good for Sega as a company.

Moreover, in the field of hardcore action games, Sega is still the leader. Players who like this kind of games also recognize the Sega brand. Now Mars Entertainment has Itagaki Tomonobu to compete with Sega in hardcore action games, but it is the only one.

Sega relies on their deep accumulation in this type of game, and Itagaki Bannobu relies on his talent in this type of game, but in the final analysis, this aspect is indeed the weakness of Mars Entertainment, but then again , although fans of hardcore games are die-hard fans, fans of this type of games are also in the minority.

Just like “Monster Hunter” made by Jester, in essence, this is a hardcore action game. Because it operates on the naturally existing door bars, this will isolate a large number of players from the door. outside.

This is also something that can’t be helped.

Players are naturally looking forward to “Shenmue” with great anticipation. Ever since Jester announced that Mars Entertainment will not restart the development of such a large-scale game project in a short period of time, players have expressed their great expectations. His eyes were on Sega and Yu Suzuki.

As a console manufacturer, Sega also feels that it is necessary for them to have a trump card when the next console war comes. Otherwise, the result may still be the same as this time, a disastrous defeat by Mars Entertainment. .

To be fair, in the sales competition between them and Sony’s PS2 in the first year, although they were not as good as Sony in the Japanese market, the gap was limited, but in the European and American markets, their sales could completely lead Sony’s, but Since the advent of Dreambox 3 by Mars Entertainment, coupled with Jester’s epoch-making game “The Hero”, the entire market has almost turned around.

From the first month’s performance, Sega knew that it might be able to maintain its top spot as the number one console seller in this generation for at most one year, but it didn’t expect that Mars Entertainment only spent half a year, which is half the time Sega predicted. , completed the sales surpassing, which also shocked Sega greatly. They always believed that this was because the extremely excellent game “Heroes” played a very important role in it.

so. After several reflections, coupled with the fact that Yu Suzuki was full of confidence in developing such a game, and relying on the arcade sales of VR Warrior, Sega has made a lot of money in recent years.

Nakayama Hayao said this before in an interview. VR Fighter is Sega’s most important product. They rely on VR Fighter’s profits. Even if they do nothing for three years, the family will not lose money. You can know that. How important VR Warrior is to Sega.

And how high Suzuki Yu’s status is at Sega.

Therefore, Sega agreed to Yu Suzuki’s development plan for “Shenmue”.

For this game, Suzuki Yu is also very ambitious. Of course, what he wants to make is his own “Shenmue”, not “King of Heroes” 2, although the game “King of Heroes” is deeply inspiring to him.

But what he wants to make is his own “Shenmue”, not someone else’s game, so for this game. Suzuki Yu really wanted to make something a little different.

Jester also knows this, and he also likes this concept of game development best. What he doesn’t like is the development method where games are made in the same way, and playing one game is equivalent to playing all the games. Although sandbox games have become popular in later generations, the real core players still have a problem with such sandbox games. Box game is dismissive.

They have a special name for this type of sandbox game, called industrial sandbox.

What is an industrial sandbox?

As the name suggests, for a huge production like a 3D sandbox game, no matter the production team. Regardless of what players expect, this game will actually be viewed as a work of art. What they hope to see is a unique game. Unlike other games, both in terms of gameplay and system, they are twins from the same egg.

First, the finished product is the same as the industrial assembly line, no surprise at all, no meaning at all.

Although the things made by industrial products look very sophisticated, after you come into contact with them, you will not feel the slightest aura.

The most typical industrial sandbox manufacturer may be Ubisoft.

how to say. French companies always have a romantic atmosphere. This is true. Sometimes Ubisoft’s inspiration is very good, especially since they are very good at finding inspiration from other small productions and then making it themselves. big.

For example, they got inspiration from “Ark”, a multiplayer online survival game that was very popular in the second half of 2015, and thus opened FC’s new game “Savage Age”, also known as Far Cry, which is better known as Far Cry. , in this game, players can tame a variety of wild animals, such as commanding wolves to bite enemies, riding mammoths, using owls to rape enemies, etc. They can also tame saber-tooth tiger cats…

It sounds like something out of Lexar Legends.

However, Ubisoft’s sandbox games have a very big common problem.

That’s what I said before, the traces of the industrial sandbox are too obvious, even more obvious than EA’s games.

Ubisoft sandboxes are basically made from the same mold, with a large number of but boring collection elements, a lot of side missions but only a few types. The game process is basically to climb the high ground to open the map, occupy the enemy stronghold to unlock the side lines and equipment, and in the middle Collect all kinds of things, and then occupy the next commanding heights… Repeat the cycle, and you can basically experience more than 70% of the game’s content in the first few hours. By the way, plus a very short main plot.

That’s basically everything Ubisoft’s sandbox is.

So, for Ubisoft’s games, when you look at their promotional CG, you will find that, wow, this idea is awesome, everything is beautiful, but after you actually play it, except for a little innovation, the rest is Ubisoft’s ancestral tradition. The sandbox adds content to it.

This is true from “Assassin’s Creed” to “Far Cry”.

Therefore, many people make fun of Ubisoft’s games, and it’s enough to just watch others play them.

Of course, being an industrial product also has the advantage 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 quality issues. It will not surprise Downey too much, but it will not let you down either. If you are too disappointed, it will always be within a suitable value range. It also requires a certain probability for works like Big Bug to appear.

It is not representative.

Suzuki Yu didn’t want to make such a game. Although he was familiar with the entire production process of “King of Heroes”, what he wanted was not to copy the development process of “King of Heroes”, but to have his own things in it.

Therefore, the development of “Shenmue” took a lot of time when it was initially formed. Now one year later, the development team has basically been formed. The initial team has a scale of close to a hundred people, which is already the largest team Sega has ever formed. The largest team. In fact, if Jester had not formed an unprecedented development team of more than 300 people during the development of “Heroes”, then the largest development team recorded by Mars Entertainment would only have the same size of 100 people. .

Even when the three versions of Jester’s “Monster Hunter” were developed at the same time, the total number of people did not exceed one hundred, but only more than eighty.

Moreover, in the future development of “World of Warcraft”, Jester does not plan to use more than 150 people. Blizzard’s WOW development team was only about 100 people at the beginning. This does not mean that Blizzard cannot build a larger team. For this project, a team of about a hundred people is actually the most efficient scale.

Sometimes, game development does not mean that the more people there are, the more efficient it will be.

While Sega was preparing its own AAA sandbox game, Sony could only covet it, because after all, Sony’s background in video game development was different from that of Sega and Mars Entertainment.

Although they have acquired many third-party studios over the years, they have become a first-party studio.

However, most of these studios are small and medium-sized studios, and they do not have the ability and experience to develop games of this scale.

Game development does not mean that you merge several small and medium-sized game companies and merge three teams of 30 people into a team of 100 people. Then you can make a game that requires a team of 100 people to develop. It is a top-level project. This kind of hastily formed team without a small core team has no efficiency at all. (~^~)