Video Game Empire

Shigeru Miyamoto didn't notice the loneliness in the eyes of his former boss, he just smiled and nodded, with a hint of childlike innocence in his smile: "I also feel that I have gained a lot, so there are so many behind an excellent game. design tricks!"

The tricks that Shigeru Miyamoto mentioned refer to some game design points that Oriental Game Company explained to these Japanese employees during training sessions. [First Release] For example, to control the rhythm of the game, after a relatively difficult map, it is necessary to properly connect some simple maps. In this way, the player can be prevented from being tense all the time, and there is a chance to relax, so that it is not easy to get tired.

Under the intentional guidance of Li Xuan, Dongfang Game Company has summarized these game design ideas into systematic knowledge through continuous internal summary and improvement, which is the basic content that every new entry designer must learn.

Now, the division of labor in game design within Dongfang Game Company has gradually become more systematic and process-oriented, and a complete set of operating mechanisms has been initially established. Hardware design and game development have long been independent of each other. A game development team is subdivided into a planning group, an art group, and a programming group. Everyone has a clear division of labor and performs their own duties.

But the video game industry in the early 1980s was actually still in the pioneering period. Even in a region with a relatively developed game industry such as Japan, the entire industry was far from achieving mature streamlined production. Many Japanese companies develop a game by relying on a few people to conquer the world. Designers must be able to program and solder circuit boards. All of them are all-powerful superhumans.

Yokoi Junpei couldn't help but nodded. He was in charge of a planning team independently within Nintendo, and he felt more deeply about it. For example, the failed game project, from software to hardware, was all done by him. And the game handheld that competes with him. There is a dedicated team for hardware design alone, as well as several supporting game development groups. Under such a gap, if he does not fail, there is no reason.

"Yoki-kun, I recently got an inspiration for a new game!" Shigeru Miyamoto said with a smile.

Watched the "Mario Brothers" that just went on sale not long ago. Shigeru Miyamoto felt that he was very touched. After coming to Hong Kong this time, he had the opportunity to closely analyze the entire process of this excellent game design, which was a very rare learning opportunity for him.

Shigeru Miyamoto got a lot of intentional inspiration from it, and he was ready to redesign a brand new game. Many fragments of childhood fantasies have become more and more clear in my mind recently.

During this time, he finally made up his mind to carefully organize these constantly jumping memory fragments into a brand new game. This is the story of a boy named Link who fights against the big devil and saves the world...

Li Xuan did not know. After he stole Shigeru Miyamoto's famous work, he instead gave him the inspiration to create another classic game in advance. It can only be said that some people are destined to shine! Of course, now that Shigeru Miyamoto is a member of Dongfang Games, Li Xuan can't wait for his achievements to be even more brilliant than in his previous life.

Putting these aside for the time being, Dongfang Game Company's handheld games have been out for more than half a year, and the global sales have reached tens of millions, but the home game console project developed at the same time as it has been delayed again and again.

In fact, Dongfang Game Company's first home phone sample has already been developed, but Li Xuan is not satisfied. The biggest problem is that the cost is too high. The hardware cost of this home phone is more than $100, far exceeding Li Xuan's bottom line. Therefore, all the work after the home machine project team focused on how to reduce the cost without reducing the performance.

In the past year, Dongfang Company has successively launched game handhelds and computers. There are also two new arcade machines, "Pac-Man" and "Mario Brothers." The various departments are almost always on the move, and no one is there to urge the progress of the home machine project.

Finally, Du Wenqiang came to announce the good news to Li Xuan today. The home machine project team has already thought that the cost has been compressed to the extreme, and there is no room for further reduction.

"What is the accounting cost of the machine now?"

Go the way of others. It is Li Xuan's habit of thinking to let others have nowhere to go. There's not a lot of stuff he stole from Nintendo anyway. Not bad for the name of this home machine. Nintendo's machine is the abbreviation of ;, and the machine of Oriental Games is actually the abbreviation of ;.

It means computer, and the home computer promoted by the Eastern Department is a computer, so in order to avoid confusion in the promotion of European and American markets, it is changed to;.

"If it is mass-produced, when we negotiate with suppliers, we will suppress the supply price of parts and components, and the factory cost can be controlled within 80 US dollars!" Du Wenqiang shook his head and said, there is still some gap from the 75 US dollars that Li Xuan originally asked for.

"That's it, the cost is really unstoppable, we can only increase the retail price a little bit!" Li Xuan said with a smile.

He has never urged the progress of the mobile phone project before, considering that the games reserved for the home computer platform are not rich enough. But now, Dongfang Games has perfectly ported "Hong Kong Cube", "Pac-Man", "Tank Wars" and the newly launched "Mario Brothers" to the platform.

In addition, the Japanese R&D department of Oriental Game Company recently developed a good baseball game for the machine. There are five games released in the first phase of this platform, involving puzzles, action games, shooting and sports. The richness is sufficient, and most of them are classic games with sufficient market foundations.

The home game console market is no different than the previous handheld and arcade markets, and it will be much more difficult for Dongfang game companies to succeed. There was almost no concept of handheld game consoles before the game was launched. The only competitor, game, was just launched, and it didn't have time to gain a firm foothold, so Dongfang Games was able to quickly swept the market.

Although the competition in the arcade market is very fierce, users do not have consumption stickiness. As long as there are high-quality games, they can immediately attract a large number of players. Home game consoles are different. If Dongfang Games cannot come up with a game console that is much better than its competitors on the market, it will be difficult to grab market share.

Now the most popular in the European and American markets is undoubtedly Atari's -2600 home game console. This game console, launched in 1977, has been in the market for four years, and no other competitor has been able to shake its market position.

Li Xuan can only shake his head. In his opinion, the performance of the -2600 is already outdated, and most of the game graphics released on game consoles are rough and inferior. But it can still occupy the largest market share. It can only be said that those competitors are worse than it. There are really no tigers in the mountains, and monkeys dominate.

This also made Li Xuan full of confidence in the machine, and let Dongfang Game Company be a strong intruder, completely breaking and rebuilding the current market pattern.

"Xiao Lisheng, we have reached an agreement with Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment. The Americans agreed to fine-tune the script and add a scene of aliens playing with the male protagonist on the computer, with a shot of no less than 30 seconds! "Du Wenqiang said, pointing to the last document.

Not long ago, Li Xuan suddenly asked Dongfang Game Company to place an advertisement on an American movie that had just been approved. This is a sci-fi movie about aliens and little boys, directed by Spielberg, who made a series of box office hits such as "Jaws" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

It's a pity that Du Wenqiang doesn't know him well. Compared with Hollywood movies, he prefers to watch Hong Kong movies. At this time, American blockbusters have not yet begun to sweep the world, at least in Southeast Asia, the era of Hong Kong films is rampant.

Du Wenqiang couldn't guess his boss, why he was so optimistic about this movie that had not yet started shooting. In order to get the other party to agree to revise the script, Dongfang Games increased the cost of implantation to US$4 million. Universal Pictures finally became tempted and persuaded the director and producer to agree to Dongfang Games’ request.

Unlike the immature practice of Hong Kong directors who may revise their scripts at any time, the American Hollywood film industry is already very mature. A script has been revised at least dozens of times from the initial creation to the final shooting. Such fine-tuning of the script for the purpose of placing advertisements in this way can only be approved by the producers without affecting the outline and paying a high price.

The information obtained by Du Wenqiang shows that the total budget of the alien sci-fi film called "et" is only 10.5 million US dollars, while the implanted advertising fee of Dongfang Game Company is only 4 million US dollars. The other party recovered a half of the cost before the shooting started, which undoubtedly greatly reduced the investment risk.

Of course, the $4 million is not just advertising placement fees, but also the exclusive game adaptation rights for the "et" movie. Looking at the agreement at hand, Li Xuan was already happy.

"et" is hailed as one of the most touching films of the 20th century~www.readwn.com~ After its release next year, it swept the box office of 620 million US dollars in the global market. This box office record has been maintained for ten years. "Jurassic Park" in the 1900s broke.

"Do those Americans think I'm a big deal, and he will regret it next year!" Li Xuan looked at Du Wenqiang's tangled face and knew that he was not optimistic about his investment, so he smiled and comforted. .

In such a great movie that was well-received and well-received, the game console was able to get a lot of 30-second appearance shots, and also obtained the right to adapt the game. Li Xuan can even imagine the wonderful expression on the face of the president of Universal Pictures after the box office comes out next year.

In his memory, after the box office hit of "et", Atari paid at least $20 million in copyright fees to Universal Pictures in order to obtain the rights to adapt the game.

As a result, the game production time was severely squeezed due to the prolonged delay in the copyright negotiation. In order to get to market as soon as possible, Atari rushed to produce a shoddy "et alien" game. This directly induced the collapse of the US home machine market in 1983. (To be continued..)

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