Game Development Giant

The last option left, ‘View’, also gave Jester a little surprise.

After clicking this option, there is only one entry alone.

fan.

As soon as Jester's finger touched the fan, three different dialog boxes appeared on the virtual screen.

They are: Mars Entertainment, "American Cube", Jester Lee.

The highest number is "American Cube", with the number of fans reaching more than 500,000 - this makes Jester overjoyed, although he knows that "American Cube" is now very popular in the United States, especially in California where he has promoted it. But after all, including the 900 units he initially sold at retail, less than 2,000 machines have been shipped in total, and the order for 10,000 units will take a month and a half to be completed.

So not many people have actually played this game.

Because of the limited number of people.

There are more than half a million, which is an incredible figure. This is equivalent to each machine providing more than 200 fans.

Seeing the success of Jester's previous marketing, the four distributors of Schwere Group also imitated Jester's original promotion plan in California and promoted "American Cubes" to the whole United States. After the market response was extremely enthusiastic, a new order of 5,000 units was immediately placed.

Of course, according to Jester's shamelessness, you must pay in full in advance. If you don't pay the full payment, you won't be given an order at all.

In this way, another US$30 million was obtained.

This made Jester sigh. At this time, Americans are really stupid and have too much money. It seems that the saying is correct. Whoever dares to underestimate the IQ of Americans can make a lot of money.

However, according to Jester's estimation, the sales volume of his "American Cube" arcade machine in a year is probably about 30,000 units. Although this number is very good, it is not too amazing.

For example, Nintendo's "Donkey Kong" arcade machine sold about 60,000 units in a year, while Atari's "Defender" was even higher than this number.

This is not because "American Cube" is not as good as "Donkey Kong" or "Defender", but because the shipping price he gave is too high. Only when the profit situation is very strong, the owners of those arcade stores will compete. If there are more people buying, their average profits will be diluted, and their enthusiasm for buying will be slowed down in a chain reaction.

In other words, his "American Cube" will not conform to the gentle curve of such long-selling games. Its sales curve will become like a roller coaster. I am afraid that the sales volume in the first two months will be very high. After that, the sales dropped like crazy like reaching the bottom of a roller coaster.

There is nothing that can be done about it. Jester knows that if he sells it at a price of less than two thousand US dollars, his sales volume may reach 60,000, 70,000 units a year or even higher. But the problem is that the production capacity is not enough. Next, no matter how popular it is in the early days, I will not be able to sell more machines than now, and the orders will not be more than the current orders. In other words, I will not be able to get as much advance payment as now in the early stages. payment.

For him now, money is the most important thing, especially quick money.

As long as you have enough money, recruit excellent R\u0026D personnel, and make a good enough console, you can make money from any number of "American Cube" arcade machines.

Moreover, the biggest market for "American Cube" is not arcades, but handheld consoles.

For a certain purpose, temporarily sacrificing early profits is very worthwhile in Jester's opinion.

Moreover, Jester plans to launch his own home console near the end of the year. At that time, the enthusiasm for the first batch of purchases of the "American Cube" arcade machine has almost been released. He will launch the home console version and at the same time, he will release the "American Cube" version. Arcade machines are sold at a significant price reduction, which can once again trigger a new buying boom, which can be regarded as squeezing potential.

And, most importantly, he can use the fame of "American Cube" to promote his own console sales.

In this period, it is not easy to sell game consoles in the United States. Even Nintendo back then had no idea how many methods they had come up with, including using various robot light guns to keep them in check. However, they failed to completely solve this problem. In the end, it was the invincible dominance of the super horse that finally solved the ES sales problem.

As for Jester Lee and Mars Entertainment, the number of fans is not high.

After all, Jester just made a game. Except for those who like it too much and ask for details, few people will specifically ask who the designer is.

The number of fans of Mars Entertainment is slightly higher than that of Jester, but it is also very limited. There is still a big gap between the number of fans of "American Cube".

In other words, this time only the game "American Cube" became famous, and the fame of Jester Lee and Mars Entertainment was not widely known.

Exiting from the 'View' page, Jester originally planned to try out "Snowman Brothers" and write down some details in it for reference in design. But unfortunately, at this moment, something happened in his office. Anzhao's phone rang.

It was his mother who called.

The West Coast Chinese party his grandpa is preparing is scheduled for the day after tomorrow, and I hope he can go and help out tomorrow.

Jester promised to be there before dinner this afternoon.

After that, Jester had no choice but to temporarily terminate his plan to try out "Snowman Brothers". Seeing that the time was almost up, Jester also left the office and came to his work area specially set up for game developers.

Because it had just been cleaned up, even though dozens of tables with brand-new computers had been set up, the second floor of Jester's mother's supermarket still looked a little empty.

It was the first time for more than thirty new employees to see this scene, which seemed like working in a large warehouse.

They all exclaimed with some curiosity.

This strange setting actually gave them a sense of freedom.

Jester actually didn't know much about how to arrange a game company's workshop, but he remembered that he had watched a documentary about the history of games, which included interviews with world-class game companies. I remember when we were talking about Rockstar or Club B, a scene flashed across their work scene, something like this. In a wide floor similar to a large warehouse, there were tables lined up one by one, and everyone Everyone has their own place, no special partitions.

Jester liked this layout very much at that time, and it felt very free.

Everyone has unimpeded access throughout the company.

He felt that game designers must work in this kind of free environment, so taking advantage of this opportunity, he copied this layout without hesitation.

Then came the tasks assigned by Jester to the designers.

He had previously obtained from his father the specific parameters of the arcade machine board they would develop next. With the specific parameters, game development could begin.

Of course, although formal development still requires the arcade baseboard to be roughly ready, the hardware research and development department specializes in producing a development machine for this baseboard - but the absence of a development machine does not mean that games cannot be developed.

Jester didn't consider it too difficult. In his opinion, the game "Snowman Brothers" is not something that these designers can independently design without their own circumstances. Moreover, his design draft for this game has not yet been completed. , he plans to start designing after he returns from Los Angeles.

Jester thought about it, and he felt that taking advantage of the current popularity of "American Cube", it might be more appropriate to continue to launch several elimination games to make money.

It happened that when he was giving a speech on how to design a good game to his employees, he mentioned several elimination game design plans, so Jester didn't waste any time and asked these people to take these three games first. Try the game.

"Bejeweled", "Zuma" and "Bubble Bobble".

He has already mentioned the general ideas of these three games before, but the design text of a game cannot rely on just one idea.

So he divided these employees into groups of ten and asked them to each be responsible for the design of a game, but...

Mark Saini looked at Jester with some annoyance. He was a little dissatisfied with Jester's arbitrary distribution method just now. Jester didn't even ask his opinion before - if he didn't also have a game of his own If he needed manpower, he actually felt that Jester's previous allocation was very reasonable.

At this time, Jester remembered Mark Cerny's fighting game called "Avengers". It was in order to meet the needs of Mark Cerney's fighting game that Jester specially asked his father to Improved the design performance of their arcade baseboards by thirty percent.

It can also be seen from this that Jester is also full of expectations for this game that is very similar to "Double Dragon".

In order to make up for his previous negligence, Jester had to apologize repeatedly and promised Mark Cerney to select ten people from the more than thirty people to help him complete the game "Avengers".

Then he watched Mark Saini pick the best ones from these people.

Among them is Will Wright, whom Jester plans to focus on training.

Jester was greatly distressed.

In fact, Mark Cerney has almost completed the design text of the game "Avengers", but as a designer who wants to make the best game, he still wants to make it more perfect, especially the levels and the actions of the characters. , after all, Jester's previous speech had a great impact on him, especially the fact that Jester had designed three games that were no less impressive than "American Cube" in a very short period of time.

In order to make the action in "Avengers" more realistic, he even contacted a Chinese martial artist who opened a martial arts school in Los Angeles to teach Wing Chun and studied Jeet Kune Do to help.

Moreover, Mark Saini himself is not a professional painter, and many setting pictures need to be re-produced.

This all takes a lot of time. After all, "Avengers" is a very huge game in this era. Judging from the capacity of the design text given to Jester by Mark Cerney, in the American game market, There has never been anything comparable to it.

This is no small feat. In fact, in the production process of a game, design is the most time-consuming part, while program implementation does not take up much time in the development process of a game.

It took more than three hours to explain these seemingly trivial matters. After that, Jester, who was in a hurry, left the company in a hurry and drove towards Los Angeles.

The car is a Ford Mustang he just bought. In his last life, Jester liked these powerful American muscle cars, but he was not very interested in those supercars with living coffins.

It was just evening when we arrived in Los Angeles. Jester felt a little hungry, so he drove directly to the Chinese restaurant opened by his grandfather in Los Angeles.

The restaurant opened by his grandfather is called Guangyuan Restaurant. It is very famous in the Chinese circles on the West Coast. It has more than a dozen branches and the business is very prosperous. Moreover, many Americans also like the taste here.

When Jester was studying at UCL, he often came here to help out and earn some pocket money.

Originally, his uncle wanted to give it to him directly, but his grandfather sternly refused, saying that the boy needs to be trained and let him know that only by giving can he get something.

The previous Jester also felt that his grandfather was right, so he would go here whenever he had time during holidays.

Usually his grandfather is based in San Francisco, which is the base camp of the Chinese community on the West Coast, while Los Angeles, the second largest metropolitan area in the United States, is personally in charge of Jester's uncle.

His uncle's craftsmanship is not bad. According to his grandfather, he has already achieved his true level.

But after all, this year's Olympics were held in Los Angeles, and the Chinese gathering organized by his grandfather also used the Olympics brand, so it was not suitable to place it in San Francisco.

Moreover, as far as Jester knew, his grandfather was actually one of the sponsors of the Los Angeles Olympics.

Of course, as the first non-government-sponsored Olympic Games, Los Angeles has dozens of sponsors.

By the time Jester arrived at the Guangyuan Building near Chinatown in Los Angeles, it was already dinner time, and the Guangyuan Building was also packed with people.

It's not just Chinese people who come here to eat. Jester just glanced at it and found that at least half of the guests were white.

As for black people, you don’t see them very often. It’s not because they don’t like to eat, but because black people generally can’t afford it. This is not racial discrimination, but a fact.

The salespersons here are all Chinese, and there are even many international students from China. His grandfather and uncle usually take good care of these students from the mainland, and the salary they give is much higher than that of other unscrupulous restaurants.

Originally this was a matter of public outrage, but Grandpa Jester's status, especially in the Chinese West Coast catering industry, was so transcendent that no one dared to cause trouble for this reason.

As soon as Jester arrived, someone informed him that his grandfather had already arrived and was meeting a guest.

And his grandfather also gave special instructions that if he arrived early, let him go directly to him.

Jester was not surprised that his grandfather knew that he would arrive early. Before he came, he specifically asked his mother to call his uncle, saying that he would arrive in the afternoon.

Jester met his grandfather in a box.

In addition to his grandfather, there was an old white man in this box that Jester was not familiar with.

He is about fifty years old, with slightly curly hair and a square face. Judging from his slightly large nose, he seems to be a Jew.

The white man didn't seem very happy, with a bored look on his face, and his grandfather kept saying something to him, seeming to enlighten him.

Jester felt that the old white man seemed familiar, but for a while he couldn't remember where he had seen him.

Although Jester's grandfather is very old, almost eighty years old, he still looks strong, with a rosy face and a good complexion.

However, Jester knew that his grandfather had a serious illness a few years ago, and his originally good body was weak for a long time, and it only took him a month or two to recover, because he went there on his grandma's memorial day in March. I saw his grandfather in San Francisco. His grandfather's complexion was not very good at that time, far worse than it is now.

Seeing Jester come in, Jester's grandfather waved his hand and motioned for him to come over.

"Xiaojie, this is Grandpa's friend, Sandy Weir. We have known each other since the 1950s." Jester's grandfather had a kind smile on his face and introduced Jester to those around him. This old white man.

The old man named Sandy Weir also turned to look at Jester, with a smile on his face that was originally full of melancholy.

Jester could feel a hint of kindness in his not-so-pretty smile.

"Sandy Weir!"

But when he heard the name coming out of his grandfather's mouth, the look of shock in Jester's eyes flashed away, and his heart felt like it was struck by lightning in disbelief.

Seeing the images slowly overlap with the photos he had seen in later generations, the name that would be all-powerful in the future also became vivid in Jester's mind.

It was Sandy Weir!

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