A real cheat was blocked, and the game industry was rectified with a backhand

next day

Daily life in China.

Soni is a very special company.

Although its corporate headquarters is in Hong Kong, most of its first-party studios are in the Beacon Country.

The same is true for "Seven Days Later".

On this day, the headquarters and the production team of "Seven Days Later" launched a very important online seminar.

The plan I used was the one I just brought back.

All participants signed confidentiality agreements and reviewed the content in advance.

At the meeting.

Fujimoto said seriously: "Please express your opinions."

Güler, the director of Little Devil Studio, the development team of "Seven Days Later", thought for two seconds and said, "If it wasn't confirmed to be the work of Lin Mo, I would have suspected that it was made by a third-rate designer. This story gives me a very strange feeling. If it were me, I wouldn't have the courage to promote it to the market."

The technical director also spoke: "Some of these gameplays are impossible to implement now, otherwise it means remaking the game, which will take a year to a year and a half. However, some of the techniques and details are sophisticated, and they feel like Naughty Cat."

The screenwriter nodded and said, "It's a bold story. I don't understand why the plot was designed this way. It's just like the fragmented narrative of Dark Souls when I first saw it. Maybe the Naughty Cat team is showing off their skills? We need to consider the audience of Playsquare players."

Among them, the manager who was parachuted in by Souni questioned: "However, can such an important thing be obtained easily? Is it a trap?"

The technical director shook his head and said, "Probably not. The controversial point is only about the story. The core of this plan is also the story, but the gameplay framework and game system are also amazing. It can be seen that it was made with great effort. It is not the kind of thing that third-rate game developers use to defraud investors."

Fujimoto heard it.

The production team still believes that this plan came from Naughty Cat.

But the problem remains.

The only part that can be used as a reference is the story.

The main body of the game has been basically developed and can be released after some optimization.

Currently, only the story can be changed with relatively little effort.

The gameplay has been finalized.

But this story is controversial and it is uncertain whether players will accept it.

"But Naughty Cat has written enough controversial stories, hasn't it?" Fujimoto looked at the screenwriter of Little Devil Studio. "If it were your screenwriter team, could they write the fragmented narrative of Dark Souls, or the dystopian society of the near future in Detroit: Become Human?"

When asked, no one said a word.

Seeing that no one spoke, Fujimoto finally looked at Director Güler.

"I know your previous works have been well received. But now the times have changed. Don't you want to step on the shoulders of giants and go one step further?"

Güler let out a sigh of relief.

Judging from the moved expression, the result is self-evident.

In August, there were two noteworthy news in the gaming circle.

The first one is the official release date of the highly anticipated "Seven Days Later".

However, unlike what was imagined, the game was released in January of the following year.

The second piece of news that came out almost at the same time made many older hardcore players sigh.

The splitting of the IP of Road to Heaven is a crucial step.

It takes about half a year to complete the entire process.

It will also take half a year, by which time the lawsuits between BigHard and the FTC and CMA will come to a conclusion.

As it stands, it seems nothing can stop this acquisition of the century.

West frowned, thinking about something.

He has been thinking about a question recently: why is it that Naughty Cat is entering this niche game field for the first time, but it is so mature that it doesn't look like a novice?

Do geniuses really exist?

As early as when Diablo was released, there was already a lot of tension in Storm Entertainment.

Anyone who knows the business can see it.

The game Diablo has enormous potential.

And terribly mature.

Even though Road to Heaven 4 is not inferior in some aspects and even surpasses it, it cannot stop the decline of the game.

The players themselves can’t really explain what’s wrong with Road to Heaven, but they just keep criticizing it.

Players don’t know what’s so good about Diablo, but they are addicted to playing it because it’s so smooth.

After the game was released, Baofeng Entertainment was still racking its brains to think about how to save the game and sell more copies during its life cycle.

Make the IP more valuable and sell it at a higher price.

The solution has not been figured out yet, but I am waiting for Naughty Cat's subsequent update plan for Diablo.

Version 1.0 of Diablo, lasts for 45 days.

Then the first season of version 1.1 of the game - the Blood Season - will begin.

The first season will bring new skins, skins in the same art style as vampires for each profession, mounts, and pets.

At the same time, new blood skills will be updated, all of which are passive and can give old skills some unexpected effects.

The new monster type, the vampire, is a powerful monster that must be summoned before reaching the boss room in the dungeon.

New equipment, linked with blood skills, brings new gameplay.

In the new storyline, the vampire army is wreaking havoc in the sanctuary, and the Nephalem are facing new challenges.

At the same time, after the season ends, the season content will be out of print. The season characters can continue to play, but nothing related to the Blood Season will be available.

The key is, the season content is free to play!

As long as you purchase the game, you can play all the season content without any pressure.

It was also officially announced that each major version will have six seasons and last for one and a half years.

At that time, new expansion packs will be updated to unlock new kingdoms, new professions, new plots, and new gameplay.

During the transition period between each season, comics and animations will be released to complete the world view.

This massive and unlimited update plan made West feel desperate, and he believed that Baofeng Entertainment would never be able to beat it.

Because the expansion pack of the previous game Road to Heaven 3, which required money to purchase, did not have as much updated content as the first season.

Moreover, no one in the company had ever thought of this, and Naughty Cat never considered Diablo as a stand-alone game.

It is a service-oriented game with stand-alone content as the main focus.

West opened Naughty Cat’s official Twitter account and took a look.

There is a latest news hanging there.

["Diablo" was released for one week, with a total sales of 7.09 million US dollars]

Seeing this number, even though West had seen a lot of storms, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, somewhat unable to believe it.

"Why can't Baofeng Entertainment be more like Naughty Cat and do better?"

This game type is not niche, but it is not as mainstream as shooting games.

The previous game, Road to Heaven 3, is the ceiling of this type of game.

What were the first week sales for that year?

1.6 million dollars.

This is already a good number.

Originally, based on the first day performance of Road to Heaven 4, it was expected to reach $2.7 million in the first week.

The people at Baofeng Entertainment must be popping champagne in excitement for being able to achieve such great results against such strong opponents.

Unexpectedly, Naughty Cat reported such a horrifying number.

But now it appears that the estimated figures may be a bit high.

If this trend continues, players who are holding their coins and waiting may have to throw themselves into the arms of their opponents.

The hole that I originally wanted to fill with games now has to be filled with the money from splitting IPs.

But West doesn't care how Storm Entertainment will fulfill the bet. He just wants the result.

As long as there are no major problems with the two IPs, Cosmic Rift and War Zone.

But the problem now is that Naughty Cat’s arrogance can no longer be suppressed.

Switch did not fail suddenly, and Baofeng Entertainment lost in the field it is most familiar with without giving up.

West, a little anxious.

In recent years, Microsoft has focused a lot of energy on games, but its focus is not limited to games.

Strategic goals in the future.

The metaverse is dead, and the reason for this is that current technology is not yet capable of realizing this concept.

Looking at Naughty Cat's layout in recent years, Giant Hard Company has a vague sense of crisis.

The young boss seemed to have the same plan, and it seemed to be more far-reaching.

So, Naughty Cat must decline.

China.

Zhou Yun from Genting Technology is reporting to his boss Lin Mo.

"In the second quarter, Switch shipped 1490 million units, largely because its main competitors XGame and Playsquare are gradually reaching the end of their life cycles, and the appeal of exclusive games is gradually declining.

If there are no new exclusive games released, shipments in the third quarter are expected to decline significantly, estimated to be 910 million units.

This year's annual shipments are expected to reach 2800 million units."

"3200 million units? That's much better than expected." Lin Mo nodded. "What about game sales?"

This is not within Zhou Yun's responsibility. The people responsible for reporting are Naughty Cat.

“In terms of game sales, the total number of game sales in the second quarter was 2010 million copies, of which 59% were digital sales and 41% were physical cartridges.

The best-selling game was the first-party game "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" developed by Naughty Cat Headquarters, with sales of 1300 million copies, accounting for 64.67% of the total sales.

The second best-selling game was "Kwaidan", an exclusive Souls-related game developed by Tsujimoto Entertainment Co., Ltd., with sales of 330 million copies, accounting for 16.41% of the total sales.

The third best-selling product is.”

The reports are completed one by one.

Lin Mo nodded and frowned, saying, "The sales of this game are totally inconsistent with the sales of the game console."

The Naughty Cat employee nodded and said, "Boss Lin, the Ministry of Commerce is actively working on discussing cooperation with third-party manufacturers, but our Switch project was launched relatively late, so it is difficult to rely on third-party games to support game sales."

The meaning behind the words is.

It still depends on first-party games.

This conclusion is not unexpected.

But it’s not enough.

Lin Mo frowned and thought carefully.

Neural connection technology is gradually maturing, and new plans are about to begin.

That's not a small amount of money.

The current sales of Switch are not bad, but they have not yet recovered their costs.

In his previous life, Lin Mo read a lot of online game novels and was very envious of the way of playing games where one could wear a helmet and rely on neural connections to enter the game world.

Although the game design level of this world is terrible, fortunately the technology tree is different from that of the previous life and has a lot of black technologies.

If you have the opportunity to realize your dream, you should not miss it.

“Time is running out”

With a sigh, Lin Mo commanded: "Okay, let's stop here. Notice, start the meeting."

The work report is completed.

The next step is to establish a new project.

The people in the conference room have been replaced.

Zuo Xuming, Du Rui and others walked in.

Among them, screenwriter Wang Zichen was the only one who knew about the project "The Last of Us" in advance.

Script work is too important and the workload is too heavy.

Such a delicate story had to be revised word for word.

At the same time, translation is also a top priority.

Translation will more or less lose the original meaning of many lines.

“New project, The Last of Us.”

After saying the name of the game, Lin Mo began to explain the design points one by one.

"The Last of Us" is a highly completed game and it is difficult to find any major faults.

In every aspect, he is like a perfect god of war.

Especially the character creation and storytelling techniques.

The Last of Us is a game that feels like a road movie.

The definition of a road movie has become more relaxed over time. Simply put, it means that the protagonist embarks on a journey for certain reasons.

There is a difficulty with this type of subject matter. If it is not filmed well, it will easily become "scattered" and it is very dependent on the narrative rhythm.

It is easy to give the audience (players) the feeling that this movie (game) has no main plot, and goes here today and there tomorrow.

This is what is called dispersion.

Whether in literature or film and television, changing the map easily is a taboo. The biggest feature of the road movie genre is that the protagonist is always on the journey until he completes the adventure at the end, or finds the answer, or forms a complete character arc.

But The Last of Us avoids this with its perfect narrative rhythm. How does it do it?

Those are two extremely well-crafted characters, Joel and Ellie.

The scattered appearance is brought together through the characters and delicate emotions.

At the same time, the game also uses many unconventional narrative methods. For example, at the beginning of the game, on the night when global civilization fell, what happened to Joel allowed players who played the first release of the game to completely immerse themselves in this world in less than half an hour.

This brings us to another wonderful feature of "The Last of Us", which is the sense of immersion.

This is a typical game that relies on characters to advance the plot, and the purpose of all plots is to shape the characters.

Therefore, the character's personality must be distinct, and every plot twist that changes the character must be convincing.

Why is Iron Man’s death in Avengers 4 so deeply rooted in people’s hearts?

It is because the audience has witnessed every mental journey of the character that the character has become the audience's friend.

The same is true in The Last of Us.

The dialogues and interactions between characters can give us a clear understanding of their personalities. What is even more valuable is that there are no explanatory dialogues in the dialogues, which does not make the characters appear like talking human instruction manuals.

For example, Ellie's past is rarely discussed in the game.

But all players know that this little Lolita probably has no one to take care of her and has a limited level of education.

Which little girl keeps saying "OMG!" all the time and kills people without hesitation?

The character who was born after the apocalypse, who is strong-hearted but longs for recognition, is portrayed vividly.

If no world has ever experienced a doomsday, one would doubt whether Ellie is based on a real person.

For a game that relies on characters and stories as its main driving force, if it can achieve this, it is almost a perfect score.