Chapter 314

Santa Monica.

In the conference room of danielis entertainment headquarters, after listening to the report of EA management on the company's operation, we started the theme of today's meeting.

The secretary handed out a piece of information, and everyone in the meeting room began to recall all aspects of the information about the novel named dune in the materials on hand.

Sand dunes is not a novel, but a collection of science fiction novels around the "sand dune" planet.

Frank Herbert, a famous science fiction writer in North America, launched his first novel dune in 1965. Until his death in 1986, he has been perfecting the "dune universe". He has published many science fiction works around the "dune" planet, such as "son of dune", "king of dune" and "savior of dune".

However, these novels basically revolve around a sand dune planet called aragis.

In the distant future, people have discovered a kind of thing called "spice" on yarragis. Spice has many functions, such as prolonging human life and assisting space jump, which can help human to realize space travel. Moreover, for many years, humans have only found spices on yarragis, so there are too many stories around the sand dune planet

because of the perfect story background and grand narrative structure of the Sand Dune series, this science fiction series has become popular rapidly since its birth, and has been rated as the space version of the Lord of the rings by some media.

Similarly, as in the Lord of the rings series, there has been a desire for the story to be put on the big screen for many years.

In 1984, with David Lynch as the director, de Laurentiis entertainment finally burned $40 million and finally put the story on the big screen. It's just not so good. With an investment of 40 million US dollars, the box office in North America after the release of the film is only more than 30 million US dollars.

In the conference room at this time, Simon is also curious about how the boss of d'laurentius entertainment came up with the idea of making David Lynch, an artistic director, shoot a commercial sci-fi masterpiece, and dare to invest $40 million.

That's 40 million dollars in 1984.

Now that de Laurentiis entertainment is bankrupt, Simon quickly takes his mind back, goes to the whiteboard in front of the conference room, picks up a pen and writes down a few words on the whiteboard: real time strategy game.

In a word, EA's strength now is sports games, and Simon has no idea of reversing this trend.

While maintaining EA's advantages in sports games, he plans to let EA focus on developing the most popular real-time strategy game in the 1990s. Because of the mode of real-time strategy game, this kind of game is more suitable for PC platform.

Although it plans to transplant a large number of EA's games to the TV game console platform, Simon will also let EA maintain its dominant position in the PC field.

For today's meeting, Simon has done a lot of homework in advance, and also sorted out the information in the hands of everyone at this time according to the information in his memory.

The real-time strategy game has sprouted in the early 1980s, but it reached its peak in the 1990s with the emergence of Warcraft, StarCraft and other games, and the concept of real-time strategy game was finally improved in the 1990s. Now, all kinds of real-time strategy games are just a rudimentary model, and usually do not have the resources collection, force production and real-time combat elements that mature real-time strategy games should have.

On the other hand, Simon didn't take out the top level real-time strategy games like Warcraft and Starcraft directly. On the one hand, there are still some restrictions on the hardware conditions at this time. On the other hand, it is also necessary for EA to practice first and accumulate experience.

The real-time strategy game in the original time and space is finally mature after more than ten years of exploration and accumulation. EA has no experience in this field now. If we start it immediately, it is likely to destroy several classics in Simon's memory.

In a word, the real-time strategy game adapted from Dune series is also quite successful in the original time and space, which is also the reason why Simon told Nancy to win the adaptation right of Dune series at a high price.

Denise entertainment promised that the price of dune's copyright is similar to that of Ninja Turtle, with a basic $500000 adaptation fee and a 5% net profit share of all dune related video games. During the process of Nancy's contact with the copyright owners of dune, the news has already spread. During this period, there are no lack of other competitors trying to bid, but the copyright finally fell to Denise entertainment.

After all, the $500000 cost of adaptation is only secondary. If dune can achieve the success of Ninja tortoise, only 5% of the net profit will be a big input.

In 1984, the failure of David Lynch's version of sand dune movie made this series project coveted by many studios become the existence of no one. The copyright owner of sand dune has made a big mistake in the film adaptation of this series, so it is natural that they will not make such mistakes in the game adaptation.

Compared with the failure of dune movie, the video games based on dune are very successful.Warcraft, developed by Blizzard studio in the original time and space, is also recognized as a work that imitates the 1992 real-time strategy game dune Warburg 2.

Simon told everyone in the conference room in detail about the development points of the resource acquisition system, the real-time combat system and the force production system of the real-time strategy game. He also briefly described the prospect of this type of game in the aspect of online combat. Finally, he said: "these are the general situation. You need to explore the detailed scheme yourself. Personally, I am very optimistic about the development prospect of real-time strategy games. This type of games can also make EA's advantages in the PC field develop to the extreme. Therefore, I hope you can treat this project very carefully. "

"Simon, according to you, there are a lot of similarities between the development of this game and the simulated city that we launched this summer," said Tripp Hawkins, EA's current chairman, CEO and founder, after Simon's speech

Simon nodded and said, "I've also seen the material of" simulated city "and had a trial play. The early generation of this game is not a success, I think it is mainly limited by the hardware platform. If you can further improve the 3D version, this game will be very popular. However, "simulated city" does not have a combat system, it and I just said the real-time strategy game are two concepts

Another EA executive said at this time: "so, Mr. westlow, do you mean that the core of this game is fight?"

"Of course not. If it's just a fight, it will become another game concept. I think the key point of this game development is the cooperation of real-time combat system, resource acquisition system and force production system. In the process of development, I hope you'd better spend a few months in the early stage to improve the setting of this game, and don't be impatient. Because this is the first time to try, the most important thing is to accumulate experience. "

As the topic unfolded, other people in the room began to ask all kinds of questions.

So it was not until noon that the meeting finally ended.

Simon has to go to Hilton Beverly Hills Hotel to attend the signing lunch hosted by qintex group. As soon as she left the conference room, Nancy chased him out and whispered to Simon, "I didn't negotiate the next salary plan with the Ninja Turtle development team. About half of them have to resign. They plan to set up their own studio."

Blizzard studio's first game has achieved phenomenal success, and the development team has naturally risen.

The game development in this era is not as coordinated and cooperative as that in many years, which often requires hundreds of people, or even one or two people. Because of the huge profits expected from Ninja Turtle, the development team has also put forward the salary increase request one after another. Nancy has been dealing with this matter recently.

It didn't work.

But Simon didn't care too much.

These developers probably only saw a Ninja Turtle game, which brought hundreds of millions of dollars to danilisi entertainment, but did not see danilisi entertainment sparing no effort in the game release process.

After leaving Blizzard studio and without the financial and channel support of danilisi entertainment, these people think that they can copy the miracle of Ninja Turtle if they master some key points of game development. This idea can only be said to be naive.

Moreover, with the advent of the era of 32-bit host and the further development of PC platform, the era when one or two people can develop a game will come to an end.

In the 1990s, the development of video games is destined to develop into a team of many people. Dozens of people and hundreds of people work together to develop a game. The risk is not that only a few people can bear. Even if these people find other gold owners to support them, it is very unlikely that they want to copy the phenomenal success of Ninja Turtle.

After all, "Ninja Turtle" is not as high as "Super Mario", but it is also a phenomenal game that can sell millions of cassettes.

Simon was able to judge the success of the game according to his own advantages. He also invested a lot of human and material resources. Even if those people mastered some game development know-how, they could only try their luck in various games.

Luck is obviously the most unreliable thing.

"Just leave. There is no lack of technical talents in this industry."

Simon said, noting that Nancy didn't have much worry on her face, and her female executives clearly understood that dannilis entertainment had many advantages over the simple game development team. A group of technical personnel left, which only affected the development progress of the Ninja Turtle sequel. Dannilis entertainment could not survive because of the success of a game Xu and the studio equity that these people ask for.

Hearing Simon say so, Nancy said: "I will start a new round of recruitment as soon as possible, and if necessary, I can borrow some technical personnel from EA."

"Actually, I've been thinking about the game studio recently..." Simon had just started, and they had already come downstairs. He simply said, "why don't you come to Beverly Hills with me for the party, by the way?"Nancy didn't think much about it. She just nodded and got into his luxury car with Simon.

As the car drove out of the parking lot of Denise entertainment headquarters, Simon continued: "I think it's very difficult for a game studio to maintain a long and vigorous vitality. It's very rare for a game studio to develop one or two successful video games in its life cycle. Therefore, danielis entertainment can adopt the development mode similar to the film project in this aspect. Set up a team and invest in a project. After the completion of the project, if it is necessary to continue the development, the team will continue to maintain. If not, just disband the development team. "

In fact, Simon's thinking at this time is that excellent game studios in his memory usually decline rapidly after they are acquired.

However, this situation has not yet happened, and EA is far away from the title of "studio terminator".

Originally, as a bystander, Simon was also very disgusted with EA's "downfall" of studios. Now, standing in the position of a boss, Simon's mode of thinking will inevitably change.

In my memory, the decline of studios acquired by large game developers may be due to the constraints of the parent company. However, another possibility is that the game team has gradually lost its creativity. Game companies want to make profits. It's impossible for a studio to support the studio to develop its imaginative works at will, regardless of cost or reward, because it once developed a phenomenal game.

Moreover, to be frank, the acquisition of these studios by game companies is probably only the successful game copyright in the hands of these studios.

In this case, it is better to follow the pattern of film production and invest in some game projects with good ideas from scratch, so that the cost will be greatly reduced.

For example, the acquisition of Blizzard studio, which owns the copyright of popular games such as Warcraft and StarCraft, may cost several billion dollars. However, if it only invests in the development of game projects such as Warcraft and StarCraft, it may only cost several million dollars. There must be a large number of failed works, but as long as one or two of the ten projects appear Elephant level works, that is a kind of success.

After all, video games usually have a long life cycle. If a game is successful, it can produce many generations of sequels.

After listening to Simon's ideas, Nancy agreed: "we can really give it a try. In addition, in order to promote the enthusiasm of the development team, we can promise them profit sharing. In this way, the cost can be reduced appropriately in the early development. "

Considering the long-term benefits, most people are willing to accept the lower salary in the early stage.

The current development of video games may not be obvious. In the future, when dozens or hundreds of people develop a game, the labor cost will become the most important factor affecting the budget of a project.

"You take the time to think it over and come up with a plan," Simon said, laughing. "Besides, when it comes to salary, do you want a raise?"

Nancy gave Simon a squint. "Are you going to give me a raise?"

"It depends on the situation. If you threaten me not to get a raise, I will give you a raise."

"And then I'll be in rem's position."

"It's very possible that I'm actually a very generous person, but I'm not used to being asked for anything."

"It's a very unreasonable way of thinking."

"I'm so busy that I don't have time to reason with you."

“……”