Hollywood Hunter

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Santa Monica.

In the conference room of Daenerys Entertainment Headquarters, after listening to ea management's report on the company's operation, everyone started the theme of today's meeting.

The secretary handed out a document, and everyone in the conference room couldn't help recalling all aspects of the novel called "Dune" on the document at hand.

Strictly speaking, "Dune" is not a novel, but a general term for a series of science fiction novels around the planet "Dune".

The famous North American science fiction writer Frank Herbert published his first "Dune" novel in 1965, and until his death in 1986, he has been perfecting his own 'Dune Universe'. God Emperor", "Savior of Dune" and many other sci-fi works around the planet 'Dune'.

However, these works basically revolve around a planet called Arakis, which is full of dunes. In the distant future, people discovered a thing called spice on the planet of Arakis. Spice has the ability to prolong human beings. Various functions such as longevity and assisting space jumps can help humans achieve space travel. Moreover, for many years, humans have only discovered the production of spices on the planet Arakis, so there are too many stories around this planet full of dunes.

Because of the perfect story background setting and HTC narrative structure of the "Dune" series, this sci-fi series has been rapidly popular since its birth, and was also rated as a space version of the "Lord of the Rings" series by some media.

Likewise, as with the Lord of the Rings series, there have been hopes for the story to make it to the big screen over the years.

In 1984, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, with David Lynch as the director, eventually burned through $40 million to finally bring the story to the big screen. It just didn't turn out well. With an investment of $40 million, the North American box office after the film's release was only a little over $30 million.

In the conference room at this time, Simon was also very curious how the boss of De Laurentiis Entertainment came up with the idea of ​​making a director who is too literary and artistic to shoot a commercial sci-fi masterpiece, and he dared to do so. $40 million investment.

That was $40 million in 1984.

De Laurentiis Entertainment is now bankrupt, and Simon quickly retracted his thoughts, walked to the whiteboard in front of the conference room, picked up a fountain pen and wrote a few words on the whiteboard: real-time strategy game (real-time strategy game).

Speaking of which, ea's current specialty is sports games, and Simon has no idea of ​​reversing this trend.

While maintaining ea's advantage in sports games, he intends to let ea focus on developing the most popular real-time strategy game in the 1990s. Because of the real-time strategy game mode, this game type is also very suitable for the PC platform.

Although it plans to port a large number of ea's games to the video game console platform, Simon will also allow ea to maintain its dominant position in the PC field.

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

Real-time strategy games have appeared in the early 1980s, and only reached their peak in the 1990s with the emergence of games such as "Warcraft" and "StarCraft", and the concept of real-time strategy games was finally perfected in the 1990s. Now, all types of real-time strategy games are actually just a prototype mode, and usually do not have all the elements of resource collection, force production and real-time battles that mature real-time strategy games should have.

On the other hand, Simon did not directly take out the peak real-time strategy games such as "Warcraft" and "StarCraft" that he had played. On the one hand, it was because there were still some restrictions on the hardware conditions at this time, and on the other hand, it was also because ea first needs to practice hands to accumulate experience.

The real-time strategy game of the original time and space finally matured after more than ten years of continuous exploration. ea has no experience in this area. If you get started immediately, it is likely to destroy several classics in Simon's memory.

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

Daenerys Entertainment promised the copyright owner of "Dune" a price similar to that of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", a basic $500,000 adaptation fee and a 5% share of all "Dune"-related video games in net profit. The news spread during Nancy's contact with the copyright owner of "Dune", and there were also other competitors trying to compete, but it was not successful.

Obviously, the $500,000 adaptation fee is only secondary. If "Dune" can achieve the same success as the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game, just that 5% of the net profit will be a big income.

The failure of David Lynch's version of "Dune" in 1984 made this series of projects coveted by many studios suddenly become a non-existent existence. The copyright owner of "Dune" has already planted the film and television adaptation of this series. It's a big somersault, and naturally you won't make such a mistake in the game adaptation.

Compared to the failure of the "Dune" movie, the video games based on "Dune" have been very successful.

The "Warcraft" developed by the original Time and Space Blizzard Studio is also recognized as a work imitating the 1992 real-time strategy game "Dune Castle 2".

Simon told everyone in the conference room in detail about the development points of the real-time strategy game's resource collection system, real-time battle system and force production system, and finally briefly described these types of

He said, "That's about it, you need to explore the detailed plan. I am very optimistic about the development prospects of real-time strategy games. This type of game can also make ea more popular in the PC field. The advantages of the company have been developed to the extreme, so I hope everyone can treat this project very carefully.”

Tripp Hawkins, the current chairman and CEO of ea who is also the founder of the company, first said after Simon finished his speech: "Simon, according to you, the development of this game is similar to the "simulation" that we launched this summer. Cities has a lot of similarities.”

Simon nodded and said: "I have also read the information of "Simulated City" and tried it out. The first generation of this game was not successful, and I think it is mainly due to the limitation of the hardware platform. If it can be further improved into a 3D version, this will be a success. This game will definitely be very popular. However, there is no battle system in SimCity, it is a different concept from the real-time strategy game I just said.”

Another ea executive said at this time: "So, Mr. Westeros, do you mean that the core of this game is battle?"

"Of course not, if it's just a battle, it will become another game concept. I think the key point of this game development is the interaction of the real-time battle system, the resource collection system and the force production system. Therefore, during the development process, I hope It’s best for you to spend a few months in the early stage to perfect the settings of this game, don’t be impatient. Because this is the first attempt, accumulating experience is the most important thing.”

The conversation unfolded, and others in the room began to ask various questions.

So it was until noon that the meeting finally ended.

Simon had to rush to the Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills to attend the signing luncheon hosted by Qintex Group. As soon as he left the conference room, Nancy chased after him and whispered to Simon: "I didn't and the development team of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After negotiating the next compensation plan, about half of them will quit their jobs and plan to set up their own studios.”

Blizzard Studio's first game was a phenomenal success, and the development team naturally had to grow.

Game development in this era does not have the kind of team coordination and cooperation that often requires hundreds of people many years later, or even one or two people can complete it. Because of the expected huge profits of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", the development team has also proposed salary increases, and Nancy has been dealing with this matter recently.

Still failed.

However, Simon did not care too much.

These developers probably only saw a "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game bring Daenerys Entertainment hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, but did not see Daenerys Entertainment's series of efforts in the game's release process.

Leaving Blizzard Studios, without the financial and channel support of Daenerys Entertainment, these people wishful thinking that they can replicate the miracle of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" by mastering some game development points. This kind of thinking can only Say naive.

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

In the 1990s, the development of video games was destined to develop into multi-person teamwork. A team of dozens or hundreds of people worked together to develop a game, and the risks were simply not borne by a few people. Even if these people find some other financial masters behind their backs, it is very unlikely that they want to replicate the phenomenal success of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles".

After all, although "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is not as high as "Super Mario", it is also a phenomenal game enough to sell millions of cassettes.

Simon was able to judge the success of this game based on his own prophetic advantages, and a lot of manpower and material resources were invested in it. Even if those people mastered some game development skills, they could only try their luck on various games.

Luck is obviously the most unreliable thing.

"Leave as soon as you leave. This industry has never lacked technical talents."

Simon said, noting that there was not much worry on Nancy's face, and her female executives clearly understood that Daenerys Entertainment had many advantages over a pure game development team. The departure of personnel will only affect the development progress of the sequel to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". It is impossible for Daenerys Entertainment to grant the studio equity requested by these people because of the success of a game.

Hearing what Simon said, Nancy said: "I will start a new round of recruitment as soon as possible, and if necessary, I can also borrow some technicians from ea."

"Actually, I've been thinking about the game studio recently..." Simon had just started, and the two had already come downstairs. Simon simply said: "Would you like to go to the banquet with me in Beverly Hills, By the way?"

Nancy didn't think too much, nodded simply, and got into his luxury car with Simon.

The car pulled out of the parking lot of Daenerys Entertainment's headquarters, and Simon continued: "I think it is very difficult for a game studio to maintain a long and vigorous vitality, and a game studio can develop one or two in its life cycle. Successful video games are already very rare. So Daenerys Entertainment can adopt a development model similar to movie projects in this regard. Form a team, invest in a project, and if there is a need to develop a sequel after the project is over, the team continues to maintain . If not, the development team will be disbanded directly."

In fact, Simon was thinking at this point about the usual rapid decline in memory of good game studios after acquisitions.

However, this has not happened yet. ea is also far from the title of 'Studio Terminator'.

Originally, as a bystander, Simon was also very unaccustomed to ea's behavior of 'bringing down' studios one by one, but now, standing in the position of a boss, Simon's thinking mode will inevitably change.

In 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 gradually lost its creativity. Game companies want to make profits, and it is impossible for a studio to develop a game of its own imagination just because it has developed a phenomenal game.

Moreover, to be honest, the acquisition of these studios by game companies is probably just the game copyrights that have been successful in the hands of these studios.

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

For example, it may cost billions of dollars to acquire Blizzard Studio, which owns the copyrights of popular games such as “Warcraft” and “StarCraft”, but if it only invests in the development of game projects such as “Warcraft” and “StarCraft”, maybe It's only a few million dollars, and there must be plenty of failed projects in between, but as long as one or two phenomenal works out of ten are a success.

After all, video games usually have a long life cycle, and a successful game can often lead to many generations of sequels.

After listening to Simon's thoughts, Nancy agreed: "You can really try it. In addition, in order to promote the enthusiasm of the development team, we can also promise them a profit share. This can also appropriately reduce costs in the early development."

Considering the long-term benefits, most people are often willing to accept lower up-front compensation.

"You take the time to think about this matter carefully, and it's best to come up with a plan," Simon said, and smiled again: "In addition, when it comes to salary, do you want a salary increase?"

Nancy glanced at Simon: "Boss, are you going to give me a raise?"

"Looking at the situation this way, if you threaten me to quit without a raise, I'll definitely give you a raise."

"And then I'm going to end up in a situation like Rem."

"It's very possible that I'm actually a very generous person, but I'm not used to people asking me for something."

"This is a very unreasonable thinking."

"Who made me the boss?"

"..."

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