Hollywood Hunter

Santa Monica.

After listening to the EA management report on the company's operations in the conference room of Daenerys Entertainment's headquarters, everyone started the theme of today's meeting.

The secretary handed out a copy of the material, and everyone in the meeting room couldn't help but start to recall all aspects of the novel called "Dune" on the material in hand.

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

After the famous North American science fiction writer Frank Herbert published his first "Dune" novel in 1965, until his death in 1986, he has been perfecting his own "Dune Universe". He successively published the first editions of "Son of Dune" and "Dune". Many sci-fi works around the planet "Dune", such as "The Emperor" and "The Savior of Dune".

However, these works basically revolve around a planet called Aragis with sand dunes. In the distant future, people have discovered something called spice on the planet of Aragis. Spices have extended humans. Multiple functions such as life span and assisting in space jumps can help humans achieve space travel. Moreover, humans have only discovered spices produced on the planet Aragis for many years, so too many stories have happened around this planet full of sand dunes.

Because of the perfect background setting of the "Dune" series and HTC's narrative structure, this sci-fi series has quickly become popular since its birth, and it has also been rated as the space version of the "Lord of the Rings" series by some media.

Similarly, like the "Lord of the Rings" series, there have been people who have hoped to bring this story to the big screen for many years.

In 1984, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group used David Lynch as the director, and eventually burned $40 million and finally brought the story to the big screen. It's just that the result is not so good. With an investment of 40 million U.S. dollars, the North American box office after the release of the film was only over 30 million U.S. dollars.

In the conference room at this time, Simon was also very curious about how the boss of De Laurentiis Entertainment came up with the idea of ​​making David Lynch such a literary and artistic director to shoot a commercial science fiction masterpiece, and he dare Investment of 40 million US dollars.

That was 40 million US dollars in 1984.

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

Speaking of which, EA's current strength is sports games, and Simon has no idea to reverse this trend.

While maintaining EA's advantages in sports games, he intends to let EA focus on the development of the most popular real-time strategy game in the 90s in the original time and space. Because of the mode of real-time strategy games, this type of game is also very suitable for the PC platform.

Although it plans to port a large number of EA games to the TV 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 personally sorted out the information in everyone's hands 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". The concept of real-time strategy games was finally perfected in the 1990s. Nowadays, all types of real-time strategy games are in fact just a rudimentary mode, and they usually don't have all the elements of a mature real-time strategy game such as resource collection, force production, and real-time battle.

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

The real-time strategy game in the original time and space finally matured after more than ten consecutive years of various explorations. EA has no experience in this area. If you start it 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 urged Nancy to take the right to adapt the "Dune" series at a high price.

Daenerys Entertainment promises that the price of the copyright owner of "Dune" is similar to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", the basic $500,000 adaptation fee and a 5% net profit share of all "Dune" related video games. The news spread during Nancy's contact with the copyright owner of "Dune", and other competitors tried to compete, but they did not succeed.

Obviously, the $500,000 adaptation fee is only secondary. If "Dune" can achieve the success of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game, only the 5% net profit point achievement will be a large sum of money.

The failure of David Lynch's version of "Dune" in 1984 made this series project that was coveted by many studios suddenly become an existence that no one cares about. The copyright owner of "Dune" has already planted on the film and television adaptation of this series. A big somersault, naturally will not make this kind of mistake in the game adaptation.

Compared with the failure of the "Dune" movie, 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 imitated the 1992 real-time strategy game "Dane Castle 2".

Simon told the people in the conference room in detail about the development points of the real-time strategy game's resource acquisition system, real-time battle system and force production system. Finally, he briefly described the prospects of this type of game in online battle. Finally: "That's probably it. You still need to explore the detailed plan. Personally, I am very optimistic about the development prospects of real-time strategy games. This type of game can also make EA's advantages in the PC field develop to the extreme. So, hope Everyone can treat this project very carefully."

The current chairman and CEO of EA and the founder of the company, Tripp Hawkins, first said after Simon finished his speech: "Simon, according to you, the development of this game is in line with the "Simulation" we launched this summer. "City" has many similar places."

Simon nodded and said: "I have also seen the information of "Sim City" and tried it. The first generation of this game is not a success. I think it is mainly due to the limitations of the hardware platform. If it can be further improved into a 3D version, this This game will definitely be very popular. However, "Sim City" does not have a battle system. It is two concepts from the real-time strategy game I just mentioned."

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 main point of this game development is the interaction of the real-time battle system, the resource collection system and the force production system. So, during the development process, I hope You’d better 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, and accumulation of experience is the most important thing."

The topic unfolded, and other people in the conference room started asking various questions.

So until noon, the meeting finally ended.

Simon also rushed to the Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills to attend the signing luncheon hosted by Qintex Group. Just after leaving the meeting room, Nancy chased him out and whispered to Simon: "I don’t have the development team of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After negotiating the next salary plan, about half of the people will resign, and they plan to set up their own studio."

Blizzard Studio’s first game was a phenomenal success, and the development team will naturally rise.

Game development in this era does not require a team of hundreds of people to coordinate and cooperate many years later, even one or two people can complete it. Because of the huge revenue expected in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the development team has also put forward salary increases, and Nancy has been dealing with this matter recently.

After all, it still failed.

However, Simon didn't care too much.

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

Leaving Blizzard Studios, without Daenerys Entertainment’s financial and channel support, these people wishfully thought that they could replicate the miracle of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles if they mastered some of the key points of game development. To be naive.

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

Entering the 1990s, the development of video games is destined to develop into a multi-person teamwork. A team of dozens of people or hundreds of people develops a game together, and the risks in it are not just a few people can bear. Even if these people find other gold masters behind their backs, the possibility of trying to replicate the phenomenal success of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is very slim.

After all, although Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cannot reach the height of Super Mario, it is also a phenomenal game that can sell millions of cassettes.

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

Things like luck are obviously the most unreliable.

"Leave and leave. This industry has never lacked technical talents."

Simon said, noting that Nancy didn’t have much worry on her face, and her senior woman clearly understood that Daenerys Entertainment had many more advantages in all aspects than a pure game development team. The departure of personnel will only affect the development progress of the sequel to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". Daenerys Entertainment cannot grant the studio equity that these people require 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 second some technical personnel from EA."

"Actually, I'm also thinking about the game studio recently..." Simon had just started, and the two of them had already come downstairs. Simon simply said, "Why don't you join me at a banquet in Beverly Hills," By the way?"

Nancy didn't think much, nodded altogether, and got into his luxurious car with Simon.

The car drove out of the parking lot of Daenerys Entertainment Headquarters. Simon continued: "I think it is difficult for a game studio to maintain a long and strong vitality. A game studio can develop one or two models in its life cycle. Successful video games are already very rare. Therefore, Daenerys Entertainment can adopt a development model similar to movie projects in this regard. Form a team and invest in a project. After the project is over, if it is necessary to develop a sequel, the team will continue to maintain . If not, just disband the development team."

In fact, Simon was thinking about things that in his memory usually decline rapidly after being acquired.

However, this situation has not happened yet. EA is still far away from the title of ‘Studio Terminator’.

Originally, as a bystander, Simon was also very uncomfortable with EA's behavior of "breaking down" each studio, but now, standing in the position of a boss, Simon's mode of thinking is inevitably changed.

In my memory, the decline of the studios acquired by large game developers may be due to the constraints of the parent company. However, another possibility is also due to the gradual loss of creativity of the game team. The game company wants to be profitable. It is impossible for a studio to develop a phenomenal game and always support the studio to develop their own imagination at will.

And, to be frank, the acquisition of these studios by game companies is probably just the copyright of the games that these studios have successfully acquired.

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

For example, the acquisition of Blizzard Studios that owns the copyrights of popular games such as "Warcraft" and "StarCraft" may require billions of dollars, but if you only invest in the development of game projects such as "Warcraft" and "StarCraft", perhaps It only takes a few million dollars, and there must be a lot of failed projects, but as long as one or two phenomenal works appear in ten projects, it is a success.

After all, video games usually have a long life cycle. A successful game can often produce many sequels.

Nancy listened to Simon after finishing her thoughts and agreed: "You can really try it. In addition, in order to promote the enthusiasm of the development team, we can also promise them profit sharing. This can also appropriately reduce the cost in the early development."

Taking into account the long-term benefits, most people are often willing to accept a lower salary in the previous period.

"If you take the time to think about it carefully, you'd better come up with a plan," Simon said, and smiled: "Also, speaking of salary matters, do you want a salary increase?"

Nancy squinted at Simon. "Boss, are you going to give me a raise?"

"Look at the situation this way, if you threaten me to change my job immediately without a raise, I will definitely give you a raise."

"Then I will be reduced to Rem's situation."

"It is very possible that I am actually a very generous person, but I am not used to others asking me for anything."

"This is a very unreasonable thinking."

"Who made me the boss?"

"..."