Hollywood Hunter

Santa monica.

In the conference room of Daenerys Entertainment headquarters, after listening to the EA management report on the company's operation, everyone began the theme of today's meeting.

The secretary distributed a document, and everyone in the meeting room couldn't help but recall all the information about the novel named "Sand Dunes" in the document.

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

After the famous North American science fiction writer Frank Herbert launched his first "Sand Dunes" novel in 1965, until his death in 1986, he has been perfecting his "Sand Dunes Universe". He has first published "Sand Dunes" and "Sand Dunes". "Sovereign", "Savior of the Dunes" and many other science fiction works around the planet of "Sand Dunes".

However, these works are basically around a planet called Aragis in the dunes. In the distant future, people have discovered something called spice on the planet of Aragis. The spice has a prolonged humanity. Various functions such as lifespan and assistance in space jumping can help humans achieve space travel.Moreover, for many years, humans have only found spice produced on the planet Aragis, so there are too many stories around this planet in the dunes

Because of the perfect story background setting and HTC's narrative structure of the "Sand Dunes" series, this science fiction series has been rapidly 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 want to put this story on the big screen for many years.

In 1984, DeLaurentis Entertainment Group directed David Lynch as a director, and finally burned $40 million, finally bringing the story to the big screen.It's just that the results are not so good.With an investment of US$40 million, the box office in North America after the film was released was only US$30 million.

In the conference room at this time, Simon was also curious. How did the boss of Laurentians Entertainment come up with the idea that David Lynch could not be a literary director to shoot a commercial science fiction masterpiece, and he dared An investment of 40 million US dollars.

That was $40 million in 1984.

DeLaurentis Entertainment is now bankrupt, and Simon quickly withdrew his thoughts, walked to the whiteboard in front of the meeting room, took a fountain pen and wrote a few words on the whiteboard: 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 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 plans to transplant a large number of EA games to the TV game console platform, but 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 also 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 been around since the early 1980s. It only reached its 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.Now, all types of real-time strategy games are actually just a prototype. They usually don't have all the elements of resource acquisition, 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 top real-time strategy games such as Warcraft and StarCraft,

The real-time strategy game in the original time and space was finally matured after more than ten years of continuous exploration. EA has no experience in this area. If you start immediately, it will probably destroy several classics in Simon’s memory.

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

Daenerys Entertainment promised that the price of the copyright side of "Sand Dunes" is similar to that of "Ninja Turtles", the basic $500,000 adaptation fee and the 5% net profit share of all "Sand Dunes" related video games.When Nancy contacted the copyright owners of "Sand Dunes", the news spread. There were also many competitors who tried to compete, but they did not succeed.

Obviously, the adaptation cost of $500,000 is only secondary. If Dune can achieve the success of the game "Ninja Turtles", only the 5% net profit score will be a big input.

The failure of David Lynch's "Sand Dunes" movie in 1984 made this series of projects that were originally coveted by many studios suddenly become an unexisting existence. The copyright owner of "Sand Dunes" has already been planted in the film and television adaptation of this series. A big boss will naturally not make such mistakes in the game adaptation.

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

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

Simon detailed the development points of the real-time strategy game outside the resource acquisition system, the real-time battle system and the force production system to the people in the conference room. Finally, he briefly described the prospects of this type of game in the network battle. In the end: "Probably that's it. The detailed plan needs to be explored by yourself. Personally, I am very optimistic about the development prospects of real-time strategy games. This type of game can also make EA's advantage in the PC field develop to the extreme. So, I hope Everyone can take this project very seriously."

Tripp Hawkins, the current chairman and CEO of EA and the founder of the company, said at the end of Simon’s speech: “Simon, according to you, the development of this game is the same as the “Simulation” that we launched this summer. "City" has many similarities."

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

Another EA executive said at the moment: "So, Mr. Westeros, you mean, is the core of this game a game?"

"Of course not. If it is just a game, it becomes another game concept. I think the main point of this game development is the coordination of the real-time game system, resource collection system and force production system. So, during the development process, I hope It’s best if you can spend a few months to perfect the settings of this game in the early stage. Don’t be impatient. Because this is the first attempt, accumulating experience is the most important thing.”

As the topic unfolded, other people in the meeting room began to ask various questions.

So until noon, this meeting finally ended.

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

Blizzard Studio's first game achieved phenomenal success, and the development team naturally had to rise.

Game development in this era is not as many years later as the team that often needs hundreds of people to coordinate and cooperate, and even one or two people can complete it.Because of the huge profits expected in "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 "Ninja Turtles" game that brought Daenerys Entertainment hundreds of millions of dollars in profit, but did not see Daenerys Entertainment investing a lot of effort in the game release process.

After leaving Blizzard Studios, without Daenerys Entertainment’s financial and channel support, these people wishfully thought that they could replicate the miracle of "Ninja Turtles" by mastering some of the key points of game development. Naive.

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

In the 1990s, the development of video games was destined to develop into a multi-player teamwork. A team of tens of people and hundreds of people worked together to develop a game. The risks involved were not something a few people could afford.Even if these people find some other gold masters behind their backs, the possibility of copying such phenomenal success as "Ninja Turtles" is very slim.

After all, although "Ninja Turtles" does not reach the height of "Super Mario", it is also a phenomenon-level game enough to sell millions of cassettes.

Simon was able to judge the success of this game based on his prophet's advantages, which invested a lot of manpower and material resources. Even if those people have mastered some game development know-how, then they can only try their luck in various games.

Such luck is obviously the most unreliable.

"Leave it and leave, there is never a shortage of technical talent in this industry."

Simon said, noticing that there was not much worry on Nancy’s face, her senior executives also clearly understood that Daenerys Entertainment had too many advantages in various aspects over a simple game development team. The departure of the staff will only affect the development progress of the "Ninja Turtles" sequel. It is impossible for Daenerys Entertainment to grant the studio equity required by these people because of the success of a game.

Hearing Simon say this, Nancy said: "I will conduct a new round of recruitment as soon as possible, and if necessary, I can second some technical staff from EA."

"Actually, I have been thinking about the game studio recently..." Simon just started, and the two had already come downstairs. Simon simply said: "Why don't you go to Beverly Hills with me for a banquet, By the way?"

Nancy didn't even think about it, and nodded altogether, along with Simon on his luxury car.

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 during its life cycle. Successful video games are already very rare. Therefore, Daenerys Entertainment can adopt a development model similar to a movie project in this regard. Form a team and invest in a project. If there is a need to develop a sequel after the project ends, the team will continue to maintain . If not, dissolve the development team directly."

In fact, Simon was thinking about the things that the good game studios in memory usually decline quickly after being acquired.

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

Originally, as a bystander, Simon was also very uncomfortable with EA's "broken down" studios, but now, standing in the position of a boss, Simon's thinking pattern is inevitable.

In the memory, the studios that were acquired by large game developers may have failed because of the constraints of the parent company. However, another possibility is also because the game team has gradually lost its creativity.The game company is to make a profit. It is impossible for a studio to develop a phenomenon-level game, it has always supported this studio to develop its own imaginary works at will.

Moreover, frankly, the game companies acquired these studios, and more probably only the copyright of the games that these studios have succeeded.

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

For example, it may take billions of dollars to acquire Blizzard Studios, which owns copyrights in popular games such as Warcraft and StarCraft, but if you only invest in the development of game projects such as Warcraft and StarCraft, perhaps It only costs millions of dollars, and there must be a large number of failed projects, but as long as one or two phenomenal works appear in ten projects, it is a kind of success.

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

After listening to Simon's thoughts, Nancy agreed: "It is indeed possible to try. In addition, in order to promote the enthusiasm of the development team, we can also promise their profit sharing. This can also appropriately reduce costs in the early development."

Considering the long-term benefits, most people are often willing to accept lower salaries upfront.

"You take the time to consider this matter carefully, and it's best to come up with a plan," Simon said, laughing again. "In addition, when it comes to salary, do you want to raise your salary?"

Nancy squinted Simon: "Boss, are you going to raise my salary?"

"Looking at the situation like this, if you threaten me not to raise my salary, I will immediately change jobs, and I will definitely give you a salary increase."

"Then I will fall into the situation like Rem."

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

"This is a very unreasonable thinking."

"Who makes me the boss."

"..."