China can make AAA games?

Word answer: The current industrial production capacity, but off.

(An aside, this does not pan capital training and preparation, examples of spending lots of money to go overseas acquisitions fail studio Red 5 Studio ( "Fire Falls" (FIREFALL), Runic Games ( "Torchlight") are common. 2020 Today, pay acceptance is high, this pot can not be poor quality training and preparation of players, do not pay love love piracy.)

Do a AAA game works, there is a need to engage in the production of AAA industrial groups . 0-1 from the process, in fact, includes two aspects:

First, set up a company (Build a company)

• There are various disciplines (Disciplines) of core talent and talent moving bricks

1. Where to find high-end talent, dig? Overseas recruits? Just rely on a bunch of fresh graduates is not enough
2. There vision (Vision) to win over the people, to those who achieve high career aspirations of self-positioning requirements (and their own Ego)
3. Competitive treatment to stabilize the body and mind of employees, in the long development process is stable enough (Job Security)

• Healthy and sustainable corporate culture, reasonable internal pipeline to promote the growth of various positions

1. How the couple from immature to mature, how to make QA gradually promoted to product manager, how to maintain the industrial pipeline Times
2. How to balance work and life (this is the first in the world First-world problems, while making AAA game itself is not the first world problems?)

Second, do a good product (Deliver a product)

• It is to cater to the market or to achieve explore creative interpretation of the fun and the next generation of storytelling (Storytelling) way?
• There is no good delivery platform and sales channels?

Of course, all decisions are business decisions (Every decision is a business decision). In order to profit exists (for profit) company, we must be worthy of the capital side, as well as the C-terminus of the player (if work can come out - a player's words.)

Here we have a few specific aspects of the expansion.

[Funds] do AAA, not without feelings, the same old stuff is understandable. "FIFA" or "Call of Duty" to make money last year, this year also make money next year, it is impossible not to earn money. Experiencing the console war (Console War), and engine dust settles today, dependents (hundreds of people started) boil time (5--10 years) is a very extravagant thing (hundreds of millions of dollars, "A Fistful of Dollars 2 "about the kind of sixty-seven one hundred million is not new). On top of this, after asking the city facing a huge risk, likely due to the efforts of a few years a part of the poor, and even the success of another internal product ( "StarCraft Ghost 'N for a long time to develop, or to" World of Warcraft "the unprecedented success give way), or phenomenal, and do not work (such as" GTA5 ") clash seriously affect the sales and reputation. In order to reduce costs and reduce risks, many companies will:

It owns and continue the game engine, reducing the risk of project development process

• EA whole company are required with frost Frostbite engine, reduce overlapping positions. Also indirectly created a "hymn" defects in production (Anthem) (other studios are not familiar with the development of new animation pipeline).
• Insomniac company paid off, since the inquiry engine achievement success "Spider-Man", the success of the first rank studio
• Amazon spent Wuliuqianwan licensed CryEngine, come up with a fork Lumberyard investing in the future
• Cross-platform, multi-platform one more revenue source. (In addition to the current VR)

A sequel, continuation and consolidation of existing products play (formula), relying on word of mouth to reduce the cost of the next generation of the declared fat.

• There are solid players and declared fat channel network (network), throwing money to buy billboards and exposure
• There had confirmed the market's business logic

Balance reputation and krypton gold

• Pre-order, can be provided to a company's cash flow Tiqian Pi can also explore the response of the market
• IAP or Platinum (for example, within Ubisoft "Assassin's Creed" purchase)

Our investment community and industrialization are still on the rise, there are many short-term capital gains of place for huge cost, long cycle, high risk project than the fast track, Guangwei project real positive difference a few good exercise.

[Production]

story

　　The game itself is a storytelling medium, requires industrialized writers (exactly the same with the film screenwriting). Characters, environment, set the cornerstone of the world requires a lot of thought and effort writing a pile of rationality

 

art

• Man combat capability, a piece of work perspective, our concept artist, modeler and animator has been an international level.
• Convergence of art and technology, this one is always the biggest challenge the entertainment industry - using the most advanced tools, materials in accordance with the way most designers and programmers the flexibility to submit a minimum of headaches. Art Director lifeblood familiar with the industry trend needs (such as Houdini two years of pipeline space more and more), depending on the characteristics of their own projects, the development pipeline, and continue to keep it fresh vitality.
• Industry and art institutions and research universities have better mobility. This is the problem of the education sector needs to think about (the school also teaches 2D animation with Flash pirated it?) Graphics Lab algorithm can industrialization?
• Art Technology (Tech Art) began to become increasingly important impact on AAA projects: the ability to open up the boundaries of art and engineering, use-party software, plug-ins and internal scripting to improve efficiency

 

design

• Designers of professionalism needs to be improved, the game plan of work needs to have a "rational passion," need to be pursued to design, psychology, aesthetic theory
• The company is a designer in the game programmer (gameplay programmer) clients, designers need to have some understanding of the realization of the program logic, and can clearly articulate and quantify their design
• Designer for the project management and task allocation need to have some ability to forecast

engineering

　　Development of production itself, is a software engineering process - it contains exciting and various aspects of anodyne.

• IT
  • Share, store and transfer files. Speed ​​fast enough? VPN good cause
  • Mobility variety of account management, video conferencing, project management, code review, HR, etc. Enterprise Suite
  • Hardware replacement (buy the latest graphics card and a CPU clutching a workstation)
• Pan tool
  • Version control
  • When the participants of the project at the time of the order of several hundred persons, document management will be very heavy (RockStar almost exhausted int32 number of Perforce version)
  • Branching and merging management, internal release management
• DevOps
  • Automatic compiler verification system: to ensure that all platform versions of code does not build error
  • Automatic Test System
  • Build self-generation system: design, art, marketing, QA can easily generate their own version required
• Format conversion, text manipulation, Batch - convergence and game engine preparation
• Figure Script Editor graphical interface - easy designer
• Server deployment and management
• Game Engine
  • How to manage and update Legacy code (such as many engines have 20+ years older code) How to add new graphics support (Vulkan, Metal) and file type support
  • How to tame the C ++ (or tamed C ++): For large game project, a high threshold of C ++ code quality to the product can not come out. When are upgraded versions of C ++? Change the compiler.
  • How to continuous improvement framework in the road, to reduce the build (compile + link) time, multi-threaded optimization, memory optimization, stable Feature on the basis of iteration on a game engine
  • How educational guidance of young engineers to write efficient codes (also management issues), passing inside knowledge
• test
  • QA tools, automated testing, problem reporting and tracking

 

【management】

Unit collaboration is the key to the success of the AAA project, like all modern enterprises to continuously improve production and management as

• How can vision into concrete to abstract concepts, to establish a clear and unambiguous design requirements and a complete and logical expansion project
• How to develop a reasonable plan tasks and schedule meetings? How to face the unexpected events repositioning pivot? How can stop wrangling after the encounter difficulties, rationally draw lines of responsibility and ownership
• Flat management (such as Naughty dog) each and everyone involved, the balance of democracy and centralization
• HR issues recruit people cutting people (Hire & Fire)

Industrialization is a long process of accumulation needs. The Qing government can buy the British navy gun boat fleet formation, but there must be a modern country, needs shipyard can build their own ship, SMEs can be proficient in the use and improvement of ships for its specific industrial production, people buy a boat able to open their own, you can buy the parts installed transducer, and never bored. Everyone needs to experience personal and gratitude (Appreciate) the progress of industrialization and entertainment to their work brings.

Mergers and acquisitions and the introduction can achieve rapid gains in the economy. But a solid industrial needs takes a hundred years. The wheel of history has completed the rotation of several of the industrial revolution, developing country can enjoy the fruits of material quickly, but through the process of a series of rational experience and market their own hands, and competitive products and other iterations on the people - after the shuttle bus missed the country permanently. Industrialization and implement local self-derived industrial progress from the cultural gene, which is the capital does not come. But if we now need to address livelihood issues after emerging from a little cheap entertainment to fill the fragments of time, then we will not engage in AAA games (like the front said, this is the first world problem), we must first engage in engage all sectors of society as a whole industrial modernization (municipal workers have not used the machine to sweep the streets? small artisan workshops have no power auxiliary production tools? there are no ordinary employees, will use an electronic system? did not enjoy sharing a street vendor of electronic facilitate traceability and responsibility of the seller to pay?).