I have just finished watching Pixar’s "Spiritual Journey" recently, and I feel deeply impressed, and I feel that it is consistent with my previous experience when I went to the temple to meditate. After a fallen leaf ignited the spark of the soul in the film, I shed tears. I often wonder how long we have not stopped facing a flower on the roadside in this impetuous society. Stop for a while, breathe in the fragrance of this flower, take a look at the conspicuous color, and listen to the sound of the wind.
For game development or game design, a transactional audio-visual language product that is touted as the ninth art, the so-called pursuit of profit for user experience and long-term overtime work. Being separated from life and gradually losing the five senses of life, I think it is difficult to create products that shock the soul, let alone art.
I always like to think about the three major issues of philosophy, and from time to time I want to find my inner starting point or spark.
Everyone has been positioning himself throughout his life since he started catching the week when he was young. Only with the development of time, I gradually realized my insignificance. The positioning has also changed from a tall scientist/great man in elementary school, or a respectable people’s police/people’s teacher, to a movie star and idol singer in middle and high school. When you arrive at university, most of the time it’s good if you can find a stable job.
After graduating, many people got rid of the shackles of learning, and finally followed their hearts and did what they liked. This is the most beautiful original intention. Zhang San, who likes eating most, graduated to set up a street stall, and later opened a restaurant. Li Si, who likes mixed society the most, became a well-known contractor on the construction site and undertook the renovation of a large shanty town. The monitor, who has a flexible mind and likes to engage in social activities, went to do real estate sales. There was no sense of existence at all, and he never participated in class activities. The most unknown classmate Xiao Ming went home to inherit the family business. And I, who was in the game hall all year round, became a developer of a certain game.
At this moment, are you happy?
During the game development process. When setting up the project, I was anxious to do a demo to show the boss, and I had to work overtime. In the mid-term, I was not sure about my own ideas and workload, leading to overtime. When I was about to go online later, I worked overtime because the task was not completed or I was not sure about my team's work. During the operation period, if there is an operation accident, it is necessary to solve the bug and follow-up operation content instantly, causing overtime.
This is a common phenomenon I have experienced in all large, medium and small game companies and studios in China.
I often reflect on why we have so much time to do things, or even no time to experience the joy of life? Is it a game that I made myself? Why is there so much time to think about the business and so little time to think about the game itself? Why can't my team make creative products?
The final conclusion is one word: starting point
Everything has a starting point at the very beginning, and there is no good or bad for an individual. But a different pattern will affect all subsequent work processes and results. In short, the motivation for doing things must be pure.
For example, your starting point for a game is to make money and to make a good game, or you want to upgrade your rank, be a leader, or have multiple ideas that overlap. Then the gap between the series of behaviors and the results can be tens of thousands of miles.
The starting point is to make money: this is generally a businessman who does not play games very much, or does not like games at all (some also like to play but are busy to make money, this kind of general game play only plays the most popular ones), even cartoons Haven't seen it. Generally, market research is conducted first to estimate or find the next most profitable category to occupy the market as quickly as possible. This is mainly based on judgment, which still somewhat tests the technical content of the decision maker. Or it is to burn money to pile up the art effects, and often use the technology of AAA games, to rely on the huge team of engineers and designers to copy the gameplay and crush the existing products. Of course, I have already invested a lot of capital. It is better to continue investing or financing for a few rounds, buy purchases, find anchors, and find CVs. This kind of operation is definitely not at a loss, and the more you invest, the higher the chance of repaying the cost. If it fails, it must be because the money has not been burnt. If you are lucky, you can earn tens of times, hundreds of times in return.
The starting point is to make a good game: first have a game category you like, then an idea, and then find teammates who complete the idea. The advantage here is that when you are very sure what idea you want to complete, you can fully control the overall situation, know what is most important, what level of art quality is, and whether other functions surrounding the core gameplay Need to stop. The development of the game can even be completed before the deadline. The high-end part of a good painter is white space, and before painting, he already has the feeling of the finished picture in his heart. This method is really difficult in reality, because for the value of humans, the idea itself is the most valuable. It is not easy to have a creative idea, and it is necessary to find someone to vote with a demo. This kind of innovation is often more advanced, because most of the market reaction does not have this type of product at all. The game analyst/commentor is also completely after the fact. What is hot to study what, dota/lol is hot for moba, collapse 3 is hot for two-dimensional, Zelda is hot for the open world, and it is hot for eating chicken. , Auto Chess became popular and it was a long story after analysis, and there was no taste in it at all. For those with strength, I think I can study my favorite categories thoroughly and find out the most promising works for estimation. Due to the lagging nature of the market and the profit-seeking nature of capital, it is difficult to raise money purely by creativity without relying on the copying templates of existing successful products. I can only join a few people to engage in independent mobile games , but now independent mobile games are not independent anymore. It has become a gimmick, or an excuse to make horizontal garbage, not for the time being. The starting point is to make a good mobile game. If you get it right, you still have a chance to make money. For example, if you encounter some small and beautiful teams to make impressive products, you really admire them with joy. There are so many on steam.
The starting point is to upgrade the workplace: it may be a student of engineering background, or it may be a colleague of some other type of job. It cannot be said that there is no ambition, but the ambition is not to play games, but to reach a certain height in one's own profession. It doesn’t matter what you do specifically, but it must have academic value and promotion value. This thing can show technical strength. No matter what category your game is, whether it can be used or not, you must push the high-tech designed by yourself in the game. This leads to a huge redundant content of the game. If you encounter another producer who has no idea, the result is horrible. This is why many domestic games have huge technology scale and first-rate game graphics, but they are not fun, and they get cold within a few months. Except for a few geniuses, I always don't think that Xueba who learns all day can be better than our so-called bad kids who skip class and go to the game hall/Internet cafe in terms of game creativity and understanding. This kind of academic master eventually developed into a career promotion personnel, I am not against it, a certain perspective is very correct, and can even become a scientist. They are all talents and there is nothing wrong with them. Therefore, in the face of this situation, it is very important for producers or leaders to use people to know people. Everyone has a division of labor and cooperation. If it is not used well, it will be rolled inward, reinventing the wheel and producing technical hooligans.
The starting point is to be a leader: this kind of person who belongs to the rest is to be the leader, producer, and director. After the upper ranks, there are not many skills and no game ideas of their own. First of all, the core point is to manage upward, and then to hire people. This test is the ability of human resource integration and the ability of workplace checks and balances. It’s easy if you have people. Let’s start by blowing up a revenue estimate of several billion. In the early stage, there will be game analysts to find you a good direction. A UI designer will help you make the PPT background and homepage, and there will be planning to help you write it. For PPT, there are artists to help you do art design, programmers to implement business functions, and a few experts to support you on key issues. All you need to do is to raise money and hold meetings, increase investment, spread the pie, and you won’t let this kind of project go bankrupt and lose money. This kind of starting point does not elaborate on the leadership, and has studied various mba and even social workers. There are also many successful people, and the larger investment projects are getting bigger and bigger, and the content of innovation and games is not to be mentioned.
Everyone knows what they are doing, but they are not willing to face their starting point. Or they are very clear about their starting point, but are ashamed to show it. It's your own life, and there is no right or wrong to choose differently.
These starting points are intertwined. For example, everyone wants to sell mobile games to make money and make technological breakthroughs to share in large academic forums, and then get promoted and raise salaries. There is only one starting point for achieving such a perfect goal, that is, everything is to do well in the core gameplay of the game as the goal, and to master the fire point to the end.
This chapter is about tracing the source. Having a starting point helps us to trace the source. Why on earth are you making games? Where does the game impress you? Why is the sense of substitution of arcade games so squalid so many years ago? Why are the AAA masterpieces that are imitating nowadays, let alone a sense of substitution? Why do you unconsciously dodge your body when playing the slag screen CS? Why is the Warcraft RPG map so fun? why……
I think the root is human instinct, just like painting. The game is simple. From the game of throwing stones, to the chasing game of running and jumping, to the game of dice, to poker, backgammon, and mahjong. All have a simple core gameplay. It is precisely the most difficult thing to understand this eye.
The mechanism of the legendary game is very simple compared to the current one, but it still shocked me when I watched others use Taoist priests to summon mythical beasts to spit fire. Including the sound effects of the equipment and explosive equipment on the ground, it gave me unprecedented sensory stimulation in terms of audiovisual language.
The essence of design
Thoughts on the development after the technical barriers gradually disappeared
table of Contents:
1. Tracing to the source (the point of the game that initially attracted you is very important, often on the spiritual level)
2. The essence of design (simplistic game, non-metaphysical primitive instinct to create fun)
3. Integrated development (advantages and skills of full-stack engineer/designer development)
4. Moral quality and technical quality (Valve and Nintendo-style precipitation development, the importance of character and technology, the concept of technical rogue)
5. Technology planning and precipitation (focused, long-term flow development and inheritance)
6. Homogeneous competition (due to the technological bottleneck caused by the development of technology or hardware, technical barriers have gradually disappeared, and there is no innovation at all, which has become a homogeneous competition in all walks of life. Example: non-innovative, due to cognition Differences, by standing on the shoulders of the predecessors but for the translation of published or foreign knowledge to show off the skill type of knowledge sharing, homogenized knowledge collation and copy and paste)
7. Business penetration (the concept of business penetration, the product of the struggle for power and interest)
8. Involution (problems caused by development diversity and insufficient innovation often come from certain violent industries or jobs)
9. Ecological mechanism (produced by high-level rules: rest and rest mechanism, inaction mechanism, horse racing mechanism, ecological reaction. There are both advantages and disadvantages. Mingjun who understands the design rules with a high profile often has the upper beam and the wrong beam. Mostly)
10. Break the game (everything is based on family and health, improve ability, pursue the original aspiration, and refuse to brainwash)
11. Hope (the development of open source technology on the Internet and the improvement of people’s wisdom)