The 3A masterpiece is the crown of the game industry and the inevitable result of industrialization.

But the 3A masterpiece itself will gradually face a variety of problems, some of which are easy to solve, and some of which are not easy to solve.

In fact, in this day and age, no one knows that the future triple-A masterpieces are facing the dilemma of where to go. In the era before Zhou Fangyuan's rebirth, the game industry could be said to love and hate 3A masterpieces. Love it because of its brilliance, hate it because it is fading its halo.

At the time, no one knew whether the future of triple-A masterpieces was bright or dark.

Gamers are doing their best to find a way out.

The first thing they thought of was that service games would become popular.

In fact, at that time, a number of game companies had already said that they would reduce the number of triple-A masterpieces that would be developed, and more costs and energy would be invested in existing service-oriented games in the future. The clearest and strongest statement is undoubtedly made by Ubisoft, which is known to release more triple-A titles every year than any other company.

Ubisoft had spoken about the company's new strategy at a meeting of financial investors.

Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft's CEO at the time, said Ubisoft's success reflected the fact that the gaming industry was moving towards a business model that was less and less reliant on the release of new titles. Releasing new titles now is just one part of the company's business, and its main focus is on content that keeps players engaged for the long term.

Their plan is to keep players engaged in their game for more than just hours, but even months and years.

In fact, this business strategy of Ubisoft has been successful, at least commercially.

Given the amount of money you can get from DLC and microtransactions alone, why spend a lot of money and publicity on a whole new game?

It has to be said that the game publishers of the future have become more and more "lazy".

IGN even ran a video show asking if R Star would eventually become a developer who only worked on GTA and Red Dead Redemption.

In fact, if you take a closer look at Ubisoft's service-oriented games, which are still in full swing, you can see why Ubisoft is doing this.

Ubisoft's "The Division", "Rainbow 6: Siege", and "Ghost Recon: Wildlands" have been in operation for two or more years at that time, and there are still many users playing these games, and Ubisoft has been constantly making follow-up updates to continue to attract more new users.

This phenomenon can be more clearly illustrated in terms of data, according to Steamspy's statistics, "Rainbow Six: Siege" is gradually heating up in China, the number of players continues to grow, and the game even ushered in a "second spring".

According to the statistics of the proportion of active players in each region of Steamspy, the number of players in China has been mediocre since the game's release at the end of 2015. Before August 2016, the proportion of active players was only 9%, which is far from the number of players in the United States, but since the end of 2016, the number of active players has begun to soar, and it was once comparable to the number of active players in the United States.

In terms of the overall trend, other countries, including players in the United States, Germany, Russia, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries have shown a downward trend, and at that time, the number of active players in the country has soared to 19%, second only to the United States at 21%.

As for the number of active players, only 米国 and Huaxia are far ahead, with data showing that there were 388,000 active operators in the United States at that time, while Huaxia had 352,000, followed by Germany with 96,000.

The Division in 2016 after the release of the initial excitement after the loss of a user, and the word of mouth has also declined, there is not so much playable content, but since then Ubisoft has continued to tinker and update, the number of users of this game is even as high as 20 million, and in the third year, Ubisoft recently released 25 new vacancies about the game on the job page, the job description mentions that the work of these people will involve "expanding the " The Division", working together to "create the best open-world RPG experience ever".

Ghost Recon: Wildlands is also undergoing a lot of updates, and Assassin's Creed: Origins has more to come to follow, and Ubisoft doesn't seem to be in a hurry to release a sequel to the series soon.

We can also see the reviews of these games on some social networks, among which we often see the evaluation that Ubisoft has saved these games with several updates and efforts.

In view of the many problems that arise in 3A masterpieces,Service games can be said to be the best solution,Since players don't like New Year's goods,Then simply make a game operation for many years,So that you can slowly listen to the opinions and feedback of players,Finally, continue to modify,Make the reputation gradually improve,It can also greatly save costs,No longer spend a lot of money to re-build a similar world,The problem of too long research and development time is also solved,Because the game company can first put out part of the content and wait for it to be done later and then slowly launched,In addition,The game company doesn't seem to have to worry about making money, in-app purchases and krypton can continue to bring stable follow-up income, as long as it doesn't go too far in microtransactions like EA.

Although there are many criticisms of service-oriented games, such as criticism of in-app purchase of krypton and box-opening systems, and criticism of game companies not launching sequels, from a practical point of view, in addition to service-oriented games, game companies do not seem to have any other way to better solve the dilemmas encountered by triple-A masterpieces.

In addition to Ubisoft, Fuso Games SE is also a big supporter of service-oriented games.

In a September 2017 report, the company's president, Yosuke Matsuda, said that server-based gaming is the future.

Gone are the days when single-player games dominated the mainstream and multiplayer played supporting roles, and President Matsuda said in the report that multiplayer games are ahead of the curve, and providing long-term play value has become one of the criteria in game design.

SE's "Final Fantasy 15" is the company's first typical service game, this game was like a half-finished product when it first came out, and there were a lot of problems, but after a year of multiple updates, the game's reputation has rebounded significantly, especially the emergence of the Ignis DLC, which has won unanimous praise from many players.

At the same time, turn your head and take a look at the overwhelming bad reviews that "Dynasty Warriors 8" has suffered, which reminds people of the bad reviews after the release of "Assassin's Creed: Revolution", if Koei wants to save "Dynasty Warriors 8", then the best thing to do is to make this game a service game, and constantly go through a lot of changes, which will be more effective than releasing an enhanced version such as Legend of the Warrior much later.

In addition, the reason for this trend is mainly due to the change in the consumption tendency of players.

A report by e-commerce company Digital River in late 2017 noted that the value of the gaming industry as a whole has tripled under the influence of this trend. Players are increasingly inclined to opt for a steady stream of new content rather than playing a regular blockbuster game for $60. Publishers are trying to meet this expectation, so they're going to a service-based gaming model. Over time, they released fewer new games, replacing them with regular updates and additional content.

In short, this service game,In fact, it is a model of stand-alone games that imitate the update mode of online games.,It's just that there are not too many network elements.,The main topic is based on stand-alone games.,But it's constantly updated.,Is it also the launch of a "expansion piece",To keep the freshness of the player's heart。

Of course, service-oriented games were not the only way to solve the dilemma of triple-A masterpieces, at least at the time, gamers found another way.

If triple-A titles are developing in the direction of decreasing numbers and service-oriented games, then the combination of indie and triple-A can be seen as a new triple-A concept. At the time of Zhou Fangyuan's rebirth, some game companies had already proposed the concept of independent triple-A games, and there were already some typical cases.

The first example is Hellblade.

People usually refer to low-cost, low-exposure games as indie games, and high-cost, well-known games as triple-A games.

Independent games do not have the capital of 3A, and it is difficult to match 3A in terms of content and quality, so they forge ahead and amplify the core gameplay of the game;

Hellblade, on the other hand, is a game that takes a middle ground.

Many people regard these games as 'indie 3A', games with the comprehensive quality of 3A's and a novel and free indie spirit. To put it bluntly, it is a small production team with a small development scale, which is only aimed at a certain audience of players, but achieves first-class game quality. ”

Ninja Theory Studio has cooperated with many publishers before, and because it is often swayed by publishers, there are always some controversial issues in the games produced, typical of which is the character problem of "New Devil May Cry", so Ninja Theory no longer looks for publishers, and creates "Hellblade" through the 3A independent model.

Ninja Theory's independent triple-A development model is centered on the production team, controlling all elements of the game, controlling the allocation of funds, marketing and public relations, and of course, the ownership of the IP. Communication between the production team and players is more direct and transparent, and the opinions of players can have a greater impact on the development of the game, and the production team will also provide early demo versions of the game to some players.

There are many ways to get development funding: micro-loans and external investments, game peripherals, completion guarantees, and so on. It must be mentioned that the premise of this model must be small production and niche. There is no physical version of "Hellblade" at the first launch, and the price of the digital version is only half of that of ordinary triple-A games, and the target sales are more than 300,000, which shows that the player base it targets is not large.

During the production of Hellblade, in addition to the purchase of necessary development equipment, which was not as lavish as it was as a triple-A studio, Ninja Theory also explored many ways to save costs but make the game look uncompromised.

As a result, by the end of November 2017, the game had sold more than 500,000 units and generated $13 million in total revenue, making the indie triple-A game, which had been in development for three years in development, a success for the 20-person Ninja Theory team. In addition to Hellblade, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a game that tries to blend the concepts of indie and triple-A: at its core, it is an indie game, more hardcore, more demanding, and more intense. But with the visual effects and production value of a triple-A game.

If "Hellblade" can only be regarded as 3A, then "Kingdom Heaven: Deliverance" may not be as good as some stand-alone masterpieces in addition to the graphics, and the content richness is even better than many 3A masterpieces, and some people even think that "Kingdom Heaven: Deliverance" has a lot of experimental novelty like the first few games of the Elder Scrolls series, and it is more interesting than many open-world games now, if it goes through several iterations, finally "Kingdom Come: Deliverance" It's possible to start a school of thought that redefines the open world or reinvents a new genre.

And the commercial returns of Kingdom Come: Deliverance are indeed impressive, with sales exceeding 1 million units in its first week of release and a total revenue of $50 million in 10 days after its release.

Therefore, it is not difficult to see that in the case of the traditional large companies' triple-A masterpieces choosing a conservative and stable service-oriented game route, some small and medium-sized companies may use less capital to create a game between a triple-A masterpiece and an indie game, whether this kind of game is called a new triple-A masterpiece or an independent triple-A game, which is a direction that may continue to evolve in the future.

Having said all this, in fact, in the future, the real problem faced by major game companies is actually very, very simple - will triple-A games eventually die?

As the problems continue to arise in triple-A masterpieces, some critics believe that the development model of triple-A masterpieces will inevitably become more and more problematic and eventually die out, but this is not the case.

If the 3A masterpiece continues to go according to the model of one work a year, the possibility of dying out in the future is still very large, but the emergence of service-oriented games has solved many problems of the 3A masterpiece, and the emergence of independent 3A games has expanded the extension of the concept of 3A, which can be said to be a new model of 3A.

So in the future, triple-A masterpieces are likely to become less and less like the games we played in previous years, and there will be more changes, and it is these changes that ensure that this mode and genre can continue to continue, so to speak, after a period of chaos, it is ushered in a brighter future.

And this can just bring some inspiration to Zhou Fangyuan.

Although it is now an era when 3A masterpieces have just appeared and are preparing for glory, this does not mean that the two ways out of future 3A masterpieces cannot appear in advance.

It's nothing more than a different development direction, one is to continue to launch sequels, and the other is to continue to add bricks and tiles on the basis of the original work.

The management of several production teams of Far Away Games, what they are worried about is nothing more than that the group spends a lot of money, but in the end it will not be able to make a profit. However, the service-oriented 3A masterpiece has avoided this dilemma, and the cost has been reduced a lot, and the risk has been reduced a lot. In addition, some of the advantages of independent 3A can also be incorporated, so that it becomes a completely new model.

This model, in the previous life, only appeared when the 3A masterpiece seemed to be coming to an end.

But now, Zhou Fangyuan is about to launch this model in the era when the 3A masterpiece has just appeared, and he doesn't care how the game market will develop in the future, because human wisdom is always inexhaustible, and when it is really unsustainable, there will naturally be new models. What he has to do now is to climb higher peaks with distant games, so it is understandable that he will do everything.