Orem was an avid gamer, but as he got older, especially with the release of SimCity last year, he slowly began to like the more interesting new gadgets of computer games, and often browsed the software store to see if there was anything new in his spare time. Today is no exception, it's almost Christmas, and he's going to buy a game that looks good, which can be regarded as a Christmas gift for himself.

Olem arrived at his base, a Lohas software store on the seventh block, and was about to push the door to enter, when a game poster on the right side of the gate caught his eye. Under the blue sky and white clouds, a huge medieval warship is sailing in the wind and waves, and a few large words are printed in the center of the poster: "The sea is calling you!" ”

Orem suddenly felt a very strange feeling, as if he had seen the newly transferred blonde girl in his class for the first time when he was in school, and he felt his blood boiling, as if some kind of consciousness that had been dormant for hundreds of years was activated.

Pushing open the door of the software store, while still at the door, Olem couldn't help but shout: "Old Jim man, where is that thing in front of your store?" ”

"You go to the shelves and take a look yourself, I'm busy." Jim snapped back in the crowd.

Olime walked to the back shelf, which is the exclusive shelf of EA, and can often find his favorite games, such as last year's SimCity and this year's Railroad Tycoon. When Olem walked to the shelf, he was about to take a closer look, when suddenly his eyes lit up, and there were a lot of new items on the top part of the shelf that he hadn't seen before, especially the top row, which was printed on the box with the sailboat on the poster outside the store. He couldn't help but pick up a box and look at it carefully, well, the familiar "EA" logo in the upper left corner, the galleon on the front of the poster, and the artistic title "UnchartedWaters", and the production company "BlueDragon" printed underneath is also familiar, and several good games played by Orem are made by this company. After looking at the front, Olime flipped the box over to see what it had.

On the back of the box is a description of the game's plot: "Leon Farrell was born into a family of seafarers, and his father, spurred on by the success of Da Gama's voyage to India, decided to venture into India as well. The Portuguese princess Christina is also in the crowd to see her off, and Leon falls in love with the princess at first sight and is determined to make her his future lover. However, his dream was shattered by a ruthless reality a year later: his father's first mate Locke brought the bad news that his father had been shipwrecked, and in order to fulfill his father's last wish, Leon Farrell's sailing career began......"

Orem felt good, the game in front of him was the best gift he was looking for, he picked up the game and turned to Jim's counter. The crowd around Jim was much smaller than just now, and after waiting in line for a while, it was soon Orem's turn, he handed over the game, looked at Jim, who was a little tired, and said with a smile: "Old Jim, it seems that your business is very good today, look at you." ”

"Luckily, it's not just in time for a new game to come out." Jim smiled too, a little tired, but in good spirits.

Jim took the game handed by Olem and looked at it, and whistled, "Olem, you want to buy this game too, it seems that almost all the buyers who entered the door today came for this." Thank you for your patronage, $35. ”

Orem swiped his card, grabbed his Christmas present, and went home happy. As soon as he got home, he couldn't wait to unpack it, took out the floppy disk inside and began to try to install it on his computer.

Orem's computer has only been updated this year, and it is the best 486 computer now, with a 14-inch color display, 4 megabytes of memory, a large 500 megabyte hard drive, and a SoundBlasterPro sound card last month. In fact, Olime didn't think about buying this sound card, at that time he just thought the music coming out of the store was very good, and wanted to go in and take a look, but the salesman in the store was too enthusiastic, and kept introducing how good this freshly baked sound card was, one would be "the latest industrial bus standard interface", and the other would be "up to 8-bit sampling, comparable to the stereo output of professional audio". Perhaps because Orem is a game lover, the salesman also boasted that he could hear the most realistic sound effects and the most beautiful music when playing the game with a sound card. When Orem really paid for it and bought it home, he realized that there are not many sounds in this game now, at most it is a little fighting "heyha" sound, which makes Orem depressed for a long time, and every time he turns on the computer, he regrets that he shouldn't have listened to the salesman's fooling.

After venting his anger at the salesman, Olime stabilized his emotions, took the six game floppy disks in his hand, and inserted the floppy drives one by one according to the installation method written in the manual. The installation progress on the screen slowly increased to 100%, and Olem suddenly thought of what had happened to some games in the past, and he couldn't help but feel a little weak. The prompt that the game is installed is complete flashes on the screen,Orem froze,Follow the method of starting the game written on the manual,Soon the game started,The speaker that had been silent for a long time suddenly emitted a burst of passionate music。 This is real music, not the simple "ding ding dong" of those previous games, the music full of electronic flavor sounds like a symphony to Olem's heart, watching the flashing game opening animation, his tears gradually flowed......

Zhang Lexing sat quietly in his study playing with the computer, his eyes full of tears. A delicate CG image flashing on the computer screen shows Leon Farrell meeting the princess, encountering bad news, and aspiring to sail, and with the elaborate background music, people immediately feel the urge to explore new places. With the appearance of the follow-up game screen, Zhang Lexing was even more surprised, this is definitely not the humble "Age of Exploration 1" that used to be, except that the plot is roughly the same, the game screen has changed dramatically. 640×480 screen resolution, 256 color rendering on the same screen, this kind of expressiveness beyond VGA image quality, well depict the characteristics of different ports, but also show various sudden conditions when sailing at sea, and bring fine naval battle pictures to the game. Different soundtracks from different ports show the ethnic characteristics of each region, with relaxed music bringing out the fun of sailing, tense music showing the oppression before the storm, and passionate music showing the excitement of naval battles, and even a lot of interesting sound effects in and out of different port facilities. Zhang Lexing is sure that this is the best game he has played since his rebirth.

A white-skinned jade hand patted Zhang Lexing's shoulder, and at the same time, Yang Xinxin's voice also came from behind: "Isn't it just a game, as for playing, tears flowed down your face." ”

Zhang Lexing didn't look back, his eyes were firmly fixed on the screen, for fear of missing a wonderful journey, and he said unconvinced: "Sister Xin, a good game is like a life experience, but you won't understand, except for minesweeper and cards, you don't play other games." ”

Suddenly, Zhang Lexing's back quieted down, and after a while, Yang Xinxin's calm voice came again: "You mean I don't understand......"

Zhang Lexing suddenly realized that he had said the wrong thing just now, and a cold sweat broke out behind his back, and he was thinking about how to remedy it, but unfortunately it was too late. "Ahh......h

The next day, Zhang Lexing came to his office as usual, but with an extra band-aid on his forehead. When he came to the desk and sat down, Zhang Lexing found that there was an envelope on the table, and when he opened it, it turned out to be a list of production costs for "Age of Exploration 1". Zhang Lexing took a closer look and became excited again, even more excited than when he played the game yesterday, and said angrily in his heart: "These guys really don't know how expensive ...... are not good at home."

That's right, Zhang Lexing promised to pay for the production fee himself, but the problem is that money is not such a way to spend, just make such a game, Zhan Jun and his gang actually used almost 3 million US dollars, which is estimated to have been cut if EA or Blue Dragon's own project was cut a long time ago. Zhang Lexing flipped through the detailed list behind him to see how the money was used. Oh my God, the music production cost $1 million, no wonder the game soundtrack is so good, I guess it's a well-known composer. The animation cost $800,000, and after using the graphics workstation, and looking at the actual results in the game, it was well spent. In the end, the rest is some equipment usage fees (renting Blue Dragon's game production room) and technical support fees (applying for audio and image processing technical support from the Game Research Institute), etc., and the bits and pieces can actually exceed 1 million US dollars.

Zhang Lexing finally couldn't help but vent in language that was not suitable for appearing on paper: "@#¥%......"

High production costs, high-quality game effects, the most direct consequences, Zhang Lexing can figure it out with his toes, the retail sales of the game will definitely not be any better, the starting point of this game is too high. This was confirmed by market feedback shortly after, and after the Christmas sales season, the game barely reached 30,000 units, not even passing the passing line. But what is surprising is that under the impetus of this game, the sound card, which was almost unattended, suddenly became a hot seller.

Many game magazines have named this game a "hardware killer" and "hardware development promoter", and wrote in a review article: "If you don't look at the hardware requirements, this game is definitely eligible to be selected for the best picture of the year, the best soundtrack, and it can be called the most amazing game, but its requirements for hardware are also very surprising, not that the 486 computer can't run, the graphics card can't run, and most of the game feeling is missing without a sound card." In order to enjoy better game effects, many gamers have to buy a new computer, and they also need to match a better ATI graphics card, and the sound card is indispensable. I'm sure the most favorite of this game will be the computer vendors......"

The retail market failed, but Blue Dragon unexpectedly got an order from Dell, which wanted to bundle "Age of Discovery 1" with a new high-end 486 home computer (with sound card) because they felt that the game would fully demonstrate the features of the new product and would be very likely to drive sales.

The new order finally made Zhang Lexing feel a little better, but Zhan Jun's group still had to teach a lesson, otherwise they would have been doing this in the future, and it would not have been possible to be so lucky to have a computer dealer take a fancy to it every time.

Blue Dragon Company Meeting Room ......

The atmosphere is a little depressing, it seems that Zhan Jun and his team members have inquired about the sales of the game, according to the previous high production cost, this game will definitely lose money even if it is counted as bundled sales, everyone is a little worried about their future, one by one is cautious, and the atmosphere does not dare to take a bite.

Zhang Lexing smiled: "Why are you so depressed?" I've played your games, and they're doing pretty well. ”

Hearing Zhang Lexing's words of consolation, everyone's expressions relaxed a lot.

Zhang Lexing continued: "However, you still made a big mistake in commercial game production this time, that is, you didn't consider what the current mainstream platform is, and paid too much attention to the performance of the game, so that you spent too much production money, and the game sales were not good. In fact, the quality of the game itself is still very good, I can feel that you are very careful to do it, but you have to think about it, how many people have the conditions to play this game now? ”

Everyone nodded, all of them with serious expressions, and it seemed that they had listened.

"Forget it this time, your inexperience is not enough, and I usually pay little attention. I hope that this can be used as a lesson to make game effects in the future, and at the same time, pay attention to reasonable cost control, especially to choose a good game platform. I won't interfere in your next project, you need to find your own ideas, apply in Blue Dragon according to the normal process, this time the production fee will be limited to $500,000, I hope you can perform well, and strive to make a qualified game under these conditions. ”

Zhan Jun stood up and said, "Boss, don't worry, we will plan well this time, and we will definitely try our best to do our best." ”

Soon after, Zhan Jun and others, having learned from their previous experience and lessons, embarked on a new development journey again......

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