Before the ice was brought, there was an American video game company that was hated by most American game developers. That's Electronic Arts.

This company has a near-monopoly in the field of sports games. Even if the games they make aren't the most fun, as long as they are updated once a year, there will still be many sports fans who will pay for them.

After all, there's nothing more exciting than being able to control your favorite star yourself.

With the strong ability to attract money in sports games, they have opened up sales in the field of video games, won more excellent game production talents, and acquired many game production portfolio production companies.

However, as mentioned earlier, they only like great production talent, and they don't have much interest in the game series that have been made by these talents before. Maybe a sequel will be made, but as long as it doesn't sell well and doesn't meet the commercial interests, the series will be disbanded.

Then, the best game talent will be shunted to make sports games or do something else. With the power of capital.

Electronic Arts, with its own limited skills, acquired a number of highly skilled masters, and then broke down their own projects and let them make sports games.

And then, the quality of their sports games is really improving. It greatly satisfies the needs of sports fans. Although in the world of video games except for sports fans, Electronic Arts has been scolded to the sky. However, they have held on to their fundamentals, which has become more difficult to shake.

In fact, the northern ice storm and the division of the southern headquarters. It should be years later, when Ice and Activision merge. will appear.

Because, Northern Storm merged with Activision at that time. The combined company is called Activision Ice, a publisher and game producer. However, there is no position for the Northern Icemen in the leadership, which means that the status of the Northern Icebreaker is even lower.

That is to say, what they are asked to do, they have to do, and if they don't do it, they can't do it. Because of this, they left Blizzard, and after leaving, they made a spiritual sequel to the Diablo series that they had wanted to make for a long time, called "Torchlight".

In a short period of time, this game has indeed carried the banner of "brushing" games. But. When Nai was unlucky, this time was no longer the original era.

In the era of Torchlight, so-called MOBA, that is, Dota and Dota-like games developed from real-time strategy role-playing maps, had already taken off.

And "Torchlight", a game that brushes the computer of the mentally handicapped, although refreshing, is far less rewarding than a multiplayer online battle arena game.

After all, one is a computer with little ability, and the other is a person who is similar in all aspects.

So. The "Torchlight" series, a total of production to the second part, this series ends here. The whole studio dissolved, and the various old buddies fell apart. Each has gone in search of a way to survive.

If you look at this game this way, it seems to have a similar fate to Diablo.

And Lin Yan is now looking for them and recruiting them. One is because they were originally members of Storm Ice, and they don't have an aversion to other American game producers for Chiba Games.

The other one is. Icy's wings hardened, and he wanted to fly solo.

It makes sense to say that. Because of the rapid development of personal computer platforms and the popularity of the Internet. Blast even plans to abandon home consoles, which are the royal gaming platform. Instead, they want to conquer the city on the personal computer platform.

Because, they have a track record of sales and have strong bargaining power with publishers. In other words, when they are with the publisher, they are in the lead. Instead of being like when playing with Chiba, they have to obey the arrangement of the game with Chiba.

Chiba Games says when their games will be pressed, when they will be pressed, when they will be released, and when will they be released.

In fact, for so many years, Chiba Games has released games on Fridays of every week. Basically, every Friday, at least one game is released.

Because, when the release is out on Friday, students can come and buy it after school, and they can play at home on Saturday and Sunday. On Monday, you can blow a new game with your friends. Resulting in a larger purchase volume.

Of course, the benefits of Friday's release aren't just limited to students. There are also white-collar workers, although white-collar workers in Japan basically only have one day off on Sunday.

But other countries are not.

What's more, the whole world is using Friday as a tipping point. In this way, it is better for Chiba Games to coordinate the global market.

If a country has a release date, it is easy to get into trouble.

If the game is updated on Friday, so that the headquarters scheduling work of Chiba Games can be arranged along the date change line and the sun.

You know, every time a game is put on the shelf, it is a group activity designed for millions of people. And Chiba Games is not the kind of company that has great command ability and can command individuals.

Six seconds for one person is 100,000 minutes for a million people. Therefore, it is really not easy to make the whole overall planning and scheduling, and there are things about management.

Moreover, sales statistics are not easy to do. Because, sometimes retailers don't like to let Chiba Games know the actual number of sales. Because, knowing the actual number of sales, it is easy to be led by the nose by Chiba games.

Fortunately, most consoles are now linked to the internet. When a game disc is placed on a game console, there is an activation action that transmits a signal to the network.

In this way, you can determine how many games have been released in a certain region based on the network address where the game is activated.

However, even if there is such a more reliable channel. However, the aggregation channel on the physical store side will not be canceled.

Because, the data of network activation is not 100% reliable. There will always be some machines that run offline, and there will always be machines that will use some network proxies and change their network addresses.

Such. This will result in a game with a lot of activations in one region, but actually selling. There aren't so many cases.

For example, the machines that are now popular in China. It has just been changed from the previous generation host to the previous generation host. And China is a country with a large population and great consumption potential.

Although, only a few of them play the latest generation of consoles. However, this small number has already tens of thousands, nearly 100,000 units.

Due to Chiba Games, a full set of servers has not yet been set up in China. There are only instant messaging servers and online game servers.

So. To play console games and want to connect to the Internet, you need to disguise yourself as a network address in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan through a proxy to better experience the fun of being online.

You know, 100,000 units is not a small number. And the network agents over there can't buy proxies from many places, and sometimes they often change addresses.

So, these 100,000 consoles. It's like a ghost, it suddenly appears from here, and it suddenly appears out of nowhere.

Add to that nearly one in seven machines that are rarely networked. Network statistics, so to speak. It's not that convenient either.

Of course, the profits that Chiba Games make on the new super red and white machines now, the profits brought by the sales of the game. It's almost halfway there.

With TV programs, as well as various news information. There is also access to the online shopping interface. Whole, a new console for Chiba games. It's like a big internet portal. Through this portal, people can accomplish many things.

And in these things, it represents huge profits.

Chiba Games also uses its own games as a means of drainage, and then, with these additional features, it is monetized.

Of course, the percentage of monetization is not high. It's mainly about user experience. There is no way to go to the bidding ranking of inferior products, which consumes the credibility of Chiba Games and reduces users' trust in Chiba Games, so as to kill chickens and eggs, and obtain extremely high profits in a short period of time.

In fact, if Chiba Games wants to do that, it is better to go public on the stock market. It is safe and secure to sell some stocks, quickly speculate on the stock price, and then blow the bubble and delist.

After all, the majority of shareholders can be regarded as uncut leeks, which are cut once, and it will not take long to grow them again. They have eaten and seen, and they have been fooled so many times, and they still love deeply. Fooling them is far more reliable than fooling their own basic game, and those gamers are much more reliable.

Chiba Games brought in the people of the northern ice and set up a second-party studio. The so-called second party is Chiba Games Investment, which occupies almost all of the equity and has absolute control over this game company.

Of course, Vulture Studios has reverted to its name. They researched the gamer audience of Chiba Games, and they started working on a cartoon version of Diablo.

Lin Yan looked at the plan, this is completely "Torchlight", but they have not yet determined the name. Lin Yan didn't say either, he didn't want these people to have a feeling of being preoccupied.

It's just that I don't know how many generations this game series can do. After all, if you play too much of the game, you will always get tired.

However, these people are not saying that after making "Torchlight", it is completely useless. They can handle the sense of attack very well, and the next step is the production of multiplayer online tactical games.

However, the companies that make fighting games in Japan can also handle the sense of striking very well. However, after all, there is still a big difference between the two games.

If nothing else, it's "Diablo", the kind of animation that overturns a jar and bursts out with a bunch of gold coins. There are many game companies that can't learn from it.

Although this animation seems to be very simple, the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction produced by other companies is not as great as the one they make.

In the end, there are still companies that take screenshots frame by frame and intercept the data in the background, so that they can figure out how to set it up here.

Of course, Storm Ice expressed strong dissatisfaction with this behavior of Chiba Games. And, it was stated that it would not cooperate with Chiba Games in the future.

Lin Yan was not too surprised when he found out, and at the same time, he didn't cherish it much.

These people are, to put it bluntly, the kind of businessmen who have some artistic flavor. It is said that it is for the quality of the work to keep bouncing tickets, but this is not a means to stir up the game.

For example, Chiba Games is a game, according to the production schedule, it should be completed in August and sold in September, while Chiba Games said to the outside world that we can complete it in May and sell it in June.

When the time is almost up, say we're sorry, for various reasons, because you are very unhappy with the current level of completion of the game, so we decided to postpone the release of the game, so please wait for news.

In this way, you can continue to maintain the popularity, and you can sell more games when you sell.

When Vulture Studios paid attention to the conflict between Storm Ice and Chiba Games in the American game news media, they didn't feel that they were also a participant in the incident.

They're making games slowly, making games slowly. Of course, this slowness is not really slow, but describes them as calm.

They start with the preparation of the materials in advance. Then, a dedicated setter writes the settings. Then, a dedicated level designer designs the level.

It can be said that the whole process has a clear division of labor. In addition, the materials provided by the artist can be used directly by the program. In other words, for example, those companies that outsource outside of Japan often sometimes feel that the drawing is too ugly and waste their beautiful programs.

Let the art revise and modify it well.

You know, in a game company, the game schedule is a very strict thing. A day later in launching a game could mean a break in the funding chain.

And the underlying program directly finds the underlying art to modify the texture and so on. Although it looks very aspect, it looks beautiful. However, it can actually cause confusion in the management of the entire game production team.

In other words, the rhythm of the entire game production is completely disrupted.

Like the working group of Chiba Games, and now Vulture Studios, they don't have this kind of problem. That is, the quality of all aspects of the personnel is passable.

I know that I can use it when I take it. Even the program is that this programmer is sick, and another programmer can take over.

Although, when the game is pressed at the end, the file transfer relationship may be disrupted. To fill in the empty space, fill in random garbled characters.

However, that's for anti-theft.

In the process of production, the programmer writes out the program, which is as beautiful as a work of art. Art is also a work of art, but due to the performance of the machine, the game can't show all the details. However, the real high-definition stickers are also preserved, and maybe one day, a high-definition reset version will be launched. (To be continued.) )