The question is fascinating.

How to use a designer's way to save development money as much as possible.

If you look at this sentence from another angle, it will become something like this -- this is another hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment for your own project.

Because you save some of your expenses, you can naturally apply that savings to other aspects of the game, or the details or other places, to make it better.

For example, if a game is only invested by the company with a million dollars, that is, you need to use this million to complete the development of the game, and you feel that this number is very tight, but you don't want the game to be ruined, so-called, you must learn to use your ability reasonably to save costs for the game.

This is basically a basic skill for a game developer.

"So how do we do it?" Jester said as he looked around the scene, this question was a purely empirical question, and even if you were involved in the development of a game, it was not enough.

He had to personally lead a complete development team and be responsible for the development of the entire game, starting from the establishment of the game and ending with the completion of the game development.

Moreover, not once.

Many times.

Jester didn't expect anyone who hadn't left school and had no experience in front-line development to answer his question, so he just paused for a moment and continued.

"Designing a triple-A game, in addition to a certain limitation of technical accumulation, is mainly to try to use the player's own imagination, yes, you heard it right, as a designer, you have to learn. When designing a game, make full use of the player's own imagination to design the game, no matter how exquisite and detailed the game's graphics are, the player's brain supplement will definitely be more vivid. Everything we do is to impress the imagination of the players. ”

"And a lot of times we don't have to show everything in the game. If the player could imagine what Napoleon was doing when he wasn't on the screen, we designers would be able to save a lot of money by not having to make this content. ”

"You may not understand this very well, but I'll use the example from Civilization as an example."

"There's an example in Civilization where the game says that a foreign ruler is seeking your favor, and the Sultan of Alexandria sends a convoy of treasures, including seven dancing bears. Now I'm going to ask you a question as to why this passage is happening. When we were designing, why did we design such a paragraph? ”

Jester continued to ask.

Soon, however, he added, "You don't need to answer, you just need to answer in your own heart, and I don't need to say it, and I can tell you now why we designed it this way." ”

"Quite simply, the principle of designing this prompt is to adapt to the situation - if the player is inclined to believe in certain things in the first place, it is easier to create them in his imagination. In other words, when we design a game, we have to bring it in, and we have to design it with the mentality of a player. What is the mentality of the players at this time? ”

"That's what I brought in, and if I were a player, my first instinct after a quote like this would be something like this - 'That's right. The rulers of the foreign kingdoms should have sought my kindness in the first place, and they had the heart to pay tribute to the seven dancing bears. As I've said before, it's an irrational arrogance on the part of players when they're playing a game. ”

"What do I want to say about this?"

"Actually, it is. We didn't have a dancing bear in the game, or a sultan or a caravan of Alexander, so we saved millions of dollars in modeling and texturing because the players were willing to believe us, all we had to do was write a text box, and we could use the time and effort we saved to convince the player to believe in something else that wasn't easy to believe. ”

Jester finished with a smile, and many of the people listening below, probably game design students, were already taking notes rustling.

They even looked serious as if they were taking a lesson that was important to them.

This is certainly a very important lesson, after all, Sid. Mel's class could have stopped for twenty or thirty lessons, while Jester's lesson might have only one chance.

"Another place that can effectively save a lot of money in game development is to learn to design games using what players already know...... I may be a little hard to understand, but don't worry, I'll explain it in detail. Jester was silent for a moment, as if pondering some phrasing.

And the audience in the audience is also very patient, and they are all waiting silently.

"This is our long-term testing and research, and then came to the conclusion that in fact, the player already has a lot of information when they start the game, and the designer does not need to reinforce this information, for example, if the player sees a swordsman with a black mustache, they will take it for granted that person is a bad guy and is ready to fight with him, the designer does not have to design a backstory for this person, he does not have to create a set of childhood experiences for him, the black mustache is a symbol of the bad guy, after adopting these techniques, You can focus your time and energy on the real selling point of the game, and the content that the player's imagination automatically provides is a great help for the game designer, and there are very, very many things that are characteristic and generally accepted by the player. ”

"It's a great treasure that every designer has to dig out of it to exploit, and what you get from it will certainly not disappoint you."

With that, Jester clapped his hands.

"That's probably all I want to talk about today...... After saying that, many people in the audience showed disappointed looks, they were just fascinated by what they heard, but they didn't expect it to be finished this time, but after Jester looked at his watch, he paused slightly.

And then he said.

"I took a look at the time and found that the time was still a little early, so let's take the remaining half an hour or so as a time to ask questions, any of you have any questions that interest you, as long as it is related to game development, you can consult me, I can guarantee that as long as I know, I must know everything."

Jester said with a smile. (To be continued......)