My game, you have no right to award

Chapter 168 Return to Development

Zhou Kuang didn't expect that he would encounter so many unexpected things while simply accepting an interview.

When asked about the TGA nomination for "Netherworld Mountains and Seas", he said it didn't matter. It was more that the other party did not write this aspect in the script at the beginning, which was what he did not expect.

If he had agreed with him at the beginning, Zhou Kuang probably would not have refused.

What surprised him was the female reporter named Susu sitting opposite him.

Not only did the other party invite me out for dinner, but it happened to be at night.

It wasn’t that Zhou Kuang was overthinking it, because the other party was almost writing the words “Hook me” on his face.

Before traveling through time, Zhou Kuang was very popular with women, and even many of his colleagues envied his love life, although he himself did not think so.

Sometimes, being too popular can be annoying.

Alas, there is no way, this is what being handsome is like.

However, ever since he came here, Zhou Kuang has no interest in falling in love.

After all, is there anything better than having complete control over the development of a game?
From a physiological point of view, the amount of dopamine secreted is no less than that of love, and it lasts longer.

The most important thing is that he can also gain a sense of accomplishment in the process of developing the game.

It was a pleasure of realizing one's self-worth. Zhou Kuang could feel his control over this project and even the entire game world.

The few places where he could come into contact with women were in the company and during business negotiations with other companies.

It can be said that Zhou Kuang has no private life.

The three points of a straight line are home, company, and business trips.

Then it is even more impossible to have a love life.

Female employees in the company have almost no chance to interact with him. He is very busy and the people he talks to the most are the heads of several departments.

Unfortunately, most of these supervisors are men.

Only the head of the human resources department is a woman in her thirties, has been married for five years and has a child.

Zhou Kuang has no interest in being Cao Cao.

Therefore, it was naturally impossible for Zhou Kuang to find love in the company.

In business negotiations, although there are many female negotiators, most of them come from large companies.

And Megvii Games is very important to these companies, so they dare not do anything out of line.

This path is also a dead end.

So, Susu was really the first woman to show kindness to him.

However, although the other party was showing goodwill, Zhou Kuang still needed to observe.

As the boss of Kuangshi Games, I cannot allow the big boss to be controlled by the small boss.

That's what he said, but if he didn't have any idea about it, he wouldn't add the other person as a friend.

Because Su Su is very beautiful and speaks very nicely.

That's why Zhou Kuang gave her his contact information.

Zhou Kuang didn't care whether they truly admired him or had other intentions.

He will respond to the other person's true intentions.

He is willing to exchange true feelings for true feelings and false feelings for false feelings.

In the real world, exchanging interests is a normal thing.

But let’s focus on the work for now!

Zhou Kuang stepped on the accelerator and drove towards the company.

……

……

……

"Infinite Game Party Exclusive Interview with the Boss of Netherworld: Why We Weren't Nominated for IGN's Game of the Year?"

The video of Zhou Kuang being interviewed was quickly edited and released, and it received a considerable number of views.

The most discussed topic in the comment section was not the debate about TGA as imagined by the media, but rather focused on Zhou Kuang.

"Fuck, so handsome! Is this the boss of Kuangshi Games?"

"No wonder, his name is Zhou Kuang, so the company is called this name"

"I remember the last time he appeared on TV, I said he was super handsome, but he only appeared for a few seconds."

"Hello everyone, this is my husband"

"So young, how old is Zhou Kuang this year?"

"I checked, it seems to be only 26"

"I just graduated from graduate school at 26..."

“Comparison makes one feel miserable”

"At 26, I'm the boss of a company worth over a billion."

"If Megvii Games went public, its market capitalization would probably be over a billion. The sales of Netherworld Mountain and Sea alone would be around a billion after tax."

As the number of video views increased, more passers-by and players got to know Zhou Kuang himself.

His conversation and demeanor are also talked about with great relish.

Zhou Kuang speaks logically and is extremely humorous and witty, which makes people who watch the interview feel good about him.

For example, when the interviewer asked: "Why do you think China's first hit single-player game has not appeared until now?"

Zhou Kuang smiled and answered in a relaxed tone.

"We in China have never lacked talented creators, and even less so, groups of gamers who love games."

“All that’s missing is some opportunities.”

"In the past, our technical capabilities were indeed not up to par with international standards. Even if we gave our all with passion, we would still end up with broken heads."

“But we are always learning and improving!”

"Now all aspects of our country are developing rapidly, catching up with or even surpassing the international first-line level, and gaming is of course no exception."

"Players are increasingly willing to spend money to support domestic games and expect us to produce higher-quality works. In addition, many of our peers are striving to reach top standards and have gained a lot of experience."

“It’s all in our favor.”

"Meishi Games just happened to appear at the right time and at the right node to create the game "Netherworld Mountain and Sea"."

"We just took advantage of this favorable situation. If it weren't for us, someone else would have made the first domestic 3A stand-alone game."

"So we are very grateful for the good market environment provided by the country, the support of the players, and the efforts of all Chinese game developers."

The players were all dumbfounded after hearing this. Am I listening to the boss of Kuangshi Games, or who else?

You speak so nicely!
I would like to thank the country, the players, and my colleagues.

Thanks to everyone, I haven't offended anyone!

Moreover, what he said was actually reasonable and not just nonsense or exaggeration.

The only time the other party's emotions fluctuated significantly was when he talked about the TGA nominations, expressing dissatisfaction with not receiving more nominations.

Many players feel that you are absolutely right, brother! You are absolutely right!
Players even thought that Zhou Kuang was a little too calm and just complained a little instead of bombarding.

Zhou Kuang wasn't without dissatisfaction, but he knew that even if he spoke up, what would happen? Would TGA change the nomination list? No way.

Will IGN change their low score for Netherworld? Probably not.

Then why waste your breath?

If the reporter hadn't asked him about TGA, he hadn't intended to mention TGA.

And now, he has left a very good impression on the players, allowing them to see his personal charm and identify with the views he has expressed.

that's enough.

From a business perspective, Zhou Kuang's approach is very clever.

Many bosses are eager to leave a good impression in front of their users, let alone an image of rationality and wisdom.

Many users like to compare their favorite brands with those of others, and even compete with each other.

The boss’s personal charm is also a very important factor.

……

……

……

Zhou Kuang returned to the office and found Hong Nianlong immediately.

He has already decided which game he wants the other party to modify, and it can also reduce costs and team size.

That is the way to survive!
To this day, Left 2 Dead is still a very popular game, with more players than many newly released games.

As an old game produced and published by Valve in 2009, this is very hard to imagine.

After all, many computer accessories produced back then have been thrown into the trash, but today's new generation of players are still using RTX4090 to play Left 2 Dead and enjoy playing various mods.

When talking about how Valve extended the life of Left 2 Dead , we naturally have to talk about the mod community.

Valve provides good mod support for the game, and coupled with the enthusiastic creations of players, Left 2 Dead has gained a very large mod community.

Various original maps, weapons, and character skins emerge in an endless stream, greatly enhancing the playability of the game.

If it only had the game content, an old game launched in 2009 would not be able to survive until 2025.

At least it won't still have such a large player audience.

From another perspective, players are even helping Valve develop games for free.

Such a game can be said to be an evergreen in the gaming industry.

If that were all, Left 2 Dead wouldn't be so popular.

The bigger reason is the brilliant game design.

Many people will have this feeling to a greater or lesser extent when playing Left 2 Dead , where the difficulty of the game keeps changing.

The appearance of various supplies does not necessarily follow the rules of the map, but is related to the difficulty and the status of the players.

Even the number of zombies and special infected will change according to the status of the game.

In order to allow players to experience greater fun, Valve designed a dynamic difficulty system, the purpose of which is naturally to keep the difficulty of the game within a good range.

Many games have similar designs. For example, if you keep firing without firing, the boss's attack frequency may decrease.

When you die enough times, more blood-replenishing items will be refreshed and the number of enemies will decrease.

When you kill enemies too quickly, they will appear in greater numbers and attack more rapidly.

This dynamic difficulty design ensures that players will neither feel unchallenged nor too frustrated.

In stark contrast to the Souls-style games, this difficulty design, which aims to achieve traditional goals, aims to allow more players to experience the fun of the game, while ignoring the needs of a small number of players who require high difficulty.

The goal is to confine players to a difficulty range and allow them to enter the flow state as much as possible.

In this way, the game can provide more fun.

It’s not that such games don’t have high-difficulty options, but that their difficulty relies more on simple and crude changes in values. This approach of increasing difficulty by increasing values ​​is actually very perfunctory.

What high-difficulty players want to experience is a difficulty design that changes attack routines and moves based on the player's strength, or even improves the AI ​​intelligence level.

There are only a handful of games that can do this.

The dynamic difficulty design of Left 2 Dead is very successful.

This method of adjusting difficulty is global, not limited to one point.

It constantly adjusts expectations about players and everything on the map.

It’s like there’s an invisible pair of hands that throw different enemies, props, resources, etc. into the field according to the situation on the game field.

Unless they choose a very high difficulty level, players often feel like they can just about pass the level in Left 2 Dead .

This difficulty setting allows players to gain as much sense of accomplishment as possible.

For Zhou Kuang, this game has undoubtedly proved that its design is very ingenious, so there is no reason not to learn it.

He also searched first to see if there were any similar games here.

The result is that there's no game that offers the same experience as Left 2 Dead .

Are there any games about fighting zombies?
Have.

Is there a game where you have to fight waves of zombie enemies?

There are also.

But no four-person team can cooperate to survive the zombie horde.

There is no zombie game that requires players to consider how to allocate resources, how to use formations, and how to divide the battlefield.

There are not so many different types of special infected people.

Simply facing ordinary infected people who are copied and pasted, and having to be careful and pay attention to special infected people at all times, are two completely different experiences.

So, just like before, this is another innovative gameplay for this world.

The gaming experience it can bring to players will also be brand new.

Players naturally like new things, which is of great help to the sales of the game.

This is purely from the perspective of game design and positioning, but from the perspective of development, Left 2 Dead means more to Zhou Kuang.

First of all, compared to the 200-person team size and four years of development time mentioned by Hong Nianlong before, the cost of this game is much lower!
Judging from various information, Valve only used a team of about 2 people and spent about a year to complete the game Left Dead .

For Zhou Kuang, such a cost is much more acceptable than Hong Nianlong's own exorbitant price.

Even if Hong Nianlong needs to build a team from scratch, which may take more time, Zhou Kuang still thinks so.

If he gave the other party two years, it would only be one-eighth of the cost required by Hong Nianlong.

For Zhou Kuang at this stage, such consumption is completely within his control.

And more importantly, the short development time of this game means that the game can be released faster and profits can be made faster.

From a financial perspective, the risk has been minimized.

Zhou Kuang didn’t think that Hong Nianlong’s original plan was bad, on the contrary, it was too good!

That's what he hopes the other studio will eventually do.

This is the so-called ultimate goal.

Unlike Qingyan Studio, which focuses on making small and exquisite independent games, Hong Nianlong's studio is destined to continue to expand and challenge the development of larger games with higher difficulty because of its goal of making FPS games.

(End of this chapter)