Game Making: Start By Healing the Player

“I’ll never drink again; my head hurts too much.”

Chen Xu rubbed his head and sat up from the bed, complaining.

He rubbed his eyelids, which were still a little sticky, and was stunned when he opened his eyes.

The environment in front of him was extremely unfamiliar.

“Wait a minute…”

The next moment, before Chen Xu could figure out what was happening, countless memories flooded his mind.

It took over an hour to sort them all out.

It was obvious now. He, who was an ordinary game planner in his previous life, had not only travelled through time, but also to a parallel world.

Based on these memories, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what went wrong in this world. It is very different from Chen Xu’s previous life.

All aspects of life have changed tremendously due to the advancement of technology.

But he couldn’t be sure of how much it was. What really drew his attention was the gaming entertainment industry.

The world was at peace after a great war. With the following explosion of science and technology, problems of resource scarcity were largely a thing of the past.

The economy recovered rapidly, people were no longer worried about survival and they now had money to spend, so the entertainment industry has naturally become the main direction of development.

And the gaming industry is a significant part of that.

In Chen Xu’s past life, games were treated as a scourge and a scapegoat, both domestically and abroad.

Why do shootings happen so often? Because games promote violence! Have stricter gun laws? Nonsense! We must remove the true source of the shootings: video games!

But in this parallel world, things are different. Excellent games can be called art, and top game designers enjoy the same social status as literary giants.

But the gaming landscape in this world is also a little different.

Major game publishers like Ubisoft and EA have disappeared, replaced by others Chen Xu has never heard of.

As for the famous game creators from his previous life, there are none in this world.

Hidetaka Miyazaki, who created the Souls series, left Oracle to join FS;

Masahiro Sakurai, who simplified hardcore platforming and created a legendary Nintendo series;

Sid Meier, who defined 4X games; and Hironobu Sakaguchi, who created the FF series.

The Hauser brothers, who pushed the concept of open 3D worlds to its limits,

Hideo Kojima, who created stealth games and cinematic narrative games,

and Shigeru Miyamoto, a video game hall of famer.

These producers, who made a name for themselves in the game industry in their previous lives, do not exist in this world.

The Chen Xu of this world was an ordinary art student who had just graduated less than half a year ago and wanted to enter the comic industry.

“This world… is a paradise!”

Chen Xu couldn’t help but sigh as he recalled some memories and basic information he had gleaned from the Internet.

Strict laws and copyright protection for cultural products were simply unimaginable in his previous life.

Chen Xu also noticed some half-finished drawing papers on the table, things he had been working on.

“Illustrations?”

It seems that before the transmigration, he wanted to make it as a cartoonist.

It is a pity, however, that despite having been submitted several times, they have never passed the editor’s test.

As for the serialization of some comics on the Internet, it is a pity that the reception has been lukewarm.

In addition to earning a bit of royalties from obscure online comic series, he also made a living by drawing character illustrations for novelists and doing outsourcing for some game companies.

He is not famous, and his artistic skills are not the best.

Usually, the price for a piece is only about 1,200 yuan, and it has to be revised again and again as things change.

“Comics? I really didn’t know what I was doing!” Chen Xu ran through the memories in his mind and couldn’t help but purse his lips.

Although the memories of the original him in this world allowed Chen Xu to understand various drawing techniques, it was useless.

After all, he had been working as a freelance illustrator to supplement his living.

As for the comics in his previous life, Chen Xu had heard of them all, including One Punch Man, One Piece, Death, Naruto and Conan.

But he has to apologise first.

He has only seen the animated versions and has no idea how to translate them into comic form.

“Looking at it this way, I feel like I can only go back to my old game business, and the efficiency of game development in this world is a bit high!” Chen Xu couldn’t help but be dumbfounded after thinking about this.

Unlike his previous life, where each game company developed its own game engine, although this way of doing things is still going on overseas, in China there are officially provided game engines.

In addition, as we all know, game production involves many aspects, such as numerical values, art, plot, level design and code.

But the most important and fundamental point is the code.

It is directly related to the performance of your game, the equivalent of the skeleton.

No matter how good the gameplay and graphics are, if the code is not well optimized, the game can basically be considered a failure.

However, with the development of IT technology in this world, artificial intelligence has also been prototyped and applied to all areas of life. Among them, games are the place that has changed the most.

Mechanical commands and other codes are all implemented through the game engines with help from artificial intelligence. Putting an end to the common practice of sacrificing a programmer to appease the machine gods.

Convenience is a given, but not every game designer can handle it without issues.

After all, using artificial intelligence to create code requires huge amounts of computation. And each game designer has fixed amounts of monthly resources, depending on their status.

Of course, you can also set up your own server and make your own code. All you have to do is pay the licensing fees.

But the cost of setting up a server and maintenance is not cheap.

So far, there are three ways to become a game designer.

One is to take the Game Department exam that is held every summer, and if you pass, you can get the title of Game Designer.

Another way is to join a game company, work there for about three years and then apply through the company’s channels and report to the gaming department to become an official game designer.

The last is to create an indie game that earns the recognition of the player market. This is the route most normal game enthusiasts and hobbyists take to try breaking into the industry.

If you’re using this route, you’ll successfully earn the title if one of the following conditions is met.

• Hitting 150,000 units sold
• Hitting 5000 cumulative ratings
• Or getting a review score of over 8.5 out of 10.

As for boosting sales and buying good reviews, there is basically no such thing, because it is illegal and there are actual consequences for getting caught in this world.

“It looks very formal, but at least it shouldn’t be difficult for me to get the title of game designer.” Looking at the information he learned, Chen Xu rubbed his chin and said to himself.

After all, he is not alone. Thousands of seniors in the game industry from his past life are standing behind him.

Chen Xu has never thought that large-scale games are lacking in capabilities, resources, and funds at this stage.

But when it comes to small indie games, Chen Xu is quite confident in what he can bring to the table. After all, he knows all about the various excellent indie games in his previous life.

Chen Xu’s own ability is quite sufficient to reproduce the relevant materials in this world after some learning.

“Wait, what is this?”

Chen Xu, who was thinking about the next step, suddenly noticed something.

It was a translucent blue ball-shaped mark on the back of his hand, like a birthmark.

Chen Xu rubbed it with his thumb, and suddenly a transparent UI pop-up window appeared in his vision.

“System?”

In an instant, the word popped into his mind.

When you think about it, it doesn’t seem too much to have a system after travelling through parallel worlds, does it?

Only, is that the name of this system?

‘Emotion Collection System’

Looking at the golden interface that looked like a cheap, app game in his previous life, Chen Xu fell into silence for a while.

It’s a bit gaudy and doesn’t feel like a serious system.

Next

Index