As a mage, I just want to pursue the truth

Chapter 343 New Cycle (Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!)
“I think this is the best news I’ve heard so far this year.

It turns out that we went to Kechuang Biotechnology to really create a world.

This is almost the ultimate dream of all gamers.

I have no objection to joining CStone Biotech.

No wonder Kechuang Biotech chose us.

Companies like Tencent and QQ are too expensive, while first-tier game manufacturers like MiHoYo, Lilith, and Perfect World are good at styles that don't fit the virtual world well enough.

Only we are the most suitable acquisition target.

Wow, it feels like I’m in a dream.

I had a feeling we were going to make history.

A complete world, it is up to us to fill it with content and give full play to our imagination and creativity.

I can’t wait.”

After Chen Ran returned to Wancheng and described the situation to Chen Chi, Chen Chi didn't care where they were going. As a fat guy weighing nearly 200 kilograms, it would be difficult for him to find a partner even if he had money.

He has a small house in Wancheng, a home that can be completely abandoned.

With Chen Chi's accumulation over the years, it would be more than enough for a down payment even if he went to Gusu.

What Chen Ran said was most attractive to him was the work content after joining Ke Chuang Bio.

Is there anything more exciting for game developers than creating a world?
Open-ended games have always been popular among players, but they also make many gamers love and hate them.

The first open world game ever made was Adventure.

Developed by Atari in 1979, Adventure was a text-based game that allowed players to explore an imaginary world. While it didn't have the same level of graphics and gameplay as today's open world games, it laid the foundation for the genre.

In the early 1980s, many game developers began to experiment with open world gameplay. During this period, the first open world game was Ultima III: Exodus, which was released in 1983.

The game features a large, explorable world, giving players the freedom to choose their own path.

Three years later, the benchmark open world game, The Legend of Zelda, was born. This game set the standard for subsequent open world games.

Even to this day, the game is considered one of the best games ever made.

Remember, this was a work from 1986.

It is precisely because there are such good works in the past that many open world works that follow have been criticized by players because they look big but actually make people feel empty.

A typical example is "Cyberpunk 20" released in 2077. Players believe that it sacrificed playability because of its open world.

That is to say, openness for the sake of openness.

Exploration is a big part of open world popularity.

Players can find new enemies, missions, collectibles, characters and easter eggs throughout the open world.

Some of them are easy to see, while others are hidden.

With a map this large, discovering these things can make players feel like their efforts have been rewarded.

A linear game wouldn't offer the same sense of accomplishment in the process of discovery, as the experience of finding secrets on a smaller map just isn't as good.

Open world games also have a lot of replay value. When you replay a linear game, nothing is too different, but when you replay an open world game, everything can be done in a different order.

But if the plot, characters, and content are too scattered across the map, players will also get bored.

One of the important reasons why "The Legend of Zelda" is still praised by players today is that it does an excellent job of balancing the two.

"There is one more thing I need to tell you, that is, I still retain 5% of the shares, and I plan to give you 1% of this 5%.

As equity rewards for these years."

If Chihu Entertainment was Chen Ran's company, he would have distributed the shares to the founding team long ago.

Even core developers can receive option rewards.

Option awards and equity awards are two different things. They have many similarities, but also many differences.

Simply put, the option reward will only be converted into actual equity reward to you on that day, which is the exercise date.

Generally, the option awards of large Internet companies are for three years, and you have to work for three years to get this part of the equity.

Some Internet companies only distribute dividend rights when the time comes, rather than ownership. That is to say, you can get dividends from this company, but they will be gone once you leave.

Equity rewards are to give you equity directly, and the only condition is that you can sell it on the capital market after the term of office expires.

If Chihu Entertainment can use the option pool as a reward for core employees and executives, Chen Ran is confident that Chihu Entertainment will definitely be able to develop better than it is now.

But before, Chihu Entertainment was not his at all, so he couldn't make any promises casually.

Now that he owns 5% of the shares, Chen Ran directly plans to give 1% to Chen Chi who has been following him in starting a business.

At their size, true friends are more valuable than money.

After listening to this, Chen Chi was not polite: "Okay, in fact, I have always known that there must be investors behind the company.

Otherwise, where would you get the three hundred million?

I believe you if you say that your family can come up with 100 or 20 million by selling everything they have, but 300 million is still too far away.

And considering how much you look like your father, I have ruled out the possibility that you are the illegitimate son of some big shot.

So I knew early on that it was a big shot who invested in you, and he was a big shot with a very powerful background.

Taking out 300 million in cash is like playing.

That's why they don't care about a gaming company.

I just didn’t expect it to be Ke Chuang Biotechnology.

Is it Mr. Li or Mr. Zheng who invested in you?"

Chen Ran smiled and said, "You look simple and honest, but you are actually very cunning.

Why didn’t the big boss sell Chihu Entertainment to Ke Chuang Biotechnology?

Don't ask about things you shouldn't know.

If you ask one more question, you will lose your 1% stake."

Chen Chi immediately shut up and stopped talking about this matter. He changed the subject and asked:
“A world is a completely different concept from previous games.

While this is an exciting challenge for me, we need to think about how to achieve this.

I am well aware that Kechuang Bio's products will be used by hundreds of millions of users around the world.

Even more.

Virtual reality equipment in the true sense is a product that the people of Blue Star cannot resist.

Even in the future, billions of people will use the games we provide as their first experience of the new world. The entire world, from art materials to gameplay, to worldview and plot, all these contents are unprecedented challenges.

This is unmatched by any previous open world.”

Chen Chi believes that a game is more than just a game, and it is not just the pure gameplay that can determine the success of a game.

He prefers to call games media experiences.

Games are not purely chemical experiences that can be neatly reduced to a series of actions and reward sequences.

An endless cycle of action, feedback, action, feedback.

This is also the popular online writing routine in recent years, which stimulates readers through infinite positive feedback.

Chen Chi believes that

Media experience should be more about an individual having a strong desire for something, and this desire may be wrong or evil, and the individual just hopes to satisfy this desire with real things.

Games can just satisfy this desire of individuals. Games are not better than reality, they just make players more focused than in the real world.

After working in the gaming industry for so many years, Chen Chi came to believe that certain goals and aspirations are universally shared among people:

If everyone has certain desires, then the difficulty in communicating those desires is a problem of translation, not content.

In other words, it might be hard to find a way to talk about something that resonates with your audience, but it shouldn’t be hard to find something worth talking about.

Or, more simply:
If you can figure out how to accurately communicate complex ideas, you should be able to consistently make games, books, and movies that resonate with people on a deep level.

Not only should games reflect reality, the best experiences already do so to some degree. The experiences that matter most to people must tap into legitimate desires in some way, and the best of them will find ways to connect those desires to the real world.

Or, more simply:
For it to be popular on a broad scale, it must somehow speak to “basic desires” that people share.

As for global games, or even virtual worlds that everyone can experience, Chen Chi has no confidence in finding this basic need that everyone shares.

Because this would be a very, very broad concept, and the broader the concept, the harder it is to satisfy.

It’s a very simple example. People need food to satisfy their hunger. The abundance of material things leads to the pursuit of food desires.

You know that food is a basic need, but when it comes to individuals, even couples in the same family will have different tastes.

It is impossible to prepare food that satisfies everyone.

This is exactly the problem that Chen Chi considered: how to find the basic needs of everyone and satisfy them in the game world.

“We had nine months in total to build two game worlds.”

Chen Ran's tone sounded a little low.

All the fat on Chen Chi’s body was shaking as he stood up: “This is an impossible task.

You can't promise them.

In five years, let alone nine months, we may not be able to create a complete world.”

“Just the world view of the game may take us a year to polish.”

"Chen Chi, we all know that games and media are primarily tools for conveying worldviews."

Worldview here refers to one’s view on the nature of reality: not in the form of preferences or political views, but as a statement about how the world works at a more fundamental level.

Is the world dynamic, static, or does it cycle through events and repeat itself? Is the unknown dangerous or risky?

“To say that a worldview is communicated is not just to claim that the players will understand on an academic level what that worldview is. On the contrary, most of the time academic communication never happens.

During the experience, players will truly perceive the game world as reality.

As for the virtual reality game world, players will even still regard the game world as reality in real life.

This also means we face unprecedented scrutiny.

Because in traditional games, players will change their worldview during the experience.

And after exiting the experience, they either internalize this new worldview and adjust their behaviors or beliefs accordingly, or they abandon it and move on.

Virtual reality doesn’t work, with such a huge world, they can live, fight and grow in the game world repeatedly.

They may even leave the real world and live in the game world for their entire lives.

Then they will have little chance of letting go of the worldview we have constructed for them.

In such a huge world, every detail needs to be carefully polished.

Nine months is simply not enough time.”

“People consciously or unconsciously gravitate toward media in order to impose a particular worldview upon themselves. Through interaction with a medium such as games, a person is able to place themselves in a reality of their choice.

Not just escapism in the narrative sense, escapism in the otherworldly fantasy sense, or just escapism in the alternate reality sense.

Our game allows players to live in the reality we create all the time.”

Chen Chi belongs to the academic school in the gaming industry and has his own understanding of the nature of things.

Compared to him, Chen Ran is a practical person who entered the gaming industry because he likes playing games.

Chen Chi is the type of person who likes to play games, then explore the essence of games, and then enter the gaming industry to combine theory with practice.

Thinking too much and not liking to exercise caused his weight to continue to rise and never recover.

“The more important point is that the new loop we built is no longer suitable for the new game system.

The whole world, a simple cycle of expectation, delivery and feedback, cannot satisfy everyone. "

In practice, Chen Ran studies play from the perspective of communication and existential states, and then finds a set of theories that more accurately describe the impact of successful games on audiences.

An extension of the concept of game experiences being applicable to the real world, Chen Ran uses the term “new cycle” to describe how an ideal experience changes players over time.

He defined the new cycle as consisting of three stages:
1. Expectation: Players are drawn into investing time and energy into an experience in an attempt to achieve a desired emotion.

2. Delivery: The game improves the player's life in a consciously or unconsciously identifiable way, and the player is able to attribute a specific experience to this change in some way.

Also, while delivery and expectations can be aligned, players don't need to be. The only thing players never demand from a game is what they initially thought they were going to get from it.

3. Positive feedback loop: Players are satisfied and willing to actively learn about the background of the game creation and the motivations of the creators, making them more willing to accept further manipulation.

Genshin Impact is a classic game that realizes a positive feedback loop. Countless players voluntarily defend it, actively understand the game company, and even hope that the game company will create more new characters, for fear that the other party will not make their money.

The new loops differ from traditionally defined behavioral loops because, at their most ideal, they are designed not to refresh the experience indefinitely but to continually change it.

I wish you all a happy Mid-Autumn Festival. This should be a relatively boring chapter on the essence of the discussion.

The computer I bought recently arrived, and then I found some games on Steam to play, and I got some insights.

The game I just downloaded is called "Galactico", which is very similar to "Slay the Spire", but with more characters and gameplay.

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(End of this chapter)