Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 460 Game Production Reality Show
In the past, game development competitions have had very limited appeal to the average viewer.

Because most game development competitions are centered around 'development'.

Including Ludum Dare, which currently has the largest number of participants worldwide, most 48-hour creation contests typically involve setting a theme and a deadline, and then the participants start making the game.

After finishing, all the games are uploaded online, and finally, the judges select the best works based on the reviews, and that's it.

Occasionally, there are also major competitions that are held offline or even streamed live.

However, the process of 'making' a game is inherently tedious and boring.

It's not hard to imagine that playing games is fun, but what if you stare at a programmer or artist and watch them work for more than ten hours?

Those who can bear to watch it are either from the same industry or have some serious flaws.

Therefore, when Ma Yuanyao was planning the event, she did not treat this stage of the event as a simple competition from the very beginning.

The first phase now is variety reality shows.

A reality show specifically tailored for these top developers, allowing them to 'show off their talents in public'.

Apart from the current segment.

There's also a component for programmers called 'reverse engineering'.

The task involves typing a complex piece of code directly onto the screen and requiring participants to explain the function and logic of the code in the shortest possible time.

To the average person, those characters would just seem like gibberish.

But when a top programmer accurately gives the answer in just a fraction of a second, the intellectual crushing feeling is conveyed through the screen as the most direct 'show-off' effect.

Similarly, there is the 'absolute color gamut' prepared for art.

This step requires you to find the cadmium red color 'e3170d' from a screen full of almost identical reds.

“We don’t need the audience to understand PBR, nor do we need them to know what cadmium red is. We just need to show the ‘genius’ of this group of geniuses in the coolest way possible.”

"Then we can use editing techniques to cut out the most exciting parts of this public display of talent."

The format of this variety show is essentially the same as the quiz shows from a few years ago. A relatively successful example in China is "The Brain."

Back then, "The Brain" attracted high ratings by using the gimmicks of "national competition" and "genius showdown" and also created a group of star contestants, such as "Water Brother" Wang Yuheng and "Rubik's Cube Master" Jia Liping.

In fact, many viewers don't understand what "The Brain" is about.

The audience is looking at the result.

It's no different from watching Olympic weightlifting. You don't need to understand the techniques of clean and jerk and snatch. You just need to see the athlete lift an exaggerated weight overhead and cheer for him.

This pattern isn't limited to China; it's prevalent globally as well. Shows like Japan's "The Brain King" and Europe and America's "The All-Round Genius" all follow the same formula.

These shows are repeatedly proving one thing: the audience's worship of 'geniuses' is the key to traffic.

However, such programs have gradually declined with the development of the times. The reason for their decline is actually the same as that of many classic games or classic novels.

That means "nothing new or exciting".

What Xingchen is doing now is actually creating something new on this "old formula." The problems in game development are both unfamiliar and familiar to the audience.

Understanding the underlying principles of familiar things can create a sense of novelty. Using this as a basis, and applying the formula, you can easily get at least 80 points, if not 100.

Moreover, this time, Starry Sky not only prepared "hardcore quizzes," but also many parts that don't require the audience to think at all, such as the "hardware heist" in the second stage.

This segment was designed as a large-scale escape room game.

Ten teams were each locked in a different themed room, filled with puzzles related to game development.

For example, the circuits need to be connected in the correct compilation order to open a combination lock, or the combination to a safe can be obtained by deciphering a piece of binary code.

Each puzzle solved yields a hardware box, which may contain the latest graphics card or just a regular SATA cable.

The entire reality show ended faster than Benna had imagined.

The entire recording was completed in the second half of the morning. The multilingual host and the well-organized program flow provided a truly impressive experience for many contestants.

During this process, there were also some highlights from the contestants. For example, in a decryption segment, a password that originally required solving eight numbers was solved by a team from the University of Tokyo, Japan, when they got to the second number.

He shouted it out and solved the puzzle.

"The safe's combination is 19830715, the release date of the Famicom."

Even the cameraman filming him couldn't resist giving him a close-up.

The whole process was tense and exciting, yet full of the romance that geeks have.

For a moment, Benner and his team even forgot they were there to promote the game and were simply immersed in the fun of solving the puzzle.

When they emerged from the sealed room, covered in sweat and clutching a 1080Ti graphics card and several extra memory sticks, the studio lights came on again.

The host stood in the center of the stage with a mysterious smile on his face.

"Congratulations to all the teams for your successful return! You have used your wisdom and teamwork to win yourselves the most powerful weapon for the next 48 hours." He paused, deliberately drawing out the tone.

"However, before our ultimate challenge, 48-hour game development, officially begins, we have one more... most special 'contestant' to introduce to everyone!"

The studio lights suddenly dimmed, leaving only a spotlight shining on the contestants' passage. Under everyone's gaze, a figure walked out of the passage unhurriedly.

The man was dressed in simple casual clothes, with a perfectly balanced look of helplessness and... reluctance on his face.

When he stepped fully into the spotlight, both the audience area and the players' area erupted in excitement.

"Holy crap! Chu Chen!?"

"Wait, what's going on? Isn't Xingchen an organizer? Why is he coming out through the contestant entrance?"

The audience below the stage was already in an uproar, while the contestants' seats were in an even bigger uproar.

The overseas teams are doing well.

The contestants from China and Japan had an incredibly strong reaction.

If we were to make a comparison, the two teams from Japan, one from the University of Tokyo and the other from Sony, actually had more exaggerated expressions than the teams from Tsinghua and Peking Universities and the Candle Dragon team from China.

(End of this chapter)