Tokyo Video Game Tycoon.

The game development team is currently preparing for the new console, and the development work has slowed down. This gives Zhuyouxing a good opportunity to focus more on the PC platform.

The PC Battle.net platform has already gained some recognition, with over a thousand games now available on it. About a third of these are various small-scale indie games, which have the opportunity to earn money through attractive revenue-sharing agreements. Some indie development teams of only two or three people also have the chance to do so.

These indie games don't require high sales volume; the average price is around ten dollars. As long as they sell ten thousand copies, the team can maintain operations and continue developing the next game, creating a virtuous cycle.

However, this still makes game development quite difficult.

"The threshold is still a bit high."

Zhu Youxing sat in the PC Battle.net platform operations department's office area, tapping his fingers on the table, his brow furrowed in thought.

"Threshold? What do you mean, President?"

Zhu Youxing said, "I mean, the barrier to entry for game development is still quite high, which results in our platform not having enough games."

"what?"

Not enough games?

Belair, the manager in charge of the PC Battle.net platform operations, was somewhat bewildered.

That's not many. There are already over a thousand games on the PC platform, and the total number of games on a top-tier console like the GS1 has just surpassed a thousand. That's already a lot, isn't it?

Chapter 599 The Greatest Mod Game

599

In Zhu Youxing's memory, dozens of games were launched on STEAM every day, and tens of thousands of games were launched every year.

Indie games have probably made the biggest contribution to this.

According to Zhu Youxing, the game industry has two cornerstones: indie games and large-scale industrial productions.

These two types of game development are complementary, and each should have its own niche.

The total number of games on the Battle.net platform is just over a thousand, of which nearly a hundred are games provided by Youxing Electronics Entertainment. Some slightly outdated games that were previously available on the FC and SFC have been added to the Battle.net platform. In order to make these games compatible with the new platform, Youxing Electronics Entertainment has also specially formed an old game optimization team.

The money from selling these old games was just enough to break even for the team. Since the team could be self-sufficient, Zhuyouxing didn't have any further demands, because the significance of what these teams did was far more important than making money.

Zhu Youxing vividly remembers how much trouble it took to find an old game that he wanted to play.

However, for most game developers, optimizing and re-releasing an old game for these niche players is a thankless and arduous task. It's better to let the team do something more valuable than to reap such meager profits.

This is the result of capital-driven development.

Of course, it's normal for capital to pursue profits; it's just that everyone's pursuits are different.

Zhu Youxing doesn't want this niche group of players in the world to experience the terrible experiences he once had, so he has been persisting in doing this, just like he has been persisting in producing the original FC game console. He doesn't seek profit, but hopes to let more people understand video game culture through this method.

Film, television, novels, animation, and many other industries have their own ways of preserving history, and works from decades ago can be revisited. However, once video games undergo console upgrades, they may face the predicament of being unable to play older games. This is essentially abandoning history, which Zhu Youxing does not like. He hopes that even a hundred years from now, people will still have the opportunity to play old games and experience the glorious moments of the game's creators.

Getting back to the point, what Zhuyouxing really wants now is for the team to resolve the current issue of the number of games.

In the field of cultural creation, video game production is probably the most demanding, requiring you to know a little bit about everything, including programming, art, music, level design, camera language design, and so on.

No other cultural product is as complex as video games, which naturally discourages many people interested in game creation.

However, Zhu Youxing didn't seem to be able to come up with a good solution for the time being.

The Unreal Engine team has lowered the barrier to game development as much as possible.

As per Zhu Youxing's request, the team has been working to simplify the process as much as possible, increasing the creation of character templates, reducing programming, and adding various templates that can be directly applied.

However, this is still a very high barrier to entry for the average person.

Even in the era of Zhu Youxing, this problem was not significantly alleviated.

But at that time, Unreal Engine had already done a very good job in this regard. Now, I can only barely reach the effect and production difficulty of Unreal Engine 3. To reduce the difficulty further, I need to go a step further.

Therefore, Unreal Engine should be considered the choice for advanced game developers, rather than for beginners.

At this point, Zhu Youxing thought of a very classic game development software called RPGARK, which later became quite classic, and it could be added to Unreal Engine.

However, this can be a bit tedious. So, is there a game development method that is less tedious and easier to develop?

"Do you have any good ideas on how to lower the barrier to entry for more people to create games and let them experience the joy of game creation?"

Belaired pondered for a moment after hearing this.

He actually feels that there are too many games now, so many that he can't play them all. He doesn't quite understand whether there really needs to be so many games.

However, since it was the president's request, he thought about it carefully and replied, "President, how about we offer more courses to teach others how to make games?"

Zhu Youxing said, "That's also an option. We can also add some simple game production courses online, but that's only a temporary solution. I still hope there can be some simpler ways to make games."

As Zhu Youxing spoke, he searched for various games on the Battle.net platform.

There are quite a few of these thousand-plus games that are of good quality, and their development is already quite good. It seems that Zhuyouxing's requirements are indeed a bit too demanding.

However, having experienced the golden age of gaming in his previous life, it's perfectly normal for Zhu Youxing to be dissatisfied with the present. The people of this world still can't understand this.

There can never be too many games, the more the better, and the more types the better, because a large enough scale can cover as many interested people as possible.

Mainstream games can only attract mainstream users, but a large number of games are needed to attract the attention of relatively less mainstream groups.

"President, could we add some game creation competitions? That might increase the number of games produced."

"That's fine too."

Just like the game jam event in my previous life, which brought together many people interested in making games to form a team to make games, this is also a good idea.

It seems like trying a few different approaches wouldn't be a bad idea.

Just as Zhu Youxing was pondering, his gaze suddenly fell on a game.

That was a game he created himself, one of the games he was trying to compete for in the European market at the time: Counter-Strike.

Due to its highly competitive nature, this game generated a great deal of buzz upon its release.

Originally, internet cafe culture was not particularly popular around the world, and most people in internet cafes were just idly surfing the internet.

Then StarCraft came along, allowing these people to experience a truly exhilarating battle on a computer for the first time.

As the saying goes, "fighting with others is endlessly enjoyable," and most people still prefer the feeling of struggle.

Therefore, games with competitive elements can also gain extra attention.

However, at this moment, Zhu Youxing was not thinking about the competitive aspects of Counter-Strike; he was thinking about something else.

Counter-Strike originated from a heavily modified version of a game, commonly known as a mod.

Counter-Strike was later hailed as the greatest mod in the world, opening up a new world for countless game developers.

Games don't require players to rack their brains to think about programming or character modeling from the beginning. As long as you have a sufficiently open-source system, imaginative players can come up with countless ways to play, allowing a variety of games to flourish.

Chapter 600 Zombies

Module.

Module!

Zhu Youxing's eyes gradually lit up.

He found a direction from which he could break through.

That is to promote the production of modules.

Creating game mods is arguably the easiest way to develop a game.

Because the game's basic logic is already very complete, as long as it is open source enough and allows for sufficient customization, players will give game developers countless surprises.

MOBA games in the DOTA style, Chenghai 3C, Counter-Strike, and Red Alert are among the most successful mods.

These open-source games are truly designed to prepare game developers for their introductory phase.

At this moment, the Battle.net platform is actually lacking a public platform for mod creation.

With such a platform, everyone will have the opportunity to showcase the gameplay they create.

"Bell".

"What's wrong with the president?"

Bell also noticed the slightly excited expression on Zhu Youxing's face, and guessed that Zhu Youxing had probably thought of a way to quickly increase the game's progress.

He thought to himself that he truly deserved to be recognized as the god of games in the industry; in such a short time, he had already come up with a way to expand the scale of game production.

"I'll tell you about a feature. You need to develop it as quickly as possible and release it on the Battle.net platform."

Bell immediately began taking notes.

"First, you should write down StarCraft, Counter-Strike, and Stardew Valley. These games are all open-source games. We'll enable new features that allow people to freely modify the data in the game. If possible, we can also make it as convenient as possible for players to modify game values ​​and programs."

Bell paused slightly, then looked at Takeyusei with some disbelief: "President, isn't this tantamount to handing over our source code? And from what you're saying, players won't face any copyright lawsuits if they modify our source code?"

He couldn't believe that these were the words of Zhu Youxing.

There was a small-scale game imitation incident in the gaming industry before.

However, this matter did not cause much of a stir, and was swiftly extinguished by Zhu Youxing as soon as it began to take shape.

Later, Yuxing Electronic Entertainment began to restrict the reading and copying of game programs, trying to avoid players coming into contact with these unnecessary things as much as possible.

At the same time, Youxing Electronic Entertainment also has the world's strongest legal team. They are constantly filing lawsuits everywhere. If anyone dares to copy their game, they will first send a lawyer's letter, and then find a way to make the other party give up the lawsuit and stop the infringement.

This approach has prevented many malicious plagiarism incidents and has been recognized as a classic case within the industry.

But now it seems that Zhuyouxing suddenly intends to change all of this, handing over some of the rights to create and modify the game to outsiders.

So if this game is modified, wouldn't it no longer be their game?

Seeing Bell's surprised expression, Takeyusei calmly asked, "Is there something wrong?"

"This... we're afraid we'll lose control of these games."

"I don't think this is anything wrong. We can strictly limit some games because they are the core of our technical capabilities and we don't easily show them to others. But the logic and gameplay of games like Half-Life, Stardew Valley, and StarCraft can be easily understood by professional game developers. There's no need for us to keep them hidden. It's better to be open and honest and let players do whatever they want with them."

"Let the players mess around? How are the players supposed to mess around?"

Bell still didn't quite understand.

Zhu Youxing knew that this world had not yet grasped the meaning of modules.

The emergence of mods has greatly lowered the barrier to game development, which is why various mods that have been regarded as classics in later generations have attracted the attention of the world.