Tokyo Video Game Tycoon.

Role-playing, open world, racing, ball sports.

Especially with the FIFA World Cup being held in 2014, and Surui Electronics holding the FIFA World Cup license, they naturally wanted to take advantage of this year to launch a truly outstanding football game.

Even just riding this wave of popularity can make their football game sell well.

Unfortunately, Yusei Electronics' football games were not to be underestimated either. Back then, they also released their own new football league series, which had official licenses from several football clubs.

One company boosted sales by leveraging the World Cup hype, while the other stabilized its market position through its own reputation and game quality, allowing both to make a fortune this year.

Football games already have very stable sales in the tens of millions, and now both games are also achieving very good sales results.

Riding on the popularity of the World Cup, Suri Electronics achieved sales of over five million units shortly after its release, becoming a rare cash cow for the company.

Even with the help of popularity, it still can't compare to the football league, which broke 10 million in sales in just the first week, maintaining its steady performance.

Compared to popularity, it's clear that more players will choose the more fun football game.

As for the other games, they also averaged over three million sales.

For games with an average development cost of only 30 to 40 million in 2014, this is definitely a break-even point.

And the money earned then became savings for Yuxing Electronic Entertainment.

Having spent a huge amount of money on the amusement park, only by saving up another round of money can Zhuyouxing feel at ease.

Of course, the continued investment in the development of 2077 is also indispensable.

Meanwhile, after a year, the general development direction of 2077 has been basically finalized, and it is now in the midst of intensive production.

This time, the entire Cyberpunk 2077 game will feature a massive cyberpunk-style city.

In the original Cyberpunk 2077, there are still some city areas that have not been revealed, such as the city where rockets are launched.

This time, the entire Bamboo Star game was created, and the modeling is quite detailed. Then there are various gameplay elements added to the game.

Honestly, the vehicle system in the original game wasn't very fun. Putting aside the driving experience, the racing gameplay itself was clearly an unfinished product.

In the original Cyberpunk 2077, the computer-controlled racers weren't actually racing against the players. Instead, they used teleportation to race against the players when the players weren't paying attention.

This approach might be a reluctant compromise, or perhaps CD Projekt Red simply didn't know how to make racing games. But in this world, Star Entertainment has over ten years of experience developing Need for Speed ​​games, so if they still can't do it well, it would be really unacceptable.

"President, allowing access to every building and every room is a huge drain on our resources. Is it really necessary? Players of this game probably won't go into every single room. Doesn't creating so many meaningless rooms contradict your previous logic of streamlining game development?"

In the third development department, Zhu Youxing was discussing the construction of the city in the game with several key developers.

The entire Night City will be divided into seven main urban areas, plus the wasteland outside the cities, making the entire map area approximately fifty to sixty square kilometers.

Most of the buildings in the city are inaccessible; it's essentially just a simple model.

Bamboo Star's requirement for Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 is that every building must be freely accessible, which is a considerable challenge for the team.

Judging from the size of the map alone, the entire game's size will likely exceed 100GB, and could even reach 200GB.

This is probably the largest map and city that several teams have ever created.

But while the map is indeed large, is it really meaningful?

In the past, Zhuyouxing advocated saving resources in the open world as much as possible and using most resources wisely, avoiding too much waste.

However, this time Zhu Youxing's request was indeed somewhat different from his previous requests.

It's no wonder that the people in charge were wondering why they were doing this.

Because it really does seem pointless.

"Because this time we're not making a simple game city, I want to make a completely convincing and realistic city, and in some cases, we even need to have some resources overflowing."

"President, this will probably be a test for the optimization team as well. This game is really beyond our expectations."

"The Unreal Engine team will work with you at any time to ensure there are no issues with game optimization."

"President, if you want all the houses to be freely accessible, are you planning to do something special?"

"Of course, for this game to be realistic enough, it's not enough to just fill in the map; it also needs a lot of content. That's the job of the Fourth Development Department. Their team is currently working on more side quests."

"This... sounds a bit creepy. How many side quests are you planning to design for the game, President?"

"Players don't need to discover all of these side quests. Just enough to make them feel that Night City is truly real is sufficient. There will probably be thousands of such side quests, and they will be a complex mix of various unpredictable side missions. Of course, that's not your job. You just need to refine and detail the game map as much as possible. Oh, and by the way, is the flying gameplay in the game's vehicle system ready?"

"We're halfway done. We're testing it now, and it should be finished soon."

"Okay, once it's finished, hand it over to the Fourth Development Department immediately. They need to develop side quests that incorporate gameplay elements."

"We understand."

Zhu Youxing was captivated by the gradually taking shape Night City scenery on the screen.

If Cyberpunk 2077 had this kind of content, it probably would have become a top-tier game that goes down in history.

Unfortunately, the game ultimately failed due to compromises made by capital and other factors.

But in this world, he won't let that happen.

Everything will only be announced on the premise that the game is perfect enough, so that the world can see a completely different top-level open-world game.

Chapter 922 A Little Bit of Resentment

922

"President, we have been studying the issue of the freedom of NPCs in the game for a long time."

"and then?"

"Our final conclusion is that with the current technology, adding so much content to the game would make it incredibly bloated. Putting aside whether the game console's performance can handle it, the game's excessive size could actually cause various crashes. We've already checked for countless bugs in the game, and the more content we add, the more vulnerabilities will increase exponentially."

"Is that so..."

In the fourth development department, Zhu Youxing was carefully watching the developers working on setting various behavioral patterns for the random NPC characters.

In Red Dead Redemption, when the protagonist enters a certain area, all the characters there will be activated and begin to perform their own actions.

Some people would vomit while leaning against a tree because of a hangover, while workers preparing for the early shift would carry sacks of goods out of the warehouse and place them on nearby horse-drawn carts.

It all looked so real, just like the real world.

However, all of this ultimately has its limits.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, such behavior logic of random NPCs can only last for about three to five minutes.

Later on, these random NPCs will repeat the same things as before, just like a program.

Pedestrians will walk in circles in one place, and no unexpected events will occur.

Of course, this also conveys to players that this is a video game, and ultimately it has its limits; it can't really be the same as the real world.

But to be honest, Zhu Youxing really wanted to create a truly lifelike cyberpunk world.

But it seems really difficult.

There are aspects of the video games I developed that can be imitated.

After all, the original world has a history of commercial game development spanning four or five decades, with various technological iterations emerging one after another, and the system is very complete.

However, the limits of games made under this system are currently only at the level of Red Dead Redemption or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Of course, these two games are already considered top-tier titles in the gaming industry.

These games are so terrifying that even four or five years after their release, it's hard to find any game-related technology that can surpass them.

In the original world, it could be said that the technology of video games had stagnated for four or five years in terms of gameplay, and was far from the diverse and vibrant landscape of games at the time.

Most people are simply enhancing and making minor innovations based on the existing gameplay.

As for major technologies related to new game development? They have indeed come to a standstill.

And now, Zhuyouxing has also arrived at this time.

Video games in this world have been developing for almost twenty years, and their development speed is even faster than in the original world. Now, the video game technology in this world has reached a level comparable to that in the original world.

To achieve another breakthrough, Zhu Youxing must seek a new direction on his own.

Bamboo Star now hopes that in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, every random NPC in the game will have a complete set of rules and logic.

The characters will operate according to so-called character logic; they will no longer be mindless zombies devoid of any additional emotions, but will act like real people.

Of course, saying that is a bit of an exaggeration.

It's impossible for Zhuyouxing to actually create an artificial intelligence with a completely independent personality; that's probably just a pipe dream in the short term.

However, Zhu Youxing still felt that his idea was feasible.

To put it simply, it's about making the programming of the passerby characters more complex.

However, this has very serious side effects.

The game will become very bloated, losing the exquisite and delicate feel of the original game design.

That's not the most crucial point. The most crucial point is the forced accumulation of too many programs, like building a skyscraper that keeps getting taller.

Once a certain height is reached, it will eventually collapse due to its own weight; no existing material can support an excessively tall building.

The same applies to programs.

The more programs a video game contains, the greater the chance of it having vulnerabilities.

Ultimately, the more bloated a game becomes, the more likely it is to develop bugs that will cause it to collapse and eventually become unusable.

Even though the Unreal Engine in this world is much more powerful than the one in the original world, it cannot solve this problem.

This is the upper limit of programming itself.

If we want to achieve another breakthrough, we have to find other paths.

Zhu Youxing stared intently at the screen.

On that screen is a random NPC experiencing a day in the nearly completed Night City.

In this day's events, this random NPC took a taxi to a restaurant for a meal, then watched TV idly for a while before going to a cyborg doctor's clinic to replace his broken prosthetic body. After receiving his new prosthetic body, he began to wander the streets. He inadvertently witnessed a gunfight between yakuza members and local sheriffs on the roadside and immediately fled in panic. After reaching a relatively safe area, he even stood there panting, occasionally glancing back at the direction where the gunfight had taken place. Finally, after ensuring his safety, he hailed a taxi to go home.

After telling the taxi driver his address, he specifically told him to avoid the road where the shooting had just taken place. When he finally got home, he took off his clothes and went to sleep.

This is a day in the life of this random NPC.

The day looked quite eventful, making one feel as if they were truly living in this city.

This code program, along with various modeling elements, occupies more than 300MB of the game's size.