Tokyo Video Game Tycoon.

These large companies are themselves leaders in the electronics, internet information, and entertainment industries, so Zhuyouxing's actions will also attract their special attention.

They simply couldn't figure out what Zhuyouxing intended to do with the AI.

The development of 2077 remains a mystery to everyone except those within the company.

Firstly, there's Yusei Electronics Entertainment's consistently strict confidentiality policy, and their ruthless retaliation against those who leak information, unless the leaker is Yusei himself.

But just to put on a show, they will still publicly investigate Zhu Youxing's hidden alternate account for a while.

As for those who actually leaked the information, they're in an even worse situation.

Once, when Resident Evil 2 was released, someone actually leaked the game's new gameplay in advance.

Most companies would probably try to protest by issuing a denunciation or sending a lawyer's letter, because they know that once such a leak occurs, even if it causes a huge crisis of trust, it is difficult to solve the fundamental problem. Sanctioning the leaker will also incur additional costs and cannot restore their reputation by sanctioning the leaker.

Due to their own cost control considerations, the group company would not be willing to spend a lot of money to do such a thing.

But Zhu Youxing didn't care about any of that. No matter how much money it cost, he was told to investigate those who maliciously leaked information relentlessly.

And as long as you have money, there really aren't many problems in this world that can't be completely solved.

In the long run, no ordinary person will dare to easily risk leaking the product secrets of Youxing Electronic Entertainment.

As for the game 2077 itself, the fourth development team has also entered the initial stage of developing AI-generated story characters.

They will use the existing Benedict AI Labs technology engine to develop some basic character models, and then hand them over to Zhu Youxing to judge whether this direction is correct.

As for Zhu Youxing himself, he is simultaneously pushing forward the continued development of other games.

Every year, New Year's goods are indispensable, and they should not only be used to make money while the popularity of canned games has not waned in recent years, but also to be used as a testing ground for these canned games.

The AI ​​development system currently being tested can be directly applied to these annual game releases.

For example, implementing AI monsters in the new Monster Hunter.

Of course, this is an AI monster under certain rules. It simply adds some randomness and variability to large monsters through artificial intelligence (AI), and the AI ​​will only be implemented on high-ranking monsters, allowing the monsters to adapt to the different combat habits of the players.

Within the development team, someone came up with a brilliant idea first. This person was named Motomura, and he was among the fastest learners of AI-related knowledge in the team.

During a chance brainstorming session, he came up with the idea of ​​using AI to learn from the different players' operating habits and combat methods. Then, the monsters would occasionally deliberately show weakness under the initially set AI restrictions, making the game a bit difficult for the players. However, after a period of 'hard work', the players would successfully defeat the monsters.

This gives players the illusion that "I am really too strong", but in reality, the monster AI is deliberately going easy on the player.

Even the most novice players will mistakenly believe that this game is incredibly fun.

When skilled players share highlights of their quick monster kills online, even novice players want to try it out. They find that they can actually do it too, and then they become smug, thinking that they are just like the top players.

This can actually be considered a more advanced form of dynamic difficulty adjustment.

However, this dynamic difficulty is much smoother and more varied than the simple step-by-step difficulty adjustment of the past. It changes with the player's own state, and this change can even make each monster challenge feel different and fresh.

As for Motomura, who developed this dynamic AI difficulty, he was personally recognized by Takeyusei and given a very generous bonus and an award such as the best employee of the year.

At the same time, Zhuyouxing also gave him a special privilege: he could choose to add some unique Easter eggs to any future game release, so that he could also have his own memories in the game world.

Chapter 931 adds more details and necessary trade-offs.

931

The Assassin's Creed series is a significant part of video game history.

Initially, the game's unique art style and the cool assassination gameplay attracted many players to buy and play it.

The same applies to this parallel world; no one can resist something cool.

However, when Assassin's Creed becomes an annual game, its essence will change imperceptibly.

On the one hand, people's tastes are starting to change, and on the other hand, players have gradually developed a tolerance for canned sandbox games.

As 2014 arrived in this world, Yusei Takeshi had already released the third installment of Assassin's Creed, the Ezio Chronicles, subtitled Apocalypse.

In the original game, Revelations was the last of the old-school Assassin's Creed games, but it gradually evolved into the very popular meme: Berserker's Creed.

Even though it gradually deviates from the original style of the game, sales continue to rise.

Zhu Youxing understood that the game's most fundamental appeal was actually only one thing.

It's not about the so-called elegant assassination and glamorous identity of an assassin, but a very simple and pure purpose: to do it cool enough.

Each subsequent Assassin's Creed game strives to be more visually stunning than its predecessor. It seems that Ubisoft has discovered a pattern: a particular style of Assassin's Creed can be popular for about three installments. After that, they have to find other styles to attract players' attention.

Therefore, we have the Victorian era of Assassin's Creed III, IV and V, followed by Assassin's Creed Origins, Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which are three games with a focus on role-playing progression, plus some ancient mythology elements.

Ultimately, regardless of the game's style, besides being cool, Zhuyouxing believes that such a game should have another appealing aspect.

That means there must be rich and sufficient content outside the main storyline.

In the world of GTA, players can enjoy driving around the streets, participating in a thrilling race, or even carrying out a heist mission, even if they don't follow the main storyline.

This is what sandbox games should be like, not Ubisoft's standard capture-the-flag mode, which is also monotonous and would make even the most patient players sick of it.

Coincidentally, in order to further improve Cyberpunk 2077 after its release, the upcoming Assassin's Creed Ezio: Revelations is a great opportunity to try.

In the original game, the protagonist Ezio would continue to fight against the Templars with his aging body.

He will also establish the Assassin's Creed Brotherhood in new territory, allowing the organization to become more complete.

The story ends with Ezio finding a wife who would spend her life with him and having a child he loved. He passes away peacefully in contentment.

Zhu Youxing was quite satisfied with this ending, considering it a rare perfect ending for Assassin's Creed. There was no need to embellish the ending. However, during the story, Zhu Youxing had his team train a batch of more varied side stories using the first-generation AI artificial intelligence NPC system.

And we try to make the experience different for each player as much as possible.

Side quests are not simply about running to one place to pick up a quest and then going to another place to complete it. Even side quests should carry some meaning and purpose.

In Assassin's Creed Revelations, Yuxing Electronics Entertainment added more side quests that expand the entire Assassin's Creed universe, allowing players to better understand the world and move beyond simply running errands like a job.

"Boss, look at this side quest tree. At the beginning, the character will randomly appear in the city of Constantinople or in the wild. The NPCs that appear in different areas will do different things randomly. The protagonist can choose to help the NPC and solve the NPC's current problem. After that, the NPC will briefly introduce how he struggles to survive under the heavy pressure of the higher-ups through our performance. If the protagonist makes different choices, even if it is just choosing to stand a little further away and talk to the NPC, it may have other ending effects. This NPC side quest has about a hundred chaotic models, which can allow players to experience at least two or three hundred different story endings."

In Zhu Youxing's office, Zhu Youxing is communicating remotely with one of the development teams in the United States via video conference.

That team is the main development team for this generation of Assassin's Creed Revelations.

They had just received the latest AI-powered NPC system from headquarters and immediately began researching it.

However, they were initially confused about how to operate this thing. At first, they simply imitated the Japanese approach of equipping the enemy with AI, giving them a very flexible and dynamic difficulty.

Later, Zhu Youxing personally demonstrated a function called the Chaos Story System to them. By setting the basic logical rules of an NPC character within the system, the NPC character in this Chaos Story System begins to create stories on its own.

Some stories are so outrageous that they are completely different from the story structure that normal people understand. In this case, we need to manually filter out these storylines that are considered useless, and then select enough good storylines to add to the chaotic story system. Through continuous self-learning, the chaotic story system will understand what it should do to make it the most reasonable and easy to pass, and then start to produce more and more high-quality side story missions.

The American team was astonished when they discovered how the system worked.

Previously, when they wrote stories, the screenwriters had to rack their brains to research and write as reasonable a story as possible before implementing it in the game.

However, now that AI has the ability to train itself for side quests, screenwriters only need to provide a general framework for the story, and the rest is left to the AI ​​to train day and night to produce results, and then the screenwriters can choose the qualified stories.

"More than three hundred different story endings, wow, it seems that the development speed of this artificial intelligence is quite fast."

Seeing that this single side quest had so many story branches, he marveled at how rapidly technological development had progressed in this world. At least in this world, AI artificial intelligence had been gradually applied to game development.

And there's something even more terrifying: not only are the characters' stories created by AI, but even the voice acting is done by AI.

However, it still falls short of real human voice acting, with noticeable awkwardness. Also, the AI-trained model is rather stiff during movement. These are areas that need to be continuously addressed in the future.

"President, we originally wanted to train more content, but as you know, we're targeting ordinary users, and their devices probably can't support such a massive amount of computing power, so we can only provide stories with fixed formulas."

“I know that,” Zhu Youxing nodded.

In fact, the artificial intelligence (AI) research within the company is still in its very early stages.

It's not that the company can't provide high-performance equipment, but rather that players' gaming devices probably can't support storylines that are simply calculated.

To achieve a breakthrough in this area, a greater breakthrough in processor hardware is needed, which is beyond the control of Zhuyouxing.

The most reasonable approach now is to add more details to the characters within a certain range around the main character.

Even if it's just an NPC strolling around on the roadside, if the player is interested, they can observe such an NPC for at least an hour without seeing the NPC repeat the same actions.

If it were any longer, the player's device processor would explode.

An hour might be enough now.

"Let's continue development according to the current plan, and there shouldn't be any problem with releasing the game before Christmas, right?"

The head of the game development team, far away in the United States, patted his chest and said, "Absolutely no problem, boss! You can rest assured about our efficiency. You've already given us so many convenient development tools, and you've also clearly explained the core gameplay and main storyline. If our development speed were even a little slower, we ourselves wouldn't be able to accept it!"

Chapter 932 The Dispute Over Formulaic Games

932

At a party hosted by a family in Japan, several people are gathered around a game console watching one of them play a game.

Most of the people watching are people who haven't had much experience with video games before.

They usually do things that they consider meaningful, while video games are considered meaningless by them and their families.

However, when friends get together, they need to find something fun to do, and watching others play games seems to be a very interesting thing. Because when they suddenly see such a realistic video game world, they have a kind of dazed feeling, since they haven't played many video games before.

Just then, a person walked over curiously from a distance, and after carefully examining the game on the screen, revealed some surprise and a hint of disdain.

"Huh? You're playing Assassin's Creed?"

"correct."

"Yes, it is indeed called Assassin's Creed. This game is quite good."

The person who asked the question nodded: "It's not bad, but to be honest, this game is a bit too formulaic. With such a formula, the game loses a little bit of its charm, but it can still be considered a good game."

At this very moment, this person is playing the second installment of the Assassin's Creed trilogy, Brotherhood.

As Yusei Electronic Entertainment develops more and more games, they no longer even release game numbers for iteration; instead, they rely solely on players to name the games themselves.

Anyway, Yuxing Electronic Entertainment just won't count to 2 themselves, and you can't really complain.

Initially, many people speculated that the Dragon Quest series would be paused after the tenth installment, probably because they didn't want to reach the number 12.

However, Final Fantasy later released a 12, which surprised everyone for a long time.

The fact that Final Fantasy has reached its 12th installment is also due to Takeyusei's high regard for this 12th game. It is quite rare for a game series to have a 12th installment in the world.

Besides Yuxing Electronic Entertainment, only Suri Electronics and Brown Entertainment each have one or two games that can reach this record.

Several people watching the game turned to look at the person who had just commented on the Assassin's Creed.