In a sense, Mahjong Academy is a Japan special operations work that is no less impressive than Momotaro Dentetsu.
The sales figures are staggering.
In just one month, nearly 10,000 substrates have been sold.
After changing hands several times, a large portion of this money eventually ended up in Blizzard's pocket.
However, Mike and his two companions were stumped about how to use this windfall.
Up until now, they've only been responsible for development work.
They don't need to be responsible for the really expensive hardware departments and other parts.
Blizzard is a lean development studio.
To put it bluntly, aside from fixed salary expenses, there are practically no other expenses besides daily food, rent, and utilities.
After much deliberation, Mike decided to call Lin Lixin directly.
Want to undertake big projects?
Lin Lixin sat on the sofa, listened to Mike's meaning, and showed a knowing look.
There are only three people at Blizzard right now.
The reason they were able to make " Rock N' Roll Racing " is that they only needed to be responsible for filling in the content; the rest of the content could be handled by the game engine.
As for " Mahjong Academy," it's even less of a masterpiece.
The only part that required some brainpower, the AI, was handled by Will, who was parachuted in from GAMENOVA.
To be honest, this kind of life was somewhat frustrating for Mike and his two friends, who originally had some drive.
This seems to be completely different from what I imagined—following Gamenova in battles across the land and creating history.
"Hmm—that's true. Have you come up with any ideas on what kind of subject matter you'd like to work on?"
"I want to make it exclusive to NovaXeno----"
Mike and the other two exchanged glances and said what they had already planned.
To date, aside from the older games that are backward compatible, NovaXeno's only true first-party titles are Civilization and Quake.
During this period, GAMENOVA's development focus has clearly shifted to arcade games, and they are frequently conducting technical verifications.
Perhaps this is a good opportunity to take over the baton from Gamenova headquarters and develop exclusives for NX.
"Ah? Of course, what about the subject matter?"
"Hmm—when Mr. Will worked with us, we often played his game, SimCity, together."
Mike paused, still forming the somewhat immature idea in his mind, "It reminds us of that combat-focused module we made in Civilization."
"I'm wondering if it's possible to leverage the more advanced capabilities of the NX to incorporate combat elements into real-time building gameplay, similar to SimCity."
"The gameplay involves producing units to attack and destroy all of the enemy's buildings to win."
"What do you think?"
After saying that, Mike stared longingly at Lin Lixin expression was strange.
"Just fucking Dolt!"
Lin Lixin suddenly stood up.
This idea is definitely doable!
That's incredible!
Isn't this the prototype of an RTS?
Although his idea is still very immature and quite different from a true real-time strategy (RTS) game.
However, Lin Lixin has directly developed the core resource cycle model, which should solve the problem.
The sources of conflict in RTS games, in a sense, share some commonalities with those in Civilization.
Limited resources and territory force players to actively expand and compete for new mining sites in order to win.
In this process, even without deliberate guidance from the designers, players will naturally clash.
Judging by the timeline, the world's first RTS game, Dune II, should be released in a few years.
Then came the golden age of RTS games like Command & Conquer and Warcraft, which happened in just a few years.
With current processor performance, they may not be able to achieve the powerful, smooth, large-scale team battles of the late 1990s.
However, since they already have high-speed memory and hardware-accelerated graphics cards, it's not necessarily true that they can't make a slightly inferior Dune II.
Moreover, if they could acquire Dune, they could secretly poach another piece of EA's resources, completely disrupting EA's future third-party lineup.
"Okay, this project is a bit tricky to develop with just the three of you. I'll introduce you to a small team with pretty good technical skills."
We should try to save as many lives as possible from the countless bones left by EA.
Not to mention that the other party is a true pioneer in the RTS genre.
Inside a garage in Las Vegas with a sign that reads "[ Westwood Associates ]".
Brett looked at the development contract in his hand and hesitated for a moment.
"Outsourcing to EA—it's really not pleasant, isn't it, Louis?"
Only Brett and Louis were in the entire garage.
No, it should be two whole people.
This configuration is sufficient for most 8-bit game development.
"No way! If you want to do this project, then I'm not doing it."
Louis immediately gave up.
As die-hard supporters of Gamenova, the two naturally wouldn't choose to accept EA's project.
"Right, I thought so too. It's just a pity that Gamenova basically doesn't accept third-party software anymore."
"Once our family becomes successful, we'll definitely have opportunities. But you have to be strong yourself to succeed; if we hone our skills, everything will come our way."
"Hehe, that's exactly what I was thinking, so----"
Ring ring ring--
A phone call came into this little garage where Legend was brewing.
Two plane tickets sent two future bigwigs to Blizzard in Southern California.
Three garage-style developers, also from humble backgrounds, warmly welcomed them.
The acquisition of Westwood Studios went very smoothly; the two founders practically paid to join Blizzard directly.
As for Lin Lixin, he found Lucas.
Instead of going through the trouble of finding film copyright holders and the original author of the novel to acquire the rights to " Dune,"...
He has an IP that's easier to obtain and more famous.
"You're going to use the Star Wars IP to develop a video game?"
"Yes, I call it RTS (Real-Time Strategy)."
The emergence of real-time strategy games was a natural progression.
Sometimes developers aren't simply used to turn-based games; they're limited by the turn-based system in their thinking.
On the contrary, they had already anticipated the complete gameplay revolution that real-time combat would bring.
However, due to hardware limitations, this evolution requires a long process.
Just like Will's SimCity.
The concept of immediacy has actually existed for a long time.
However, RTS has established a standard design paradigm on top of this.
"Gathering - Building - Combat, I'll roughly divide it into these three parts of the cycle."
"Imagine that we and the enemy discover a massive Kyber crystal at the same time."
"Now we need to quickly establish a base around this area and produce units to eliminate the enemy."
Kyber crystal are a very important resource in the Star Wars universe.
Whether as a power source for lightsabers or to amplify the the Force, its significance is extraordinary.
Using it as an example to explain to Lucas, Lucas understood Lin Lixin's meaning.
Thinking about it, I actually kind of want to play it.
With the backing of GAMENOVA's R&D capabilities and Lin Lixin being a major shareholder of Lucasfilm, Lucas had absolutely no reason to refuse.
In fact, Lin Lixin could have just made a phone call to say something about this.
However, Lin Lixin's special trip today was certainly not just for this kind of thing.