Infocom.
Caneghem, who was busy integrating the studio's development resources, met Lin Lixin, who had come to visit.
Ever since Boss Lin dumped this huge mess on him, he's been completely left to his own devices.
The situation of having to do everything personally was far more troublesome Caneghem had imagined.
It's not just about working with other developers.
Organizing past development resources and accumulated technical expertise requires a significant amount of effort.
How have things been lately?
Lin Lixin casually pulled over a chair and sat down, curiously looking around at his surroundings.
To be honest, this was his first time here.
This small company, Infocom, was given to him as part of the acquisition of Activision.
At the time, he was busy dealing with Activision, so he simply handed the company over to Caneghem.
"It's alright."
Caneghem scratched his head sheepishly.
Look at the mess here. Even basic development and production haven't fully recovered. It's really embarrassing to face the boss.
Lin Lixin smiled.
It's much better here than he imagined.
While it wasn't exactly spotless, you could definitely see that it had been carefully maintained.
Each of the dozen or so developers had some items scattered around their workstations.
Although he never really took Infocom to heart, Infocom isn't actually as worthless as it seems.
Ten years ago, Infocom was synonymous with the "text Adventure game" genre.
The world's most popular text-based game, " Demon Domain Empire," was created by this studio.
Of course, with the rapid development of graphical games, word games have almost completely become relics of the past.
"They weren't involved in your new project?"
" Heroes of Might and Magic? Yes, sir. Because we haven't worked out together yet, we've recently been trying to revamp 'Zok'."
Caneghem nodded and explained the situation in detail.
Although the higher-ups completely left them to their own devices and provided them with regular financial support, he didn't really intend to just give up.
The less they are valued, the more they need to create something impressive to impress Lin Lixin.
To be honest, even Blizzard, a small studio that was only recently established, has already made quite a name for itself.
Activision has fully recovered its former glory, not only taking on the responsibility of developing some simple games for NovaXeno to enrich the game library, but also gradually restoring its publishing functions.
However, Infocom remains untraceable to this day.
This was something that Caneghem, a very strong-willed guy, found extremely unbearable.
He was really eager to make a name for himself and prove himself.
But after this period of integration, Caneghem was well aware of just how difficult this task was.
"The former boss of Activision was a beast."
Thinking of this, he spat.
Almost all the current troubles are traps set by that bastard Bruce.
The original Activision not only completely exploited Infocom like an assembly line, but also had a strong aversion to RPG games.
This can be described as the arrogance passed down from the old Activision lineage.
Just like the Brahmins of the gaming world, Activision used to look down on RPGs, a mainstream game genre.
On the contrary, they are very interested in innovative projects that are highly artistic and experimental.
The fact that they abandoned " The Bard's Tale," one of the best-selling CRPGs of the 1980s, and gave it to their competitor EA is enough to reveal some clues.
It is precisely because of this strange arrogance that Infocom has now almost completely abandoned its past achievements.
Caneghem had to conduct archaeological excavations, working with several key veteran employees of Infocom to try and salvage these old structures.
P.
"Zork" is one of the works he discovered not long ago.
Upon hearing Caneghem mention this, Lin Lixin also became interested.
"That's why I came here."
He paused, then added, "I plan to reboot the Zork IP."
"Ah?"
Caneghem was clearly taken aback, and remained stunned for a moment.
Judging from Lin Lixin's words, he intends to personally take charge.
"Don't rush, I'm not planning to make a remake, but rather to use its setting and world view to develop a spin-off."
Back then, "Zork" sold over 6,000 copies in just eight months.
Although it would be considered a complete flop by today's standards, it wasn't a bad achievement back then.
This is enough to demonstrate the commercial potential of this IP.
"A spin-off?"
"Yes, I call it 'ZorkIdle' ( Demon Domain Empire Idle ')."
"Idle?"
Caneghem was somewhat puzzled.
This word isn't exactly a positive one.
It usually represents laziness, slackness, and indolence, and also means unemployed or idle.
Simply put, this is a game you don't need to play.
Lin Lixin chuckled.
Incremental games, also known as idle games, are definitely the most unique and unusual genre in video games.
The most important characteristic of video games should be interactivity; it should be the act of playing itself.
But the emergence of idle games completely changed this.
It requires almost no player interaction.
Often, all it takes is the simplest clicks, and a series of repeated clicks, to complete the entire game.
Resources are collected through simple, repetitive tasks such as clicking. When enough resources are accumulated, they can be consumed to upgrade or gain a certain ability.
In this process, the efficiency with which players acquire resources will also increase.
This simple gameplay loop has become a major game genre in the future mobile game market.
Because it doesn't require players to invest too much effort in it.
Even if it's running in the background or offline, you can still reap the rewards when you return.
This unique model perfectly suits the lifestyle of modern office workers, making perfect use of the short and fragmented time spent at the office.
If possible, Lin Lixin actually had the idea of making a game like this back when the NP handheld console was launched.
However, this requirement is not feasible for NP.
It can't even do that on NX.
The reason lies in the length of the digits themselves.
Even in a 16-bit environment, it can only process a maximum of 65535 raw numbers.
At first glance, it is indeed quite large, even frighteningly so.
In the past, when 255 could solve all mathematical problems, the range of 65535 was already more than enough to explore any mathematical problem.
But incremental games won't work.
The explosive growth of numbers is an important part of the enjoyment in games.
Sixty thousand is far too few for a game with a large user base.
It's similar to the classic idle game " Melvor Idle " that Lin Lixin is comparing it to.
In modern development terms, it is a fully 64-bit game, capable of handling numbers of a length that is beyond what people can imagine today.
If 16-bit is used, the 60,000 limit will be maxed out very quickly, requiring only a few upgrades.
"Ha----"
After listening to Lin Lixin's explanation, Caneghem barely understood what he was planning to do, and his eyes lit up with admiration. "So you developed a 32-bit coprocessor, expanding this range to a full two billion?"
What an outrageous number! It's simply unbelievable.
"No."
Lin Lixin shook his head, grinned, and said, "It's 1,844 billion—100 billion."
In other words, the 1 was followed by 19 zeros.