Chapter 41: First, let's set up the worldview

  After the interview, Jest didn't have the heart to pay attention to this information. He had many things to do, including handling some trivial matters of the company, designing a brand new game, and preparing for the visit of Sega's president, Nakayama Osamu.

  However, this episode of "Chicago Morning" was not broadcast immediately, but after a few days, and he still talked about the betting incident in the program.

  That white man named Henry Stewart was not a relative of some unimportant TV station staff, he was a somewhat famous TV drama director, and that day he went to AM TV station to deal with some work-related things, while waiting, he saw there was a program recording, so he went to take a look just to kill time.

  He had previously been convicted of racial discrimination and was sentenced to six months in prison for allegedly racially discriminating against a black actor during the filming of a TV series.

  This time he was again involved in a new racial discrimination incident, and his previous black history was also dug up again.

  The top management of ABC was also very concerned about this, thinking that it was a good gimmick to hype up the show. After immediately terminating all cooperation with Henry Stuart in the first place to show their stance, they began to create momentum for this program which was already close to becoming a social hot topic.

  The episode was originally broadcast on more than 20 ABC-affiliated stations across the United States, but after the incident, ABC quickly decided to increase the number of broadcasting stations to over 120, which is almost 90% of all ABC-affiliated stations.

  Things related to racial discrimination always cause the most widespread concern in the United States, and people of color are particularly sensitive to this.

  Especially the object of insult is still a figure who has just completed a game with sales of $100 million.

  Considered by many to be the second Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

  The spokesperson of UC also came out to support Jester, stating that Jester was an excellent student with no bad records in school and even made his transcript from last semester public after obtaining his permission.

  Jester also took advantage of the hype, spending $5 million to buy a full half-month of prime-time advertising on ABC, set to air on the day the Chicago test play began.

  The ad is not directly promoting Mars Entertainment's games, but an event - Game Tour Across America!

  This is also the product of Jester's brain hole opening.

  Mars Entertainment will conduct a national tour of trial play after the Chicago trial play, and has initially selected twenty major cities. In addition, Jester also promised that during the national trial play, part of one of the two large-scale games currently being developed by Mars Entertainment will be announced for players to experience.

  This is a next-generation game! That's how Jest described it in the advertisement.

  Although many people are waiting to see Jester's Mars Entertainment jokes, he still has a lot of fans thanks to "American Blocks". From the system in his body, it can be seen that the total number of fans of "American Blocks" has exceeded 2 million, and the total number of fans of Mars Entertainment is close to 500,000. His own fans are slightly less, only around 100,000.

  These people also look forward to Jester and his Mars Entertainment's new game.

  Jester believed that as long as this advertisement was broadcast, his promotional campaign would also definitely trigger a hot trend.

  Of course, what Jester is referring to as the next game to be released is "Snow Bros".

  The first two levels of "Snowman Brothers" have been roughly completed, although for a game with more than 80 levels, this is just the beginning of a long journey. In fact, starting formal production also means that all initial settings are complete, and only need to be programmed step by step according to the established settings.

  The frontmost checkpoint was made the slowest because it had just started, and after getting familiar with making checkpoints, the production speed would be greatly improved.

  Jester plans to release a trial version with about twenty to thirty levels, so there's enough time.

  Moreover, Joust decided to use the already developed low-end version of the 8-bit motherboard as the platform after careful consideration, because the game's rival was Donkey Kong, and only a qualitative improvement in screen quality compared to Donkey Kong three years ago was needed, without requiring the high-end version with dual PPU that was still under design with its terrifying color processing capabilities.

  This nationwide tour was just a publicity stunt thought up by Jester to promote his legacy, and he left the actual operation in the hands of Carly Terri who had already arrived in Los Angeles.

  In this aspect, let him brainstorm a bit and he can still make it happen, but the specific details are not something he can handle.

  Also on the day Jester returned to California, a company called Popur Inc., wholly owned by Jester Holdings, was formally established.

  This is also the concept of the establishment of this company, and its own products are the most popular.

  The company name was proposed by Carly Terry and then received unanimous approval from the company's only two employees plus Jest.

  And Jester also found that Adam Edgar, who was still slightly disdainful of his appointment of a woman as CEO, was thoroughly conquered by Carly Thayer's talent.

  Even Margaret Whitman, who was also twenty-six years old, surprised Adam Edgar greatly, and her crisp style of doing things made him completely unaware that she was a woman.

  "Where did you find this kind of talent? Or is it a woman?"

  Adam Edgar's abilities were exceptional, a high-achieving graduate of Georgia Tech, one of the top three polytechnic universities in the United States, comparable to MIT. At a young age, he had already served as vice president of a trading company and managed the entire company with great success. He was extremely confident in his own abilities. This time, when he met Jester, it was just a casual encounter, and he originally thought that the two women were just there to make up the numbers, but their exceptional abilities really surprised him.

  "God said: Do not speak." To this, Jester could only laugh it off and gloss over it, of course he couldn't tell the truth to the other party.

  However, the biggest problem with Wind Dancer's current release is still a lack of funds. The $35 million that Jaret took from Mars Entertainment's profit-sharing was simply invested in a few things and spent over $18 million, and he still needs to take out nearly $5 million from the remaining $17 million to invest in the animation of "Ninja Turtles".

  So this time the founding capital of Feng Xing's distribution company was only 10 million, and even among these 10 million, Jie Shi Te had already taken out 5 million to buy advertising broadcast time from ABC.

  The $10 million in initial funding that was originally promised is now only $5 million, staring Carrie Taylor in the face.

  Five million dollars is completely inadequate for establishing a company aimed at building a nationwide distribution network, it's basically just a drop in the bucket.

  And this time's nationwide tour rehearsal will also definitely cost a lot of money.

  So Carly was still somewhat angry.

  Facing Carly's inquiry, Jester, who knew he was somewhat in the wrong, could only guarantee that the cost of the nationwide trial tour would be split 50/50 between Wind-Up Records and Mars Entertainment, and that he would add at least $8 million in follow-up funding within a month.

  After getting Jester's guarantee, Carly Terry was relieved.

  The sales trend of "American Blocks" was not much different from what Jester had expected earlier. After selling 15,000 units in the first month, orders plummeted like a 10-meter diving platform in the second month, with only over a thousand units ordered in more than ten days.

  Then, some media outlets got wind of this news and began to mock Huoergosi Entertainment, which Jester scoffed at.

  These people don't understand video games at all.

  It's not that the popular trend of "American Blocks" has passed, nor is it that the market is already saturated, and yet only less than 10,000 units have been produced.

  According to Donkey Kong's experience, the saturation number of a single arcade machine in the US market is about 60,000 units.

  But because the price of "American Blocks" is more than twice that of "Donkey Kong", sales will inevitably be far from comparable.

  But it's still far from saturation.

  However, it was somewhat unexpected for Jester to receive another order of 1,000 units in about ten days. He previously predicted that "American Blocks" would sell around 20,000 units by the end of the year. Looking at this, there is a good chance that sales will exceed 25,000 units by the end of the year.

  This also gave Jester a bit of a surprise, after all, 5,000 units is equivalent to $30 million in sales.

  After all these trivial matters were settled, Jester also had some rare free time.

  He was in Chicago considering a vertically scrolling flight combat game, specifically to compete with Namco and Capcom for market share in this type of game.

  Thinking about the two games that were going to be his own rivals, Jester actually felt extremely excited.

  There's no greater sense of accomplishment than taking down a legend with your own hands.

  In his memory, although Namco and Capcom were the first to develop this type of game, the leader of this type of game later on was a game company that had not yet been born - Psikyo, translated into Chinese as Caijing.

  This is a game production company established in 1992, which is different from Namco or Capcom and other comprehensive game companies. This company specializes in the development of one type of game, namely flight shooting games, thus developing the gameplay of this type of game to its peak.

  Before his rebirth, Jie Si Te had played two flying shooting games in the arcade that he couldn't forget.

  Because he played arcade games in the 90s, so the two vertical scrolling flying shooting games that were popular in the arcades of the 80s, the ancestors of "Iron Plate Array" and "1942", he didn't have much contact with.

  His real first play of these two legendary games was later on a PC emulator.

  Because in his time, arcade halls already had very few of these two games.

  His two favorite vertically scrolling shooter games are well-known among many arcade game enthusiasts, and even people who only played arcades as kids.

  One is Seibu-Kaihatsu's 1990 release of the renowned "Raiden", a game with extremely high difficulty, possibly the highest among all flying shooting games that most people can play in an arcade.

  And "Raiden" is also the first game to let all players know that the fun of air combat games isn't about shooting down planes, but rather dodging bullets.

  Jie remembered that when he was a kid and went to the arcade, every time someone played "Raiden" and cleared the game with one life, it would attract a large crowd of onlookers.

  Such a character is absolutely a great god in the eyes of Jie Si, who can't even pass the first level with his crippled hands and feet. Every time he looks at his back with envy, jealousy and hatred.

  The second item may not be as famous as "Raiden", it was born when the mainstream of fighting games had basically entered the era of clearing levels and struggling to survive, and the game almost had no foothold. However, when I played this game for the first time, I was still attracted by its smooth operation, gorgeous explosion scenes and brilliant colors.

  This game is the culmination of Psikyo's vertically scrolling shooter series and also their breakout title, Strikers 1945.

  Jester knew that both Raiden and Strikers 1945 were homages to Capcom's 1942, and he built his own brainchild with these two games as the prototype.

  He didn't mind this either. Since he wanted to compete with Namco and Capcom in the same type of game, he wasn't afraid to have some similarities in settings, which would also allow players to compare the pros and cons of several games of the same type.

  However, on the other hand, although there are some similarities in the settings, it's not entirely true. In Jester's view, this brain-opening game he is preparing to make, apart from taking place on Earth in the 40s, has little connection with "1942".

  As for "Iron Plate Array"? This game doesn't even have any specific background settings.

  Current players' demands for a game are not as many as those of later generations, as long as it's fun.

  But Jester didn't think so, he deeply knew from the future that how important a game's worldview is to its subsequent development.

  Some games are not suitable for a massive worldview, such as the ones he did before, but some games are very suitable, such as Mark Cerny's current project called "Avengers" which is a fighting game with a large worldview, and his own current brainchild.

  And this game is also his first non-plagiarized game, so he wants to make the world view setting of this game as perfect as possible.

  He first referenced the background of StarCraft, setting up a powerful alien race Xel'Naga, which discovered Earth, a planet suitable for biological survival, just after World War II in 1945. In order to occupy this planet, they released a corrupt seed that came to Earth.

  This seed corrupted some human military leaders who were not resolute enough, these people betrayed humanity and formed a military organization called Naga, the purpose of this military organization is to complete the advent of their master Sal Naga.

  To complete the arrival of the people of Sal Nang, a terrible energy is needed, so conquering the world became the first task of the naga.

  With the support of some beyond-the-times technology possessed by the Salnagans, Naga, who was driving a black-tech, started to win every battle, while each country collapsed separately.

  Finally, when human free forces were about to thoroughly fail, countries finally abandoned their prejudices and formed the last resistance organization - Earth Resistance Army.

  Of course, Just Cause set the main body of Naga as Soviet Union to cater to American players. The Soviet Union was the most severely corrupted by the Sal Naga people, and Moscow also became the base camp of Naga.

  And the core and leader of the Earth Resistance Army are still undoubtedly themselves in the eyes of Americans.

  This is the initial large background setting made by Gest, and under this background, he will naturally find a professional writer to write a few books. It doesn't need to be written well, just clear enough to tell a high-brow story, which is originally done as a peripheral promotion for this game.

  No, Jester's plan was to release the background of this game after it became popular, and he didn't dare guarantee whether the sales would be very good or not, but he knew that under the influence of this game he was developing, the sales would definitely not be bad.

  This is also a marketing strategy for some large game companies in later generations, such as Blizzard.

  Then, it's the specific gameplay settings for this game.