Chapter 33: Exclusive Interview (Seeking Recommendation Tickets!!)

  The first ten days of July were basically spent by Jester on the plane, and this degree of running almost exhausted him.

  Before Jester was reborn, it said that the protagonist only needed to talk about romance with beauties and he would make a lot of money, but when it came to him, it wasn't like that at all.

  He has been flying from south to north every day for the past few days, and he hasn't had a good night's sleep. He sleeps on planes and works as soon as he gets off them, so exhausted that he doesn't even have time to catch his breath.

  It's almost as if once you stop thinking, it's like going to sleep, quietly sitting for a minute is sure to enter the dream world.

  He first secured a deal with Mirage Studios in Northampton, Massachusetts, a small comic book studio that had gained some recognition for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Eastman traded $100,000 cash and an agreement to invest in the production of an animated television series based on the Turtles for 70% of the company's shares; the remaining 30% remained with Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, authors of the Turtles and co-founders of Mirage Studios.

  This is not that Jester can't buy the remaining thirty percent, but Jester thinks that one can only put in all his energy when working for his own interests, having a hundred percent stake, and having a seventy percent stake, the energy invested by the two is absolutely impossible to be equal.

  After all, Jester didn't know how to run a comic book company, he just wanted to make money.

  Then, Jester rushed to Toronto to meet He Guoyuan, who was staying at home as a NEET because he couldn't find a satisfactory job.

  In a typical Toronto coffee shop, Jester met the three future co-founders of ATI, Francis Ho, Benny Lau and K.Y. Ho.

  The negotiation went smoothly, and the three of He Guoyuan were almost in sync with Jester. However, as an ordinary wage earner, He Guoyuan had already made enough money and demanded that he be appointed CEO of the newly established display chip R&D company for at least ten years. This point must be written into the contract, and there must be at least a 10% shareholding.

  On these two points, Jester also agreed. Ta had no intention of undermining He Guoyuan from the start, as it would not be beneficial to him. All he needed to do was wait for ATi's development to get on track and then find Huang Renxun to balance out He Guoyuan, but not now. A company in its early stages of development is most afraid of internal power struggles, and such a company has no future prospects whatsoever.

  To make a company have the highest execution efficiency, its CEO must be authoritative and decisive, so that orders can be carried out smoothly.

  Moreover, he was clueless about how to develop display chips, while He Guoyuan had already proven his success in future history.

  He Ziguang obtained a 10% stake in the newly established company, while his two friends, future ATI product development vice president Benny Lau and ATI strategic planning vice president Liu Lika, each received a 7.5% stake. Jester guaranteed that as long as the three did not leave the company, these stakes would become their shares after ten years.

  After listening to Jester's parameter requirements for the ppu he requested, the three of them immediately stated that there was basically no difficulty and they had mature technology in their hands. They would definitely come up with a design plan within a month and definitely produce a sample within two months.

  So, Jest's $9 million investment is gone.

  After that, Jester, who had temporarily put down one of his worries, immediately flew to Longview, Texas, where he met Mike Dell, who was about the same size as him.

  Michael Dell was very interested in his investment plan, but he had no interest in his controlling purpose. Michael Dell believed that Dell Inc. was his company and he would definitely make a big success in the future, and the control of the company would not tolerate anyone to touch it.

  Jester wasn't interested in discussing the issue of control with Dell, who was willing to spend $20 billion to take his company private from Nasdaq. He only brought it up to have more room for retreat later on.

  He has no interest in controlling Dell Group at all. What he is interested in is the development potential of Dell. The computer industry is now in its growth period, and it will not be in the future.

  After two days of negotiations, Jest and Dell reached a final agreement when both were somewhat exhausted. Jest invested $8 million in exchange for 30% equity in Dell's garage-based company but with 35% voting power.

  Both parties were extremely satisfied with the price, Jester spent a small price to get one-third of the shares of a computer giant that will surely soar in the future, while Dell got a large sum of cash, which can be used to quickly expand his computer direct sales business across the United States.

  In this case, both sides win.

  Of course, in the eyes of many people, Jester is a fool, but Jester knows that if he doesn't get an irresistible price from Dell, he won't sell 30% of his shares.

  One can't keep a wolf from eating one's child by just being reluctant to let go of it.

  What about the future? Hehe, if Dell knew how big his company would become in the future, he definitely wouldn't think he was making a profit.

  In just ten days, the $350 million he had just received from Mars Entertainment was gone, more than half of it. This also made Jester lament that money was like flowing water. He originally wanted to visit his grandfather's close friend Sandy Wil in New York and ask him to help find a reliable investment fund manager, but a phone call he had just received disrupted all his plans.

  The content of the phone call was simple: ABC wanted to interview him.

  As the most talked-about company in the past month, Mars Entertainment has caused a huge stir with its "American Blocks" in the US. Everyone is curious about this one-month-old company that has reached sales of $100 million. Where did it come from? What's so charming about it? What are their next plans? And most importantly - who founded this company?

  Jiest recently received several media interview requests, but he refused them all. However, he also knew that always refusing was not a solution. Coincidentally, the three games from his company that belonged to the same elimination genre as "American Block" had entered the beta testing phase. Several test machines were already ready. Since elimination games were currently popular, why not take this opportunity to do some promotion?

  Actually, when it comes to eliminating games, the earliest one should be Atari's "Breakout". Many people think this is Steve Jobs' work during his time at Atari, but in fact, Jobs didn't have that ability. The idea of this game was from Bushnell, and the one who completed this game was Wozniak. Jobs only played a role as an intermediary to persuade Wozniak for Bushnell. Jester often sees some videos saying that this game was designed by Jobs, but it's not true at all.

  It's just that Jobs has the biggest name, and fans follow his name.

  Jester inquired carefully and found that it was not ABC that wanted to interview him, but rather a television station under ABC - Chicago AM TV's revamped talk show. However, ABC stated that although it was just a local TV station, this program would also be broadcast across the entire network, to the whole of America. Jester thought what they said sounded good and agreed to do it.

  As a result, Jester had no choice but to return to Costa Mesa ahead of schedule.

  During the time Just was away, the development team of Snow Bros. was mainly in charge of Shawn Dobbins, a young man from Texas who had the free and easy-going personality of a Texan cowboy. After observing him for some time, Just found that he had a good talent and was very perceptive, so he let him take charge of the design group specially established by himself for Snow Bros.

  The development process of "Snowman Brothers" was exceptionally smooth, with no major hiccups. The entire game's theme was designed by Jester, who even drew rough sketches and detailed explanations for each level on manuscript paper, leaving only the programming to be done.

  Darby was also very skilled at coordinating the work of the entire R&D group, always able to get all team members to focus their efforts and complete as much work as possible in the shortest possible time - of course, Jester had to pay a large amount of overtime for this.

  Of course, he was happy to oblige, and the designers were completely absorbed in Jester's brand new game design, which they had never seen before, and they gasped in amazement at Mark Cerny's design for what would become one of the greatest games of all time.

  Yes, "Snowman Brothers" in this era, indeed lives up to such a reputation.

  Moreover, since it's a static screen game, there are no technical difficulties that can't be overcome. What's more, in the "Origin" R&D team established by Jester, there are several experts who have participated in the development of scrolling games at Atari, so making Snow Bros is naturally not a problem. It's worth noting that for someone with experience in developing high-end game engines, creating a low-end engine is not too difficult.

  It's worth mentioning that after Jester named his R&D team "Origin", Mark Sennett also thought it was a good idea to give his design team a nice-sounding name, so he gave his design team a name that Jester found extremely tacky - "The King".

  It is said that this was still the result of their own vote.

  Almost made Jester laugh his teeth off.

  Of course, the remaining dozen or so people and the new seven or eight employees also formed a temporary small group. They are now responsible for the final cleaning up of the three games "Treasure Hunter". So they call themselves 'Janitor', which is quite vivid in Jester's view.

  Actually making an engine seems like a lofty goal in the future, it's hard for ordinary people to achieve, but in fact, game engines also have their own strengths and weaknesses.

  For example, the game engine needed for Tetris, which Jestr did earlier, of course, this engine has very few functions, only need to make those blocks appear randomly and fall at a certain speed, and can rotate when the player presses the key. The engine with such little function is very simple to write, while an engine like Super Mario's is much more complicated, it needs to consider problems such as smooth screen scrolling, character movement, lighting, even gravity during jumping, etc., writing such an engine is very troublesome, because this engine needs to load many more functions than Tetris.

  Of course, it's not too difficult to make these 2D engines now, generally a few people, or even for some talented individuals, one person can handle it. But after entering the 3D era, it's completely impossible. After all, geniuses like Carmack are rare in the world. Even if it's Carmack, he could complete an early 3D engine by himself, but if you let him complete a mature Unreal Engine 3 or Frostbite 4 level of 3D engine later on, that would also be impossible, because this work is really too complex and heavy.

  The game engine is the heart of a game, everything you want to do, whether it's lighting, rendering, sound effects, or even movement, all the functions you can imagine in a game need to be completed by the game engine.

  And what makes up a game engine is those lines and rows of code.

  Jest also consciously let these young programmers under his hand develop the habit of creating modularized engines when programming "Snow Bros." The entire game engine is composed of individual program modules responsible for different functions, and these program modules are complete components with certain engine functions. Later, when making other games that need to use the same effect engine, they can be used directly.

  It's really convenient.

  That's Jester's advantage, he may not be as good as these people in specific technologies, but his grasp of future technologies is top-notch in the world. In other words, he knows which technology will ultimately win out in the world.

  The current game is still a simple 2D plane pixel block, which does not require high technical content. The advantages of modular writing are not visible yet, but when it accumulates for several years, and the 3D wave or high-pixel 2D game comes, the advantages of the modular engine will be fully revealed.

  Convenience and universality are the greatest advantages of modular engines.

  Of course, the physics engine library Jester didn't forget to start building from scratch, starting with simple things like gravity effects, parabolic trajectories of objects, elasticity, acceleration and so on. After accumulating for a few years, when this database becomes complete and massive, its effect will be very obvious.

  To know, a game engine can simulate various physical effects because they load the physics engine library. If the physics engine database is not built up over time, it will be very troublesome to rebuild it later, and even cost a lot of money and time.

  Jest deeply knows that building a database is never an overnight thing, for example, the latest physical engine racing games.

  At that time, "GT Racing" was able to debut with great success, selling 11 million copies on a single platform, but without the technical accumulation of Kazunori Yamauchi in previous "Cartoon Gran Turismo" and "Ultimate Recommendation", it would have been absolutely impossible.

  Apart from these, Snowman Brothers includes original paintings, music and modeling which are all proceeding in an orderly manner without any flaws but also no surprises, including the redesigned Mario image that he asked to be remade, none of them meet his expectations.

  Jest also discovered the inadequacy of his own design team, which had programming experts and level design experts, but almost no dedicated artists, composers, design masters, or even background writers.

  It's not that I don't have it, but rather I'm not good at this aspect.

  The reason is that Jester also knows, in this era of game designers, basically one person, or two or three people fight alone, these people are basically all multi-talented. Take an extreme example, the early Touhou Project series games, creator ZUN (Jun'ya Ota) completed the entire game development work by himself - programming, music, art, and script were all done by ZUN alone.

  Such an extreme environment has very high requirements for game designers. In fact, designers who can survive and thrive in this era will inevitably become well-known figures in the industry, far surpassing those of later generations.

  But this kind of R&D environment can barely work now - in fact, when developing more sophisticated large-scale games, such as "Avengers" led by Mark Cerny, a team of one or two people is completely unworkable. Even if it can be done with difficulty, the development time will be stretched extremely long, so long that even if the development is successful, there is no significance.

  At this time, Jester felt that there were still many things he wanted to do, and even the game development team he had established with his own hands was not perfect.

  "Ah, I really envy the Storm Sons of Blizzard!" Thinking about his own team's inadequacies, Jester couldn't help but feel envious of the most renowned art design team in the gaming world of later generations.

  Perhaps domestic players first heard of this team at the 10th Blizzard Carnival, where their first Chinese artist Wang Wei officially joined Stormwind Sons. At that time, Wang Wei was called Storm Eighth Son by fans, meaning he was the eighth member of the Stormwind Sons team. In Jester's impression, before his rebirth, the ninth person of Stormwind Sons had already returned.

  This team is responsible for the overall image setting of Blizzard games, original painting collections, logo production, and plot writing. There are two people who must be mentioned here, both of whom have made great contributions to the game industry.

  Samwise Didier, the soul figure of Stormwind, a great artist who joined Blizzard in 1991 when it was still called Silicon & Synapse, can be said to be one of the founding fathers of Blizzard. He participated in almost all game designs of Blizzard and basically all the images you can think of from Blizzard games are related to him. It's worth mentioning that the concept of Pandaren and even the earliest image of Pandaren was first proposed by him.

  Another, more familiar to Blizzard fans, is Chris Metzen, also known as the "Father of Thrall", because he wrote the Tribe's King and made Thrall a Blizzard poster child. Later, StarCraft's plot and Diablo's plot all had his participation. It can be said that he was Blizzard's most important plot writer.

  But now the founders of Blizzard are still in high school, let alone Stormwind.

  At the thought of the Stormborn of later generations, Jester's heart was burning with excitement. Could he also create a special art design team like that? Called Marsborn?

  Although he knew that Samwise and Mason were just teenagers, it didn't mean there weren't other excellent rule designers or original painters.

  Only say rule setter.

  For example, Rick Priestley, the rules designer of Warhammer 1st edition, and Richard Garfield, the inventor of Magic: The Gathering. The former is now just a small designer working in a game workshop that is not well-known, while the latter was only a student at the University of Pennsylvania who had yet to graduate for another year.

  Jest is eager for these two settings, the world view of Warhammer is too easy to be compatible with, and in the future, no matter what background games are released, they can be compatible with the world view of Warhammer, it's simply a versatile tool. As for Magic: The Gathering, just because it was the first desktop card game in the world, it has the necessity to take over, let alone it will have a large number of hardcore loyal players in the future, and the annual profit will be hundreds of millions of dollars.

  At this time, Jester thought of a rebirth book he had read. Why could one person complete the writing of a 3D engine, the establishment of a physics engine library, the capture of human-like actions, 3D modeling of characters and buildings, the creation of several kilometers large sandbox maps, high-level AI writing for NPCs, highly realistic sound effects and dubbing, music production and other advanced technologies, but can only be a street coder in a small mobile game company. This is simply incomprehensible.

  Is this self-deprecating? Or has your IQ dropped to a negative number?

  It's really puzzling.

  Jie Si Te now dreams of having a salary of 100,000, no, 500,000 US dollars. Are you willing to work for that? I'll provide the funds to help you set up your own studio, are you in?

  Such a tech expert sends his work to any game company and can't get an annual salary of over $100,000? Does he deserve to be a street coder?

  But anyway, such a technical god can never be found and can only sigh, is it that such a great person can only exist in the fantasy world of neurosis?

  Forget it, don't think about it for now.

  The TV show's program requires Jest to record in Chicago, scheduled for three days later. However, the other party agreed to come to Costa Mesa to shoot a trial play of Mars Entertainment's latest three games, so Jest, in order to achieve the greatest promotional effect, put the game still in internal beta testing into the exhibition hall and invited players to participate in the test personally.

  For these three games, Jester is still very confident in their quality, and the charm they hide is also irresistible to players who have just fallen in love with elimination-type games.

  Because I am in Chicago, it is not convenient to send a camera crew, so the task of coming to Costa Mesa was taken over by ABC's Los Angeles headquarters and then brought the tapes to Chicago when Jest went there, which counts as an outdoor material for that interview program.

  This time, it was a three-person small film crew, led by an official employee of abc, a young man under the age of thirty named Jack Aston, and the other two were interns at abc during their vacation, both students from USC, which made Jester's eyes light up, he thought of the girl who also studied at USC whom he met in a bookstore in Los Angeles.

  "Find an opportunity to ask them and see if they know that girl." Jest thought.

  The three people who came were all young, and they had also played Mars Entertainment's "American Blocks". They loved this game very much. This time they came to Mars Entertainment for an interview, they were all very excited.

  They can play their favorite games for free.

  Jester naturally wouldn't disappoint them and let the three experience half a day in advance the three latest games he would test on players tomorrow.

  Since Jester turned the first floor of the original supermarket into a game demonstration area for Mars Entertainment, it has never been publicly opened and has always been used as an employee rest room. The tables, chairs, and tea are all available, but it still looks extremely empty.

  This time, fifteen game consoles were added, which made the hall look less empty.

  "Puzzle & Dragons", "Zuma" and "Puyo Pop" are three games with their own characteristics, all of which are easy to get started with, but wanting to play them extremely skillfully is not an easy task.

  This is also consistent with Jester's consistent style of making games. A good game must be easy to learn and difficult to master.

  An intern named Austin Francis designed a contoured mouse for the Jester, inspired by later computer mice. The result was the "Gemstone" mouse, which he loved, especially praising the elegant design of the mouse and stating that whoever designed it must have been a master of industrial design.

  This also made the employees of Mars Entertainment, who were resting and playing games nearby, burst out laughing. It wasn't until they asked Austin Francis that they found out this external design, which was completely different from Apple's Macintosh computer's square box mouse, was also designed by Jest.

  "I didn't expect you to be not only a master of game design, but also have some impressive skills in industrial design." The leading Jack Aston sincerely exclaimed to Jester, "Those appearance designers at Apple should all worship you as their master!"

  "Haha!"

  Jester didn't seem to care, just smiled and said nothing. To him, it was just a simple mouse design. It was only a layer of window paper that he had pierced, and after that, other manufacturers wouldn't be fools either. In the future, all sorts of new trendy mice would inevitably appear in large numbers, and by then, his own second-rate design wouldn't amount to anything.

  Jester now most wants to know is how these three original players feel about their own team's design of the three games.

  Is it as good as their own feelings? These are three great games!

  Mark Cerny explicitly stated in his methodology that only players are the sole standard for judging whether a game is good or bad, and only when players say your game is a good game can it be considered a good game.

  "Awesome!" Jack Astor was again full of praise, and even spoke somewhat effusively, "That game called 'Zuma' is really too much fun, I think it's more enjoyable than 'Tetris', what an incredible game!"

  "Thank you!" Jester nodded, he actually didn't want to hear any flattering words. The purpose of letting players test it had two points: one was to see the market's reaction, and two, most importantly, was to see what else could be improved. As for the first point, Jester already had a clear plan in mind, what he valued most was the second point.

  As they spoke, two other interns from USC also gathered around. They still had to complete their outdoor interviews this afternoon and then film the Mars Entertainment new game trial tomorrow before rushing back to Los Angeles. Their time was limited too.

  "Do you think there's anything else that can be improved?" Jess asked as he saw the other two gathering around, so he directly opened his mouth to ask.

  The three of them furrowed their brows and thought for a while, then all shook their heads, unable to think of any areas that could be improved.

  Jester had expected this, after all, he was directly using a mature design from the future. When he used it, he had already improved it once himself. Now, for someone who hadn't experienced the gaming craze, it would be difficult to see where improvements could be made.

  Even in Jester's eyes, his company has designed these three games based on the plan he provided, and they have already reached the ultimate that can be done in this era.

  Maybe the only thing that can be said is through pictures?

  As for the issue of screen display, the processing capacity of 8-bit baseboards is only that big. If you want more realistic images, more vibrant colors, and a larger number of on-screen display colors... Jester said he couldn't think of any better method than using 16-bit baseboards.

  That's it then.

  Jester thought so.

  Besides, I saw someone saying that my updates are few. This week, I've been averaging over 7,000 words per day, and this chapter alone has over 8,000 words! It's just that when I write, I always finish it in one go, and I really dislike dividing it into chapters, so don't say that my updates are few anymore!!!!!!!!!!