"It's over, boss, you've been confirmed."

Early the next morning, when I entered the office, I heard the little secretary telling me.

"Ha? What's the real thing?" Cao Yang was confused.

"You are teaching others badly and not doing good things." The little secretary couldn't help laughing.

Cao Yang looked at her smiling face and immediately realized that this guy was obviously joking about him.

"Do you have time to do some serious things? Have you not had a meeting recently? Are there any urgent calls to me?"

"No, everything is fine."

The little secretary said with a smile.

"But, I think you should watch this video."

Zhuang Yurou took out her notebook and put it on Cao Yang's desk.

A video is playing on the computer.

Cao Yang is very familiar with the character in this video. He is the island game producer [Hengo Miyazaki] who has been outstanding in the gaming circle recently.

This is a video interview that Miyazaki Hideto received in the island country as a product supervisor after the Demon Soul Fire became popular. Because it was quite interesting, netizens added subtitles to reprint it on B.

After watching the video, it actually has more than 1 million views.

In other words, not all the people watching this video are Demon Soul players.

Cao Yang didn't know what this video was, so he sat down patiently and clicked the play button.

...

The video is an interview with Miyazaki Hidetaka's reporter, mainly asking about his recent news about the Demon's Soul.

"As the team supervisor of the Demon Souls, what did you think of creating such a work, and what improvements did you make in the work?"

Miyazaki Hidetaka said, "To be honest, I was not responsible for the predecessor of this game. At that time, SCE wanted to make a product similar to the Elder Scrolls.

Later, I was very interested in this project and took the initiative to apply to participate in the production. Later, the company handed over the full rights to me.

At that time, we proposed several changes to make the Demon Souls project successful.

The first abandoned one was the early goal of "making a replica of "The Elder Scrolls 4".

Before I joined, this project had been following the SCE's opinion and heading towards "Old Like", but we thought that the same route could not go beyond the original work, so we explained to the team members that the general direction should be focused on combat and exploration.

The second change is the perspective of the game.

In the direction of Lao Geng's production, the production mode was adopted that could freely switch between first-person and third-person perspectives. However, if you want to pay attention to gameplay such as combat and exploration, you only have a fixed perspective to maximize the most appropriate angle and combat expressiveness. In multiplayer games, third-person perspective can also better reflect gameplay.

So the game designs the perspective into a fixed + third person mode.

Because part of the game has been made, after changing the direction and design, the content was rushing to be produced. This is also a point that has been criticized by players after it was released, that is, the completion of our game is too low.

I want to apologize to the majority of players here, and we will definitely make better and more complete works next time.

Third, to make the project shine again, one of the most important things must be reconsidered: define the most essential main axis of the game, namely challenge, discovery, and sense of accomplishment.

Our vision is to reproduce the most essential source of fun in these classic RPGs with the latest technology.

We talk about these definitions of essential fun: "For example, in Wizardry, you can feel the heartbeat of exploring the maze, the fear of encountering enemies, and the joy of obtaining props.

I don't think these are good memories that have become past, and those fun must be the most essential things. So we redefined the main axis of "Devil Souls" and made the team's vision of moving forward clearer.

When I was producing "Devil's Soul", there was a consensus between me and Ken Kajii: "No matter how popular or popular it is, just make interesting things first."

Although this is a natural idea at first glance, it is also a business to do games and it is not easy to implement.

If the production costs and investment amounts of hundreds of millions or billions of yen are placed there, we must collect materials that can convince investors and executives that "this will definitely be sold."

For projects that imitate popular masterpieces, money is easier to get, but for brand new projects, it is difficult to prove that they can really make money because there are no successful cases.

In fact, "Demon Souls" has not been simply accepted in order to pursue the fun of the game rather than selling points.

We really took a lot of effort to convince SCE.

It is worth mentioning that the fireproof woman who appears in "Devil's Souls" is actually the result of SCE's request to add a heroine to the game.

"The pressure is really great to develop games with a sense of uneasy mood of not knowing whether they can sell the top players."

But even under such pressure: I believe that the game we have to save time to play must have its most essential fun, and I hope that young players today can also taste the fun at that time.

Under such expectations, the team continued to develop "Devil Souls".

07 Time flies for 3 years, and this game is finally coming to an end. Finding solutions through continuous death and overcoming difficulties through countless challenges. This game design is like the vision we originally outlined, presenting the essential fun of classic RPGs with the latest technology.

However, in addition to presenting the essential fun, we have also prepared another core design. This is the online element.

We believe that most online games at that time had negative experiences with too strong social elements, so he began to think about how to build a system that players could easily experience.

One of the systems is asynchronous socialization, that is, the text messages that can be left in the maze, and the death replay that can be left after the player dies. So far, a large number of online games have relied on chat channels and voice functions to socialize, which is equivalent to an experience of "making a phone call", but "Devil's Soul" designed a light social experience similar to "sending text messages and sending emails".

There is another system in "Devil's Soul", which is the soul system.

That is, in the state of spirit, you can be summoned or invaded the world of other players, cooperate with the other party or become enemies. Cooperation is to speed up the main player's arrival in the SS battle, and hostility is to slow down or even hinder the former.

In other words, the protagonist of the game is always the main player, and other players are all extra elements to add pose to the protagonist's adventure.

In this game, we do not create an experience of "confirming each other's intentions with certain people and then playing games together in the living room", but instead intentionally create an accidental scene that "even if it is just a moment, it will always remain in the heart."

This is because of our personal experiences in the past.

One time when we were driving up the snow-capped mountain, we encountered a ramp, and the car in front could not slide up, but the vehicles behind pushed one by one, slowly letting the car in front cross the slope.

We were the same. The vehicle behind pushed the ramp, but even if he wanted to thank the vehicle behind, he couldn't stop on such a section of road to thank him.

On the way back, I couldn't help but think repeatedly: Have you returned from the last car? I guess these people who helped me will never meet again...

Suddenly my mood was indescribable.

Later, when we recalled this incident, we felt that it was just like the cherry blossoms that the island people loved. Because it was a fleeting thing, we would stay in our hearts for a long time.

So, this experience and idea was turned into design and integrated into "Devil's Souls".

"Well, understand." The reporter nodded and continued to ask politely, "Then I see many people on the Internet say that the game Demon Soul is too similar to the Chinese-made Assassin Soul and the God of War God Wukong. I wonder if you have any troubles in this regard. As a game supervisor, how do you view this issue?

Do you feel that the hard work you have made has a sense of being defiled, or that you have not become a pure original, and you have a sense of loss?”

Seeing this, Cao Yang couldn't help swallowing.

Comrade reporter's question is too sharp, right?

But in fact, the order is reversed.

If we insist on saying it, we should feel guilty, because we have borrowed from Miyazaki Hideto in our previous life in game production and also borrowed from many future products, so we have achieved our current reputation and achievements.

This is all because Cao Yang is standing on the shoulders of a giant.

And these giants may not have grown into giants yet.

Faced with the reporter's question, Hideto Miyazaki thought for a while, then showed a free and cheerful expression on his face: "I think it is a good thing for the game industry to have imitators, because there is no regulation that you can only do this game and no one else is allowed to do it.

If players have relevant needs, there will naturally be a market.

Although it is a pity that we failed to achieve 100% originality, the producers of our game industry have come step by step, adding some new things of their own to the works of our predecessors, and then being imitated and surpassed by the next imitator.

I don't mind being called a Soul series, or a God of War, like Bomi.

On the contrary, I think this is a kind of praise for me.”

Miyazaki Hideto said seriously:

"It should be said that I was indeed inspired by Mr. Cao Yang of Bomi Company, and their Assassin's Soul Game was quite good.

When I first played the game "Assassin's Soul·Maple", I was deeply attracted by its exquisite scene production, three-dimensional maze design, very rich and cool fighting, as well as bloody executions and wave SS battles.

You may not understand my mood at that time.

I was playing Assassin's Soul Feng on the first night and didn't fall asleep at all.

He also stood in front of the window for one night.

Because this game deeply shocked me.

I always feel that Assassin's Soul is the game I want to develop.

All my childhood fantasies, my design of games, and the things I dreamed of in my dreams, became reality in this moment.

Let me put it this way, it is equivalent to the other half that you dream about day and night, who can only dream of when dreaming, who is impossible to exist in reality, suddenly stands in front of you alive. What he says and what he does, everything is in line with your dream imagination.

What a terrible thing this is, but it makes people feel extremely happy.

I felt like I was surrounded by petals and bitter lemons.

I like the Assassin's Soul game very much.

But at the same time, I was also deeply in inferiority because our country's game industry developed very early, leading China for at least 20 years. I didn't expect that in such a short time, China already had such a powerful game development company. It was really surprising.

At the same time, I was also wondering, can I still have a chance to surpass him?

Can I make a better product than this one?

My thoughts at that time were the same as your question, and I was very desperate.
To be continued...