Image source: Pixabay
Planning is a very magical profession in the game industry, they are the creators of gameplay, the soul of the game, but the status of the industry has always been a quantum state: overseas planning is usually in a detached position, positioning closer to the producer, such as Hideo Kojima, Hideyoshi Miyazaki Producers usually consider the question of whether to come down from the "altar", and Chinese game planners and producers, as long as they are not scolded, are already considered successful.
Today, to a large extent, game planning undertakes the back work of "being sprayed", not only needing to bear the criticism of internal "planning document blind writing", but also accepting a series of insults from players such as "planning drag art" externally. In GameLook's impression, gamers protest en masse, demanding that a game company change the planning of the event, which appeared more than once or twice.
Deeply investigate the reasons, some people will laugh at themselves for planning are halfway out of the house, such as the meat factory slaughterer who only knows mobile phones and computer games to change the system planning, the financial department can not enter the four major can only go to the game company mixed value planning post, and the reading volume relies on the poor acid writer who relies on the network text to rely on rotten stems and IP for ink as a copywriting planner.
Some people also believe that the low status and low salary of China's game circle planning are not caused by planning, but by the environment of free online games. Because the online game that emphasizes social networking amplifies the comparison between people, rather than highlighting the playability of the game, the essence of planning is a tool for the realization of the boss's ideas, the game is not fun to be scolded by the player, and the planning does not want to.
Game film and television is difficult brother, the root of the disease is in the partial department
The dilemma of Chinese game planning, GameLook privately believes that the dilemma of screenwriters in the Chinese film and television industry is similar. Before we understand the crux of the two's sympathy, let's look at two stories.
At the "Guan Tianxia Forum" in July 2018, the well-known screenwriter Wang Hailin's ridicule of "the film and television industry misses the coal boss" caused an enthusiastic discussion on the whole network.
Wang Hailin said that among the investors he has experienced, the coal boss is the best, because the coal boss has no other requirements than asking for actresses and will not interfere in the creation. Afterwards, Wang Hailin also responded that the coal boss topic seemed to be a joke, but it was actually very serious, because the main theme of the discussion was "laymen do not lead insiders".
In November 2021, Jinjiang's contracted author WeiYu sent a Weibo complaint about the chaotic changes in the script of the film and television drama, "the characters, the story is all different", but even so, the film and television party does not seem to care about the original author's opinion, but instead said that the author is not professional and does not understand the script. To this end, tail fish even said that it has informed the agent that it will get the right to edit the script when signing the contract in the future, otherwise "don't sell it, don't want to make this money."
Like game planning, the repeated criticism of scripts in China's film and television industry is an old problem. In June this year, the women's animation "Reflections" was launched, which caused a sensation with the exaggerated art quality of the hair roots and the skin texture, and was known as the "ceiling of national comics".
It is reported that "Reflections" spent an additional 3 years polishing, a total of 117 character models, 77 scene models and nearly 1,000 prop models, including each character has its own expression template, special effects shots far more than the industry average of 20% to nearly 60%, is the strength of the national comic industrialization process.
However, this anime did not enter the temple of god as expected, and the circle vibration at the beginning of the broadcast did not reappear when the last few episodes were broadcast. Most critics argue that "Reflections" has been pulled back by the protracted, old-fashioned plot design.
The third most popular short comment on Douban said that the picture quality and modeling details of "Thinking about the Volume" are very in place, and it can be found that the refinement of domestic animation has come up, but "the script needs to be polished well, and the plot is really almost meaningless."
Everything is good is not fun, developers should have a higher pursuit
The film and television circle's "the picture is great, but the plot is almost meaningless", and the game circle's "everything is good, but it is not fun", almost the same meaning.
The content is not good, the creator is the first responsible person. Many people believe that in the three major game jobs of art, programming and planning, game planning is generally a halfway out of the house, and there is no other two kinds of professional positions, so it causes repeated cowardice in planning and becomes the culprit that the game is not fun in the eyes of players.
This statement is very extreme, but it may have some truth. Unlike art and procedures, China does not have a mature planning higher education system, and the mismatch of talents is the norm, and naturally there is a lack of authoritative ability judgment standards.
Therefore, when planning new candidates to take the test, they usually regard the love of playing games as a core criterion. But in essence, the love of playing games, like the love of travel and the love of listening to music, belongs to the category of hobbies rather than skills, and it is difficult to judge whether it is up to the job requirements.
Shigeru Miyamoto, the head of Nintendo's development department and the "father of Mario", once said in an interview with the media that he did not want Nintendo's new employees to be fanatics of the game, but it was best to have a skill. For example, "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" producer Eiji Aonuma did not play the game at all before he was recruited to Nintendo, and Shigeru Miyamoto only looked at his craftsman family background and carpentry skills.
Shigeru Miyamoto's unspoken subtext, GameLook feels that game developers should not be dead houses, but ordinary people who love life.
The game is the ninth art. It is often said that art originates from the fact that life is higher than life. The premise of the game above life is to have a life, and no matter how high a building is, it is impossible to grow without a foundation.
Today we often see the following scenes in many development notes, such as how many experts and how many materials the development team visited in order to make a good game for a certain product. It's good to learn for a project, but wouldn't it be better to recruit experts in your field to plan at the beginning.
GameLook feels that game planning is not so much a half bucket of puddle harm to players and colleagues, but rather too arrogant, if the game is art, planning is naturally an artist, take out the standards of artists and experts to demand themselves, this is the concept that planning should be correct.
People change the environment to change, love the game is not as good as love life
Instead of planning to become an expert for the sake of a project, it is an expert to develop a product first, and the correct order of game planning professionalism is more or less the same.
If not, in addition to the quality may be difficult to meet the needs of players, it may even be possible to make a fuss about the professionalism of the content, and even commit principled errors such as sexism and promotion of historical nihilism.
Here you can compare one by one and one positive.
In 2018, a game called "Absolute Love" became popular, and the game adopted interactive film and television methods to teach players to "seduce sisters". Due to the lack of bottom line content such as exposing the screen and instigating the player to do whatever it takes, the game producer was criticized for distorting the three views and never talking about normal love.
"Absolute Love 3" was rejected by Steam due to the content of the edge ball
In 2019, the British Creative Assembly developed "Total War: Three Kingdoms", because of the reasonable adaptation of the Three Kingdoms theme, recognized by Chinese players, while the sales of the series recorded a record number of Chinese players also reached two-thirds. Despite the late turmoil, Total War: Three Kingdoms is still regarded by many Chinese players as one of the best Three Kingdoms games.
Of course, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, planning is also involuntary in the general environment. Unlike buyout console games, which only need to devote themselves to gameplay and content construction, free + in-app products naturally need to be distracted to build a kryptonite system. Fortunately, in this process, one of the participants in the environment, Chinese game companies, is also gradually changing, from focusing on social networking products in the past to advocating long-term service products.
Phenomenal products such as "Original God" are very different from the MMO that emphasized competition and comparison in the past, the game has a network function, but it is not strong, the player can play as a single machine, and the social interaction between players also occurs more outside the game. It means that the concept that there must be social networking in the game and that there must be strong social networking to sell well has failed.
Planning the phenomenon of everyone shouting and beating, removing emotional noise, more should make us wake up, game companies blindly pursue social, the pursuit of strong networking, the pursuit of the use of human weaknesses to design kryptonite orientation, in this era of global competition is still appropriate?
For the game to change, you must first start with the person who makes the game. Perhaps, as Shigeru Miyamoto said, game planning should not be just game planning, but carpenters, writers, sociologists, fashionistas... Before flaunting love games, it is better to love life first.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
Global vision / depth is material