With the gradual development of the metaverse concept, the relevant practice is also deepening, but the metaverse still faces many challenges, and the most interesting of them may be the "metacosm sniper". This concept illustrates the multiplayer online challenges that metaversals face in network vendors – such as a sniper on a hill, who needs to see people several kilometers away when he opens the scope, which is not just a simple network data problem, but also deals with the rendering of different machines, and so on.
Multiplayer on the same screen is undoubtedly a technical problem that needs to be solved for the implementation of the meta-universe, which is also the focus of Improbable's business, that is, to provide technical services that support multiplayer online at the same time for game development. In addition, Improbable owns several game studios and adopts the core technology of its Spatial OS.
Recently, Improbable announced that Tencent announced a wholly-owned acquisition of its first-party game development studio, Inflexion Games, which is also working on the game "Nightingale" will also join Tencent's Level Infinite product line. After this acquisition, Improbable may also officially withdraw from first-party game development, and Nightingale has also announced that it will no longer use Spatial OS technology.
Survival + Build + RPG, Proficient in Nightingale
Nightingale is a multiplayer online survival-building game, and many of its development studios, Inflexion Games, are members of the former BioWare who have developed games such as Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars, so in the construction of Nightingale, they not only inherit many of the previous game experiences, but also add unique survival and construction elements.
Nightingale promotional video
The makers of Nightingale have talked in detail about the game's worldview in a previous IGN interview, the game takes place hundreds of years after human contact with elves, people built a city called "Nightingale" for magical research, and built portals to travel to the "Fairy Realm", but with the collapse of the portal network, countless people are trapped in different realms, and the player's role is called "Realm Walker", they travel through different worlds, Encountering a variety of map creatures, the player's interaction with them is not only an attack, but also some friendly ways, and different choices will naturally bring different consequences, which also requires players to think and explore in the game.
What intrigued GameLook the most was the setting of the characters and monsters in the game, the characters in the game maintained the Victorian steam style, and the monsters were inspired by the settings in many folklore and fairy tales, including a wonderful mixture of a variety of living creatures, different monsters will also have a variety of different ways of acting, some will attack the player, and some will steal props, so Nightingale also brings players a very unique magical world.
In Nightingale, players need to collect materials to build and explore, and survive in this wild and colorful spirit world, and the main line of the game is to find the right materials and cross the dangers back to "Nightingale". However, in terms of construction system, Inflexion did not disclose too much, but they said that the development and freedom of the game in the construction part is very high, including a variety of customizable options, and the modular building system can also help players create more complex villages.
The technical power is all there, why not do self-developed games?
The appearance of "Nightingale" has surprised many players, and in addition to the Outside of the Infant Games studio, the Improbable behind it is also worth mentioning. The British "super technology unicorn" in 2017 received a huge investment of $500 million from SoftBank, and in 2018 received another $50 million investment from NetEase, relying on the technical power of the multiplayer online network services provided to support gamers, its Spatial OS platform is a multiplayer game development solution, in addition to solving infrastructure and network problems for small game developers, but also for the mainstream, and even customized engines have made plug-ins. So that developers can focus more on the creation of game content.
In addition, Improbable works with multiple cloud service platforms, including Google Cloud and Tencent Cloud, where developers can quickly create a seamless, rich world with the help of smarter AI and more rational architectures, further simplifying the technical barriers to game development.
Under the support of technical strength, Improbable also seems to be intent on the level of game development, further showing its technical level, they set up self-developed game studios in Edmonton and London in 2019, the two studios are led by Aaryn Flynn, a well-known producer of the "Dragon Age" and "Star Wars" series, and John Wasilczyk, the former executive producer of Epic and EA DICE. In addition, the company acquired studio Midwinter Entertainment six months later, which developed Scavengers, creating a PVEVP model rarely seen in the industry.
Tencent's acquisition of Infoexion Games was actually a hint back late last month, and in an Improbable blog post, they already announced their status as withdrawing from first-party game development, saying that they are "in deep discussions with potential partners about games developed by Edmonton and Midwinter Studios, and believe that they will reach their full potential with the support of publishers with leading records in bringing games to market." ”
Inflexion Studio CEO Aaryn Flynn said that his previous work experience in Bio Ware made him very aware of the situation that independent studios will face after being acquired, which also made him particularly emphasize the need for independent operations, after the acquisition of Inflexion Games or will continue to maintain independent operations in the future, its Virgo "Nightingale" also joined Tencent's global game brand Level Infinite, This undoubtedly adds an important chess piece to the overseas market of Tencent Games.
As Infoexion Games leaves Improbable, it may only be a matter of time before another Midwinter studio leaves, and Improbable's exit from first-party game development is clear. As for the reason for Improbable's withdrawal from first-party game development, it was officially called "accelerating the development of the meta-universe business and realigning the company's content strategy." However, as far as the current situation is concerned, it may be too early to assert that Improbable will go "pipelined" by withdrawing from the first party, but this undoubtedly shows that hyperscale games still have development difficulties at present.
Technology or content first?
In a sense, The Hybrid, which abandons its studios, may be signaling its tendency to withdraw from first-party development of games, which seems to be quite similar to what happened to Google Stadia , which was downgraded internally , although Stadia " will not give up directly providing games to players " , its spontaneous "pipeline" action also seems to make Stadia's self-development of games "empty talk". For Improbable, which has several game studios, in addition to the economic possibilities, withdrawing from first-party development also shows that game content and technical power have been in the game.
As the first work of Inflexion Games, "Nightingale" carries many expectations of Inflexion and Improbable, and the amazing appearance on the previous TGC has also made players have a high popularity for this game, and relying on the technical power of Spatial OS in the map ecology and super-large-scale multiplayer online also makes this game more exciting, but with this acquisition, "Nightingale" will no longer use Spatial OS. Flynn, CEO of Inflexion, said the future of gaming will take the form of "a more intimate single-player or small group player experience."
Commenting on the decision to stop using Spatial OS, the CEO said, "It's mostly from the perspective of game design and where we want to lead the game to, and we're increasingly investing in the elements of the game that we're building for survival, so we're making decisions that we can make sure the game can be released, rather than getting us stuck in a long development cycle like other MMO." ”
Does using advanced technical power surely lead to quality games? This may be another chicken-and-egg question. For the game industry, although advanced rendering technology and research and development methods make games more and more able to bring the ultimate audition experience, if there is no real content, technology may only become an empty shell.
Although the boom of the metaverse seems like a carnival driven by technical power, but without content, no matter how big the outlet is, it is difficult to take off, no matter what kind of real rendering effects and game experience can be achieved by technical power, the pursuit of high-quality content is undoubtedly the eternal goal of players. Although technical forces such as cloud gaming and massively multiplayer online may be the inevitable direction of future development, having them still cannot be equated with "good games".
On the one hand, supporting ultra-large-scale players and online games at the same time may still have a high development difficulty and a long development cycle for existing developers, and no obvious breakthrough has been found; on the other hand, whether the game rules that support ultra-large-scale players online at the same time can adapt to the current game market and players are debatable, but in GameLook's view, although the technical strength may have reached such a standard, it seems that it will take time for players and the market.