Not long ago, a former Sony executive said in an interview that it seems that the cost of developing games on every game platform has doubled, and the recent budget for the development of big games on PS4 has reached $100 million.
Under the premise that manufacturers are now increasing their size and betting on self-developed tracks, the increase in game development costs seems to have become a trend.
But recently, there has been a very different "game" "Dead Silence" on steam, according to producer Chen Jiacheng, this product is just a case game made for the teaching of Unreal Engine 4, and the steam on the shelves is more just "Tu Yi Le".
What's even more unusual is that although the game is made with Unreal Engine, neither the time cost nor the capital cost is high, it only took 17 days to make the game, and in addition to the labor cost, the cost of developing the game is only about 8,000 yuan.
As we all know, the game industry is a very "money-burning" industry, a product often requires a lot of manpower, capital pile-up, then, such a "low-cost" game in the end what is the quality? And how to achieve low-cost development?
8300 yuan, 17 days, how this game is refined
According to producer Chen Ka-shing, most of the materials used in the game are basically purchased in the Unreal Store.
Among them, the highway and the village two scenes cost a total of 1065.63 yuan; followed by the character and zombie model, because the number of character models and zombies used in the game is very large, so the cost of this part is more, about 3100 yuan; followed by a more technical content, the character action package and particle effects of the character zombie, the cost is about 2000 yuan; and finally the development cost of the server, cdn and website is nearly 1200 yuan.
In general, according to the developer's own statement, if you don't count the labor cost, the entire game costs only 8397.1 yuan. After purchasing these materials, he carried out "billion points" processing and optimization, and finally got the effect of the current version.
First of all, it should be pointed out that, as the producer said, the original purpose of the "Dead Silence" product was not to make a complete game, purely entertainment products, so it was selected to be sold for free on the Steam platform, and it can also be clearly seen that there is not much "carving" at the core gameplay level, more to show the use of the engine and functions.
To put it simply, players only need to do one thing in the game, destroy all the zombies in the scene, the game player has a complete health bar, bullet number, etc., there is also a corresponding blood pack on the map, players need to pay attention to their status anytime and anywhere. At present, the game has designed two modes, simple and difficult, and relatively speaking, the number of zombies in hardmode is higher.
It can be said that the core gameplay of the game is very ordinary, but it still attracts a group of players, as of now, "Dead Silence" has reached 91% praise on the Steam platform, and not only attracted domestic players, but even many overseas players have noticed the game.
Many players said that if they added the plot under the existing framework, or polished the gameplay, it would be a very promising game. Overseas players said that although they saw a lot of the material from the Unreal Store, the current experience of the game is still very good.
Of course, some players said that "Dead Silence" is difficult to really call a game, and even demos are difficult to call, in fact, it is a technical demonstration. Steam here is still to use the quality of the work as an endorsement.
As mentioned above, strictly speaking, "Dead Silence" is a product born of teaching, perhaps the gameplay is not high, and it is indeed a problem, but only one person can achieve the current effect in a short period of time can not help but make people impressed.
Moreover, if you stand in the perspective of teaching or popular science, "Dead Silence" has indeed achieved an effect, this product has not only gained good popularity on the Steam platform, but also several videos related to this game on the b station have super high playback.
Engines and technology are only tools, talent is the key
I believe that after understanding the origin of the game "Dead Silence", while lamenting the powerful expressiveness of Unreal Engine and the convenient tool chain, many players have also found the key points, and talent is the key.
The cost of about 8,000 yuan, less than a month cycle, looks very "dreamy", but behind the accumulation of endorsements over the years.
According to Steam's page description, the author is an official Unreal Engine certified instructor, and as of 2021, he has 4 years of Experience using Unreal Engine and two years of Teaching Experience in Unreal Engine. So, in the final analysis, the engine is only a kind of tool, and how to use the tool well is the key.
Some netizens joked that it cost 8,000 yuan to buy materials, but to invite such a "craftsman", 8,000 pieces is far from enough.
About the game teaching section of ppt
In fact, Chen Jiacheng also mentioned in the introduction video of the game that the materials purchased in the Unreal Mall are like the various ingredients purchased during cooking, and a good chef can only make a good dish by processing.
On the surface, although the materials in the "Dead Silence" product are purchased directly from the Unreal Store, the content of ui production, ui interaction, functional logic, character movement system, pick-up system, shooting system, damage system, scene atmosphere, ai system, game optimization, etc. have been produced and polished by developers for a long time, and these processes also determine the final experience of the game.
From this point of view, in fact, it is not difficult to understand why the game industry has appeared "talent involution", under the era of boutique, as the player's requirements for quality gradually increase, the value of talent will also be highlighted.
Will Unreal Engine become the new darling of indie games?
Perhaps for many players who like this game, Dead Silence can be said to be a proof that even individual developers can make high-quality games that rival masterpieces. Then, the cost of less than 10,000 yuan, you can reach such a level and effect, new problems will naturally arise, since you can make such a game at low cost, will Unreal Engine become the new favorite of independent game developers?
Perhaps there will be no definitive answer to this question, because the choice of engine is not something that can be decided with a single slap in the head, and a series of issues such as team personnel, cost, core gameplay of the game, and optimization need to be considered comprehensively.
At the same time, relatively speaking, independent game developers may consider more gameplay when creating, and then choose tools such as engines, so there is no substantial causal logic between cost and engine selection.
But at the macro level, from the overall game market in recent years, we can also see that Unreal is no longer just used by big manufacturers, but also many independent game teams have begun to use Unreal Engine for development, and even some teams have used the next generation of engine Unreal 5.
At the data level, it can also be seen that developers are becoming more and more receptive to Unreal Engine. At last year's uod conference, Wu Hao, general manager of Epic Games Greater China, revealed that the number of industrial application customers in Epic China has increased by 250% year-on-year, and the number of game customers has increased by 280% year-on-year.
From the perspective of the engine, many new technologies in Unreal 5 announced by Epic last year, such as nanoite, global illumination and other technologies, are aimed at improving screen expression on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is actually to optimize the production pipeline, thereby improving production efficiency and achieving cost savings.
From this point of view, the engine and solo developers are actually a two-way empowerment state, because the performance of the engine gradually improves, coupled with the reduction of development costs, more and more developers can turn what they think into reality.
Moreover, based on the strong expressiveness of Unreal Engine, the quality of the game is also recognized by players, such as the "Shadow Torch City" that has just been released on the ps platform has an average score of 83 points in 9 media outlets on the metacritic station, and the Korean "Pokémon" "Dokédokev" at the Cologne Exhibition not long ago has attracted the attention of many players, in addition to some domestic players are very familiar with "Border", "Bright Memory" and "Black Myth: Wukong" that has aroused strong repercussions in China.
At the end of the day, the value of tools lies in empowerment, and having good tools also requires good ideas and talents. Of course, if you want to do something good, you must first use it, and as the makers of dead silence say, the tools are getting better and better, and the environment for game developers is much better today than it was a decade ago. Because of this, there may be more high-quality and high-quality games in the market in the future.