How popular was "Minecraft" in Chen Mo's previous life?

To sum up, it is the most successful independent game in popularity and business, no doubt about it; it is the second highest-selling game in the world, with sales exceeding 100 million, second only to the old antique Tetris.

Considering that "Minecraft" was released in 2009, there were already many very good PC and console games at that time, it was a miracle to get this sales.

Moreover, the power of "Minecraft" is that it can be used in the halls, in the kitchen, in the PC and console, in the tablet and mobile phone, and in all platforms, all platforms can be ported smoothly.

There are also some data that can slightly prove the popularity of this game.

In 2014, Mojang Studio, which produced "Minecraft", was acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 billion.

"Minecraft" has 4.31 billion views on Youtube.

During the Minecraft beta, more than 10 million players applied to join, making it the most popular beta game.

It is said that the Fuguo Military Survey Bureau created a topographic map of the entire British Isle in Minecraft, using 22 billion blocks.

Why does this game have such great magic that makes countless people obsessed with it?

Simply put, because Minecraft greatly reduces the difficulty of creating a three-dimensional object in a computer.

In fact, many people have the idea of ​​"creating their own space/world". When they were young, they could experience it through sand castles, building blocks, paper molds, etc., while when they grew up, they would enter various games to experience it.

There are many ways to create a virtual world on the computer, but traditional three-dimensional design software has extremely high learning costs, and most people don’t have the patience to start from scratch.

And "Minecraft" can make most people more easily create a 3D virtual world.

Just pile up squares.

No material, map, rendering, terrain, vegetation, or particle effects are needed. Anyway, you need to choose the right square and just pile it up.

In "Minecraft", the blocks are very regular, with a standard size of 1m*1m*1m. Players are not likely to feel lost in the scale of the virtual world, and the finished product is more convincing.

Moreover, "Minecraft" is not just a world creator, it is also a rich game.

For Chen Mo, porting this game to the VR platform is a very challenging thing and meaningful thing.

...

After Chen Mo explained the concept setting draft, everyone began to hurry up and prepare for various tasks, especially the technology tree, art style and derivative gameplay mentioned by Chen Mo, which was a headache for everyone.

After all, there is no game for reference in this world. How to make a game similar to building blocks? What does it look like? How should some details be designed?

This is a question that everyone must consider carefully.

As for Chen Mo himself, he returned to the second floor of the experience store and began to study the relevant rules for making VR games.

Fantasy Editor supports the production of VR games, but the specific production methods are different from PC and mobile games.

Chen Mo is now an A-level designer and an honorary member of the Games Committee. He has high authority in the Fantasy World Editor and can open the corresponding section for making VR games.

When he became an A-level designer, Chen Mo had already viewed the relevant process of making VR games, and now he has confirmed it again.

Chen Mo has also experienced VR games represented by "Earth OL". Simply put, the VR technology in this world allows players to directly input their consciousness into the game cabin and receive feedback signals.

The game cabin replaces traditional input/output devices, such as keyboards, mice, monitors, etc., and becomes the bridge between player awareness and the virtual reality gaming world.

The game cabin has the ability to analyze player consciousness.

To give a simple example, if a player wants to reach out to get a prop in the game, the game cabin will parse this consciousness, transform it into the actions of the characters in the game, and interact with the game world. The final result is that the characters in the game pick up the prop.

Similarly, movements such as moving, climbing, jumping, attacking, shooting, etc. are all achieved in this way.

Theoretically, the virtual reality technology in this world can analyze any player's intentions, but whether it can be applied to the game depends on whether the designer has designed the corresponding rules.

Simply put, in a cold weapon battle game, players can issue the awareness of "I want to pull the trigger", but after the game pod is parsed, it is transmitted to the game world. Because the game world does not support this action, the characters in the game will remain motionless and will not react.

For a specific VR game, what actions and how they support will be supported depends on the designer's design.

For example, in the game, you are a gun-carrying warrior. You want to make the action of "putting the gun under your feet", but the designer does not design, so your character will remain motionless.

It sounds strange, but after playing VR games for a long time, you will get used to this setting. (Just like in 3A masterpieces, you can only do the actions that the plot requires you to do.)

Therefore, the more executable actions a designer designs for the game, the more free the player will be in the game, the more things he can do, and the more real the game will appear.

But in this way, the greater the load on the game, the more energy the player needs to consume.

This is also one of the reasons why VR platforms generally do not make games like RTS.

There is no particular advantage in art performance.

It costs a lot.

Players need to consume too much consciousness, which leads to fatigue and cannot play for too long.

If there is a VR platform RTS game now, the player's consciousness needs to select a certain unit and perform a certain operation. In the process of infinite looping, he still needs to constantly think about combat strategies. For players, the mental power that needs to be consumed will be increased exponentially.

The PC platform is different, and players also need to think about these things, but all operations are done through the mouse and keyboard, and many of them are subconscious habitual actions, so they are not that tired.

Therefore, some VR games will also deliberately simplify game operations to prevent overly complex operations from causing fatigue to the players' mental health, thereby achieving the purpose of extending the game time in disguise.

For example, in some VR games, all the "attacks" of players are punching attacks, and they cannot determine the direction, angle, strength and other attributes of punching. This is to simplify game operations and reduce the burden on the player's spirit.

In addition, in terms of perception, VR games have the ability to fully simulate the player's senses, including vision, hearing, smell, touch, etc.

The in-game screen will be transmitted to the player in the form of visual signals, the same as the normal person's eyes overlapping the field of vision, and the area of ​​attention is about 25 degrees, which is consistent with reality.

Hearing and smell are transmitted to players in the form of signals, which can fully simulate the sounds and smells in the real world.

...

After understanding the basics of VR game design, it will be some basic design principles.
Chapter completed!