- 8 ore fa
Ubisoft e Blue Byte annunciano un traguardo importante raggiunto dalla serie di strategici/gestionali ad ambientazione pseudo-storica The Settlers.
Si tratta del ventesimo anniversario del brand: un viaggio iniziato nell'ormai lontano 1993 con il primo capitolo su Amiga e PC e proseguito negli anni attraverso capitoli principali e spin-off, fino al recente capitolo online in stile MMO. Ecco dunque il video rilasciato in occasione del ventesimo anniversario di The Settlers.
Si tratta del ventesimo anniversario del brand: un viaggio iniziato nell'ormai lontano 1993 con il primo capitolo su Amiga e PC e proseguito negli anni attraverso capitoli principali e spin-off, fino al recente capitolo online in stile MMO. Ecco dunque il video rilasciato in occasione del ventesimo anniversario di The Settlers.
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VideogiochiTrascrizione
00:16Per me, The Settlers è un gioco in cui molti persone lavorano per me e creano un bellissimo kingdom.
00:24E in fine, sono il boss di tutto.
00:35La cosa più speciale è che quando hai un'azione in un gioco, c'è una cascata di eventi che
00:42si starte.
00:43E tu puoi guardare tutti questi effetti, e potrebbe succedere che un'inizio e 20 minuti dopo un'altra cosa
00:50succede.
00:59All'inizio, piccoli, piccoli, piccoli all'inizio, ma anche un punto importante per me è il tempo.
01:08Tu puoi spendere molte ore spiegare il gioco, optimizzare l'ecosistema e così via.
01:22Tutti è collegato, e tu puoi, per un tempo, optimizzare e attivare l'economia.
01:33Settlers è una grande IP, una grande brand, uno dei più grandi in Germania, e sono molto orgoglioso di essere
01:40parto.
01:42In il 20 anni da l'inizio inizio, Settlers ha venuto a stando per in-depth economic management, real-time
01:48strategy,
01:49e l'ultimo, ma non l'inizio, lo ha venuto a essere conosciuto il distinto busto factor.
01:54The little hard-working Settlers were a great success.
01:58From the time they first appeared on the market on June 30, 1993 for the Amiga,
02:03a PC version followed one year later,
02:05succeeded by seven equally popular sequels over the years.
02:09This whole journey started with a small team of creative individuals.
02:13We decided to take a deeper look at the Settlers from their humble beginnings.
02:17We talked to people who were there when it all started.
02:20We talked to them about the original idea,
02:22about their first contact with the Settlers series
02:25and what it felt like to work on the first installments of the Settlers.
02:29I was also inspired by other games,
02:31like Populous or Little Computer People or SimCity,
02:33but the whole concept of Settlers, of course, is really unique.
02:38And originally I came to Thomas Herzler,
02:40the CEO of Blue Byte in those days,
02:43and I came with two concepts.
02:45For one, I even had a prototype,
02:46but when I started talking about the Settlers
02:49and my imagination of what the game should look like,
02:51he was absolutely convinced and told me,
02:54let's do this one.
02:55So I started.
02:56So originally I started creating the game alone.
02:59So I did all like design and of course all the coding.
03:03And in the second year there was an additional artist,
03:07Christoph Werner, who created all the nice arts.
03:09And then in the final months a lot of my friends helped.
03:13so my living room was basically changed into QA department.
03:17And yeah, we tested the game for some months there.
03:21So I've been working at Blue Byte in the end of 1980s,
03:26a long time ago.
03:27And I've been doing various games,
03:30but one task for me was to do QA for Settlers 1.
03:34So that was the basic version I played.
03:37My first contact with Settlers was many, many years ago
03:39when I played Settlers 1 as a fan,
03:42not as a worker in the games industry.
03:45I played it many times with my friends
03:47because they had that split screen option
03:49where you can play together.
03:50And I played it for so many hours I cannot remember.
03:54Yeah, it's completely different to nowadays.
03:56So those days very few, ideally one very passionate person
04:00could really create a whole game.
04:03And Settlers 1 is an example for that.
04:07So, for example, the code is 70,000 lines of assembler.
04:11It's in one file and there are basically no comments.
04:13So I only had to agree with myself.
04:16And while playing Settlers 1,
04:20some ideas have grown up in my mind,
04:22which I wrote down later on.
04:25And that was the basic start for Settlers 2.
04:27My first Settlers was the Settlers 2.
04:28and I got it as a gift from somebody working at Bluebite at these times.
04:33It was in the year of 1997, so long time ago.
04:36And I started playing that game and I quickly got addicted.
04:40It was a very, very good game and I really loved it.
04:43And so that I could join Bluebite long time later,
04:46ten years later,
04:47it was really a very nice surprise
04:49that I would later join this big company creating this great game.
04:53The Settlers 2 team, that was something that I experienced when I was at Bluebite,
04:58were mainly for people, so a very small team.
05:01The development was around half a year, as far as I can remember.
05:05And it's not comparable to the development nowadays.
05:07My first contact with Bluebite was actually when Ubisoft bought it.
05:14So I was working at Ubisoft at the time in Düsseldorf
05:17and there was a rumor,
05:20we feel that we might have bought a company.
05:24And you can imagine especially all the marketing and salespeople
05:27were very, very excited about that
05:30because this is a very big game
05:32and a very well-known company that we bought.
05:35And then just a few weeks later I was offered to work at Bluebite,
05:39so then I really went there and I was the producer of the Settlers.
05:43So that was in 2001.
05:45If you compare the game development process today
05:48with how games were made back in the day,
05:50you will see some major differences,
05:52not least in terms of graphics.
05:54The team grew exponentially.
05:56The graphics improved.
05:58But what was more important?
06:00Graphics or perfect gameplay?
06:01Watch our video to find out how the team
06:04balanced the growing demands placed on them.
06:06Those days good game design was really more important than good graphics.
06:11And I think it's the same now.
06:12So there were only a few years in between
06:14where maybe good graphics could hide a bad design.
06:17But nowadays, especially with free-to-play,
06:19it's even more important to convince players
06:21that you have a good game
06:22and you can only deliver this game experience
06:24with a great game design.
06:26I think for any game that you want to play
06:28for let's say more than just a few minutes,
06:31the game mechanics, the game design
06:33is the most important ingredient.
06:36The graphics can grab your attention,
06:39let's say for the first minutes
06:40or maybe even a bit longer if it's really spectacular.
06:44But to continue playing,
06:45and that was the same back then compared to today,
06:48from my point of view,
06:50the game mechanics have to take over.
06:52And especially with a game like Settlers.
06:54Yes, you can probably play for hours
06:56and just enjoy all the animations.
06:58And that's really, really cool.
07:01But if you don't like the game design,
07:04if you don't like the gameplay,
07:05you will stop playing.
07:06And today, to me, it's the exact same thing.
07:10Well, the gameplay is very special for Settlers.
07:13And it's something that brings you very deep in the game
07:17and that lets you play for hours and hours again.
07:19However, the graphics itself are very cute since the beginning.
07:24If you imagine Settlers 1,
07:25that was in the 90s, 20 years ago.
07:28Even in these times,
07:30the graphics were really great.
07:31It was very detailed,
07:33you could see everything.
07:34Even if it was quite pixellic from the graphic style,
07:36it was brilliant, even in these times.
07:38The team was very small.
07:40You know,
07:41the game could be done in months,
07:43not in years,
07:44with quite a few people.
07:45So the programming, the graphics,
07:49was of course important.
07:50And it had to be a certain quality,
07:54but the game idea was the most important thing to start with.
07:57So Settlers 1 and Settlers 2 really,
07:59and especially Settlers 1 of course,
08:00introduced this genre.
08:02It was a huge leap to see this kind of strategy game
08:09with all these cycles,
08:12economic cycles and so on.
08:13So that was really, really good.
08:14And the second one just improved that in many ways.
08:18And I played the first one after,
08:20I played the second one,
08:21and I really said like,
08:21no, no, I don't want to play the first one.
08:22The second one just improved it a lot, I think.
08:25And then the third one really introduced
08:26more real-time strategy elements,
08:28like directly controlled fighters.
08:31And that really changed the dynamics of the game quite a bit.
08:34and number four then again was an approval of that.
08:39After Settlers 2,
08:41the gameplay moved a little bit
08:43to more real-time gameplay,
08:44but we really liked the old style of Settlers games.
08:47So the idea was just to bring the old gameplay
08:50to a new level,
08:52including new graphics,
08:53new possibilities we didn't have before.
08:56Yeah, just to go on with the old ideas.
08:59When I made a sequel to a game,
09:01I always try to really offer new experiences to the player.
09:05So we really completely changed the road system.
09:08Also multiplayer was added to the game,
09:11and the combat system was completely reworked.
09:14As far as I know,
09:15there is still Settlers 3 server active nowadays,
09:18which is like 15 years now.
09:20What we decided for Settlers 5
09:22was to go more in the real-time direction.
09:24So with a little bit less focus on the construction part
09:28and some more options in the fighting part.
09:31And then for Settlers 6,
09:33we focused very much on city building,
09:35really building a medieval city.
09:38And one of the signs of that
09:39was that we introduced storage
09:41in the middle of the city
09:42with the marketplace up front
09:44where everybody has to go to get his stuff.
09:47And we also introduced needs for the fellow citizens.
09:53Both of those games were pretty successful,
09:56but from a content point of view,
09:59from a brand point of view,
10:01we were not so happy with the way it was going.
10:03So in Settlers 7,
10:05we went back and forth at the same time.
10:08So we introduced some new things.
10:10We introduced the victory point system
10:12and we also went back to,
10:14especially in terms of production chains,
10:16we went a bit back to even Settlers 2.
10:19and to me Settlers 7 really is the best of the series.
10:23I played it a lot.
10:25I mean, I was responsible for the production,
10:27so I had to play it while it was being developed.
10:30But after we released the version,
10:32released the game after launch date,
10:35at home in my spare time,
10:36I just played it like crazy.
10:38It was so much fun.
10:38I think the campaign was great
10:40and the multiplayer sessions with the victory points,
10:44I think they were really, really good.
10:46so I'm a big fan still today.
10:49Talking about the Settlers series
10:51means not only talking about box titles, of course.
10:54The latest major success in the series
10:56is The Settlers Online,
10:58which is a free-to-play browser game,
11:00playable in more than 40 countries worldwide.
11:03Find out what our The Settlers veterans
11:05have to say about this.
11:07So after Settlers 3,
11:08I basically switched to multiplayer games
11:11and I didn't track the sequels a lot.
11:14But now Settlers Online
11:15I think it's a very interesting project
11:17and I really appreciate that.
11:20And I think there's a lot of new opportunities
11:21in this market for the series.
11:24So what we as a company have seen around that time
11:29is that free-to-play games
11:31pretty much were there to stay.
11:33I mean, you see those browser-based online games
11:35and in the beginning we thought,
11:37well, that's an interactive website.
11:38Who's going to play that?
11:39And then suddenly we see like,
11:40wow, this is really successful
11:41and they really start to look like games.
11:44And lots of those games out there
11:46really looked a bit like Settlers.
11:47They weren't called Settlers, obviously,
11:49but they looked a bit like it.
11:50So we said, well, we can maybe do this better.
11:53So we started this project
11:55and at the time we had looked at different ways
11:57to bring Settlers to different platforms.
12:00So this was just another try
12:02and it worked very well.
12:04When we started Settlers Online
12:05it was still a test balloon.
12:07We wanted to try if it really works.
12:09Nobody knew if this is the way to go.
12:11And then when we launched it,
12:12it was already appreciated by the audience.
12:15We had 15-20 thousand people
12:17on the very first day playing that game
12:19without even announcing it.
12:21And since then it became very, very big.
12:23We have now millions and millions of people
12:25in our game playing Settlers Online every day.
12:27I think it was a great success.
12:29And it was very successful.
12:31They managed to bring that feeling of a game
12:34and that spirit of the Settlers series
12:36to a browser game.
12:37And it's so difficult because
12:38you have now not a game
12:41that you can play for some hours
12:42and then you start the next mission.
12:44You play it for months.
12:45And that is really a big challenge.
12:47And I think it was a very good step.
12:50And I'm really looking forward
12:52what will be the next step.
12:53For us it was very important
12:54that it's really not a pay-to-win game
12:56but a free-to-play game.
12:58So yes, we like it when people pay
13:01to save some time
13:02but you don't have to do it.
13:05And it proved to work very well
13:07with the Settlers game system
13:09with the Settlers game mechanics.
13:11And people really appreciated it.
13:12It's great because I think
13:13that the free-to-play approach
13:15is the way to go nowadays.
13:17It also, due to the limits
13:20of the browser version right now,
13:22it looks quite similar to the very old Settlers part.
13:26It's not in 3D yet.
13:27This all will come maybe in the future.
13:29But right now it's a natural evolvement
13:32of what Settlers should be for me.
13:34I think the launch time was a moment
13:37where it really fit very well.
13:39So we had an enormous success
13:42from day one pretty much.
13:44So yeah, that's how it went online
13:46and I think it works quite well.
13:48One single guy had a bright idea
13:50more than 20 years ago
13:51and got the ball rolling
13:52on one of Germany's most distinctive
13:54and successful gaming series.
13:56Join us as we look at the constant
13:58creative evolution of the Settlers
14:00that turned it into an industry standard
14:03in the field of strategy gaming
14:04for two whole decades.
14:06Celebrate with us
14:07as Blue Byte sets the franchise up
14:09for a successful future
14:10with the Settlers online
14:12for another 20 years.
14:16on 6H.
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