Chapter 206 The Sword Goes Wrong

No matter how reluctant Leon was to leave, the next movie was about to start, so the theater they were in needed to be cleared.

"Come back, I'll teach you how to play games. The most popular one lately is Resident Evil!" Adam shouted.

"Is it the game about fighting zombies? The one in a very big mansion?" Little Leon's eyes lit up.

"Yes, I finally borrowed its game cartridge!" Although the basic social welfare security of ordinary American families during this period was pretty good, and they could basically purchase all the commonly used household appliances - however, new technological gadgets like electronic game consoles also required some time to work with the elders in the family to get them.

Especially now that the North American game market is still dominated by the old company Atari, although Nintendo of Japan has also launched the Famicom for this market, it is still difficult for the newcomer to shake the authority of the local snake.

Adam was able to get a Nintendo Famicom on his birthday last month, thanks to Su Yun's disguise strategy: after adding two or three educational games, this game console was transformed into a so-called "educational learning machine".

It’s a pity for parents all over the world. After discovering that their children no longer want a game console but a "learning machine", many parents gritted their teeth and bought one for their children. Of course, for now, Japanese products, which are still in the market, are considered to be low-end and mid-range with low prices and high cost performance in the economically developed North American market.

This relatively cheaper price is one of the important reasons why many children can get their first game console in their life.

But is that the end of the game once you’ve spent money on it?

No, this is just the beginning.

As the saying goes, it is easy to buy a car but difficult to maintain it. Today's game consoles are not like the networked computers of later generations where you can download whatever you want, and there are even various corresponding shopping malls for you to choose from... The current situation is that every time you want to play a new game, you have to go to a physical store to buy a new game cartridge, or go to a corresponding rental store to rent a game cartridge.

Probably in the last century, the childhood of minors around the world was basically the same: you and your friends would agree to buy this game and I would buy that game, and then during the holidays, you would bring your own game cartridges, joysticks and other peripherals, gather in someone's room, and play games together. These are the best memories of your childhood.

However, whether it is the bustling arcade era in the past or the gradually rising home game console era today, those interesting and fun games are definitely the works of big manufacturers that are passed on by word of mouth. The rarer and more technically demanding the games are, the more likely they are to become hot topics in the circle.

Especially for rebellious teenagers living in slums, action-packed games with a strong sense of impact and horror-packed games with suspense and thrills are undoubtedly the stage for them to stand out and show off their skills in their small circles.

For example, Sweet Home, which was forced to be taken offline after it was launched in North America because it was too scary, is still a challenge legend in the gaming world. Many game fanatics even learned Japanese and bought the Japanese version just to play it. Sometimes, people who are addicted to the game are really so magical. They have a low level of knowledge that can celebrate with their family if they pass the elementary school exam, but in order to pass a difficult level in the game, they can grit their teeth and chew many math, physics and chemistry formulas at the junior high school, high school or even college level, just to solve that key puzzle...

The Japanese versions of games of this era either had styles or stories that did not suit North American tastes, or their graphics and technology were inferior to those here, so they never had much of an advantage over Atari, a long-established North American game company.

It was not until the emergence of the suspense horror game "Sweet Home" and the subsequent "Resident Evil 1: Parasite" which was a further improvement on the original version that the restrictions of the local snakes were broken, allowing foreign game manufacturers and console manufacturers to successfully enter the North American game market and share the pie.

However, local manufacturers were naturally unwilling to share their own cake, which led to the joint operations of manufacturers led by Atari to encircle and suppress outsiders: in addition to developing new games independently, they also signed game platform porting contracts with game manufacturers in other regions, porting those famous arcade games from other regions to the company's machines, hoping to squeeze the development space of outsiders with quality and quantity.

In particular, the FC red and white machine, led by Su Yun and produced by Japan's Nintendo, is similar to the models produced by Atari but also has its own differences, and it has occupied the most market space.

So when Atari faced this situation, the first thing it did was to port "Space Invaders" from Taito Company, Nintendo's arch-rival in Japan, to compete with it.

This game, Space Invaders, which is similar to Galaga, was popular in arcade games in the 1970s. Many emerging small companies have released many copycat games. At that time, Nintendo, which had just transformed into a game company, released several copycat games. However, the end result of these copycat games was that they all failed...

In this ever-changing market, especially in the technology and gaming sectors that place the most emphasis on innovation, only the first to try new things can reap the rewards. Those who follow suit and want to follow suit will most likely spend their own half-full meal ticket.

Nintendo just happened to encounter the sudden emergence of Su Yun with black technology and successfully recruited him, thus opening up a new path for development. This is how it broke through the siege of major local old-brand game companies and carved out a bloody path.

Within Nintendo, the Yamauchi family has always been the inheritor through blood. Although Su Yun is not a member of the Yamauchi family, she has a certain amount of Nintendo shares and a high share of game sales, which is a testament to her technical importance to the company.

Therefore, Atari's plan to join forces with Taito, the leading Japanese arcade game company, to counter Nintendo's expansion in the North American game market was really overthinking: while they were still immersed in occupying the market with small games with simple plots, Su Yun's eyes were already on the long road of creating a legendary big IP.

The "Resident Evil" series is enough to become a large IP series that spans multiple fields.

Games, peripheral products, movies, and all kinds of derivative works... Isn't this more profitable than just gaming works?

Of course, even though Su Yun is still at the stage of laying the foundation for turning this theme into a game, having experienced the baptism of countless 3A masterpieces in the future, he also looks down on the perfunctory behavior and perfunctory quality of today's hasty work to grab the market. Coincidentally, one of the main reasons for the subsequent Atari collapse that affected the North American game market was the policy of quantity over quality in order to grab the market and make money.

After ignoring quality in order to rush the work, Atari, which obtained the IP license for Spielberg's then-popular movie "ET the Extraterrestrial", created the most notorious IP failure in the history of the gaming industry.

The resulting wave of negative reviews had such a wide impact that not only did Atari lose control of the North American gaming market, but the North American gaming industry also languished for several years, with most players losing confidence in the local gaming industry.

This culprit that dragged down the local gaming industry did not make much money but lost a lot of reputation and had to be split up by its parent company Warner to survive. In the end, this old gaming company that should have left a strong mark in the golden age of video game development failed to debut as a childhood classic in the gaming industry, but instead successfully debuted in the economics world with the term "Atari Collapse"...

With the previous experience of making bad money but almost going bankrupt, Su Yun always pays great attention to the works he handles no matter what industry he is in.

Even when making commercial films, she would always remember the concept of appealing to both the elite and the masses that she learned from Kubrick, and would add some of her own personal opinions into the films without affecting the commercial and money-making goals of most of the content.

For example, the regional discrimination due to the times and the secret control of capital over various elections in "Song of Youth"; the almost obvious comedy-style political satire in the second half of "Bruxton's Billions" and the ubiquitous criticism of the capital-first society in the whole plot...

The outcome of this approach is also very obvious: after the release of "Youth Song" last year, the film simply showed the problem of regional disputes and the dark tip of the iceberg that election competitions are not based on real strength but on the support of capital behind the scenes. However, it has already caused the film to receive mixed reviews in Hong Kong and subsequently triggered a round of controversy.

Unfortunately, in today's society where people laugh at poverty rather than prostitution, people are not afraid of becoming famous for their crimes, but are only afraid of remaining unknown: even though everyone knows that in such entertainment-related competitions, there will inevitably be cases like the two male protagonists in "Song of Youth" competing in the Japanese competition area, no matter how good the quality of their works is, they will still encounter the shady dealings of the judges using various reasons to eliminate them just to promote their own people; but this kind of competition is really too popular and can earn too much attention. No matter how dark it is, it is still more likely to change one's ordinary and mediocre life than the rigid way of working hard.

After all, it is no longer the old days when you could get more rewards by working hard and rising to the social level. Nowadays, what people believe in and pursue is the unearned gains that come as a gift from heaven as soon as luck strikes.

Therefore, the emergence of "Brewster's Billions" just hits the sweet spot of human nature in this era.

In addition, the second half of the film, which criticized current affairs and was a co-production, offset a large part of the distraction caused by the racial issues, and also met the current demands of non-mainstream ethnic groups in North America for rights struggles... With all these factors piling up, this film took off at an unexpected speed. In the first week, it was classified as a cheap movie in the unpopular movie section even in the slums, and it kept climbing up and outperforming all the films of the same period. The ticket price, box office, and reputation soared, and it quickly turned around and became the weekly champion of the North American movie box office in the second week.

Spielberg even called to joke: "Luckily I didn't postpone the release of Raiders of the Lost Ark, otherwise if it collides with your movie, then you might have pulled down my box office guarantee."

"Come on, when I won the championship in the second week, Indiana Jones was about to be withdrawn from the theaters - you should consider that you gave me a concession." Su Yun is very clear about the reasons why her movie made a comeback: by accurately targeting popular points, capturing regional preferences, and pleasing non-mainstream ethnic groups, she took an unconventional approach to form a pattern similar to "watching this movie is politically correct"...

If there is a head-on competition with "Indiana Jones", which has become a signature series of commercial blockbusters in the local area, even if the box office and reputation of Su Yun's new movie can turn from a niche to a hit, its achievements and profits will still be discounted.

Just like when she won the Cannes Best Actress award, it was not because she was so outstanding, but she met most of her competitors who were not very good, so she just became a relatively outstanding general among a group of dwarfs.

The "highlight" of Su Yun's new film, especially against the backdrop of the vigorous equal rights movement in recent years, is that it is relatively pioneering in setting up positive black characters: the night before Brewster's "bankruptcy", when his friends were running around to raise funds for him, the group of black security guards and the security captain who led them donated all the salaries they had received from Brewster.

"Although we are here for money, we always believe that there are some things in the world that are more important than money." The black security guards, who were silent throughout the entire movie, filled their hats with goodwill banknotes.

This is in stark contrast to the white private detective next to him, who usually flatters his loyalty but clings to his high salary and refuses to donate a penny.

This was not yet the era of Black Lives Matter. Black people had just gained certain rights through struggle and no longer needed to exist as villains and ugly characters in movies and TV shows. But for now, there are not many positive characters.

The status of Chinese people in the film and television industry today is even lower.

Suddenly, a movie with people of color as the main supporting roles, mostly positive images, and no deliberate ugliness in the casting, has come out. Wouldn't it become a super hot treasure in the community of color?

For this reason, there are many people in the circle who have relatively negative comments on Su Yun's approach, believing that the reason why her new film was successful this time was because she tried to please people of color: during this period, "Brewster's Billions" has almost become a synonym for political correctness. If you dare to say something bad about it, it will inevitably arouse public indignation and boycotts from people of color.

As expected, she is a ruthless person who retired from the entertainment industry for three years in her teens due to being involved in a political turmoil, but was able to make a comeback later. This business marketing method that combines politics and public opinion has really allowed her to carve out a piece of the pie in the North American film industry.

Of course, where there is loss there is gain. Su Yun, who has always ignored those sarcastic remarks, was suspected and guarded by some people, but at the same time, she also gained the favor of many people in the circle because she started to criticize current affairs.

For example, George A. Romero, the "Father of Zombies", had originally rejected her invitation to film due to lack of schedule, but later called to say that after watching her new film, he felt that they still had something to discuss.

"I originally thought that since our ideas were not consistent, there was nothing much to talk about." Romero, the old man, liked to use absurd themes of science fiction and supernatural to allude to social contradictions in his movies, so he was always alienated and rejected by the mainstream Hollywood. "However, after seeing your new movie and re-reading your plan, I hope to have a more detailed interview with you..."

"For now, you plan to shoot a TV promotional video for the game first to build a good foundation for popularity, and the movie series will take some time to prepare, right?"

Su Yun hummed, and then briefly told Romero, who was still middle-aged, the reason why she had put her plan to adapt the film on hold: "In addition to not being able to find suitable actors for the main roles, the post-production special effects technology and funds will also take some time to prepare."

What’s more…Leon Scott Kennedy, one of the most popular male protagonists in this series, is probably still a little kid playing with a water gun somewhere in Su Yun’s mind!

She will have to wait at least another ten years before she and the actor will reach the age that is most suitable for playing the roles.

It doesn't matter. Romero is a man with a very long waiting time. Even if she hands over the six-film series she originally planned to direct to him ten years later, there won't be any big problem of suddenly changing the director.

Moreover, for a player like Leo who is of a fighting race descent, once the youthful excitement disappears, he loses that unique charm that he had when he was first seen. It's fine to play with him while he is young and beautiful, but when he gets older and his style changes and he becomes fat and ugly... then you have to kick him out as soon as possible!

Su Yun, whose bad girl mentality was becoming more and more obvious, imagined this very seriously.