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The Virtual World and Realistic Struggle of Young Game Planners: The National Style and the International Travel Circumstances

08:18, March 24, 2021 | Source: Guangming Daily
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Original title: Virtual World and Real Struggle of Youth Game Planners: National Style and International Travel

   Every young person has his own spiritual home and virtual life. And the game is just one of the ideal residences for flying the sky horse and flying the sky soul.

   Today, players will find that the theme of the game is more abundant, and Chinese elements are more distinctive. Some are like fashion classics, and some make people dream back to the Tang and Song dynasties, reshape rivers and mountains, rewrite legends, and work together with the ancients to cook wine and wear time and space to fold flowers.

   The rise of Guofeng Game can not be separated from the game planners. In this article, their names are pseudonyms. Behind the name is a group of post-80s and post-90s youth. The game's progress in creativity, plot, picture, sense and various details is the crystallization of their wisdom and sweat with their peers.

   Young people who only deal with numbers, programs and calculations in people's stereotype, but with rational and romantic passion, grand and exquisite ingenuity, write classics into reality, and integrate aesthetics into technology. They regard the compliance with culture as the most important thing, as the game planning of the Three Kingdoms Strategic Edition and the post-90s young Ge said: "My wish is that the games we plan and design can fly in the sky of digital technology, with one wing carrying the traditional culture, and one wing surging the ideal of making excellent Chinese copyright games."

   When these young planners were born, China's game market was still firmly occupied by foreign games; When they grow up and enter this field, domestic games have seized the opportunity to break the deadlock and develop rapidly. At present, the wave of traditional culture stirred up by domestic games is more surging than any other period. This wave is just the new sound of the old songs they wrote together with their fellow fighters.

   1. The framework of the ancient landscape and the return of cultural concepts

"I condensed my work into six words: reasonable self negotiation." After 10 years of participating in the game planning, Xiaowen, a senior director of Guoyou's Cold Against the Water and a young man after 1985, held this view on Guofeng Games, "To put it simply, it is to realize and check the rationality of things appearing in the game world, so that players' exploration in the virtual world can be coordinated with their understanding, concepts and thinking habits in real life."

Such work consumes a lot of energy and effort of planners. Cold Against the Water creates a marketplace environment in the Northern Song Dynasty. Xiao Wen and his team have done a lot of research, searched for information in ancient books such as History of the Song Dynasty, Tokyo Dreams, Wulin Stories, and incorporated various elements into the indoor furnishings, food, clothing, housing and transportation in the game to ensure that the game situation conforms to the customs of life in the Northern Song Dynasty, At the same time, it awakens and inspires the emotional needs of contemporary people to trace back to cultural customs. "During the Spring Festival in the game, we designed links such as' Spring Bull 'and' Women Sumo '. Players feel very strange and like these lost folk customs." Xiao Wen said that many overseas players were affected by the charm of the national style and played the game against the time difference. The wisdom of strategizing in the game and the strategy of manoeuvring are the way the Chinese nation is keen to deal with problems. The "master apprentice relationship" common in domestic games is almost absent in foreign games. "Violence and stimulation are not our values," said Xiao Wen.

"The design accumulated in the traditional culture has the aesthetic feeling of historical polishing, and also has a certain authenticity. Whether it is artistic expression or concept presentation, it can help us build a relatively real virtual world." The game planning of the mobile game "Condor Heroes 2" and the post-90s youth "studying in North Huainan" university are majoring in literature, and pay attention to the integration of humanistic ideas in plot planning, He believes that the profound infiltration of Chinese cultural elements can give domestic users a sense of familiarity and closeness, and will also attract foreign users. Cultural identity and collision will enhance the user's sense of substitution.

"Chinese literary works emphasize human growth and subjective initiative. We map this cultural atmosphere and characteristics into the core design concept of the game." In the view of the deputy chief policy of the mobile game "New Laughing Proud Jianghu" and the post-85 young stars, the domestic national style game focuses on "growth", pioneering all the way, and the traditional culture focuses on being the first The quality of hard work.

For the sake of reasonable self consistency and the return of cultural view, the planners searched up and down, screened, screened and refined from the vast traditional culture, and selected plots and stories that meet the needs of contemporary people for traceability and positive energy to organize the narrative of the game. Han Xing said that, for example, the plot of the mobile game "New Laughing and Proud Jianghu" can mostly reflect the loyalty, filial piety and righteousness in traditional Chinese stories.

   2. Bitter culture, sweeter culture

In the planning stage of "Three Kingdoms · Strategic Edition", the design of the plot of "fire attack" fell into a bottleneck. In the famous novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the description of the scene of fire and camp is grand. How the game presents such a scene in detail is the key for users to obtain a real experience. The planning team designed several plans but was always dissatisfied.

Xiao Ge recalled that the team members spent days and nights trying to deal with a detail. They read ancient books, watched film and television materials, and struggled to find inspiration and basis. After turning over such classics as Sun Tzu's Art of War and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it was thought that the ancients paid attention to the right time, the right place and the right people, and weather, wind and other factors were important key factors affecting the outcome of the war. "Let's design the relationship between the ignition and the wind direction, which is unprecedented in historical strategy games!" The wisdom of ancient times has been renewed today. They not only solved the problem of "fire attack", but also found the innovation of "wind direction".

"Thousands of players galloped on a huge map of 2 million grids, and we can imagine the difficulty of planning and designing terrain, buildings, characters and events, Create a myriad of illusions. One detail and one action may be just a moment, but you can find the wind in every part of the game and appreciate the taste of history.

Young planners are not satisfied with the collection of books and online materials. When designing the warship, Ge and the planning team were busy for nearly two months, overturning and rebuilding countless design schemes. In Guangzhou, the company's planners went to Chibi, Hubei Province for many times to consult the curator of the local museum and scholars of the history of the Three Kingdoms. They are determined to present a warship that can best restore history in the game.

"Running a museum seems to be a 'stupid way', but it is actually the right way to approach the truth and the original culture." The game planning of Cold Against the Water and the post-90s youth Xiaozhi are also planners who love running museums and exchanges with experts and scholars. He said: "To restore the Chinese style and features thousands of years ago, the difficulty mainly lies in textual research and original production. It is impossible to understand the shape of many things just by referring to the written materials." So he and his team went to the museum and systematically sorted out the paintings of the Song and Yuan Dynasties to find evidence and reference from the paintings.

After completing the examination and design, the difficulty lies in starting from scratch. "The western game industry was founded early and has accumulated a lot of experience. For example, many game elements such as castles, weapons, armor, houses and so on, they have ready-made universal design components that can be used." Xiaozhi said, "But we start from scratch and do little by little. Even if we take a detour, we must try to accumulate valuable experience for future development."

   3. Industry opportunities and career ideals

All the game planners interviewed, without exception, had a strong interest in games when they were young, and began to plan for future game planning when they were in college.

"Go Kart, Miracle, Legend... When I was young, almost all the games I came into contact with were foreign. Even the single player game Three Kingdoms, which was based on Chinese historical stories, was Japanese." Xiao Ge said, "I had such a dream when I was young. We must have a domestic game that can win."

By the end of the 1990s, foreign game companies had always been in a leading position in terms of stand-alone and PC games. The technology and experience of domestic game designers at that time were beyond their reach.

It started late and had a weak foundation. However, thanks to more than 20 years of active learning and catching up, the domestic games merged with the local culture and bloomed brilliantly, turning the game market upside down. "At present, the domestic games have basically formed the trend of occupying the domestic market, strongly radiating the Southeast Asian market, and reverse exporting to Japan, South Korea and North America," said Xiao Wen.

Cold Star, who was determined to "create an interesting game world" when he was in college, said: "Although there are still some good and bad situations on the whole, the domestic games are relatively mature in terms of type, technology and production concept, and the leading enterprises have established a relatively complete industrial chain. In general, domestic games have shown a trend of industrialization and can accept all kinds of talents. "

According to the 2020 China Game Industry Report, in 2020, the actual sales revenue of China's self-developed games in the domestic market will reach 240.19 billion yuan, up 26.7% year on year; Previously, the report "Transformation and Innovation of Chinese Traditional Culture in the Game Field" by Tencent Research Institute said that the Guofeng game market has exceeded 30 billion yuan, with more than 2300 game works and more than 300 million users, which is an important part of the Chinese game market.

The continuous development of more than 20 years is the result of continuous improvement of game planners and designers. "The return and interpretation of traditional culture is still continuing. In terms of theme and style, games related to traditional culture are increasing; in terms of product content, such as scene modeling, role models, fashion and other module design, the reference to traditional cultural elements is increasing." To the delight of "Nostalgia for North and Nostalgia for South", many games go offline and link with traditional cultural activities hand in hand. He introduced that the "Condor Heroes 2" mobile tour had carried out the linkage with the national key Peking Opera troupe, Beijing Peking Opera Theater and the unique Tianqin culture with Zhuang characteristics in Longzhou County, Guangxi, and attracted more attention.

"I, an ordinary planner, go up and be the main planner; and then go up and be the producer..." There is still a long way to go for Xiao Ge's personal development, and his game industry is also facing increasingly fierce competition. But this young man, who "has preliminarily realized his childhood dream", is full of ambition. He is grateful for the rich wealth left by the pioneers in the game industry, and also inspired by the continued efforts of the youth of his peers.

   (Our reporter Peng Jinghui, our correspondent Zhao Jiarun)

   (Editing team of this issue: Peng Jinghui, Gong Liang, Li Danyang, An Shenglan, Li Ruichen, Yang Tongtong)

(Editor in charge: Yang Yubo, Lian Pinjie)

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