Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: NemoTheCaptain

A brief and dazzling golden age.

Editor's note: 20 years ago, 2002 was a crucial year for both the global game industry and China's game circle. The rapid development of hardware makes more games into the full 3D world, the popularity of Internet and broadband makes PC and host players feel the fun of online, online video is beginning to take shape, e-sports and game TV programs are developing rapidly.

Time flies, and 20 years later, some players left the circle for a variety of reasons, while others persevered with remarkable results. In many ways, today's gaming industry is the echo of the golden age of 2002, and the history of 20 years ago has laid the foundation for today's pattern.

Because of the long length of the article, we are divided into three parts.

Serial one: shining Stars: the Game Industry in 2002 (PC)

2002 is a year of rapid development of broadband network and PC hardware. The fierce price war makes more players feel the taste of broadband and PC upgrade. 2002 was also a year of rapid development of e-sports and game videos. Huge competitions with a scale of 600000 people were held in China, and self-made videos of all kinds of players were circulated on the Internet. Game TV programs represented by "Game things" have sprung up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. The splendor of that year is still unforgettable to this day.

E-sports and TV "We have seen a lot of foreign game promotional videos, people often lament that others have done a good job, watching it is fun, is it really that we can't do it? as a player, if I have a chance, I would like to try."

Fang Zhan, producer of Omaha, the first engine film in China.

Broadband and Internet cafes boomed in 2002, giving birth to a broad space for e-sports. E-sports competition on the choice of the game and ordinary players have some differences, the game needs a more stable version of the game, rather than simply catch up with the new. Ordinary players like the trendy "Warcraft 3" in 2002, but the competition of "StarCraft" is more than "Warcraft 3" in 2002, because "StarCraft" has entered a stable state in 2002, Blizzard no longer released balance patches, players can rest assured to study tactics, while "Warcraft 3" in 2002 is still in the early stage of repeated adjustment of balance.

By the same token, the rough 1.0 version of counter-Terrorism Elite was released in 2000, and after two years of accumulation, the classic 1.4 and 1.5 versions were released in 2002. The change of version has also brought about changes in the style of play. Versions 1.4 and 1.5 of "counter-Terrorism Elite" have lowered the upper limit of personal operation, and the threshold of the game is lower than that of "returning to German headquarters." what's more, it can't be compared with Spring Snow's Thor Hammer 3 and Unreal Colosseum. With the lowering of the threshold, the "counter-terrorism elite" gained a large group of players in 2002, paving the way for follow-up competitions.

The menu screen of "anti-terrorism elite" familiar to veteran players according to the recollection of GD, a famous team of early "anti-terrorism elites" in China, because broadband was not yet popular in 2000, the team had to run around in taxis between several urban areas of Guangzhou, looking for Internet cafes all over the street to play practice games. After that, broadband is becoming more and more popular, which makes it much easier to play practice games.

In 2002, a total of four major "anti-terrorism elite" competitions were held across the country, including the "Merida Cup" sponsored by Pepsi, the "Shining Invincible Cup" sponsored by Philips, WCG 2002 sponsored by Samsung, and CIG 2002 sponsored by major telecom operators.

Among them, CIG 2002 is sponsored by the Internet Society of China. In addition to the "anti-terrorism elite", there are also "StarCraft", "FIFA 2002" and online chess and cards. CIG 2002 covers 32 divisions, including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, with 600000 contestants participating in the online stage and 300000 in the offline stage, a figure that set the Guinness World record at that time. In the end, 300 individuals and 32 teams went to Shanghai to participate in the finals, which became a feast for the e-sports industry.

The development of the team has also paved the way for engine Movie. Engine movies are videos recorded using a game engine. Early short films were dominated by online maps, with players acting as actors in the game. In 2001, some domestic FPS teams have recorded several promotional short films, but these short films are simple highlights of the game, there is no clear plot and theme, and the editing is very rough, which is not a real engine film.

The first real engine film in China was born in February 2002. Tianren Interactive is the domestic agent of "return to German headquarters". In order to promote the game, Tianren Interactive has set up several sets of servers in China and held a large number of competitions. Tianren Interactive Marketing Manager "Fang Zhi" once made a video of an exhibition match for a team, and he wanted to record some more complicated videos, so he pulled on the "old knife", who was also a marketing employee, and began to work out the details.

"return to German headquarters" also has a certain popularity in China. According to Fang Zhan, if a video wants to become a movie, it needs camera language and narrative sense. The team obviously played fiercely in the exhibition match, but after turning into a video, the battle scene was mediocre-the scene was too big and there were too few characters, and such a video was not a movie. As a result, the staff gave rise to the idea of taking the observer's perspective as the lens and asking the player to pose as an actor. Lao Dao, inspired by Saving Private Ryan, conceived a short screenplay called "Bloody Omaha".

Square stick is the producer of Battle of Omaha and Lao Dao is the screenwriter. The director is Wang Baike, a student of Beijing Broadcasting Institute, and his classmate Xu Carp works as a camera and post-synthesis. As for the 50 actors in the game, they are played by the marketing and customer service staff of Heaven and Human interaction, as well as the SURV game team in Beijing.

"Bloody Omaha" is a completely free short film, the participants are naturally not paid, they rely solely on enthusiasm to complete the task. The shooting took four days in an Internet cafe in Beijing, while the later editing took another three days to borrow a small bungalow from the Beijing Film Academy.

The director of "Battle of Omaha" uses projectors to explain to actors in Internet cafes, although the quality of "Battle of Omaha" is a little rough, the short film has achieved a breakthrough in domestic engine films from scratch and caused a sensation on the Internet. RTCW Online, the foreign special station of "returning to German headquarters", sent a congratulatory message to the interaction between heaven and man, and invited domestic players to go to foreign servers to exchange views.

With the first experience, the Heaven-Man interaction team has achieved a clear plan. When they made their second short film, Mission of death, everything went more smoothly. "death Mission" introduces character models that are not available in the original through the module, while special effects such as bullet time use 3D MAX for post-processing to make the effect smoother. The standard of "death Mission", which was finally released in July 2002, has made remarkable progress, marking the rapid maturity of domestic engine films.

Bullet time Special effect in "death Mission" in October 2002, Sweet Coffee, a player of the "Anti-Terrorism Elite", released a promotional short film about the Beijing long and wide team. The fierce editing is exciting, and the special movements such as "Dapeng spreading wings" make the audience unforgettable. In December 2002, Sweet Coffee continued its efforts and released a new short film, "On Your Mark." This time the video has a clear theme: the comrades-in-arms in the game, that is, those who buy you guns, help you with your feet, and block your guns. "Anti-terrorist Elite" is a game that emphasizes teamwork, and this theme resonates strongly among players and moves audiences across the country.

Sweet Coffee's iconic action "Dapeng spread its wings" Sweet Coffee has become a famous video author not only because of its skillful editing and unique creativity, but also by its solid gaming skills. Some of the jumping skills in the short film are of practical value and are not fancy. For this reason, Sweet Coffee has launched a related strategy explanation, and he has also become the leader of countless novice "counter-terrorism elites" in China.

2002 is also a year of rapid development of domestic game TV programs. TV stations in Japan, Europe and the United States had professional game programs as early as the 1980s. The first game program in China was "Video Game Grand View Garden", which was broadcast in Hong Kong and Taiwan in 1994, while the first TV program in mainland China was "GOGOGO", which was broadcast in 2001. However, "Video Game GOGOGO" was broadcast on very few television stations in 2001, and it was not until 2002 that it expanded to 18 local television stations, and the program was renamed "Video Game Ark".

Other domestic game programs began to broadcast in 2002 like bamboo shoots after a spring rain: the "game stuff" of Tourism Satellite TV, the "madness of tourist spots" of Shanghai TV, and the "introduction" of Shaanxi TV. More similar programs cannot be enumerated one by one. These programs have their own characteristics, such as "Game things" will also take into account the animation content while introducing the game, "the ark of video games" is good at reviewing the cultural themes of the game, and "Paradise Crazy" is the first to broadcast the "counter-Terrorism Elite" competition on TV.

Luan Jing is one of the many hosts of "Game things". CCTV-5 did not have a separate game program in 2002, but during the World Cup in South Korea and Japan, CCTV-5 held a "FIFA 2002" competition called "the first World Cup of fans". After the team accumulated experience, it created a separate game program "E-Sports World" for CCTV-5 in 2003.

In this way, domestic TV game programs experienced a short golden age of two years, and the highest-rated "game stuff" once reached 60 million viewers. In early 2004, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television banned traditional television stations from broadcasting game programs, and the golden era ended, and the program teams had to find another way out. Some of the talents of "Game things" left the team, while another part was reorganized into the new program "East-West Animation Society", and later launched an animation magazine of the same name.

On the other hand, paid digital TV programs, such as "Games" and "GTV", which began broadcasting in 2003, continued to broadcast normally in 2004. After the suspension of "tourist Crazy", some people joined the "Game Wind and Cloud". In the gap between the disappearance of traditional TV game programs and the rise of video portals such as Tudou and Youku, these digital TV programs prop up the domestic game video sky.

The rise of Haofang "China Telecom can refer to the operation model of AOL to create 'China online', and we can cooperate with powerful content providers."

-- Zhou Deqiang, then general manager of China Telecom

The popularity of online war platforms changed the domestic gaming industry 20 years ago. In September 2002, Haofang game platform was officially opened to the public. Based on virtual local area network technology, Haofang can connect to the Internet through the local area network interface of the game, so that piracy can also fight on the Internet through Haofang. At that time, Ogilvy Electronics was the game agent of Blizzard in China, holding the domestic agency of games such as "Warcraft 3". Because of this, after Haofang went online, Ogilvy immediately reprimanded Haofang for helping to spread piracy and threatened to sue.

In fact, this virtual LAN platform does not originate in China, but in Europe and the United States. Blizzard sued the BnetD platform in the United States and won the case. Many authentic "Warcraft 3" users in Europe and the United States have used the BnetD platform, naturally because Blizzard does not provide enough servers to protect the online environment, so players choose to solve the problem on their own.

Online problems in games such as "Warcraft 3" have caused a series of disputes. The author of BnetD also told Blizzard that he could add a genuine verification function to the software to kick out the piracy in exchange for Blizzard withdrawing the lawsuit, but Blizzard was not moved. The reason is simple: behind such disputes is not only the conflict between genuine and pirated copies, but also other issues of interest. Blizzard can get players' information and advertising revenue through the Battle. net platform, and they naturally don't want to share this traffic with BnetD.

Ogilvy has not set up enough servers in China, and the online experience of genuine users may not be smooth, and sometimes it is not as good as Haofang platform. Not only that, Ogilvy has secretly played "sell more than one number" since 2002, selling the same online serial number to multiple players, only one of whom is online. In other words, at this time, Ogilvy is secretly selling pirated copies under the banner of genuine copies.

Although Haofang platform acquiesced in the existence of piracy, it has completed the work that many genuine agents should have done. The war platform born in China in 2002 was far from the only one of Haofang, but Haofang persisted until the end. Haofang cooperates closely with various domestic telecom companies and has set up a large number of servers across the country to provide players with a more smooth network environment. This kind of cooperative relationship is related to the ecology of netizens at that time.

Haofang's old home page now has 500 million monthly active users of QQ, but the total number of registered users of QQ in 2002 was 100 million. The scale of online chat 20 years ago is quite different from that of today, and many users used broadband for online games at that time. Games indirectly led to 6.8 billion yuan of domestic telecommunications business in 2002, which far exceeded the direct income of the game industry itself. According to the statistics of China Telecom, 60% of ADSL users applied for broadband for games in 2002. Therefore, in 2002, when broadband content was extremely scarce, domestic telecom companies provided support for all kinds of war platforms.

In 2003, Haofang not only provided technical support for CCTV-5 's "E-Sports World" program, but also provided a platform for online qualifying matches for WCG 2003. It can be said that Haofang has made solid contributions to the development of e-sports 's cause in China. Ogilvy was also very greedy for the cake of e-sports in 2003, but their contribution to it was far less than that of Haofang, and even made a lot of crooked thoughts.

Haofang provided support for E-Sports World and WCG 2003 to require Ogilvy to use authentic games in e-sports competitions, which is naturally reasonable and legal. However, on the basis of this article, Ogilvy also claimed that the national e-sports competition, big or small, needs to be authorized by Ogilvy & Mather, and such an absurd request is neither reasonable nor legal. Ogilvy holds genuine dealership and tries to control sponsors and even referees of all kinds of competitions. The agency was sold to Ogilvy by Blizzard and even Vivendi, the parent company of Blizzard at the time, and these absurd requirements were not approved by foreign countries. During a visit to China in 2004, Vivendi executives said that "as long as the use of genuine games is a reasonable game," Ogilvy's nonsense became a joke.

In 2005, Ogilvy Electronics was acquired by China Telecom and reorganized into China Ogilvy. The farce continues. China Ogilvy ignored the debt owed, and there was no compensation for the victims of "No. 1 selling more". Instead, it filed a lawsuit with Haofang in 2006. In 2007, because China Ogilvy could not prove that they still had the right of agency for games such as Warcraft 3, the court ruled that Haofang won the case.

After the smoke dissipated, the pattern of the game industry has gradually changed, more and more new works have cancelled the LAN mode, increased the number of online servers, and integrated the functions of the war platform into the game. Haofang and other war platforms, as a feature of the times, fade out of the mainstream vision and become the patent of nostalgic players today.

Broadband and computer "the Internet came into China not by carrying a sedan chair, but by coming out of the footpath."

Hu Qiheng, the first chairman of the Internet Society of China

A good horse still needs to be saddled. 2002 was a blowout year for 3D games and a year for the rapid development of PC hardware and network. Battlefield 1942's grand map and multiplayer online are amazing, but you can't experience all the fun of this masterpiece without a high-configuration PC and broadband network.

The number of Chinese Internet users increased from 33.7 million in 2001 to 59.1 million in 2002, while the number of broadband users increased from 1.65 million to 6.6 million. The popularity and price reduction of broadband became the memory of many netizens in 2002. Take Guangdong Telecom as an example, when ADSL first entered Guangdong in 1999, the initial installation fee was as high as 3000 yuan, and the monthly fee was 400 yuan. By 2002, the initial installation fee had been reduced to 300 yuan and the monthly fee had been reduced to 150 yuan.

ADSL's "cat" (modem) has been gradually replaced by optical fiber's "optical cat". However, in 2002, 4080 domestic users continued to use the extremely slow 56Kbps dial-up Internet access. When it comes to the question of "why not install broadband", dial-up users give a variety of reasons, of which the highest proportion of the answer is "no broadband" accounted for 32%. In other words, many people still do not have access to broadband in their places of residence in 2002, so they can only wait for future infrastructure. It was not until 2005 that the number of domestic broadband users exceeded the number of dial-up users.

Internet cafes across the country gradually popularized the optical fiber network in 2002. In the early years, many computer business places had no broadband, or even no Internet at all, so they could only connect with the local area network. Such places could not be regarded as Internet cafes in the real sense, and they were called "computer rooms" at that time. The number of users surfing the Internet in Internet cafes rose from 5.2 million in 2001 to 11.5 million in 2002.

The number of Internet cafes in China also doubled in 2002, this barbaric growth state on the one hand provides convenience for Internet users, on the other hand, it also brings more standardized management problems. In 2001, 17500 of the country's 94000 Internet cafes were closed for violations, while in 2002, 80,000 of the 200000 Internet cafes were closed.

PC configuration, Microsoft's general program interface DX (DirectX) at the turn of the century in a state of rapid update, from 1999 to 2002, Microsoft has released DX7, DX8, DX9 these three major versions, graphics card specifications to exceed Moore's law of rocket speed soaring into the sky, the price is also decreasing, so that players get a value experience.

At the beginning of 2002, Nvidia released a new generation of graphics card brand GeForce 4, and three of the six products became the focus. DX8 graphics cards include the high-end Ti 4600 and the middle-end Ti 4200 DX7 graphics cards include the low-end MX 440s. What is worth mentioning in particular is Ti 4200, whose core and video memory frequency is 80% of Ti 4600, and its actual performance is 80%, but the price is only 30%. As a result, Ti 4200 is known as the most cost-effective king in the history of graphics cards, and players still miss it.

There are actually six models of GeForce 4 released at the beginning of 2002, but there are only three key models. Then, in the second half of 2002, ATI also released a new generation of graphics card brand Radeon 9000 series, including new DX9 cards and DX8 cold rice cards. The DX versions of these graphics cards all exceed the same price products of Nvidia. Nvidia did not panic about this. Games supporting DX9 did not exist in 2002, and ATI's lead in DX9 had no stage at that time. Although the DX8 performance of Nvidia graphics cards is also lower than that of ATI products at the same price, Nvidia can keep the graphics cards hot as long as they are reduced in price, and then ATI will follow suit.

By the end of 2002, the price war between the two sides has entered a white-hot stage, the price of the low-end card has dropped by about 400 yuan compared with the initial state, and the high-end card has dropped by 1000 yuan. Radeon 9700 Pro and GeForce 4 Ti 4600 dropped to 2999 yuan, Radeon 9700 to 1999 yuan, Radeon 9500 Pro to 1599 yuan, Radeon 9500 and GeForce 4 Ti 4200 to 999 yuan, Radeon 9000 and GeForce 4 MX 440 to 599 yuan. At this time, the product performance and DX version of ATI at the same price are still higher than those of Nvidia, but the price of Nvidia graphics card is also worth it.

The performance of the Radeon 9500 Pro is 70% of that of the Radeon 9700 Pro, and the price is only half. In other words, at the beginning of 2002,599 yuan can only buy a DX7-level GeForce 2 MX 400. by the end of 2002, a DX8-level Radeon 9000 can be bought at the same price, doubling the performance. Such crazy competition is so exhilarating that players are buying graphics cards for PC.

The price reduction of CPU in 2002 was similar. The Pentium 4 of the main frequency 1.7GHz dropped from 1750 yuan at the beginning of the year to 1000 yuan at the end of the year, and the speed dragon XP 1700 + dropped from 1050 yuan to 450 yuan. Intel and AMD both showed sincerity in the price war.

Intel adopted the concept of dominant frequency during the Pentium 4 period and tried to achieve the dominant frequency of 10GHz in 2005. Pentium 4 reached the default frequency of 1.5GHz in 2000 and reached 2GHz in 2001 and 3.06GHz in 2002. Although Intel during this period was denounced as "high frequency and low energy" and AMD called itself "performance first", in 2002, there was no speed dragon XP that could match the performance of 3.06GHz Pentium 4.

The competition between Pentium 4 and Fast Dragon XP lasted through 2002, and everything went well. Intel thought it could get rid of its competitors by greatly increasing the frequency, and 2002 became the last happy time of Pentium 4. At this time, Intel is not clear, after reaching 3GHz, want to further enhance the main frequency, CPU power consumption will soar exponentially. The Pentium 4 in 2003 was only promoted to 3.2 GHz in 2004 as 3.4GHz. Intel CEO Craig Barrett even knelt publicly because the Pentium 4 did not reach 4GHz in 2004. Until 2006, Pentium 4 stopped production, its default main frequency stayed at 3.8GHz, and the highest overclocking record for liquid nitrogen was 8GHz. Eventually Pentium 4 gave way to core architecture, and 10GHz became a fantasy.

In 2002, if you had a fully equipped PC, you could get a taste of the next generation of games. Doom 3 ran a trial version through Radeon 9700 Pro at E3 in 2002 and won five awards, including E3 Game of the year, for its super screen. The trial version of E3 was leaked by ATI employees at the end of 2002, and players tested it and found that only top graphics cards such as the Radeon 9700 Pro could run smoothly.

The leaked trial version of Doom 3 is short, but it has already given players a glimpse of the future. To satisfy those who can't wait, Unreal Colosseum 2003 launched a full version of the game in 2002. The picture of "Unreal Arena 2003" is slightly lower than that of Doom 3, and the configuration requirements are much lower. Only a mid-range graphics card such as the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 can get a very smooth effect.

The technical level of Doom 3 outperformed others in 2002.

Although slightly inferior to Doom 3, the picture of Unreal Colosseum 2003 is also excellent. 20 years later, whether it is PC hardware, game graphics or DX standards, it has slowed down and is no longer as strong as it was 20 years ago.

The world of console games in 2002 also had something as wonderful as PC, but that's another topic.

(to be continued)

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