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

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

Sooner or later we will fully accept the game and get used to it sooner or later.

From February 12 to 14, 2023, the 2022 annual meeting of China's game industry was held in Guangzhou. Compared with ChinaJoy, the industry-oriented "industry annual meeting" seems to attract less attention from the public perspective, but many of the news and trends that have changed the game industry appear at the industry annual meeting.

In addition to the main venue, some sub-forums will be held at the annual meeting. The scale of this year's industry annual meeting should be the largest in all previous annual meetings, and the content of the forum also covers all aspects, such as game re-cognition, game responsibility, guardianship of minors, game technology, game going out to sea, national style games, and all kinds of technology forums-- you can see it from the setting of these forums.

There has been a lot of news about games in the past year, and at the "continuous Future-Game re-Cognition" forum at the annual meeting of the industry, I also saw the speech made by Tang Jiajun, deputy secretary-general of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, secretary-general of the Game working Committee, and chairman of the e-sports working Committee. In his speech, he said that "re-cognition" is a kind of cognitive recycling, why re-recognize the game? The core is that the game is not only about playing, but also has many attributes: entertainment, art, science and technology, society and culture. After nearly 20 years of rapid development, these attributes have emerged, the industry needs to break the inertia and limitations of previous cognition of the game, and re-look at the nature of the game.

For these reasons, I am beginning to be more convinced of one thing than ever: it may be time for mainstream society to redefine the value of games.

Meaningful big topic for a long time, the social evaluation of the value of the game is fragmented. Mainstream society and gamers, there is a clear distinction between the value of the game between the two camps. Frankly, I never thought it was the player's fault.

It seems that mainstream values have never really been able to look at the game calmly before. As for why public opinion is so nervous about games-in fact, I think the answer is very simple, as simple as a sentence, because games are "too new" for society.

When something is too new, it naturally leads to suspicion and mistrust. But on the other hand, when people get used to certain things in life, they will naturally begin to discover and face up to its value and significance.

As you may all know, on November 10 last year, the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution on video games, which called on the European Commission and the Council to strengthen support and assistance to the European game industry, called for a long-term plan for the development of the video game industry, and encouraged more people to join the game industry. The whole decision is based on the judgment that games have become an important part of human cultural life.

Ms Laurence Farreng, a member of the Culture and Education Committee of the European Parliament, has made a great contribution to promoting the EU Game Resolution, which is not an isolated case, but a trend. In the past few years, countries around the world have paid more attention to and invested in the game industry. I can casually cite some examples. for example, in September last year, Saudi Arabia announced the National Strategy for Games and E-Sports. It says it plans to make Saudi Arabia a global hub for the gaming and e-sports industry by 2030. For example, Canada and Australia have consistently launched policies to promote the rapid development of the gaming industry-many countries have seen the significance of the gaming industry and are partly determined to be ready from now on.

So, in the eyes of these decision makers, what is the game? I think it is obviously not limited to the narrow sense of "game" itself. Right now, right around us, games are affecting many industries with their own technology, mechanism and experience, and the results based on game technology spillover have widely appeared in various industries. You can find the shadow of game technology in almost all fields, such as culture, travel, cultural security, industry and automation, film and television production, smart city, medical medicine, and so on.

I saw a news earlier that Tencent Games announced a cooperation with China Southern Airlines, based on the game engine's application of real lighting and rendering in domestic full-motion flight simulator software-- I have experienced a full-motion flight simulator, a huge box, inside is a 1-to-1 replica of the civil airliner cockpit, supported by several hydraulic rods, which runs professional flight software to train civil pilots. This thing is expensive, but because there is very little demand, just from the picture performance, there is a strong sense of mapping, the lighting is not real-time, the fidelity is not high enough, and the mainstream game pictures of the same era are not on the same level at all. At that time, I felt that if it was a good idea for the simulator manufacturer to cooperate with the game company, I did see the news of the cooperation a few years later. If nothing else, at least the trained pilots will have a stronger sense of reality. This is basically a match made in heaven.

I can also cite countless examples of the "simulated flight" visual software system developed based on the game engine. The most critical point is that if an industry is large enough, it will attract enough capital, good talent and abundant resources, and all these resources will produce enough achievements. in addition to allowing the whole industry to move forward rapidly, these achievements are bound to spill over to other areas and bring help to other industries. The job of the game is not to observe the planets or reconstruct logistics, but the theory, experience and technology accumulated in the rapid development and maturity of the game industry will benefit other areas.

All these game-based technologies that develop, grow and mature may lead to our imagined future life: autopilot, efficient logistics, automated pension care, all of which are bound to be more or less related to the technology driven and developed by the game. Just like looking at the history of the American chip industry, you will find that games are the core driving force for the rapid development of this sophisticated industry. In the wildest imagination, digital survival is basically a two-sided relationship with the game.

In July last year, the research team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences released the report "Game Technology-- A New Technology Cluster in the process of Digital-reality Integration". There is a sentence I like very much: "the outstanding interesting attribute of video game masks its scientific attribute. So game technology has been ignored by people for a long time."

If we look at games as a science (and art), then of course it should be paid attention to, studied and valued, you see, it's as simple as that. But that is changing, and for now, at least, many front-line scientists have begun to acknowledge the help of games in their fields. At this annual meeting of the industry, the Game working Committee and the China Game Industry Research Institute jointly released the research results of the project in cooperation with a number of units-- "Research report on the capability and value of Game Science and Technology". The report distributed questionnaires to many practitioners in the technology industry, asking them about their views on the "scientific and technological influence" of games. 81% of the respondents agreed with the role of games in promoting AI. 46% of the respondents agreed with the role of games in promoting GPU technology, 49% agreed with the role of games in promoting XR technology, and 73% believed that games had a greater impact on the development and innovation of pan-transportation. 56% and 55% of the respondents agreed with the promotion of industrial development, medical innovation and other industries.

Excerpt from the "Research report on the ability and value of Game Science and Technology" this report and many examples can illustrate an obvious fact that, starting from some professionals, society is re-recognizing the value of games, which, to a certain extent, determines the future picture and boundaries of the game.

Let's talk about culture in addition to the value of science and technology, the game certainly has cultural value. In recent years, among all the cultural works, the moment that impressed me most was the launch of the first promotional film of "Black Myth: Wukong". Of course, the promotional film itself is great, but what makes me most unforgettable is the clip at the end-you should remember that when Qi Tian Dasheng appeared, the words "Ruyi Golden Hoop stick" burst out in turn on the golden hoop stick. At that moment, I felt pure excitement and shudder.

"Black Myth: Wukong" has attracted the attention of many players and game practitioners, although it is not yet available. This promotional film has been widely circulated on the Internet. There are many videos of foreign anchors watching "Black Myth" on YouTube, and every time I pay close attention to how everyone reacts when they see that scene. I found that all Chinese people burst into emotion when they saw the scene, and some Chinese anchors even began to cry, while most foreign anchors were indifferent to the scene or "gave some polite exclamations."

It is difficult for me to rationally explain why I feel so strongly about that scene. For me, that moment is the moment that defines me and the culture to which I belong. And I was proud of it, and at that moment, I resonated with the developer, I knew how it was trying to express, and I accepted that feeling to make sure I wasn't alone.

Culture is a very mysterious thing, and most of the time, the so-called "traditional culture" always gives us the illusion that we are born to understand, appreciate and resonate with these cultural symbols.

We certainly agree that games can carry cultural content, and now I would like to say that we have ushered in a new trend. Domestic games are in the process of radiating their cultural influence to the world. The premise of this trend, on the one hand, is that the general environment of cultural products in China is ushering in a period of prosperity; on the other hand, our game developers have begun to enter the stage of finding and expressing "who I am".

This stage brings a lot of things, one of the typical manifestations is that we begin to see more and more shadows of traditional culture in the game. I have written many respects to Chinese traditional culture in Arena of Valor, as well as the origin of forever robbing and knight-errant culture. I know how creators feel. What creators express is that they are analyzing themselves to the outside world. What kind of person am I? What is my growing experience? What things affect me and what is my view of the world? And when the creator feels confident and comfortable, he is sure to start these explorations.

Just as traditional culture seeks to develop in the new era, it is only natural that games can become a link between tradition, the present and the future. In fact, many things are regular, but we always want to take shortcuts. The development of the cultural market has always been a process of quantitative change leading to qualitative change, and I am beginning to think that almost all cultural markets will go through a messy era before prosperity-in terms of games alone, the United States has had the Atari shock. Japan has had similar times, think about the background of Nintendo's grant system. But what's interesting is that, in a sense, the cultural industry is like a character in a game-accumulating enough experience, then changing jobs and making a qualitative change.

I do not think the current Chinese game market is in a moment of maturity, it still has many problems and challenges. But I still have confidence in it. I believe that after the rapid development of the past 20 years, China's game industry will surely usher in its own adulthood, and practitioners will get enough decent income and a clear and stable career path. Players will play good enough works, but more importantly, games will undertake the important mission of high-quality digital cultural works: inheriting history and letting creators express.

At that time, we will naturally feel the charm of Chinese traditional culture in the game. At the same time, we also export this feeling to the outside. In recent years, the development of Chinese games has improved a lot, which is also a natural process. We are also beginning to have cultural influence towards the world. The road is still long, but I have no doubt that this day will come sooner or later.

Why am I saying this? I still occasionally think of an afternoon about 26 years ago, when I might be seventeen or eighteen years old and in high school. I happened to buy a new issue of "Electronic Game Software" that afternoon, and saw the above article rectifying the name of the video game. The background of public opinion at that time was probably that the whole society strongly attacked the game.

Of course, I am very aggrieved and angry, but this is not the only grievance in my life. Later, I came into contact with the Internet, and at some point (I think it was about 2000 years ago), I was obsessed with writing "rectifying the name of the game" online, trying to demonstrate from various angles that human beings have enough demand for games.

But now, as I get older, I have begun to look at it more and more calmly. I can still see a lot of criticism of the game, some reasonable, some far-fetched, some even nonsense. In the face of these criticisms, I am fully aware that my retorts and even excuses are often meaningless, but I am no longer as angry and angry as I used to be.

This is not because I have become more peaceful (and maybe a little bit), but mainly because I have more confidence in the future. Although we can still hear some opposition, and although we are still infuriated by some arbitrary arguments, if we try to look at the "social evaluation and definition of games" in a longer time dimension, we will find that the attitude of the whole society towards games is actually changing, or it can be said to be progressive.

The news of "e-sports Nursing Home" appeared on the CCTV news that sooner or later we will fully accept the game, and sooner or later we will get used to it-- when the game is integrated into our lives and becomes a part of our daily life instead of appearing in the form of "spectacle". When we casually talk about the name of a game without explaining it. When we don't emphasize that "games are undervalued" (would you say "books are undervalued"? ).

Of course, I believe that society will treat the game peacefully and fairly, but I often don't believe that this day will come because I have waited too long. Now, however, I'm starting to think that the critical time has come, and mainstream society is finally starting to face up to the value of the game-maybe it's just the beginning, but it's good to have a beginning.

So, let's be happy and give ourselves some confidence in the future, and then we still have to talk about the meaning and function of the game over and over again, trying to tell everyone the value of the game until that day really comes.

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