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

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

Those new problems related to the players' blog will always emerge with the development of the times.

Today, we talk about a topic that we may avoid-- "death". This not only involves the material demise of people or things, but also extends to the related topics of virtual retention, including account numbers and props.

At the end of last year, several things came together, such as Blizzard's national service, such as the outbreak, which caused a kind of "awakening", a sharp increase in the sense of "death" or "disappearance" of many of my friends, and made me start to pay attention to and think about these things.

Time flies, even though we often say that the history of Chinese video games is still very short, Chinese players are very young, but there are already many players who have entered the older or even the old group. At the age of 50 to 60, both the body and the "cyber body" have enough accumulation. In the face of "death" in various senses, can it be different from the mentality of the past, so as to have a different understanding?

Let's start with a warm sense of historical accumulation-the father of a 3-inch disk and a 5-inch floppy disk! Game archiving and recollection since ancient times, human beings need to record and recall, from knotted notes to the depiction of symbols, written records of history, people always want to retain the past. This reflects that human beings attach importance to memories and is the inheritance of culture, but more often, what they want to leave behind is an authentic emotion and feeling, and it is also the complete demise of these emotions that people rely on memory to fight.

Game archiving is a kind of existence with similar meaning, after customs clearance or experience content is over, archiving still has the value of recording memories for players. In particular, compared with photos, videos and other spectator-only media, video games are inherently interactive and immersive, which makes the memories of players more special.

The most traditional game archive is the achievement and trace of a virtual life of the player, and it is a monument to his life in a different world. People always need to "revisit" and "hometown". It can bring great spiritual comfort and is the best source of sense of security that can make people move forward for a long time.

In the real world and at the material level, the rapid development over the past few decades has made many memories quietly turn to dust. The trail that I missed when I was a child, the shop I like, and the alma mater that I studied at may have been gone long ago, but as long as you have left a long archive, then Shilipo is still there. Spiritual home is also a kind of home, archiving is a ticket to arrive quickly.

Nostalgia from time to time, often "go home" to see, of course, archiving is just a limited pile of data, but with the game, can be extended to the function and potential is not limited to this. The ancient StarCraft has added a "replay" function, which can fully record the whole process of a game, and players are free to watch the movements of friends or opponents on a fixed timeline without videotaping. It may be a display of operating habits, or the first perspective to appreciate the classic "underworld scene", which is much more interesting than simple photos and videos, and is easier to share with others.

The effect of this function continues in later games such as "Watch Vanguard". Once it is replayed, it is a complete reproduction of virtual history and a complete restoration of atmosphere and emotion, which is difficult to provide by traditional memory carriers. For example, "tomorrow's Ark" activity reproduction, can read the player's own battle records last year, although can only go back to a year ago, but look at their own lineup, also do not have some feelings.

Unfortunately, the playback function of "Watch Pioneer" is only valid in the current version, or it has to be recorded as a video to keep it. For players born in the 1980s and 1990s, the archive belongs to them in a complete sense, as long as it is well preserved. the data won't disappear. However, there is no lack of hidden worries in the way we keep the archives under the iterative development of software and hardware. Recently, the Steam platform has announced that it will stop supporting Windows 7 systems, and this bottom line may continue to extend to Windows 10 or 11 over time. If an old game is difficult to run, the archive loses most of its value-what if the key is still there, but the home is gone?

From the perspective of game history, the rich simulator support allows us to play many old games that have almost disappeared, but the simulator archives are not necessarily compatible with the original game archives, many simulator archives are not common to each other, the older PS era, and the hassle of how memory card data is read to the computer-- in short, even if you keep valuable archives from how many years ago. The goal of protecting Cyber's hometown still has a long way to go.

In addition to the game video, there are also good memories of fighting with friends for more than 20 years. When the memory no longer belongs to us, we may be able to pin part of our hopes on AI, for example, in the near future, even if the archive cannot be replayed, AI can completely learn data based on the playback function to copy teammates who are consistent with friends' habits.

In order to fight against time and "death", some game ontologies are constantly updated to provide support for various systems. I was able to run StarCraft from 1998 without any patches on the Win10 platform. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised that the money I spent more than 20 years ago could no longer be described as "well spent".

The blessing of feelings is always a good card, everyone knows it, but I also know very well that this is only an example. In the era of service-oriented games, more people are still thinking about "the present", which brings embarrassing new problems: nowadays, following online games, service-oriented games and subscription systems are cloud games and cloud archives. If it is an online game, then the progress is not possible to be saved on the client side. Who does it belong to?

If the previous "death" games and disappearing operators are not well-known enough, then what just happened to Blizzard is a lesson for players. People once thought that Blizzard's national service was unshakable, and with this sense of security, many veteran players could work for more than a decade, and even gave rise to a story about a son inheriting the account of his late father, World of Warcraft. As a result, it has been gone for more than ten years. Is there any virtual wealth and electronic heritage to speak of? Blizzard left Chinese players only a "electronic urn" that does not know when it will be completely buried.

These tickets back to cyber's hometown have gradually become a link that can not be ignored in the game of interests between manufacturers and players. But when it comes to solutions, the world is "actively exploring".

If you add the deceased player to the game, will you be able to stay forever in the cyberspace? look forward to the future with a more user-friendly and customized archive design, so that the player's archive will not disappear with the reinstallation of the system; the player's virtual property, including account numbers, props, progress, etc., will not be lost because the operator shuts down the server. Some domestic mobile games and online games have been forced by players to practice the aftermath of "non-stop service": the game is out of operation, no longer updated, the server remains open, and players can log in and have a look. it's like an Internet museum that you can visit at any time. No one knows how long this state will last, but there is no way out, right?

Especially for the current generation of Chinese players, most of them are exposed to mobile games and online games, and may feel quite unfamiliar with local archiving. What matters more is the money, time and emotion they pay in this account year after year. Therefore, for them, being able to go back to their "cyber hometown" should be regarded as a kind of "natural human rights". But to get pregnant with this old, only if the game is still in service-after all, not every game company can be like CAPCOM, when your child grows up to rebuild the familiar Spanish resort.

CAPCOM relies on another meaning of "immortality". The time span of several "biochemical Evil 4" cold meals is long enough for new players to grow up. When it comes to passing on fire, this seems a distant topic for gamers, but I already have a lot of friends playing games with their children-"Mom and Dad are Pokemon trainers at your age!"

In families that do not object to their children's exposure to video games, nine times out of ten, the first games played by many children come from their parents' old devices and accounts, which more or less arouses the imagination of parents-how much game legacy do I have to leave to my children?

Among other things, Pokemon may indeed be passed on to the next generation, and the story of parents' old partners coming to take care of their children is not uncommon. In the broader Internet world, the issue of account inheritance has been discussed a lot, and some have even reached a clear conclusion. But in the game field, the answer to this question may not be urgent, and the emergence of each special case will lead to more thinking.

The Steam platform has stated in the user agreement that "you cannot sell your account, charge a fee for others to use it, or transfer it in any other form". Most domestic manufacturers have similar regulations that users only have the right to use their accounts, not ownership. In the case of Blizzard, there have been cases in which children are allowed to inherit their father's account, which can be completed by providing the will, death certificate and identity information of the deceased. But this is really only a few cases.

In more news reports, we can see this description:

"in judicial practice, there have been cases of division of virtual property such as Wechat official account and game account. However, whether virtual property can be inherited as an inheritance is not clearly defined in the law of our country."

"whether the game account can be inherited depends on the agreement between the player and the game company." now some game companies agree that the ownership of the game account is not owned by the game player, which means that the player account cannot be inherited. "

Unfinished conclusion archiving, account numbers, virtual property, "death" games, and new problems related to players' cyber body will always emerge with the development of the times. "how to face the Paper Man with Mom's Voice" or "beat the Boss that Dad can't beat" was once a romantic and interesting thing that was once regarded as a fantasy theme, but now it has gradually become a reality as a new generation of players grow up. I believe that in the future, Ching Ming Festival, climbing the "cyber hill" that his parents and even his grandparents once loved, will also be a good way to commemorate.

But today, I don't want to make it too heavy, so I'd like to relax and think that these troubles may eventually be solved by AI or something more advanced, and there will be more humane ways to deal with them, so as to promote social progress. Let's wait and see with curiosity and caution.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.