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

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

In his eyes, every game is new to him: different versions, different ways of playing, and meeting different people.

In the Chinese game industry at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, the "Legend" series of games, like its name, achieved legendary success. Nowadays, in the minds of most people, it may just be an online joke with "Gu Tianle" and "scum Hui" and "come and cut me if you are brothers". Portraits of "legendary" players are drawn from jokes and memes: middle-aged men with stable jobs and high incomes are not active on social media, in stark contrast to shiny, noisy and rustic ads.

That may not be the case. The golden age of Legend has passed, but today, when smartphones and mobile games become mainstream, it can still attract new players, and some old players have never been far away.

Xiao Wang is a post-90s generation who has played Legend for 18 years.

In 2005, Xiao Wang and others attacked Shabak in an Internet cafe in Hubei province. Shabak is a scene in the online game "Blood Legend", in which the guild is proud to occupy this place.

Xiao Wang was in the fifth grade, and the other players were several times the age of Xiao Wang. When he entered the server, someone sent him brushed experience books to help him upgrade, and someone threw down a set of top graduation equipment for him to put on. After the rectification, he was pulled into a voice channel, and the combat commander began to arrange positions and guard points and explain the next tactics. Attacking Shabak will not only hold the gate, the front will advance all the way from outside the city to the city with the battle. In addition to the main entrance, there are several secret passages that can break through the defense, and the exit of the secret passage is also the focus of defense. If the front door is breached, you still need to withdraw into the palace at the right time to guard the last line.

The secret passage under Shabak was considered to be the beginning of the decline of the "Blood Legend" in 2005. The online game developed by South Korean manufacturer Actoz and represented by Shanda occupied Internet cafes across the country in 2001, but encountered server source code leaks in 2003, resulting in numerous private servers. After the heyday of version 1.76, there was no major version update of the game for more than a year because of copyright disputes, resulting in the loss of countless players.

With the continuous upgrading of the computer configuration of Internet cafes, the living space of "Legend of Blood" is constantly occupied by new games with better picture quality. At the end of 2005, Shanda announced that "Hot Blood Legend" changed from point card fees to free operation, gradually moving towards the profit model of "free games and mall props", thoroughly dividing "paying players" and "free players" into two camps.

At the same time, the private service of "Blood Legend" is becoming more and more prosperous. In the past, when charging by spot card, the point card price of 1 yuan for 3.5 hours was not a low threshold. In order to attract players to surf the Internet, many Internet bar owners simply set up their own private servers, and local private servers with regions and cities as the smallest units are gradually on the rise.

It was at this time that Xiao Wang began to play "Blood Legend".

Xiao Wang has forgotten the name of the private server he first played, but he still remembers the excitement when he first met the Legend of warm Blood. Before that, his impression of arcade halls and game consoles was completely subverted by "Legend" in just one day-everyone in the whole Internet bar had the same game on the screen, and this game could hold more people than an entire Internet bar.

Almost everyone's screen is "legendary" Xiao Wang doesn't spend much time on games, only going to Internet cafes for an hour or two every Friday night. It was not until he was in junior high school that Xiao Wang had more time and money: from Monday to Friday, his family would give him 1 yuan every morning and spend 50 cents on breakfast, which could save 50 cents. The money saved was saved by him to cover the night in Internet cafes. At first, it was 5 yuan a night, but then it slowly rose to 8 yuan or 10 yuan. At that time, he looked for new clothes on various publishing stations, and counted them on the list of friends, and they were all private server addresses.

What impressed Xiao Wang most was that he was dragged together to "attack the sand". When the gap between equipment and levels could not be widened, the number of members participating in the war became the key to determining the success or failure of the regiment war. The guild brought Xiao Wang into partnership, and the members of the guild uniformly brushed the equipment and distributed it to the participants. It was the first time that Xiao Wang came into contact with the "graduation costume", and it was also the first time to enter the world of adults.

"join the guild of Internet cafes to help attack the sand!" For Xiao Wang, online games have created a small society independent of real life, allowing him to hide the identity of his children and bring an equal imagination. However, this imagination was quickly broken: he met a player in the game, learned that the other party was a "girl", tried his best to equip her with equipment and took her to paint pictures with him. After they became acquainted with each other, the other party suddenly launched a video invitation on the chat software. Xiao Wang accepted, but didn't dare to turn on the camera on his side.

At the end of the video is an older woman who flickers in front of the camera and quickly gets to the point: she has been having trouble recently and wants to borrow money from Xiao Wang. Xiao Wang was silent and lost touch with her.

"she may not know that I only have the first year of junior high school in the end." Xiao Wang said.

In any case, Xiao Wang still misses the days when he just started playing "Blood Legend". At that time, the version of the game was still very backward, lacked many key functions, and it was very difficult to play, but the atmosphere among players was much kinder than it is now, and he made a lot of friends in the game. Although PvP is an immutable part of the game, there are many players who are willing to answer questions and help others.

"maybe it was because I didn't play much at that time, and I was thinking about 'legends' day and night." Xiao Wang said, "maybe this is the beauty of distance."

After free junior high school, Xiao Wang originally wanted to learn computer, but his parents were afraid that he would indulge in games in the name of learning computer and wanted him to do some more down-to-earth work, so they sent him to a vocational school to study Chinese cooking.

The days of being an apprentice are freer than studying. Xiao Wang has a salary and more time. When life is easy, he spends almost every weekend playing "legends" in Internet cafes.

Exploding equipment brings a lot of fun to Xiao Wang and his friends. He still remembers that he and his friend killed a monster in a retro version and lost a very rare piece of dragon god armor. My friend put it on excitedly, but a few days later, the server modified the data and raised the demand level of Dragon God equipment. My friend didn't even dare to take it off-- but I couldn't wear it any more.

The joy of playing rare equipment is beyond words, but at that time they did not want to resell the equipment, let alone cash it out. "it was just fun at that time."

In the past few years, all kinds of private services of "Blood Legend" have sprung up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. Wang has played many versions, from 1.50 to 1.85, and each server has a game cycle of almost three days, which happens to be a weekend. "take Shabak" is often seen as the end of the game content, and then there will be only PvP content, when there will be fewer and fewer players. Xiao Wang doesn't like "fast food clothes" or clothes that are too "abnormal". After these clothes go in, they don't have to hang up, they can be upgraded by eating experience books, and they can be fully dressed in a few hours, but he also admits that fast food is an inevitable trend. It's not just legends that become like this.

On the occasion of the sand attack, Xiao Wang was almost obsessed with all kinds of private servers. After work, he worked in an office canteen with two days off so that he could play games all night on weekends. But the days are not always so free, in most cases, cooking is always hard, the kitchen is smoky and burning, always hot, sometimes only one or two days off a month. It is obviously a waste of a day or two to upgrade. Xiao Wang can only choose those fast-food versions that can graduate in a day or two.

Most of the time, Xiao Wang fights monsters manually, and he prefers bizarre revisions to functional optimizations. In addition to the conventional treasure, sand attack, each version of the skills learning, equipment values, set effects are not the same, there are also differences in play. Every once in a while, there will be some new versions, there will always be a sense of freshness, different private servers have their own meaning-just like playing a stand-alone game module.

At that time, it was not difficult to find an interesting version. After dealing with each other for so many years, Xiao Wang has almost memorized the web addresses of various server publishing stations, and he is also aware of the claims in the publicity and the possible "pits". If you like the version, you will spend one or two hundred yuan to "support the server". He does not deny that part of the expense is to make up for the regrets of his childhood. When he was a child, he had neither the money to play in Internet cafes for a while, nor the money to recharge in games; after work, he was finally able to spend money "openly" with his own money.

Xiao Wang gradually realized that the environment of private service was beginning to be different.

The biggest impact on the environment is the gold mining model that appeared in 2013, which is now the source of the well-known advertising of "equipment recycling and cash in gold". At that time, a private server named "Ice and Snow three professions" was very popular at that time. In order to stimulate players' consumption, the private server added an equipment recycling system in the game: the best equipment brushed could be sold to GM, won yuan treasure, or even realized. Before this, many players would trade equipment privately with cash, but did not form a scale, at this time, "official" recycling has set off a craze, so that players who want to recover costs or even make a small profit continue to pour in. The frenzy brought by this model began to spread among the major servers.

In addition to equipment recycling, there is also an important gold means-sand donation. In this kind of server, a kind of transaction currency which can only be purchased with cash and supports cash withdrawal is often added. Sand donation means that full-service players can get a certain attribute bonus by donating transaction coins to Shabak, while putting the donated funds into a bonus pool. Of the bonus, the operator takes 20%, and of the remaining 80%, 70% is shared equally by the guild that successfully captured Shabak, and 30% is given to the loser as a consolation. If you can take Shabak, you can withdraw the trading currency, which is equivalent to making other players' money. The war between gold players has become an arms race: it takes a lot of money, time and skill.

The sand donation ranking of a server can be exchanged for an attribute bonus. Xiao Wang hates playing gold suits from the bottom of his heart, and he doesn't like those professional gold players. In his eyes, "legendary" private server changed from the beginning of gold. Xiao Wang heard a long time ago that gold mining can make money, and some friends asked him if he wanted to play together, but he knew that gold mining would make him lose the fun of playing games-professional gold farmers had to turn day and night upside down, constantly changing new areas, and operating in front of the screen all day. "it's not like playing games, or even a player."

The proliferation of gold suits also makes it more and more difficult to find them. Xiao Wang prefers "entertainment clothes": no recycling, willing to recharge a little money, pure play. But after the gold mode is rampant, if the server is not marked with gold, it can hardly attract any players. Xiao Wang can only find one or two entertainment clothes among the pieces of gold clothes in the publishing station, and it will take a day to find them when he has time. Without enough players, entertainment clothing is also difficult to support operating costs.

Xiao Wang's work has changed as well as Legend. After changing several jobs, he summed up a rule: there is no good one for any urgent job, no matter how high the salary is. Urgent recruitment shows that job mobility is large, post mobility means that people can not be retained, it is estimated that the work pressure is very great. There may also be leisure jobs, but most of them will not be left to outsiders.

Xiao Wang doesn't think he can see a future in this business. The best treatment, that is, only the head chef who gets the bonus can earn tens of thousands of yuan a month, but there are only a handful of people who can become the head chef. Even with more than ten years of work experience, it depends on talent and ability. You have to work in the kitchen all day to adjust the relationship between the boss and the chef, make plans for the restaurant.

But Xiao Wang never wanted to make money in the game. He has also heard of those "gambling suits". In these private servers, the whole game is a big casino, in which players bet with yuan treasure and the operator takes a share. You can gamble not only in casinos, but also on the next map, and competition among players can even gamble. The server loudspeaker scrolls that so-and-so players have won "× × Yuanbao" or "× × costumes". Xiao Wang vaguely feels a little scary, and he has never touched it. "if you go in, you will definitely gamble. this and the young people who earn thousands of yuan a month suddenly see that someone can earn their own 10-year salary on a gamble, and no one can stand it."

Gambling is the biggest minefield, but there are still many people who miss the original atmosphere of the game. Players play games for the sake of playing games, are friendly to each other, and can make friends in the game. But gradually, the trend of fast food promotes private services, the pace is getting faster and faster, two-hour graduation, automatic hang-up, automatic recovery, click and send. The game also encourages people to attack each other more and more. "if you find one to take it in now, if you buy fury (cash-paid Buff), people will kill you and get paid. If you don't buy fury and you don't have enough attributes, you can't play at all."

"the law of the jungle is very cruel."

In 2019, a friend in Dongguan, the King of France, asked Xiao Wang if he wanted to work with him for Japanese food.

The French King is a friend that Xiao Wang met in the Legend. In 2009, when he was brushing pictures, he met the king of dharma. when he saw that the other party was using the "Dharma" lineup of double wizards, he did not even think about it. He rushed up and took a second. He did not expect that the other party not only did not avenge him after his resurrection, but began to talk with him. The two became acquainted with each other and often painted pictures together. Found an interesting server, he will also share with the French king, the two agreed to "cut down" together.

The French king's hometown is in Hunan, Xiao Wang's hometown is in Hubei, very close, the two are only one year apart, and they both happen to be catering workers. Not only games, the two have a lot of common topics, usually talk about everything. Therefore, as soon as they met, they said everything. The first time we met offline, the French king took his girlfriend. "as soon as we met, we were always bragging, and we talked about so much that his girlfriend was surprised." Xiao Wang is very proud.

The French king has been a master in a Japanese restaurant for six or seven years, and Xiao Wang has to start as an apprentice. As an apprentice, I get one or two thousand dollars a month for food and accommodation. However, Xiao Wang feels that making Japanese food is much more comfortable than Chinese food, because it is Mingjiao's rotary sushi, the chef stays with the customer, and the air conditioner can blow together. This made Xiao Wang quite comfortable: "the temperature in the kitchen was too high before, and my underwear was wet with sweat when I got off work."

There is an air conditioner to blow on, which is what Xiao Wang likes (the picture has nothing to do with the characters in the article) the days as an apprentice are not idle. During the lunch break, Xiao Wang used this time to hang up his clothes. At this time, he does not have much time to manually brush strange, can only choose the version with the function of hanging up. On one occasion, he remembered eating noodles in a nearby Cantonese-style sugar shop when he suddenly saw that a skill book had been dropped from the server in the group. When there was a rare drop, the trumpet would inform the full server. He didn't care at first, but when he looked intently, he found that he had dropped his account number and ran desperately to the dormitory without even eating noodles. When he waited for the dormitory, his heart was half cold: his role of hanging up was hacked to death, and the skill book naturally disappeared.

Japanese restaurants get off work late, so he always misses the 10:00 sand attack. Sometimes, when he got off work with the French king, they braved the rain to rush to the dormitory and rented houses in order to catch the tail of the last sand attack. In retrospect, he still misses the days in Dongguan: delicious food, seeing brothers every day, and being able to cut clothes together.

After the Spring Festival in 2020, Xiao Wang's life was interrupted. Because of the epidemic, he quit his apprenticeship and went back to his hometown. At home in Hubei, he couldn't go out for a long time, and his parents couldn't help nagging in their ears when they saw that he didn't have a job.

After thinking about it, Xiao Wang tried to become an anchor. At first, he opened the live broadcast purely out of interest and desire to share, but he was shy and too shy to talk. Later, after discovering that live streaming could bring benefits, he began to change his style and actively chat with viewers. Because the technology is good, and the "post-90s" identity appears young in the "legendary" player group, it attracts a lot of peers and, at best, thousands of fans, which can also bring a steady income.

Until one day, the live broadcast platform suddenly stopped broadcasting "Legend of Blood". Due to copyright issues, the live broadcast of "Legend of Blood" has been in a gray area, and the rules of the live platform are constantly changing. "if you can broadcast it one day, you may suddenly fall out the day after." In more than two years, Xiao Wang has tossed around several platforms.

Many platforms also have strict restrictions on live streaming content. If URL or inappropriate fields appear in the chat box, Wang's two-year live broadcast career may also be blocked. Wang has accumulated a lot of experience during the most difficult period of time. He used to broadcast more than 12 hours a day, day and night upside down, basically sitting in front of the computer except sleeping and eating, constantly answering on-screen comments and looking for topics. He gradually felt that his body could not hold up, and tiredness was the most direct warning. He realized that his body was also very different from when he played games all night 10 years ago, and that being an anchor was not a long-term solution after all.

Now, Xiao Wang has found himself a new job: he has contacted some authorized "legendary" server operators to advise on the new version as an old player.

On the one hand, this job is less stressful than being an anchor. on the other hand, Xiao Wang still has a little hope for Legend.

"the business model of playing Golden Services is doomed to self-destruction." Xiao Wang said that even if the licensing problem is solved, playing gold server has still caused a lot of damage to the game ecology. He wants to make suggestions to operating companies to increase the proportion of entertainment clothing. In his vision, as there are fewer and fewer gold suits, there will be more and more room for entertainment server players, which will make more and more players willing to return to the "legend".

"many older players have missed the window to learn new things, and the cost of learning new games is too high, so they will eventually return to 'legends'." Xiao Wang said firmly.

He still misses the time when he first played Legend: the version of the game was backward, lacked key functions, was hard to play, but enough to open the door to a new world for a child. In his eyes, every game is new to him: different versions, different ways of playing, and meeting different people.

(at the request of the interviewees, the characters in the article are all aliases. )

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