A few days ago, at the 10th anniversary celebration of League of Legends, the League of Legends mobile game (hereinafter referred to as "LOLM") also invited executives from three mobile phone manufacturers to help out. They are millet group vice president Chang Cheng , VIVO senior vice president and chief technology officer Shi Yujian, and OPPO vice president and president of software engineering division Wu Henggang.
Tencent senior vice president Ma Xiaoyi mentioned at the scene: "Games and the development of hardware technology complement each other."
The continuous improvement of creativity and expressiveness of games has always been an important driving force for the development of hardware technology; Improved hardware technology also supports more innovative explorations in the game.
The continuous technological advancement and design innovation make the game, the "super digital scene", better connect the virtual and reality, and help industries to achieve more benign interactions.
Subsequently, the three executives of Xiaomi, VIVO and OPPO expressed their intention to promote the development of mobile hardware and give players more convenience. Picking at this juncture of LOLM, I really borrowed a good wave of wind.
"Games and hardware complement each other" is not a strange knowledge. Even players born after 00 have heard of the "graphics war" in recent years. Graphics cards and games have helped each other all the way to today, and a group of miners have been "sweeping love" for players in the middle of the road, which also shows that hardware and applications are relatively independent and difficult to distinguish.
The entanglement between the game and the hardware even affected the " Win95 "
In the 90s, when the PC was also called " microcomputer", when they entered the computer room and had to wear shoe covers, many players today are there. I have played various small games in the computer class. My "information technology" teacher at the time, the first sentence in class every day was: "Computers are for playing." It is of course an exaggeration to say that computers are purely for "playing", but for most home users,From the early days of card minesweeping, to the graphics card crisis in the future, to today's "replacement of graphics cards for VR", how many can you say that your own computer is never used for playing?
Players who have installed the graphics driver by themselves know that regardless of whether it is an N card or A card, they regard gamers as a large customer group. In the few minutes after the program is installed, the graphics card-related advertisements can be found in three pages. There are two pages of popular games display. This similar situation has already extended to the mobile phone industry. Nowadays, the release of almost any high-end flagship mobile phone is accompanied by a smooth operation preview of popular mobile games. For example, iPhone12 "earlier" LOL mobile games when it was released. Of course, we can say that this is a chicken-and-egg problem. In any case, mobile phones and mobile games complement each other, and they have come to a realm similar to that between PC and stand-alone games.
Older console players, every time they think about this, they will smile with their hearts-today’s gaming PCs and PC games, and even running the most mainstream operating system Windows for games, back then, in terms of “gaming” The influence is far inferior to that of specialized "game consoles." The reason why the entire game publishing market has reached the point where a hundred flowers bloom today is that the various hosts in the past have also given a small push.
After all, "information technology" used to play much earlier than the experience of ordinary players. The earliest tennis game appeared in 1958. At that time, computer workers racked their brains to let "ordinary people"-or "customers" understand the value of computers, but until they made a game that only had black and white and two colors. When the "net" and "ball" games are played, customers will stop and watch when they visit the laboratory.
In 1962, "Spacewar!" was also born in the laboratory. "It didn't leave too many impressions in the players' minds, but it left a great prototype of object movement, collision and environmental interaction in the history of the game. In the 20 years since then, "information technology" in the literal sense has developed rapidly. Computers have not only left the laboratory, but even entered the homes of some Xianrui technology fans. Born.However, a great barrier appeared in front of all game makers and players-distribution.
Although in the 1960s, the original game makers had thought of using cables to spread the game (this day imagined that it would not become true until the emergence of real "online games" in the 90s), but the games at that time were still standard As a geek product, the difficulty of distributing this thing is even higher than that of making Mengxin search and install a series of mods of Laogun 5. The original solution can be said to be a "detachable board "-does it sound familiar?
This must have aroused the childhood memories of the red and white gamers, but in fact, the red and white game has been more than 20 years after that. As early as the rise of personal computers in the 1980s, the advent of CD-ROM accelerated the distribution of games-but at that time personal computers were very expensive, and optical drives were also very expensive. PC games were definitely not the first choice of ordinary players. In 1994, the release of Play Station allowed many people who had never touched a PC to get in touch with games at a price that was much cheaper than a PC. At the same time, they also came into contact with the excellent medium of CD.
What is the result? In the era of Windows95, Microsoft released the CD-ROM version of Windows95. Of course, we can't say that this is the credit of Sony PS, but the game promotes the medium of "CD" and the hardware of "optical drive", which can be said to be no small supplement.
This trend will develop more obviously in the future. Those who are concerned about Japanese pop culture in the 1990s should be very aware of the major function of PS2 in Japan at the time-watching DVDs. To be precise, many Japanese people buy PS2 just to watch DVDs that have greatly improved image quality compared to CDs. Even if you don't remember how expensive PCs and VCDs were at the time, you should remember that many families were still watching video tapes at that time? And the picture quality of DVD is comparable to that of video tapes.
In the PS3 era, the entanglement between games and hardware, or the promotion of hardware and related industries and industries by the content itself,Has become a hurdle that cannot be bypassed. Toshiba's HD-DVD was launched in early 2006, almost one year ahead of its rival Blu-ray to educate the market; however, the PS3 released by SONY at the end of 2006 allowed Blu-ray’s market share to crush HD-DVD— —The vast majority of Blu-ray players are the PS3 itself.
Strictly speaking, HD-DVD does not lack excellent game content support, but Microsoft XBOX HD-DVD drive is external and needs to be purchased with additional money, while PS3’s Blu-ray comes with its own of. This small gap has rewritten history so profoundly one year later. What is this called, the pattern (SONY sells PS3 at a loss).
game battlefield, generations of innovations urge people to old A bloody path was made among the opponents who were cheaper and more cost-effective.
"Thor's Hammer" is an FPS milestone that many players have "heard of and never seen". Today, Wiki sets the tone for this great game like this:
Quake promotes some of the major developments in 3D games: the player images and monsters are all three-dimensional models instead of the previous two-dimensional sprites; in the game The world of is also created as a true three-dimensional space, rather than rendering a two-dimensional map with high information into a 3D image. At the same time, it also combines lightmaps and dynamic light sources, instead of using sector-based static lighting in past games.
Quake first adopted a fluid control scheme, which uses the mouse to watch/aim/orient (mouselook) and use the keyboard to move forward/backward/sideways.It is generally believed that this game has brought about the revolution of independent 3D graphics. "GLQuake" was the first application that truly demonstrated the capabilities of 3dfx's "Voodoo" chipset. To this day, we can still feel the impact of Quake engine.
3dfx co-founder Scott Schillers once said that before Voodoo was launched, they took the initiative to find John Carmack who was in charge of the Thor's Hammer engine. 3dfx's excellent ability to increase the number of frames and improve picture quality touched Carmack , which made the latter add support for Glide in "Thor Hammer". Glide was one of the mainstream 3D APIs at the time, and it was also a dedicated 3D API for Voodoo. This collaboration between Quake and Voodoo graphics card has become a good story to rewrite the history of the game.
Everyone knows the follow-up story. Quake and its sequel or suspected sequel sold more than 4 million copies, creating a big FPS boom in the future. Without FPS, there would be no half-life; without half-life, there would be no powerful Valve ; without Valve, Steam might not exist. And Steam is the main reason why many players still need a PC today? Nowadays, the well-developed V agency, in turn, has invested money to vigorously support the VR industry. This is actually a wonderful cycle.
In the above process, the 3dfx that released the Voodoo graphics card that year has disappeared in the long river of history. But similar history is still repeating itself. This time, it's the mobile device's turn.
Today's smart phone users, some people have transitioned from keyboard phones or even full keyboard phones. In those days, "touch screen" was not something that should be taken care of, and even a little heresy. Personally, I have experienced three full-keyboard phones before finally making up my mind to switch to a keyless phone-which shows how difficult it is to change the inertia of the industry and the habits of consumers.
mentioned above,The legendary engineer John Carmack, who developed "Thor's Hammer" and blasted 3D graphics cards into the hearts of players, once criticized "the lack of buttons on Apple devices is an obstacle to game design." However, not long after "Angry Birds" came out, all the controversy disappeared. It is true that talented people have come out from generation to generation, and they have led the way for hundreds of years.
Having said that, I would like to ask, how many people entered the Apple Pit because of the troubling mobile games on Apple phones and iPads? In any case, the concept of "good games without keys" has not been questioned since then, and many outstanding touch screen games have exploded in those years, just like and Nintendo. Like several masterpieces that are bound to be released, they have contributed a lot to Apple's position on the mobile terminal. Next time, will the one who becomes the conservative Carmack be Apple itself?
Apple is not only a hardware manufacturer, but also a publisher. Distribution channels still affect the game market. In addition to the various app stores, the mobile network behind it also said: Without me, you would not be possible.
There is no need to enumerate the differences between mainstream games in the 2G, 3G, and 4G era. How big is the game installation package now, and how big was it back then? In fact, this is still reflected in the uneven network environment around the world. When Tencent promoted the game in some parts of South America, it took into account the local download speed and deliberately reduced the size of the material-otherwise the player would see the game download for several hours, and who would be in the mood to play it? Time is one aspect. Don’t forget that traffic is more expensive when the internet speed is slow.
mobile games have even turned around and affected the console. Now it seems that the touch screen of NS , the back panel of PSV , and the settings that handhelds can generally connect to mobile networks today are hardly unaffected by mobile games. Now, this game world is like a circle. No matter how isolated it is usually, the penetration of each other is carved into the bones.
What will LOLM bring?
In fact, the relationship between Tencent and gaming hardware really did not happen in recent years. ROG game phone 2, Black Shark game phone 3/3S, and Red Magic game phone 6, are all masterpieces of Chinese game phones.
Taking Black Shark as an example, due to the special optimization and exclusive rights of Tencent game , in the two days after the release of Black Shark 3, the number of reservations on the entire network exceeded 5 million, and the total platform sales on the day of the first release exceeded 100 million; Tencent Red Devils Gaming mobile phone 6, the whole network sold more than 10,000 in 1 minute, and sold more than 100 million in 9 minutes. These gaming phones have created another world apart from the mainstream flagships on the tall.
2014, when Tencent and Intel jointly established a game innovation laboratory, the focus of the industry was still on the PC. Later, when working with Qualcomm and Huawei , the center of gravity obviously tilted to the mobile end.
In fact, nowadays, we talk about mobile e-sports. Around the mobile terminal of LOL, what is built around the mobile terminal of LOL is not just a "game world", but also an e-sports arena. After all, LOL is the world Influential game. In this e-sports arena, well-known players will still carry their own equipment, they will become the spokespersons of major hardware manufacturers-external keyboards, speakers, mobile headsets, etc., there will be more exposure opportunities, hundreds of millions of people around the world In front of LOL players.
Back to the core mobile phone performance itself. By then, the ability to run LOLM smoothly will probably become the benchmark for dedicated gaming phones. And 's high frame rate and high image quality will be a test for flagship phones in the new era-no wonder Xiaomi and OV are busy coming to the platform at the 10th anniversary celebration.
The layout of Tencent and major hardware manufacturers can also enable LOLM to bring players a better experience.
This is still an endless story between game and hardware.
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