The "national trend" elements, including history, art and tourism resources, are not only becoming the aesthetic benchmark for domestically produced games and joint venture games, but also making video games an effective medium for spreading Chinese culture and telling Chinese stories. For example, " King of Glory " linked with elements such as Harbin Ice and Snow World and Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes to develop a "cultural and creative skin", and " Tianya Mingyue Dao " linked with Zhangjiajie Scenic Area to develop a new game map. The most talked about new work - "Codename: To Jin Yong", an open world game developed by Photon Studio, not only emphasizes "orthodox martial arts" in theme, but also highlights the technology of using the Unreal 5 engine to create "real-life Huashan" landforms and scenery. .
Indeed, compared with the share and influence of traditional mass media such as Chinese movies and TV series in the global market, video games are obviously more advantageous due to their outstanding market size and communication efficiency. Using video games to carry traditional culture to achieve "national trends overseas" has also become a hot topic in the cultural field.
However, this design concept and aesthetic mechanism are always accompanied by controversy. "Glory of the King" has questioned the cultural value of video games because the character design involves historical nihilism and other issues; "Hundred Scenes of the South of the Yangtze River" derogated the image of Yue Fei, which directly hurt the national sentiment. Named by the central media.
When video games are faced with carrying more cultural missions, the accumulation and collage of traditional cultural elements is not only not an effective path, but also a dangerous trap. How can domestic games correctly utilize local cultural elements and truly serve as the media pioneer of "national trends going overseas"?
The starting point of integration:
Video games and online literature
To correctly use local cultural elements, we must first be wary of a "painted skin" logic, that is, just simplifying rich national culture into replaceable, low value-added element symbols , such as changing the character "skin" to leverage the market potential of different countries and regions.
But it is not easy to break through this logic. The mainstream types of video games today come from the definitions of dominant industries such as Europe, the United States, and Japan, which is doomed to the cultural bias of video games. For example, the birth of RPG games cannot escape the systematic relationship with European and American board games/card games, as well as the textual relationship with Western fantasy legends. When domestic games of the same type try to inherit Chinese culture with elemental symbols, "The King" The miracle doctor Bian Que in "Glory" "automatically" becomes a witch doctor or warlock with the ability to use poison. Therefore, the continuity of Chinese traditional culture elements often encounters breaks in the gameplay and text levels of video games and is automatically rewritten. The culture of "going global" through online games may become rootless at any time.
Therefore, it is necessary for us to find a more solid context for domestic electronic games, and along this context, we can connect the cultural heritage between domestic electronic games and Chinese traditional culture. This guides us to return to the time when domestic games took place and discover how they were born after absorbing traditional cultural resources.
In 1995, at the initial stage of China's Internet culture, the stand-alone game "Legend of Sword and Fairy" came out and achieved great market success, and is often considered the pioneer of domestic electronic games; in 1996, the online original community "Jin Yong Inn" "The "fan forum model" opened the starting point for the development of Chinese online literature. Just as the game text of "Sword of Immortality" is closely related to martial arts novels such as " Shushan Swordsman " and " Meteor Butterfly Sword ", the Internet literature starting from the name " Jin Yong " also draws nutrients from traditional martial arts novels. And from the mixed development of different themes, fairy novels were born that were born out of Huang Lao's studies and have the characteristics of youth subculture.
Obviously, compared to the currently popular concept of "video and game integration", video games and online literature actually have a deeper foundation for cultural integration. At the beginning of the birth of Internet culture, these two new things with subcultural colors invariably chose martial arts literature as their cultural resources - and this is the difference between them and today's domestic games when facing traditional cultural elements.If the latter adds "national style" elements to the Western game world, then early video games and online literature touch on the traditional cultural resources behind "Jin Yongs" in the process of quoting martial arts literature. It is precisely because of this that this expression of cultural elements will appear more layered and realistic.
Enlightenment from "Internet Literature Going Global":
Cultural Position and Business System
Compared with the great success of domestic games in recent years in "going global" through the use of capital, the path for overseas dissemination of online literature is obviously more difficult. It is precisely because of this that it has embarked on a path that is different from domestic games.
In 2014, Lai Jingping, a Chinese-American who was obsessed with Jin Yong's martial arts novels, created the website "Wuxiaworld" in order to create a better communication forum for overseas martial arts novel fans while translating the Chinese online literary work "Pan Long". This forum-type novel website quickly gathered a large number of overseas fans of Chinese online literature. In 2017, when the website world ranking (Alexa ranking) of , the leading domestic online literature website, Chinese website , was still hovering around 8,000 in the world, the Alexa ranking of "Martial Arts World" was already as high as 1,000. The "Martial Arts World", which does not have huge investment to pave the way, has established a successful cultural position in the North American reading market by relying on the unique appeal of "Cultivation to Immortality" novels such as "Coiling Dragon". Soon, domestic industry giants such as " starting point international " brought mature online literature operation experience to the overseas market, making the updated model and paid reading experience of overseas online literature synchronized with the domestic one.
Nowadays, these overseas websites have also attracted and cultivated a large number of foreign "Internet article" authors to carry out fan-meaning writing around the creation system of "Xiu Xian" articles. As a result, Chinese Internet literature has completed its "going out" from cultural elements to the commercial system, forming a guiding influence on the writing style and reading experience of global "Internet literature", and has therefore dominated the "play" and "playing methods" of Internet literature. text".
From this point of view, domestic games and online literature, which were once parallel, have embarked on two completely different development paths, and we can also regard this difference as a break in the domestic game cultural tradition. As a media carrier whose market value and communication effect are far superior to online literature, when domestic games seek to connect with traditional culture, they have reason to explore a more solid path for cultural "going overseas".
Games "going overseas"
need to stimulate players' potential
But this does not mean that we have the ability to oppose existing game types, gameplay and systems. So, facing the deep-rooted influence of Western game culture, where is the breakthrough for domestic games?
In 2016, the game-adapted movie " Warcraft " was released and ultimately earned a global box office of US$430 million, ranking first in the box office list of game-adapted movies in film history. However, the Chinese market contributed more than half of the box office of US$221 million. Hollywood box office analyst Jack Burke said bluntly, "If this movie does not become popular in China, it will be a complete failure." This shows that when faced with the movie "Warcraft", Chinese audiences and the world A prominent aesthetic rift developed among the audience. This crack in
may become the key to the collapse of domestic games. For Chinese gamers and the mainstream audience of "Warcraft", "World of Warcraft" is an online game full of youthful memories. After watching the movie in the theater, many viewers choose to log in to games that have not been online for a long time and "play again". "Replaying familiar scenes from the movie - this has almost become another version of "culture and tourism fusion". The key issue is that in this typical European and American game, Chinese audiences/players have produced consumer meaning and aesthetic value that European and American players do not have.
This means that player-centered game culture has become a key force in breaking the cultural bias of the global game industry. Indeed, facing the first-mover advantage of the European and American game industries, it is difficult for the electronic game industry to "expand overseas" like online literature, and it is also difficult to quickly change the mainstream game mechanisms.But we can still use other media - such as the "Warcraft" movie - to produce a completely different game experience and market voice.
This gives the hot concept of "video and game integration" a new value: spreading Chinese game culture. However, the object of "fusion" is not exclusive to movies. Take the Kuaishou blogger "Li Daoyou" as an example. His nostalgic short videos around early Internet cafes and games have gained nearly 5 million fans and 50 million "likes", which not only fully expresses the localized gaming cultural atmosphere, but also The form of short video as a medium to carry game culture itself belongs to a "national trend" of "film and game integration". China’s technological and market advantages in the field of UGC short videos can provide convenient communication channels for the export of this kind of game cultural experience.
Therefore, on the one hand, we need to face up to the profound impact of the global game industry on fields such as gameplay and text, and realize that this is an irresistible force for creators; on the other hand, we should call on players’ creativity and other The communication power of the media forms the reverse output of Chinese video game cultural discourse, making player practice on the consumer side an effective means of dispelling the cultural bias and stipulations of the game industry.
Author: Zhao Yi (Associate Professor, School of Film and Television, Shanghai Normal University)
Editor: Fan Xin
Planning: Shao Ling
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