"The auspicious hour has arrived, and the new people have entered the church."
The sound of gongs and drums in the room was noisy, the red veil poured out, the two newcomers were dressed in red robes, the husband and wife bent down and bowed their heads, and everyone praised the golden and jade good fortune. Just as everyone was immersed in sweetness, the lights suddenly dimmed, the background music suddenly changed, a sad laugh came in, and the main marriage suddenly rose from the ground strangely, his eyes were sluggish and unfocused, and there was no trace of blood on his face...
This is not a TV plot, but it is staged in the real script killing, and whenever she thinks of the scene of the main marriage "changing her face", the 22-year-old Aya will always habitually turn on the night light in the bedroom and accompany her to sleep for a night. As a script killing enthusiast, Aya recently prefers the "horror book", which is partially filled with supernatural and frightening elements, and in order to pursue excitement, she interprets the storylines such as ghost hunting, pen fairy, and yin marriage, which also brings her a lot of psychological burdens.
Script Kill, a new immersive gaming experience, has been pushed to the forefront as a popularity of Generation Z. From first-tier cities to fifth-tier towns, script killing offline stores are growing barbarically, more and more different types of game scripts are being produced, due to the lack of supervision in the nascent industry, some of the communication content rooted in the script frequently arouses public doubts.
How terrifying is it?
"Every time I read a detail, my heart is cold." The 23-year-old Xiaoyu, who has played more than a dozen horror books, still clearly remembers the thriller interpretations of different scripts, some need to read the "Ghost Summoning Order", some need to join forces with "please immortals", and there are methods of burning paper and so on. The lights in the haunted house are bright and dim, the table is messy with stumps props, the music is full of eerie horror, and NPCs (non-player characters) come out from time to time to intimidate and bomb...
"Closing my eyes is a horrible picture, and the single-person evidence search almost scared me to 'die' on the spot." Although Xiaoyu is a staunch materialist in her daily life, she still feels uncomfortable in the horrors of being in the dark, and once she enters the dark room alone to search for evidence, one arm grabs her leg, and suddenly a woman with a shawl appears behind her, which makes her scream loudly.
"I know I'm going to be scared, but I still want to try, curiosity kills the cat!" Although it is a script that has experienced hundreds of battles to kill old players, in the face of some supernatural horror books, Xiaoyu's performance is still not calm, and after each brush, her heart will continue to recall the details of the horror, so that she dare not walk at night, or even afraid of being alone, but can't help but continue to seek new excitement.
Aya also recounted the "Please Pen Fairy" session in a script, in the faint candlelight, several players followed the host to recite the "password", folded their hands with each other, grasped the pencil and drew on the white paper, and a cold sweat broke out after the ceremony. "Existence is reasonable, and it is better to believe that it exists than to believe that it does not exist." Knowing that this was just a game, Aya began to feel some awe for such things.
The 25-year-old Cha Lei, who kills obsessive enthusiasts like Xiaoyu and Aya, has a completely different view of horror, "Although I have also dabbled in this type of work because of curiosity, it is really difficult to have a sense of substitution, but it will make people laugh." ”
Cha Lei likes the script killing from 2019, has played more than a hundred different scripts, once a period of time is "eating and sleeping to play the book", but also stepped on a lot of "Lei Ben", pay special attention to the quality of the script, is currently preparing to open an offline store.
Cha Lei said that some of the horror books involve feudal superstitions and ghosts, but most of them use ghosts and gods as shells, making the murders in the script more confusing and elusive, and a small part of the horrors are only scary, and it is completely incomprehensible to make up for the sake of ghosts and gods.
Cha Lei likes to resonate with the characters in the script, the taste prefers hardcore reasoning scripts, followed by emotional immersion, when he encounters a fun script, there will be a sense of gap after the end, and even for a long time, life will not forget the characters, stories, modus operandi and so on in the script. "Occasionally I think about how I would choose in life if I were him, and it's really a deep sense of disconnection from the role after I'm deeply immersed in the play."
Why create horror?
A good script can make loyal players like Cha Lei resonate with the characters in the script, through the details of the clue reasoning, layer by layer to peel off the cocoon to catch the murderer, while reasoning at the same time there are tears and laughter, this is the game script producer and screenwriter most want to achieve the effect.
However, at present, the script killing is in a new industry, the market environment is mixed, there are always merchants to play the edge of the ball for profit, there are some yellow riots, the content involves blood, violence and pornography. Many Yellow Riots deliberately add sexual violence crimes and large-scale fragrant details, bundle vulgar plots and reasoning processes together, use the "Eighteen Forbidden" gimmicks to attract players, and constantly cross the moral bottom line.
"Player demand determines the market, someone writes someone sells, naturally there is a demand." Su Su, a post-90s generation, is a script supervisor and has written many scripts by hand. She believes that horror is easier for players to have a direct experience, and the NPCs are designed in the plot to be scary, and the store will adjust according to actual needs.
"Hardcore books, it's scary to be panned out!" Su Su once supervised the production of a horror script to kill, which belongs to the "contemplative extreme fear type". Compared with the horror version, Su Su is more focused on the emotional book and the reasoning book, and the demand for emotional scripts is larger in terms of market share, and the production cycle needs to see the revision and quality of the script, the fastest 1 month and the slowest 1 year.
Su Su said that from the perspective of script arrangement, most of the horror should be conceived first of how to be scary, the writing style varies from person to person, and what is more intuitive is the number of NPCs and the appearance and frequency of "ghosts". Even the background music and interpretation will be taken into account, how the ghost will act, and a reference video will be given, and the actual layout of the scene will generally look at the store.
"The simple thing is to turn off the lights, the NPCs dress up to scare you, and the players go to the small dark room alone to search for evidence, two ghosts ambush in it, one plays the plot, one touches behind you, and the two levels of terror are immediately different." Su Su introduced that in the process of players interpreting the reading book, the store will make some modifications according to the situation to achieve different horror effects.
The person who plays the ghost
Behind a script that wants to gain the recognition of players and take into account the sense of game experience, it is not only the screenwriter and author like Su Su who are in the control of creation, but also the real scene layout of the store and the soul interpretation of the DM (host).
According to many players, most of the horror books have eerie background music, dim lighting, scary long-haired NPCs, coupled with bloody scenes that make people sweat, these scene arrangements and character interpretations can assist players to substitute for the role.
As a post-95 runqi who kills fans of the script, last year helped his brother open a 700-square-meter M Schemers Real Scene Reasoning Hall in Zhengzhou, and at the same time served as the manager of the store, decorating a large number of real-life elements when opening the store, just to be able to better create a sense of the atmosphere of the script game.
"The script is the same, change the soup without changing the medicine, it depends on how the store plays, we still have to respect the player, if you don't want to experience the horror plot, you can sign a confession agreement." Runqi introduced that the store currently has a hundred kinds of scripts, horror books, emotional books account for 40% of the proportion, the remaining 20% is the reasoning book, the actual effect of the horror book varies from person to person, and some of the horror section interpretation is the category that the store can control.
Yao Zai, who has been a host at a well-known script killing store for more than a year, has a lot of experience in self-deprecating ghosts, and sometimes needs him to improvise. "Girls play mostly, some boys may not be bolder than girls, some are scared out and dare not come back, and some players are afraid to hit me, and give me a beating that is not light."
The experience of playing a ghost that impressed this "old ghost" Yao Zai was that he hid behind a curtain to prepare for a "sudden appearance", but he was found by a male player and bumped into it, and his chest hurt for a while, and even his neck was scratched by the other party.
Yao Zai also revealed that playing horror is not only full of thriller plots, it is also a single artifact, because in the case of extreme fear, adrenaline is soaring madly, and players inevitably have physical contact in the panic, thereby accelerating the heating of feelings, for which there are not a few who have successfully taken off the single.
Who's playing script kill?
It is undeniable that script killing is gradually becoming one of the daily gatherings and play methods of urban young people, and Qichacha released the "Semi-annual Report on Enterprise Development in 2021" in July, showing that in the new consumption field, script killing related enterprises rose by 294.4%.
According to the "2021 Entity Script Killing Consumption Insight Report" based on Meituan's user data survey, the size of China's physical script killing market is expected to reach 15.42 billion yuan in 2021, and the consumer scale is expected to reach 9.41 million, of which the main consumer group exceeds seven to become a young group under the age of 30.
Because of the requirements of epidemic prevention and control, some cities have temporarily opened their script killing, KTV and other closed places, but Mammoth News reporters found in the early visit to the script killing store that the weekend traffic is large, students can account for more than 60%, using the holiday time to form a team to "open the book", there are also workplace experts will be idle on weekends "spelling", hoping to meet more new friends through the game.
Store manager Runqi introduced that the script killing is an open social way, most of the people who come to the store to consume are middle and high school students, college students and white-collar workers in the workplace, the main group of players is students, the age is about 15-20 years old, the proportion of middle and high school students, college students can account for 68%, the unit price is 100 yuan, and students will pay more attention to price concessions.
"Basically 80% of the people who come to our store to play horror books are students." Runqi frankly said that when underage students go to the store to play script killing, they will first recommend some scripts with family and national feelings, which are more value-oriented, and once they choose horror, they will respect the player's choice.
There was a Weibo hot search mentioned that "the post-00 guys are too deep into the drama because they are addicted to the script, shouting in the middle of the night", which was diagnosed by the doctor as game addiction and accompanied by obvious anxiety, which triggered the public's discussion of the script killing, and many parents were worried about it, believing that the adolescents' ideological development was not mature, and it was not suitable to play the heavy taste script killing.
Script killing enthusiast Cha Lei believes that some scripts involving horror, supernaturality, and blood are not suitable for dissemination to young groups, and the store manager Runqi has a different opinion on this, he believes that some groups that play horror have overreacts, most of them are psychologically resilient and cannot fully represent the true reflection of all players in the horror book.
The market size of more than 10 billion yuan is in urgent need of supervision
"The mentality of teenagers playing horror script killing is actually because of the pursuit of excitement and curiosity. Adults can reasonably judge their personal psychological endurance, but minors cannot. Ye Bei, deputy chief physician and psychotherapist of the Psychological Clinic of the Children's and Adolescents Mental Health Promotion Base of Henan Children's Hospital, analyzed that there are many contradictions in adolescent psychology, and physiological maturity covers up psychological naivety, but adolescents' life and social experience are not rich, and it is easy to be interested in emerging things, so as to challenge themselves.
Ye Bei said that from the analysis of fundamental internal factors, the curiosity of middle and high school students about the horror of the drama may stem from the children's exploration of the death instinct, but not only when the script is killed, daily movie clips and participation in funerals may trigger death curiosity.
In Ye Bei's view, the emerging industry script killing should set level restrictions, for adults and minors to divide a reasonable range, in addition to the effective supervision of relevant departments, parents need to pay special attention to active communication with children, timely grasp of emotional fluctuations.
Seemingly rapid expansion of the sunrise industry, more than 10 billion market scale of the script killing is standing on the cusp of the storm, who to manage, how to manage has always been the industry pain point, guide the script killing industry standard management arrow on the string.
On November 9, the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism took the lead in studying and drafting the "Shanghai Secret Room Script Killing Content Filing Management Regulations (Draft for Comment)", which solicited public opinions, 6 of which mentioned that the story script used in the secret room script killing business and the set storyline must not contain storylines that promote superstition, obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, and drug-related illegal and criminal activities.
In November, Zhuzhou City's multi-departmental jointly set up a special inspection team for "script killing" business sites to carry out special inspection operations in the urban area, mainly to check whether the scripts used in the "script killing" field contained a number of inspections that contained content that promoted obscenity, pornography, violence, cults, superstitions, gambling, and luring suicides that endangered the physical and mental health of minors.
Script killing as the current fresh game, in the young consumer market performance is not bad, but also a relaxed mood, reduce the pressure of entertainment innovation, young people can play the imagination and exploration ability, in the after-life of the "drama addiction", but the content of the script should avoid the pursuit of supernatural, superstitious, obscene pornography and bloody violence and other low-level fun, which requires the regulatory authorities to participate in management control, to eliminate the inferior and promote industry self-discipline.
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Mammoth News Oriental Today Reporter Zhang Li/Wentu
Edit: Summer Rain
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