It's hard for today's readers not to notice the close connection between online literature and video games. "Fighting monsters", "upgrading", "changing maps", "main line", "copy" and "gold finger", these terms and concepts from video games, have not only become common terms in online literature, but also become important structural elements in online literature. Whether it is shanda network wholly-owned acquisition of Chinese network in 2004 with online games as its main business, or the advertisements that appear on various online literature websites since then have always been mainly game advertisements, or the increasingly frequent IP interaction between online literature and video games, it proves that online literature and video games have deep roots, and the authors and readers of online literature are often game groups with deep experience in video games.
When it comes to the gamification characteristics of online literature, the most classic cases are the online game texts that have developed and matured in the first 10 years of the 21st century (such as the wandering toad's "Shu Mountain") and the Xuan fantasy and Xiu Xian upgrade texts (such as the "Fighting Heavens" of the Heavenly Silkworm Potatoes). These titles are clearly borrowed from the upgrade structure of MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), in which the protagonist constantly defeats stronger and stronger enemies, gains skills or treasures, improves personal abilities, and then challenges the next enemy, after a complete victory in one region, and then moves to the next, and so on. In fact, when online literature breaks through the length limit of previous print novels and reaches the length of one million, or even millions of words, it often uses the upgrading structure of video games to a greater or lesser extent, which has become the underlying logic shared by super-long online literary works.
"Breaking the Sky" game
Regarding the typical xuan fantasy and xiu xian upgrading texts, the previous research on online literature has achieved very rich results. It is generally believed that the popularity of upgraded texts is due to the fact that a generation of online literature authors with general experience in video games, when writing in the Internet media environment, consciously or unconsciously use the logic and narrative structure of video games to break through the literary conventions formed by adapting novels to the old paper media environment, thus forming a model of upgrading texts; on the other hand, it is closely related to the changes in the entire social environment and public psychology. Since the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War and the rapid development of the Chinese market economy, social Darwinism and the logic of the law of the jungle have soon become the mainstream concepts that fill the gap in values, and the social trend of pursuing secular success and equating the accumulation of power and money with the only path to the realization of personal value has become a road to the endless desire to upgrade the text. At the same time, there is a general belief that individual struggle can break through the barriers of social class, that all members of society compete with each other in the same set of economic and social rules, and that the winner achieves a hierarchy. This point is reflected in the upgrade text, that is, the counterattack routine of the protagonist of "Don't deceive the young and poor", and the upgrade system with a clear level represented by the level system of the Fighting Qi cultivators in "Fighting broken firmament".
In recent years, although the typical fantasy and xiuxian upgrading literature still has an incomparably broad market, when it comes to online literature types with gamification characteristics, infinite streams are undoubtedly more eye-catching rising stars. Looking at the list of the current starting point Chinese Network and Jinjiang Literature City, you can see that typical infinite stream works such as "Welcome back to the world game" (Feng Yao did not sleep enough), "Players please get on the car" (Haiyan Mountain), "Infinite Tour Group" (Yan Guhong), "Female Bed's Great Escape" (Huocha) are at the top of the general list or classification list. Other outstanding infinite stream works that have been completed and are often mentioned in recent years include "Thriller Paradise" (three days and two sleeps), "Kaleidoscope of Death" (Xi Zixu), "Global College Entrance Examination" (Musuri) and so on.
Infinite Stream, a genre of online literature, began with zhttty's Infinite Horror (2007), and its basic story framework is that the protagonist constantly travels to various quest worlds to complete tasks. Although the copy world in the early infinite stream novels represented by "Infinite Horror" often has a fandom nature, based on the story world in existing movies, games, animations, novels and other literary and artistic works, with the development of infinite stream novels, various original copies have gradually become the biggest attraction of infinite stream novels. Infinite stream novels can be within the same worldview framework, fusing multiple quest worlds with different settings, such as the decadent infinite stream novel "Role Play" contains copies of dark fairy tales, urban supernatural beings, ancient immortals, medieval European courts and other styles, and the quest rules and ways to pass levels are also different. The brain-opening copy design makes the infinite stream novel often contain the fun of the decryption game at the same time, and the author invites the reader to work with the protagonist to solve the mystery of the copy and reveal the truth of the world.
Recently, Netflix's Korean gambling battle royale TV series has unexpectedly become popular around the world, setting a record for the ratings of Netflix dramas and triggering extensive discussions around the world. In China, many viewers have also compared it with China's unlimited streaming online literature works. Although strictly speaking, this Korean drama is not exactly the same as the genre of infinite streaming network text, there is indeed a tortuous relationship between the two. Fundamentally, they are all borrowed from Japanese (pan)battle royale genre works.
Battle Royale poster
In December 2000, Shinji Fukasaku's Japanese film Battle Royale was released in Japan, adapted from the 1996 novel of the same name by Hiroharu Takami, which received strong social repercussions as soon as it was released, becoming the best topic work at the 24th Japan Academy Awards. In the film, all the students in a junior high school class are sent to an isolated island, where the students are asked to kill each other until only one survives. Battle Royale has since become a phenomenon-level popular genre, and its basic feature is that a group of people are placed in an isolated environment to fight, and the only winner can survive. The test of human nature in extreme environments is the biggest attraction of this type of work. Battle Royale works have been greatly enriched and developed in Japan, and combined with various elements, many new subtypes have been formed. For example, the combination of battle royale and the gambling story that appeared before and after the Japanese bubble economy produced the gambling battle royale story, represented by Nobuyuki Fukumoto's manga work "Gambling Apocalypse" (1996), which was later adapted into a series of live-action films of the same name, starring Fujiwara Ryu is also the main actor of "Battle Royale", playing this kind of character in an extreme environment, hysterical, but at the same time has a tenacious will to survive and determination has become the iconic feature of actor Fujiwara Ryuya, This similarity in the choice of actors also reflects the kinship between the two types of works. The basic setting of Netflix's recent popular battle royale Korean drama is no different from that of "Gambling Apocalypse", but it expands the audience by weakening the intellectual fighting component in the story. In the 2000 comic "Killing City", the protagonist Genno Ji and others fight with aliens invading the earth under the control of the mysterious black ball "GANTZ", although it does not take the mutual struggle between human beings as the main plot, but the cruel situation in "Killing City", the doubts about human nature, and the never-ending killing are similar in temperament to "Battle Royale", and the originator of China's infinite stream network "Infinite Horror" is created by drawing on the setting of "Killing City".
Ryu Fujiwara's role in Battle Royale
In his book Imagination in the 00s, the Japanese scholar Tsunehiro Uno specifically discusses the background of the era when (pan) battle royale works appeared in Japan in large numbers. Uno tomohiro believes that in the first decade of the 21st century, the (pan) battle royale genre was popular in Japan, closely related to two important events that occurred in 2001. One was the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, and the other was the neoliberal policy in Japan that began after the Koizumi administration came to power. Uno argues that after the defeat in World War II and the bursting of the bubble economy in the early 1990s, Japan has entered a typical postmodern social situation, with society itself becoming incomprehensible and untrustworthy as a result of the collapse of grand narratives. Thus, the Japanese literary works of the 1990s present a "psychological" character, in which the protagonist is lost in values, unable to achieve self-recognition through social action, and realizes that any positive action of the self will inevitably cause harm to others, so he indulges in the acceptance of the flawed, self-harming and self-pitying static self, represented by the classic Japanese original TV animation Evangelion. But by the beginning of the 21st century, the brutal social competition brought about by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and neoliberal economic policies had created a general "survival" consciousness in Japanese society, that is, it was impossible to survive in a cruel society without participating in social struggles and struggles. The Japanese did not see 9/11 as a purely evil terrorist attack or as a desperate counterattack from the long-oppressed weak to the strong, but as a clash and competition between two different civilizations and ideologies. That is to say, at the beginning of the 21st century, Japanese society did not return to a modern social state with unified ideologies and values, and people competed with each other in the same promotion system, on the contrary, people chose the small narrative they wanted to believe in a "decisive" posture, and joined the war in this way, and the small narrative communities launched a cruel struggle between you and me, which is the social trend reflected in the battle royale story.
Related to this, Uno tokihiro also provides another sequence of works that changed at the turn of the century, that is, the change of mainstream juvenile manga genres serialized in Japan's most famous shōnen manga magazine, Weekly Shonen JUMP. Around 1995, the main genre of Weekly Shonen Jump's main shonen manga work shifted from the "knockout" mode to the "card battle" mode. Representative works of the "Knockout" mode, such as "Dragon Ball", "Saint Seiya", etc., the key to the protagonist's victory lies in "friendship" and "effort", the basic plot structure is similar to a martial arts competition, the contestants have the same power system, and the protagonist with talent and belief, who constantly hones his skills through hard work, will become the strongest. The masterpiece of the "card battle" mode is "JOJO's Wonderful Adventure" and other works, in which different characters have completely different abilities, which have their own strengths and weaknesses, and cannot be simply compared. It is no longer "friendship" and "effort" and skill that determine the outcome of the battle, but the wisdom of the battle, making full use of intelligence and situations, and making full use of strengths and avoiding weaknesses in order to achieve victory. This change is also a reflection of social mobilization warfare in literary and artistic works under the condition of small narratives.
Tokihiro Uno believes that the combination of battle royale and card battles is the imaginative model dominated by Japanese literary and artistic works in the early 21st century. And the works formed by this combination happen to be very similar to China's unlimited stream network literature works.
In the first decade of the 21st century, Chinese society did not have a high acceptance of (pan) battle royale Japanese literary and artistic works represented by "Battle Royale". Although it appeared in 2007, the infinite stream genre of online literature that is related to the battle royale genre has long been a niche genre in online literature. During this period, Chinese society coincided with a period of rapid economic development, the living standards of Chinese especially urban residents, coupled with the national self-confidence brought about by the post-disaster reconstruction of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the Wenchuan earthquake, the Chinese at that time generally had a strong trust in China's rise. In a way, this is actually a slight resemblance to Japanese society in the bubble economy of the 1980s. According to Tokihiro Uno, the 1980s were the last era when grand narratives came into effect in Japan, and there was a widespread optimism that a bright and prosperous future could be created through struggle and hard work, and the "knockout" model of hot-blooded shonen manga was a representative product of this period. In China, which was developing rapidly in the early 21st century, the Xuanxian and Xiuxian upgrade texts were born, although the Xuanxian and Xiuxian upgrade texts often believed more in power than friendship, but both adopted a battle upgrade system similar to the "Martial Arts Conference", the cultivators in the story cultivated in the same power system, and the Xiuxian upgrade texts were the most typical, from The foundation to the Jindan, from the Jindan to the Yuan Baby, this upgrade process is almost the only way for every practitioner.
There are many explanations for the similarity in narrative structure between the Japanese hot-blooded juvenile comics of the 1980s and the Chinese upgraded texts of the first decade of the 21st century, for example, they are all influenced by video games, for example, many Chinese online literature authors grew up watching Japanese animation and manga, but at the same time, although they are in different eras and different countries, similar social emotions may also be an important factor in giving birth to similar literary and artistic imagination.
Thriller Park 3
Around 2015, represented by works such as "Thriller Paradise" and "Doomsday Paradise", the online literary theme of infinite streaming began to heat up rapidly in China. Fighting with randomly acquired skills or items is a common setting for this type of work. Although as the protagonist experiences more and more copies, accumulates combat experience and rewards, his personal physical fitness and skill level will also increase, but because the skills of different players are very different, the growth route chosen for themselves is also different, so what really determines the success or failure of the battle is often not the personal ability level in the sense of the numerical panel, but the tactical ability and on-the-spot play of comprehensively using their own skills and props, discovering the opponent's weaknesses and carrying out targeted attacks. From the perspective of the internal development of literature, the infinite stream novel with complex skills and props developed from simple upgrading texts has greatly expanded the possibilities of combat and provided more diverse narrative kinetic energy, which is itself the self-enrichment of online literary narratives. But just as the Chinese upgrade essays of the first decade of the 21st century coincide with the Japanese teenagers of the 1980s, the Chinese unlimited streaming network texts around 2015 also have similarities with the Japanese "battle card" battle royale stories around 2000 that span time and space. When the time comes to 2021, the global popularity of a gambling battle royale that is not excellent is intertextual with China's unlimited streaming network trend, outlining the psychology of the times under the global epidemic.
The global spread of COVID-19 is undoubtedly a traumatic experience, which has brought about a global economic dilemma, shattered the future expectations of many people, magnified the different flaws in various political systems around the world, and made humanity realize once again that medicine, as the representative of modern science, is far less powerful than we once thought. In fact, in the years before the start of the epidemic, Chinese society has begun to face problems such as the solidification of social classes and the deterioration of the public opinion environment highlighted by the slowdown in economic development, and the emergence of social buzzwords such as "996" and "inner volume" shows that people are generally experiencing a process of intense social competition, and have a clear awareness of this fact. The infinite-flow novels that became popular during such a period are a non-realistic metaphor for people's confusion, taming and resistance in the face of disorderly social competition.
But China's infinite streaming network articles have never completely moved towards the desperate situation of "Battle Royale", or the extremely ambiguous values of this year's hot Korean dramas. In the infinite stream novel, there is never a lack of idealistic light. The protagonists of the story always refuse to be assimilated by the darkness, they rebel against the evil of the system, save their compatriots, and even later fight for equality and freedom for the NPCs who have gained autonomy. On the ruins of value, they did not want to fall into barbarism, so they legislated for themselves. The thousands of copy worlds in the infinite stream novel are both the endless hell of brutal fighting and the promised place to shake off the burden of reality, and the resonance between the reader and the protagonist in the situation is only the first step into the story, and then they will explore together what kind of life they really expect, and what kind of life they really recognize. If we have not talked about ideals, how can we talk about changing reality? The protagonists in hell are no longer waiting for the silk of compassion from the world of Elysium, they are going to create a new world of their own.