Century Huatong Xie Fei: Regard self-discipline as a law of nature and use future thinking to enter hard science and technology

In 2021, the domestic game industry ushered in a new round of adjustments. Xie Fei, president of Century Huatong and CEO of Sheng Qu Games, summed up the challenges and opportunities facing the current game industry with four keywords at the 2021 China Game Industry Annual Conference held recently, and put forward the content as the entry point to enter the "hard technology" development strategy, providing new ideas for the next development of the domestic game industry.

Xie Fei, president of Century Huatong and CEO of Sheng Qu Games, delivered a keynote speech

Keyword 1: "Key"

What is the essence of the game? What role do game practitioners play? On this topic, many people in the industry have given their own views. Sony Online Entertainment Chief Creative Officer Ralph. Coster believes that play is the activity of learning a certain skill in happiness. Xie Fei uses the metaphor of "key", she believes that the essence of the game is to let people in the virtual world, through collection and cultivation, to obtain achievements and even desires that may not be achieved in the real world. Practitioners, with the creation of content and the construction of technology, have gradually mastered a mysterious "key" that can achieve achievements and amplify desires.

In the past, games were just a simple form of entertainment. But today, with the continuous innovation of science and technology, games have made great breakthroughs in content forms, interactive methods and display terminals. Games have also evolved from simple entertainment categories to digital scenes that integrate social, creative, emotional, educational, and other functions. Last year, the "Fortress World" game held an online virtual concert, successfully attracted 12 million players to watch online, setting a record; this year, the e-sports team EDG won the championship, won countless Chinese players likes, became the hottest and most out-of-the-loop news event of the period.

The popularity of the game has also boosted the rapid development of the industry. According to the latest industry report released by the Game Working Committee, in 2021, the actual sales revenue of China's game market was 296.513 billion yuan, an increase of 6.4% year-on-year; in 2021, the number of Chinese game users maintained steady growth, with a user scale of 666 million people, and the Chinese game market has become the world's largest game market.

Keyword 2: "Self-discipline"

Greater capability also means greater responsibility, which is an unavoidable problem for the growing game industry. In terms of the specification of game content and the protection of minors, how to reflect the responsibility of game companies is not only related to the development of the enterprise itself, but also affects the future of society. From Xie Fei's point of view, the "mentality" of game practitioners will largely determine the spiritual outlook of children in the future, and self-discipline is undoubtedly the best solution for the moment.

She believes that corporate self-discipline is not a passive choice, but an active acceptance. As one of the earliest enterprises to initiate, participate in, formulate and implement online game anti-addiction, Sheng Qu Games jointly issued the "Declaration of Online Game Anti-Addiction System" in 2005 with a number of enterprises; in 2007, Sheng Qu Games' youth online game anti-addiction system was officially put into use, and at the same time launched a number of measures including real-name registration, anti-addiction system, parental monitoring project, game age-appropriate tips, etc., providing telephone, email, online video multi-channel 7 * 24 hours service, convenient for parents to timely supervise their children's game status. In 2019, Sheng Qu Games participated in the drafting of the "Game Age-appropriate Prompt Specification", becoming the first batch of initiators and the enterprises with the largest number of participating games on the People's Network Age-appropriate Prompt Platform. At present, through the continuous improvement of its own anti-addiction system, under the multi-party control of platform, system and AI technology, the proportion of minor users of Sheng Qu Games is significantly lower than the industry average.

If you look at it from a more macroscopic point of view, Xie Fei believes that the development of each industry is "spiraling upwards", and each self-discipline is a kind of self-transformation and rise, which can also help enterprises obtain greater opportunities, and such self-discipline is also a natural law. At present, the acceptance of games by the whole society is constantly strengthening, and the development of functional games that are integrated with culture can not only open up new application scenarios for games, but also realize the diversified value of games and contribute more social value. This year, in cooperation with Shanghai Normal University, it has developed 5 functional games such as "Le Shen Qu", "Ling Hu Sheng Dream Order", and "Facebook", of which "Facebook", "Xingdang" game Demo video and "Clothesbox" game planning plan will play a role in the future opera teaching in the field of basic education as the supporting content of Shanghai's first set of primary and secondary school opera textbooks (reading books).

Keyword 3 "Ability Cognition"

As an industry that coexists with technology, the concept of "game +" has been widely mentioned, and more and more game companies have begun to get involved in the development process of integration with education, cultural tourism, medical care, public welfare and science popularization. Tencent empowers urban cultural tourism through games, Sheng Qu Games makes a layout in digital drugs and red cultural experience space, and NetEase actively cooperates with museums to expand digital cultural exhibitions, and the horizontal value of the game industry is being opened.

Based on the practical experience of multiple projects, Xie Fei also pointed out the key elements of the current game empowerment, she believes that the digital transformation empowerment of game enterprises is not a simple technological transformation, not only the implementation of information technology to achieve the digitization of multiple scenarios, to create personalized needs and experiences, but also to stimulate the development and change of society, including knowledge structure, input and output, culture, etc., it is a way of thinking transformation, even subversion.

Therefore, a correct understanding of their own capabilities can not only help enterprises focus on the project, but also achieve a leap in the project. Xie Fei believes that game companies have accumulated rich experience in the field of content development standardization, research and reserve of human-computer interaction mechanism, and commercialization capabilities for end users. At the same time, based on the understanding of users, game companies have created countless good-looking, good-listening, and fun content and technologies in the interaction between people and people and machines, precipitated massive data, gathered excellent talents, accumulated greater wealth, and have a better first-mover advantage.

Keyword 4 "Hard Technology"

At present, the global economy is facing deep adjustment, the domestic economy is also transforming to a higher level, strengthening original and leading scientific and technological research, aiming at artificial intelligence, quantum information, integrated circuits, life and health, brain science, biological breeding, aerospace science and technology, deep earth and deep sea and other frontier fields, the implementation of a number of forward-looking, strategic national major scientific and technological projects has become an important strategic direction of the country.

In 2020, Century Huatong combined its own advantages and invested heavily in the field of "hard technology". On the one hand, Century Huatong has cooperated with Zhejiang University, TCCI and other research institutes to lay out the first brain science laboratory in the domestic game industry, focusing on the research and development of digital drugs. At present, many products such as "VR Screening and Training System for Children with Autism", "Attention Enhancement Training System", "VR Assessment and Rehabilitation System for Cognitive Impairment" have entered the clinical trial stage, which is expected to achieve a major breakthrough in the field of digital medical treatment in China and narrow the gap with overseas. On the other hand, Century Huatong's new IDC data center business not only deeply participates in the construction of Tencent's Yangtze River Delta Artificial Intelligence Supercomputing Center located in Shanghai's Songjiang District, but also expands to more cities based on the successful experience of the project, cooperates with Tencent Cloud, local governments and state-owned assets to jointly invest in the construction of local government cloud, state-owned cloud and national supercomputing center, creates a new generation of infrastructure base with leading scale in the country, and makes positive contributions to ensuring data security for the country and building a national supercomputing backbone node. At the same time, in order to solve the problem of high energy consumption in data centers, Century Huatong will actively explore, develop and use new energy technologies, embrace carbon neutrality, and strive to achieve faster, better and cleaner coordinated development.

From a business point of view, the layout of the hard technology track will be a long-term process, and it will be difficult to see returns in the short term. However, standing at the historical opportunity point of the new scientific and technological revolution, the integration of innovation to undertake the mission of the times of a scientific and technological power has become the development direction of Century Huatong in the next 20 years, in Xie Fei's view, growing into a scientific and technological cultural enterprise that actively participates in social and economic transformation and upgrading and has the responsibility will be the company's biggest mission.