The sword art online swordsman in black: Ace, which is constantly discussed among two-dimensional players, has won another award.
In mid-December, at the 13th CGDA Outstanding Game Producer Competition, Kaiying Network's sword production team won the "Best Game Audio Design Award". For an IP adaptation, it is not easy to win this award. On the one hand, the audio performance of the original "Sword Art Online" has been very eye-catching, which also puts forward higher requirements for the game itself; on the other hand, players are constantly emerging new demands for game audio, and how to innovate on the basis of fully respecting the original work is also a major problem.
In response to these questions, GameLook also interviewed ICE, the head of the R&D side of Sword Art Online: Ace, so we also have a deeper understanding of the successful methodology of this product, including audio.
Art and function, audio is becoming a new direction for quality games
Some people say that if you watch a horror movie on mute, the sense of horror will be instantly halved. This is also an important manifestation of the integration and mutual achievement of sound and film itself. However, in the past game products, spelling art and playing have become a common and more concerned issue from developers to players, and audio is often ignored elements. In recent years, with the rise of the concept of boutique, more and more game manufacturers have begun to pay attention to the role of audio in the overall shaping of products.
In ICE's view, this is undoubtedly a welcome phenomenon. He believes that online games are not a single entertainment industry, but a comprehensive industry that includes various elements such as competition, leisure, art, and literature. Putting aside the difference in logical experience, ICE prefers to see it as a film industry-like existence. Therefore, the audio itself should be an important part of the player experience. Nowadays, people pay more and more attention to game audio, which is also the inevitable result of the game industry to mature, users are pursuing more and more comprehensive experiences, and the game industry itself is also trying to give players a better experience.
But for games, audio needs to be not only artistic, but also functional. The so-called functionality mainly refers to interactivity, such as the player walking from the grass to the stone slab, the sound must have the switching of the footstep material, and other characteristics such as distance attenuation, sound orientation and priority must also conform to the physical laws of sound. In contrast, artistry is more abstract, and the recording team can record a variety of footsteps, but which is more appropriate to put together with other sounds in the scene is a problem that artistry has to solve.
For the relationship between the two, ICE believes that the main role of functionality is to play aids, assist the core gameplay of the game and various systems. Artistry can be understood as a kind of depth, on the one hand, the extension of functionality, the deep excavation of interactivity and immersion; on the other hand, the expansion of the content level, the beauty and enjoyment of the senses.
Based on this professional understanding, ICE and his team naturally worked the sound polishing of Sword Art Online: Ace, which also achieved an audio presentation that exceeded market expectations. In his opinion, the reason why the sword production team can get this honor is inseparable from the overall level, the entire studio attaches great importance to this IP, but also inseparable from the excellent professional ability of the audio team in the sound effect module.
More specifically, the sword production team is a very special presence within Kaiying. The core members of the team have more than ten years of industry experience, participated in the research and development and operation of a number of billion-level products, and are good at the research and development of multi-category and multi-platform games such as quadratic, MMO, SLG, and leisure. Many of these members also have another label - the old two-dimensional, or the ashes of Sword Art Online's original party. Knowing both products and IP, with such a foundation, Sword Art Online Swordsman in Black: Ace also has the prerequisites for success.
To understand the product, we must understand the IP, and go through the original work to achieve high restoration
In fact, the audio effect of Sword Art Online Black Swordsman: Ace doesn't happen overnight. ICE said that in the early days of research and development, the audio team spent a lot of time to experience and understand the "Sword Art Online" anime, because only after the experience, you can know which nodes to play the more appropriate music and sound effects. In addition, while summarizing the characteristics of the sound effects, the R&D team will also collect the experience demands of fans, so that the sound effect design can achieve a more immersive sense of experience.
Specific to the development of the game, the small partners in the audio group will first understand the core gameplay of the project, and then work around it. Every action of the player and even every step is a group of friends who take the initiative to add audio. Only by adding audio step by step can the sound playback logic strictly match the gameplay of each system.
On the basis of full respect for IP, through highly specialized design and research and development capabilities, the audio content of Sword Art Online Black Swordsman: Ace is no longer just an accessory element of the game, but actively assumes a decisive role in the specific artistic experience, bringing players a high-quality listening experience beyond expectations.
In addition to these hardcore game development processes, ICE also said that the two-dimensional and original parties within the team also played a very big role in the audio design. In the overall research and development process of the whole project, whether in the core of the gameplay or the pursuit of art, these members who know the most about sword IP have played a pivotal role, and even directly determine the solution to many problems. In order to make the product more faithfully reproduce the settings in the original work, the R&D team not only went through all the IP derivatives including novels, anime, and games, but also sorted out the world view descriptions scattered in various works one by one, in order to restore the world of Ein Grant in the hearts of fans as much as possible.
A more obvious example is the level system that the game prides itself on. The first layer of the game's guard boss, whether it is skill design, battle rhythm, or the overall effect, is restored according to the animation version of 1:1 reproduction. Behind this extremely high degree of reduction, there is a highly industrialized process described by ICE: the copywriting plan will look for the elements that can be gamified in the entire game, and the level planning will select the content that meets the core gameplay on this basis, and then according to these contents, the artist will create the relevant scenes, and the programmer will realize the relevant game requirements at the technical level. It is this group of old two-dimensional elements who have both professional ability and understand the IP of the sword, through the professional division of labor of each performing their duties, to achieve a digital reproduction of the original sword.
"Reuse" R&D experience to create more surprises for players
Despite winning the CGDA Award for Best Game Audio Design, and the game also finished seventh in the iOS bestseller list and second in the free list on the day of launch on June 9, ICE did not get carried away, but instead focused more on the problems exposed in the past six months.
ICE admits that there have been many problems in the game in the past six months, but the small partners in research and development have been actively responding to and trying to solve related problems. In the future, the sword production team will continue to advance the game update, bringing players the long-awaited new map with more than 8 floors.
More importantly, through "Sword Art Online Black Swordsman: Ace", ICE and his team have accumulated more experience in the development and operation of two-dimensional MMO, which also makes him more confident in the follow-up products of the sword production team.
According to ICE, there are already a number of products under development in the project team, two of which are applied to the research and development background of "Sword Art Online Black Swordsman: Ace" from different levels: a new product on the casual track based on its rendering effect, which is scheduled to meet players in 2022. The complex system in the game and the large-scale map optimization experience involved in the big world have incubated a free IP open world category based on the traditional Chinese cultural background and created with a global idea, and this product has also been successfully established and is in the early stage of development.
In the current evaluation of the industrialization level of the game industry, "reusability" is a term that is often mentioned, but it often refers to the reuse of visual content such as art resources and numerical systems. The sword production team integrates the development experience of existing products and uses them for the research and development of new products, which not only further extends the meaning of "reuse", but also shows the profound research and development of this game.
For Kaiying, whether it is "Sword Art Online Black Swordsman: Ace" or a series of its own IP products that will be launched in the future, it is an important witness to its transformation path. As "Sword Art Online Swordsman in Black: Ace" continues to blossom in terms of market performance and industry evaluation, in addition to blessings for the follow-up products of Kaiying, an industry "veteran", we also have reason to pay more attention and expectations.
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