Author: Snow Bean
Write on the front
As a standard player with half the time for mobile and console games, the annual TapTap Game of the Year Awards is one of the events I've been following. You should know that the award ceremony of the mobile game circle can be said to be as many as cattle feathers, but most of them are more like a self-entertaining party held by major platforms.
So the TapTap Game of the Year Awards are not just "annual" in my heart, not just "annual" so simple - more, it is a summary report on the overall performance of mobile games this year.
This year's TapTap Game of the Year Awards also arrived on January 15 as scheduled. Compared with the more entertaining awards ceremonies in the past, whether it is from the award setting, the invitation of the on-site judges, or the overview of the results of this award, we can find some intriguing small details from the 2021 winner list.
In the post-epidemic era, players' game habits are also quietly changing with the progress of the times. In general, as a weather vane in the domestic and foreign mobile game industry this year, and also as a mirror reflecting mobile game players this year, this year's TapTap Annual Game Awards have more "unique" meanings than in previous years.
How is this year's Game of the Year Awards different from previous years?
Compared with last year's award setting, this year's changes are not too big, but a simple addition and adjustment has been made on the basis of the original: the original "Best Music Award" was upgraded to the "Best Music Sound Award", which further improved the evaluation criteria of this award; in order to encourage the development team to explore the character action and combat design, the "Best Action Award" was newly added; at the same time, the "Player Participation Vote" award that did not appear last year was able to appear this year - "Most Loved by Players" and "Best Player" Awards" The return of "Best Continuous Operation" makes the original mechanism of "limited to the votes of the judges" of the award fairer, and also allows players to have more participation.
At the same time, the number of judges participating in the TapTap Annual Awards has also increased - the selection of judges is still based on the three dimensions of developer, media and anchor in previous years. The composition of the latter two lists has not changed much (after all, Simon can put down his fishing rod to participate in this selection, which shows how much he attaches importance to this event), and the developer judges have invited the development leaders of games such as Ink Bucket, Shadow Torch City, and Wind Country, which have performed well this year.
However, the most notable thing on the list is the further increase in the number of practitioners belonging to professional fields such as fine arts, drama, and music, such as music directors from Mihayou, Heartbeat, and Sony Music China. This year's awards, both in terms of the scope of nominations and the reasons for the award, are more professional and authoritative than in previous years.
Partial list
Judging from the list of participating games, this year's mobile game selection range still continues the previous standard - while including many works at home and abroad, it also relaxes the criteria for game screening. So we can see some unfamiliar names from the nomination list, and we can also see many old friends who have won awards and won soft hands. After all, the iteration speed of works in the post-epidemic era mobile game market has shown an accelerated trend, new games are constantly accelerating the frequency of launch, and many familiar old games have also added new content in order to continue their vitality, so that the game has expanded into a newer and more interesting new way to play.
Times are changing, and so are the standards by which games are judged. Just at the nomination stage, the prize has already aroused heated discussion among players. After the official announcement of the winner list today, we may be able to see a certain trend in the development of mobile games at present.
A few words about the results of the award
- Best Vision: Harry Potter: Magical Awakening
This year's Best Visual nominations include "Two Kingdoms: A Staggered World", "Harry Potter: Magical Awakening", "Ink Bucket", "Neil: Re[in] carnation", "Jockey Pretty Derby", and "Heaven and Earth: Ghost City Revisited" for six works. Looking at the six nominated works, most of the character designs are typical of the Japanese art style. But in it, the overall atmosphere of "Ink Bucket" adopts the ink style, "Harry Potter" and "Neil" are closer to the picture book style, and "Horse Racing Lady", "Heaven and Earth" and "Two Kingdoms" adopt the two-dimensional celluloid coloring style that is closer to modern young people.
"Horse Racing Lady" is very exquisite, "Ink Bucket" is very unique, and "Neil" is very "Yokoo Taro style", but the artistic performance of "Harry Potter" from the announcement to the launch has always been described as "amazing".
Harry Potter itself is based on the magic work of the real world, so how to reflect the elements of reality while being able to well express the charm brought by the magical elements, it is very difficult to find an art style that can take into account both. On the basis of ensuring the balance of these two elements, the development team can ensure that the most important "painting sense" in the picture book style can make the game's graphics retract freely and unique.
Although each work has its own characteristics, Harry Potter achieves a particularly good "sense of wholeness". This sense of wholeness pervades every detail of the game: from the player riding a broom to enjoying a panoramic view of Hogwarts, to the flickering flames in the streetlights on the corner... Fonts, UI patterns, button designs, it can be said that in Harry Potter, they all serve a "sense of wholeness" - as Simon says in the film, it is a state of fullness.
Personally, Harry Potter didn't surprise me to win this award.
- Best Narrative: "Lucy All She Expected"
The best narrative of the year gave the text AVG game Lucy everything she expected.
In fact, I have always been in a state of "no comment" as to who this award is awarded to – because the selected works can be said to be completely different and lack contrast at the same latitude.
For example, in the female game "Love of Light and Night", the emotional description of several male protagonists to the female protagonist is delicate and has room for players to analyze and create; "Mimo" is through the elements of suspense and META, constantly deepening the player's sense of substitution in the game; and "Blind Drive" is more of a sword, through sound and simple symbols to promote the development of the plot.
Recommend everyone to try "Blind Drive"
The award-winning Lucy All She Expected is a typical AVG game that can no longer be typical, using a most traditional method to tell the love and separation between a person and a bionic person that seems commonplace now.
The text AVG genre has grown like a bamboo in recent years - good development and small size have become one of the reasons why many start-up teams are willing to try, but examples such as "Tricolor Love" that can be passed on by word of mouth among players are rare, not because of the limitations of the genre, but because the expression requirements of AVG games for text are too high.
As the guest drill teacher said, "AVG is a game genre that can maximize the style and will of the creators themselves." The reason why Lucy's Everything She Expected has been recognized by players is that I personally feel that it is just a sincere and carefully polished story. Sincerity is important, but in repeated denial and modification can also clearly express their views and ideas, which is already a very difficult thing for AVG games.
In addition, in the awards ceremony, we can also see that "Lucy Everything She Expects" is only one vote away from "Mimo" and "Alba". So this reflects a fact from the side - the quality of the game story has little to do with the carrier.
- Best Action, Most Popular with Players: Reborn Cells
For players who have played the console version, "Reborn Cell", which won two awards this time, is already a game three years ago, but the national service officially landed on Android and iOS on February 3, so it can barely be counted as a selection.
As one of the masterpieces of Roguelike games, "Reborn Cell" itself has excellent qualities, and has won many awards before the mobile version is launched. And this time to get the "Most Popular Player Award" selected by the player's vote, I think it is a little interesting when I think about it - it is actually able to force "League of Legends Mobile Game" and other works to win this award, does it show to a certain extent that players who pay attention to the TapTap Awards will prefer to develop smaller boutique independent games?
If Respawn Cell can predict that it will win "Most Popular with Players", then winning the "Best Action" award is really unexpected for me.
As a new award this year, the term "action" actually covers more than just "feel". Including interaction and UI, a game needs to polish more elements if it wants to win the "best action" award. It's not easy to adjust the operating experience of a console action game that's not inferior to that of a console action game, so that's why, although there are a lot of action games on mobile phones, there are very few brilliant works.
Battle Double and Crash Three are representative works
Thanks to the solid foundation of the console version itself, "Reborn Cell" is not big in terms of content adjustment, but it is precisely because of the mobile phone platform that the increase in the "sliding roll" and "automatic attack" using gesture operation has reduced a lot of burden on the part that requires fine operation. However, in general, the optimization of the operation interaction did not give me a "bright eye" feeling, and it did not deviate from the original "rubbing glass" operation feeling.
Personally, I prefer to award the "Best Action" award to "Ink Bucket" - as an FTG game on the mobile phone, it has restored the fist-to-flesh feel of the arcade fighting game on the mobile phone, and the basic systems of "Standing Back", "Wave Rise", "Throwing" and "Second Choice" are also designed with plates and eyes. It is indeed a pity that I did not win this award this year.
For "Ink Bucket", you can refer to the review I wrote before: 鎵嬫満涔嬩笂锛屽疄鍔涗負鐜嬶細灏忚瘎 FTG 鎵嬫父銆婂viii.鏂椼€ | Chain baking GCORES
- Best Musical Sound: "Neil: Re[in]carnation"
As an upgraded award, the evaluation scope of the best music sound effect has been upgraded from "simple background music" to "best music sound effect" including "including ambient sound and effect sound", which means that the criteria for judging this award are further improved, and the game itself has more gold content.
Of the games nominated, Neil and Horse Racing Lady are the two games I played more in depth. In the award ceremony, Mr. Shigeru once commented that in the competition, the sound of the horse's hooves will present the details of "near and far and small" according to the distance of the camera, but in fact, in addition, after each competition performance, the reverberation sound of the character performance also follows such a detailed design.
The newly added side-screens add to the look and feel of the pro-game
Personally, I think it's somewhat debatable that "Neil" won the "Best Musical Sound" award – in fact, everyone still focuses more on the "music" aspect of "Neil" for "Neil". But there is nothing wrong with this, as Keichi Okabe is still an inseparable part of Neil. Even if you open the phone and do nothing, only play the ethereal and melodious melody of the background, "Neil" can bring players the ultimate auditory feeling. It's just that in the "sound effects", I don't feel more unique.
"Play the game and send OST" applies in Neil: The Automatic Human form, in Neil: Artificial Life, and in Neil: Re[in]carnation.
- Best Gameplay, Best Indie Game: Baba Is You
Frankly, from the list of all the nominees, I have no objection to awarding these two awards to Baba Is You. Because this game is so special, so special that it is difficult to describe its uniqueness in words.
42 once wrote in the article "Baba is You": Treat common sense as a walnut, and then smash it with a hammer | GCORES has commented on the game this way: "The game is usually designed within a framework, and this framework can also be part of the game. The game guides you to identify those common senses, then gives you a hammer and breaks them one by one.
It's very META, meta to the core mechanics of this game is unconventional - the general game is to establish a rule, let you play the game content while following the rules, and Baba Is You is asking you to break the rules, or rather, to establish a rule for yourself.
Baba Is You is essentially a game of pushing boxes, and its size is no more than megabytes. So from a development point of view, making a game of the same size may be completed in more than ten hours. However, precisely because its operation is simple and direct enough, it highlights its uniqueness in gameplay - how to find the correct combination of words is the first step test, and pushing the words to the corresponding position is the second step of the basic gameplay.
"Baba is you, SB is me" is something that many players tease themselves about when playing The Baba Is You level. From an indie game perspective, Baba is YOU is enough to show the personality of the producer in a limited space, and from the perspective of gameplay, it has the characteristics of simple, direct and changeable gameplay. As 42 summed up the game – "It's so easy to understand, so unspeakable, so full of energy, reminiscent of the punch-and-punch punch that was common in indie games of the past." ”
To win both awards, Baba Is You deserves it.
- Best Game: Terraria
Several of the games nominated this year received very close votes. When I watched the awards ceremony, I kept thinking that if I had to choose one of the "best games" from the list, it would be really difficult (without playing the emotional card) - the deck of cards in Harry Potter has a lot of depth, the Horse Race Lady has a Roguelite uncertainty in every game, and the opening of a game of "League of Legends Mobile Game" has become a collective activity of the editorial department after work...
The photo has been shortlisted for the "2021 Computer Core Editorial Office Photo Liquidation Awards"
I don't think I need to repeat the excellence of the grand prize winner Terraria and the nominated game, so under this award, I would like to discuss with you, what is the "best game"?
The term "best game" is actually a very vague word – what is the best for games? Is the picture good? Tough to play? Or is there potential for optimization? If a gameplay is particularly solid, but there is no sound, the graphics are simple, can it be called the best game?
The criteria for judging "best game" actually change with the player's game habits, and it is difficult to predict next year's winning criteria based on this year's results. But a player's message under the "shortlist" in the TapTap forum became the answer that impressed me the most at the awards ceremony.
"Used choices can't be wrong. 'It' doesn't fit the masses, but, it suits me. No amount of process can compare to 'I like'. ”
- Best Continuous Operation: "Original God"
Also as another award that is purely voted by players, "Original God" winning this award can be said to be "expected" - the recently released PV of "Goddess Split View" has aroused unanimous praise from players at home and abroad.
After the public beta of "Original God" began in September 2020, it took more than a year to update to version 2.4. Compared with the original version, after several rounds of iterative optimization, "Original God" has a much better map design than the 1.0 era design, and the increasingly rich character group has always been able to make the game have a continuous appeal, and even the character story that players care about has been fully improved with the update.
Being able to maintain an average update cycle of about 40 days is a very big project for a game that requires simultaneous maintenance of the PC, console, and mobile phone. From the perspective of the amount, quality and frequency of updated content, the development team of "Original God" this year is indeed not easy to develop, but fortunately, the content presented has still been affirmed by players, and it can be said that at the end of the year, it can be relaxed.
In addition, in the nominated list, "Muse Dash", which has been online in 18 years, can be on the list, which is still a bit of a surprise to me - although the game successfully went out of the circle with a vibrato hit song "Vietnam drum" in the past few years, it is clear that the development team did not stop itself at the short-lived Internet celebrity event, and in the past year, "Muse Dash" has linked the "Oriental" series, "Rhythm Doctor" and "Arcaea" on the basis of maintaining an average monthly addition of a new song package. Such famous works, it is no wonder that in the TapTap forum, the discussion of game content by players has always maintained a high level.
But then again, it's time to launch Muse Dash 2, right?
Look at the significance of the TapTap Awards from the awards ceremony
TapTap Game of the Year Awards started in 16 years and has gone through five years this year, looking back at the annual awards, it is not difficult to see that the awards themselves are constantly changing.
From the perspective of 18 years, the awards at that time still included the award of "Best Multiplayer", and in 19 years, the award was cancelled, and the "Most Influential" award was added, and the "Most Anticipated" Player Award was added to the original player voting award - when the popularity of the "Eat Chicken" type game began to fade, the Awards immediately made corresponding adjustments.
In 2020, the number of judges on the entire jury rose to 33, and the original awards were streamlined. Also in the same year, TAPTAP held its first official award ceremony. In the past two years, taptap game of the year has made a lot of efforts in terms of professionalism and popularity compared to the previous "just one award is enough" process - it looks more and more formal, and in the content it expresses, it has become more and more professional.
Awards for 2020
Admittedly, the TapTap Awards have also made different attempts along the way forward - such as inviting Li Shi as the host at the 2020 awards ceremony, but it has not caused much heat among players. So this award ceremony invited the "Chinese Boy" and "XiaoNingzi" that are well known to the players. It's not so much an awards ceremony as it is more like a few big names in the industry sitting together, chatting, and talking about such a cozy party in the industry.
Players are improving, and the TapTap Annual Awards are progressing with players. It is a window for us to understand mobile games, and in a sense, it is also an old friend who knows us best.
Write at the end
Whether it is a new game or an old game, whether it is a prize or a nomination in this award, the criteria for players to choose "favorite games" are constantly changing, becoming more meticulous, and becoming more "professional" - from the habit of "playing what you have", to the current "only choose your favorite game to play", know how to enjoy the game, understand the game to get knowledge and happiness from the game Will become more and more.
The TapTap Annual Game Awards are more like a stone monument to record the changes in domestic mobile games, which records the wonderful events that occur in the game world every year, and also invisibly closes the distance between players and developers. "Those who play games are friends" used to be a famous saying that CEOs often hang on their lips, but at the end of this article, I still think it is more appropriate to change it slightly.
That is, "Those who love games are friends." ”