Zhengguan news reporter Li Bingjie
The narrative of power and pampering in the palace fight game has formed a new order in the modern context, but the players are still woven into a set of digital systems, and their love and hatred, their experiences and feelings, are all intricately intertextual with their encounters in reality.
"As soon as the 'emperor' spoke, I wanted to kick his crotch", after spending nearly two years with the "emperor", the king unilaterally pronounced a merciless judgment on the relationship between the two.
The 24-year-old king is studying law graduate school, and the rules of modern society are well memorized by her, but in the hidden corner of the mobile phone, the harem dispute is quietly unfolding, and in this virtual world, the king who has "survived" for two years has become a "side concubine".
Promotion, vicious fighting, competition for favors, these are incomparably familiar plots in the court drama in the game gradually appeared, since 2004, the palace fighting game has become a new game category by countless girls welcomed, according to the consulting company Frost & Sullivan's survey report, it is expected that by 2023, the chinese women to mobile game market size will reach 95.8 billion yuan.
Shi Keyang, a professor at the School of Art and Media of Beijing Normal University, said in his analysis of the "Gongdou Fever": (Gongdou culture) reverses the traditional cultural order and the identity relationship between the male-dominated and female passive existence in classic art creation, and is a release of female consciousness in the field of ideological consciousness. In most palace fights, the male becomes a symbolic or instrumental being, and the relationship between the two sexes in the story is in a deliberately created imbalance.
The narrative of power and pampering does form a new order in the modern context, and in order to attract the attention of more girls, most palace fighting games will set up other male characters with different personalities in addition to the "emperor", but the king who has played the palace fighting game for two years has found that the male characters that appear as a reward have lost their appeal to most players.
The game is pleasing and collecting female players, who seem to have a richer choice, but "Krypton" also dominates everything, facing a system of repeatedly measuring value with numbers, their love and hatred, their experiences and feelings, all form a wonderful intertextual with the encounter in reality.
Become queen
Finally waited for 0 o'clock, Cao Hate Twilight's rental house of less than 20 square meters was as bright as day, the mobile phone was the brilliant "Jingren Palace", and it was a new day, Cao Hate Twilight would reopen a new round of palace fighting in the game - the retinue who lost yesterday was refilled after 0 points of health, the old enemy who had been defeated before was still waiting for repairs at Dali Temple, the system restored five opportunities for her to play with love enemies, and the page appeared in the constantly rotating pink flower pattern, new gold coins, new physical strength, and new equipment waiting for her to harvest.
Palace Fight game interface
This is the third day that Cao Hate Twilight plays this palace fighting game, she thinks she has mastered the basic rules of this game, her fingers are flexibly shuttled through different interfaces, how to get the most gold coins, how to wear clothes with higher scores to obtain higher intimacy with "blue face", and say words that may be against her heart but more appropriate. Cao Hate Twilight is ambitious, and in this virtual palace fight, she is bound to accumulate the most wealth, obtain the highest title, and defeat the most enemies.
Ambition for her to usher in the reward, in just over two days, she has been promoted from the show girl who participated in the harem draft to the fourth class, she has obtained the head frame that only "concubines" can wear, the exquisite and intricate patterned head is more exquisite than the "promise", she has gained more silver and energy, has a higher prestige to teach the old enemy mercilessly, and even the way of entertaining the love enemy has been extended from passing on bad words to the little people. Excluding dissidents and uniting forces, in Cao Hate's view, this is the only criterion for palace fighting.
The system provides Cao With four men with different personalities
Men are another kind of manifest and hidden wealth. The system provides her with four men with different personalities, her choice is "rain and dew", and she has understood that any change in intimacy will affect the next round. Four men lined up in front of Cao Hate Twilight's eyes, her fingers stayed briefly between the avatars, the mystery of the gift upgrade she had already remembered in her heart, a red agate heart was given to the "Emperor", the magnetic voice of the male voice actor sounded in the ear, Cao Hate Twilight interrupted the voice actor's love words, and clicked on another page of the upgrade.
According to the game's background, Cao is a modern costume designer who travels to the Qing Dynasty, and her goal is to find the long-lost treasure map from endless clues, and what she needs to do is to gain greater power in the dangerous harem to find the final whereabouts of the treasure map.
But no one cares about the treasure map. Cao Hate Twilight's goal is to become an empress.
"Just ignore the men and the game won't be boring"
Becoming an empress, or constantly upgrading, this can almost be used to sum up the happiness that the king gets in this palace fighting game, from the autumn of 2019, the king has become a loyal player in the palace fighting game, from the show girl to the "side concubine", the level 11 advancement took the king a long two years, she loves to hoard all the resources in the game, silver two, power, attribute Dan, joined the first ranking alliance in the service area. This is the most attractive part of the palace fighting game, get the items and then consume them happily, watching the level of the value skyrocket.
In her opinion, most of the plots of the palace fighting game are "shoddy, lengthy and boring", while the personality and copywriting of the male characters make people laugh, and a gentle tap of his intimate gesture will get "who gave you the guts, so ignorant of etiquette" or "women, dare not come to see me for so long", unable to perceive any happiness in interacting with the "emperor", the king turned around and looked for other fun in the game.
In The King's long experience of gaming, "as long as you ignore the men, the game will not be boring", she joined the alliance , a loose organization of players, the alliance's group, "Sisters rush!" The shouts came and went, the chat on the public screen seemed that no one really cared about the male protagonist, even the plot was not discussed, "because it was really smelly and long", everyone shared the raiders in the group, fought for a higher position for the alliance, and even shared the photos of the children, which is a group that accommodates elementary school girls to Bao Ma, but no one discusses the male character who is firmly in the center of the page - the player needs to keep sending gifts to the male character, carefully matching the costumes and communicating with it, hongyan chuanshu to communicate feelings, but the king said" No one cares what men are doing, no interest at all. ”
Players exchange experiences in alliance groups
But in fact, the male characters that the king deliberately ignored could not be invisible at all. Playing another palace fighting game, Lin Yunshi must try her best to sleep as soon as possible after entering the palace, and "want to succeed once", only in this way can she enter the next level more smoothly, which is the essential she learned in the raiders. The game's interface appears with a male stand-up in a white undershirt and two white arms that are tightly wrapped around him, and the words "[You're red-faced] Concubines serve the emperor and go to bed" appear on the screen, "You have to go against your mind to identify with the very ancient worldview in order to go up step by step, and I sometimes feel uncomfortable, because it seems that subconsciously I feel that only pleasing is right."
The game interface of Lin Yunshi
In a palace fight game that requires giving birth to five children and killing other concubines in the harem to successfully upgrade, Jiang Shuyue spent a week to pass the level, she "painfully" poisoned the former queen who had a deep affection for herself, gave birth to a bunch of children, and eventually became the queen, standing at the top of the power, she felt "really uninteresting", she reset the game, secretly eloped with other men.
"Rational objectification"
In the initial period of entering the game, not every girl loses interest in male characters.
Dawang is also a lover of romance novels and mobile phone games, in the not far away girlhood, she has received countless romance novels and baptism, Qing Palace dramas are like several family treasures, she believes that the pure yuan in "The Biography of Zhen Huan" is Martey Ruoxi in "Step by Step", and Zhen Huan is lafayette in "Huan Zhu Ge Ge".
Five or six years ago, the king began to contact a competitive game, because he failed to "kill" an enemy, the male player on the other side scolded in the public screen, and the humiliating words specifically aimed at women appeared on the screen of the king, and the newly adult king was a fragile girl who would "cry and retreat because of her teammates scolding me, and didn't know what to do except cry." ”
Virtual and real offenses came at the same time, almost at the same time, the king came into contact with a love game from South Korea, without any redundant plot, what she needed to do was to remain ambiguous with male colleagues and several other men as the heroine, but this is not a one-to-many love game that bubbles up in the bubble of romance, in the memory of the king, this is more like a difficult test of whether to face herself honestly, and the indicator of favorability in the game interface makes her have to "weigh herself" all the time. Even if the male colleague on the other side has sent discriminatory remarks or frivolous remarks, the king still needs to use a gentle reply full of "East Asian wisdom" to resolve all possible conflicts, "Sometimes the boy arranged by the system may not be attractive to you, but if you want to win, you must please him."
Unable to accept that she was "reasonably objectified", after successfully passing the level, the king reset the game, she deliberately violated the game's playthrough rules, gave the male colleague an unceremonious counterattack, "just want to see what the ending is for my own happiness", did not disappoint the king, all possible ambiguous relationships have dropped to the freezing point.
Cao Hate Twilight, who entered the workplace after graduating from college, also had a similar situation, facing two rows of female subordinates, the boss laughed and giggled at the staff meeting to tell yellow jokes, she felt offended, looked up at her female colleagues, all of them bowed their heads and were silent, "always can not pat the table and leave", she will "refuse to laugh" as a kind of silent weak resistance.
"Waiting for Godot"
After seven days of check-in, Cao Hate Twilight received the system to give her a tired sign reward, felt a kind of "waiting for Godot" style of absurdity, friends know that she played the palace fighting game are joking, at first, everyone asked her, whether she has seen a man, later, the inquiry became a few children, according to the general rules of palace fighting, the mother is expensive, with the favor and the child can rise step by step, but Cao Hate Twilight, who skipped most of the plot, has completely unclear the specific progress of his relationship with several male protagonists, Affection and affection are reduced to pink numbers wrapped in heart-shaped symbols.
Numbers rule everything in this world, the system reminds Cao Hate Twilight, there is no shortage of beautiful people in the harem, ask her to pay attention to makeup, the number gives a more precise explanation of this sentence, Cao Hate Twilight will be Western-style bracelets, traditional style long skirts and ancient heroic crown together, this unusual combination for her to win a perfect score - because the system algorithm shows that these items are more "advanced".
Even hatred can be written in numbers, and Cao Hate Twilight, who has a prestige value of 2,000, can teach 4 old enemies a day, "Snap! The bamboo battle hit the old enemy, and Cao Hao Twilight harvested 100,000 silver two and 200,000 yuan qi. She couldn't hear the beating, it was too loud, and an indescribable sense of shame hung over her, and she hastily turned off the sound every time it sounded.
The King is "joked" by other players in the game
Rumors about her people, paint ugly makeup for other concubines, use power deterrence, sneaky villains, this is the way to make a vendetta with other players, if anyone spreads rumors, the system will automatically classify her as your enemy, here to encourage revenge, because rumors get rewards, painting ugly makeup is a praiseworthy quality of scheming.
Cao hates Twilight for giving ugly makeup to the other concubines
The king and an enemy have been tearing each other apart for two years, "the two people's grudges can be found on a different server." ”
This absurdity spread in every palace, and in order to unlock the plot, Yao Siwei had to fight with other eunuchs in the palace from time to time, "Am I not a lady?" Why do I always let me fight with the eunuch", after several failed fights, Yao Siwei quit the game.
Fight with eunuch palace maids for the upgrade
But Cao Hate Twilight and the King have not yet given up, there is no spare money to invest in the game, Cao Hate Twilight's choice is to go to various projects in the game to earn possible meager "Yuan Qi", which is the embodiment of the life energy in the game, only by earning enough "Yuan Qi" can she win the vicious battle with the palace eunuch. Cao Hate Twilight, who has the dream of an empress, caught fish in the palace fighting game, and in the pond outside the palace, Cao Hate Twilight slammed the screen and fished enough for half an hour, in exchange for 200,000 silver two and 200,000 yuan qi, and was able to re-enter the "battle", she returned to the battlefield with the eunuch, less than five seconds she was defeated again, and the fish in the pond outside the palace were going to suffer again.
Silver two and Yuan Qi slowly increased with the passage of time, every ten minutes, the system automatically generated according to the player's level, from 0:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m., Cao Hate Twilight scavenged every drop of YuanQi given to her in her backpack, in the fish pond and in the system, and she finally passed the level.
Unable to have enough patience to wait in the long upgrade, the king chose to "kryptonite" in the game early, the system reminded her that as long as she spends 6 yuan, she can get a big gift package and double rewards, upgrade to LV1, do not have to go to the suburbs to fish, before and after spending more than two hundred, the king successfully rose to the "side concubine".
But there were still six levels ahead, tens of thousands of palace fortunes waiting for her to earn, she didn't know how many more fights with the eunuchs, how many more times to wear strange costumes to rise to the empress, in the public screen, the king had seen someone spend 200,000, but a look at this person's title, it was not even the empress.
Two years later, the king still logged into the game with the mood of Sisyphus pushing the boulder, "I suspect that no one can become a queen at all, at the beginning there were only 20 levels, but now there are 40 levels, the game developers will definitely set more levels in order to make money, but I have never seen a queen, every day I go online to do tasks, just want to see if this game can really rise to the end." ”
More people's curiosity has gradually faded, and the alliance group of the king has gradually fallen silent since the end of 2020, and those "sisters rush!" The message still lingers on her page, interspersed with a few photos of young children, someone talking about newborn children, their lives disappearing on the edge of the Internet, and those similar offenses in the minds of these players? This question floated up in the king's mind and was pressed down, and she did not ask the exit.
A new game where you can marry two husbands
The king opened the interface of another palace fighting game, and this time, she could be in a "both embarrassed and excited" mood and marry two men at the same time.
Editor: Cheng Shuaixing Ma Shaojian
Coordinator: Shi Chuang