Design: TOPYS@huimeng
Is the game spiritual opium? I am afraid that this view has long been outdated.
When looking through the data, Professor Shen Yifei of Fudan University, who has been very popular with young people in the past two years, also discussed the relationship between games and teenagers in his video, and several of these views I agree with. First of all, it should be clear that the game does provide users with a highly saturated world, and this visual stimulation is not available in the real world, and teenagers may indeed lack interest in real life; secondly, many games are unequal in power and responsibility, such as after the player kills an NPC or takes an item, there is no need to bear any consequences, so the lack of guidance of teenagers may indeed have a large deviation from understanding real life. But it is not forbidden to play games, all the behavioral cognitive problems caused by children will be solved, and the logic of not playing games = learning is obviously more untenable.
Instead, educators should see that the game is nothing more than an outlet for the child's emotions and spirits, because the core of the game is designed to allow the user to produce "flow" (flow is a feeling of fully betting one's mental strength on an activity), so it is not the game itself that people are addicted to, but a lot of timely positive feedback from something. (Parenting three times a day: encouragement?) Compliments? Appreciate it? ）
Secondly, many commercial game masterpieces are now based on the real world, with rich cultural content and narrative to guide players to spontaneously explore a grand world, including many of the history, physics, and even psychology and other knowledge of science, there is no lack of attention to social issues, so the game can also have a serious educational function.
Taking stock of a wave of truly socially functional games today, is it possible for our future to realize the meaning of education itself in fun? (Education here applies not only to children, but also to adults))
The following is a serious spoiler warning!
#01《Trip for Two》
"Giving up is never the optimal solution"
When "Two-Person Trip" was released, its producer Josef Fares once put down a harsh word: "If anyone thinks "Two-Person Trip" is not fun, I will directly paste you for $1,000." The truth is, many game commentators these days call the game a "textbook-level two-player game." The story of "Trip in Pairs" revolves around a couple (Cody and May) in deep marital crisis, and when they decide to solve the problem in the simplest way, divorce, their child Rose first thinks of overcoming the problem, not giving up. So with the help of a bestseller about the magic of "love", the couple began a journey together.
The game is very consistent with the principle of "player motivation and world view consistency", and the purpose of the plot and the level-breaking mechanism adopt a "cooperation" mode to promote Cody and May to repair the relationship between husband and wife. In the game's level design, such as the female protagonist blaming the male protagonist for not dealing with the hive on the tree in time, the male protagonist does not know that the female protagonist discarded the tool, the man and the woman do not know what toys the other party bought for their daughters, and other events that are often experienced in daily life, which not only naturally become the cause of the level, but also let the player have a strong sense of substitution. At the core level of the story, it alludes to a very common social problem: why do couples always move toward indifference, why do children always become victims of marital conflicts?
When the player plays their respective roles but examines their own indifference, nitpicking, non-communication, avoidance and other issues from the perspective of God, in fact, they have learned how to re-examine and deal with the relationship with the people around them in entertainment, how to assume responsibility for the family in life, and through the mechanism of the game to obtain the establishment or repair of real-life relationships, mobilize a new perspective on the original life understanding, this emotional experience is far more convincing than any preaching.
#02 Animal Forest Friends Association
"We always need friendly communities"
If there is anything that is rooted in the bones of TOPYS, it is that we believe that design can change the world little by little and create a warmer society. Therefore, the new island launched by Nintendo in "Moving Forest" recently attracted our attention. The island, called Omnipod Bay, is a "diabetes-friendly community" launched by Nintendo in partnership with instills of tubular insulin pump manufacturer Insulet, where players can wear custom clothing, such as wearing an insulin pump or carrying other diabetes accessory kits, for novel adventures. Lei Mercado, Chief Marketing Officer of Insulet, said in a statement: "We hope that through the integration with animal friends, we can give people more tolerance, connection and attention to diabetics in an entertaining and educational way."
According to reports, the number of cases of diabetes in Chinese children is increasing and the risk of developing the disease is also increasing, mainly due to poor eating habits and lack of exercise. The World Health Organization also pointed out that by 2040, the number of diabetics in China will increase to 150 million. In fact, this small move of "Moving Forest" is not a game design innovation, but if a game can arouse everyone's attention to health and tolerance of special people in this way, it is definitely worth seeing.
#03 Persona 5
"Through fantasy, you can see reality from a new perspective"
Is it a good game that can arouse players' attention and thinking about society? I think the JRPG game "Persona 5", which mainly exposes the ugliness of real society, has delivered a good answer.
Through flashbacks, the story tells a group of high school students who call themselves the "Strange Thieves of the Heart" to solve the unsolvable injustice and decay problems in society through their own strength (including invasion, art plagiarism, collusion between officials and businessmen, etc.), and the story is based on the events that have been greatly affected in Japanese society in recent years. From businessmen and politicians to celebrities, players can find benchmarks in the real world.
In fact, whether players can get anything from this game, I think it is a matter of opinion, especially teenagers, who need parental guidance. After all, under the setting of the game, the player's "punishment" behavior will never cause real-world harm, which is also one of the limitations of the game mentioned above. But it raises a deeper question: What is self and freedom?
The game's original English name, Persona, refers to the mask, which refers to the appearance of people when they are with people, and also refers to the concealment of the true self. By tearing off the protagonists' masks in the real world, the game turns into a force against the distortion of evil, a true self that is neither within the rules nor in line with the label of "justice". I want to explore this topic is the real meaning: the ubiquitous anxiety always makes people try to make the mask on their faces more perfect, but for better or worse, learning to accept a complete self is the most precious wealth of modern people.
Kant has a quote in Speculation about the Origins of Human History: Find yourself with the ability to choose a way of life for yourself, rather than being tied to the only way of life like other animals. ”
Maybe freedom lies in acceptance.
#04 "Twelve Minutes"
"A happy childhood heals a lifetime, and an unhappy childhood needs to be cured all a lifetime"
The title of the game, Twelve Minutes, points out the basic setting of the game: time looping. In fact, the story setting is quite similar to Nolan's "Memory Fragments", and it also integrates some elements of "The Shining" and "Rear Window". The story tells that a detective breaks into the man's home, accuses the protagonist's wife of committing murder, and the romantic evening time with his wife instantly becomes a nightmare trapped in twelve minutes, and the only solution is to use the subsequent development of the story to change the outcome and break the cycle.
In fact, all of the above is hypnotized and imagined by the protagonist himself, and what he is really dealing with is a contradiction about the individual at the unconscious level. If the protagonist wants to develop an unrequited love affair with his sister and is then opposed by his father, there is a clear theme here: incest taboo and Oedipus, and the male protagonist's pathological obsession may come from the unsolved Oedipus Triangle in childhood.
I haven't delved into Freud's psychoanalysis, and I won't explore it too much here, but the influence of the original family, a topic that has been frequently raised in the past two years, is actually worthy of people's attention. In A General Theory of Love, there is a theory that love and the lack of love change a baby's brain forever... Most of the nervous system (including the limbic system, managing mood, memory and attention, etc.) ... The lack of a caring mother can cause irreparable damage to the complex and fragile limbic system of human beings.
When everyone is talking about how Gu Ailing's mother taught women to be good, did they think for a moment: the difference is not in the material, but in whether their personality integrity has reached the requirements of motherhood.
#05 Blue Bridge Cafe
"Misunderstandings often stem from ignorance"
"Blue Bridge Cafe" is an AIDS science game jointly created by Tencent Game Dream Pursuit Project and China STD AIDS Prevention and Control Association. In terms of style, this game is as warm as its setting, and it is a text-oriented healing style. "Blue" refers to the color of AIDS blockers, while "bridge" refers to building a bridge between HIV/AIDS knowledge and the public.
The story tells a touching story between the owner of an ordinary coffee shop played by the player and the three AIDS patients: from the initial difficulty in opening the heart to confessing the identity and illness process of their AIDS patients, the popular science knowledge of AIDS is no longer a cold text, but a specific case combined with a sense of truth. Although the storyline has an element of artistic processing, the knowledge of AIDS prevention and diagnosis and treatment in the plot has been professionally guided and recognized by the China AIDS Association.
In addition to the science of HIV/AIDS prevention knowledge, I think the inferiority complex and real discrimination of patients are more worthy of reflection by every player, because according to the data, humiliation and discrimination are the main obstacles in the effective prevention and care of AIDS and HIV. As far as the global situation is concerned, if a person is suspected of having HIV, it means that the patient will lose health care services, housing and other social benefits, and the insurance company will reject their application, and they are more likely to be abandoned by relatives and friends, or even violently treated and killed. Sometimes taking a life often doesn't require weapons, and verbal violence can do it.
Although "Blue Bridge Cafe" is only a small game, it uses the way of player substitution to highly restore the different vision and unfair treatment endured by AIDS patients in reality, so as to arouse the care and respect of the society for the group, which is a strong and effective public welfare attempt, and may also give some reference and thinking to institutions that deal with similar social problems.
#6 Resident Evil: Infinity
"Man makes a choice, but a slave obeys"
Since its inception, the Bioshock series has caused people to think about "utopianism" and "extreme capitalism" in society with its rich philosophical connotations and aesthetic experience, and even academic papers have used Gremas's symbolic matrix and Lacan's three realms of personality to study this game. (This year, even playing games has a threshold)
In BioShock Infinity, the third in the series, the protagonist of the game, Booker DeWitt, is sent to the floating city of Colombia to find a imprisoned girl, Elizabeth, who is hunted for by xenophobes, elites, and the rebel group That Voice of the People, which represents ordinary people, and must embark on an adventure and journey to find the truth.
The dazzling Colombian society presented in the game is a capitalist society that has developed to the extreme, and the surface of this society is very "utopian": social harmony, beautiful environment, and technological development, but behind all this superficial beauty is the blood of countless enslaved people, such as the massacre of Indians, the lack of food for the people at the bottom, racial discrimination and other issues. Paradoxically, you find it interesting to put this fantasy theme in real life.
It is true that capitalism has promoted the industrial, technological and green revolutions, which have greatly improved the standard of living of human beings, but what will capitalism face when it reaches the next stage? Excessive promotion of objectivity and individualism, everything is measured by economic value, increasingly weak self-awareness, spiritual crisis brought about by lack of faith, tolerance of vulnerable groups and other derivative problems... True utopias are far more distant than we think.