What is national is the world
Under the wave of going to sea, the cultural influence of games has become increasingly prominent.
In July 2021, China's Ministry of Commerce announced the "List of Key National Cultural Export Enterprises and Key Projects for 2021-2022". Among them, a total of 68 game companies have been selected as key enterprises, and 9 games have been selected as key projects.
"Games are a medium carrier with sound, graphics and a sense of interactive experience, and the advantages in cultural display are very obvious." Hu Xiaonan, brand manager of netease leihuo marketing department, said, "As game practitioners, we have creativity, technology, and excellent art, and we are shouldering a cultural mission. ”
Gamers have the responsibility to make "national culture go to the world". More and more games have also begun to link with traditional culture, which not only gained benefits, but also enhanced cultural influence, forming a win-win situation.
The cultural meaning conveyed behind it is more important than the "going out" of cultural forms. At the 2022 N.GAME NetEase Game Developer Summit, Hu Xiaonan took the "Eternal Destruction of the Golden Wuji" as an example to analyze how the cooperation between "Eternal Destruction" and traditional culture was upgraded from the artifact level to the spiritual level.
At the same time, the exploration of the field of traditional culture in "Forever Destroyed" also provides a good example for the inheritance and promotion of excellent traditional culture in domestic games.
The following is the full text of the speech of Hu Xiaonan, brand manager of NetEase Thunder Fire Marketing Department, slightly edited:
Journey from 0 to 1 in the Golden Age
Hello everyone, I am Hu Xiaonan, brand manager from NetEase Thunder Fire Marketing Department, and I am honored to participate in the 2022 NetEase Game Developer Summit. Today, my sharing is mainly to talk to you about some large and small explorations and attempts in the field of traditional culture since the launch of the eternal disaster.
First of all, to show some of the achievements that Yong hao has made since the global public beta in August last year, we have waded through the water for domestic buyout games and stepped on a foot first. I am also very happy that after we went online, we have heard many peers more firmly do terminal games and do IP voices.
After these achievements, on the one hand, it can reflect our commercial success, on the other hand, it means that Yong hao has walked out as a domestic game with a strong oriental aesthetic color, entered the international vision, and become a window for the export of Chinese culture.
In recent years, from the perspective of the industry, the level of the track of traditional culture in game products has gradually "rolled up", many products are doing, there are cultural and Cultural Linkage, there is intangible cultural heritage linkage, in the game into the Hanfu culture, Quyi culture, porcelain culture and so on... There is also no shortage of very amazing cases of going out of the circle, achieving double success in commercial revenue and user reputation.
We will find more and more that in fact, traditional culture is not only a public welfare for game products, but also more of an opportunity and a treasure. When we want to develop new content and inject new vitality into the game, we can always look back at the golden mountain of traditional culture, and what are the good things that fit our tone and can be used.
I believe that your peers will often receive a large number of resources from suppliers, and there are many names, such as 5A-level tourist attractions, national non-genetic inheritors, Chinese time-honored brands and so on. However, our development resources and promotion resources are limited, so how do we choose partners that match the tone, and how to find a combination point to do the landing?
I can share with you the truth about our groping process. Although the theme I share today is the Eternal Destruction of Jinwuji, which is a very complete traditional culture development plan, at the beginning, we did not have such a systematic idea of how to do this line of traditional culture, and there was no such thing as Jinwuji.
We had already made some scattered attempts before the JinWuji, but in fact, at the beginning our thinking was very simple and direct.
As far as we ask, if an animal were to be used to represent eternal doom, what would it be? It's easy to think of Jin Wu and Dragon.
Then if you use an item to represent the eternal devastation, then the first thing that may be thought of is the mask, from this emoji, you can see this mask of Ning Hongye, it has become a symbol of the eternal devastation, wearing it is to fight the robbers, and there is the immortal mask that the heroes of the Cave Continent are fighting for.
If you use a plant to represent eternal doom, it is easy to think of the other side of the flower, in the game we call it the soul flower. If a weapon were to be used to represent eternal doom, it might be a broadsword or a long sword, and many people may have different answers.
The first cooperation we talked about in the literature and blog was achieved in such a simple idea. Why is it said that the golden crow and the dragon are animals that can represent eternal destruction? Because in the eternal worldview, behind all the disputes is the dispute of the ancient gods. The anode true god Jin Wu and the cathode true god candle nine yin fight, which is the beginning of the story of Juguzhou.
But when it comes to Jinwu, we think of the sun god bird, speaking of the sun god bird, I don't know if you know what The city image logo of Chengdu looks like? This is Chengdu's urban image logo "Sun God Bird", and its original form is from a national treasure-level cultural relic. Sun God Bird Gold Jewelry, unearthed in Chengdu's Jinsha Ruins, we have Jinwu, Jinsha Ruins have Sun God Bird, that has a point of convergence in the world view, and the treasure of the town hall, the Sun God Bird can be used as an iconic appearance, we have reached a linkage with each other.
We refined the feathers of the god bird, the elements of the sun, plus the Shu embroidery elements of the ancient Shu kingdom, made a linkage skin for the new hero Wu Dust, and restored the gold ornament of the sun god bird to the game, and the player can also wear this national treasure-level cultural relic behind him as a back ornament.
So how to establish the relationship between the new hero Dustless and the Sun God Bird? We used paper puppet animation and paper-cut stop-motion animation to create a promotional material that was independent of the game's plot.
This video is about Wu Chen in a cave to see the mysterious mural of the Hermit people on the stone wall about Jin Wu, he controls the Sun God Bird totem into the world in the painting, and then meets the Jin Wu in the painting, in which he has a fantasy battle with Jin Wu. You can see that this is all made of paper-cutting, this Golden Wu is a paper-cutting process, Dustless is also a paper doll made of paper-cut, this duel may be just a dream in the illusion for Dustless, but after the dream woke up, he transformed into a golden wu costume in a cloud of flames. The script is simple and the message is straightforward.
We also made a cultural relics science video, and the narrator is Jin Wu's nemesis, Ning Hongye, the power holder of the Nine Yin of Candles. You can see that our Kunlun Xuannu Ning Red Night usually has a lot of words, and now her face is full of happiness, explaining historical culture and archaeological knowledge to players, which is a very lightweight low-cost small material.
The second linkage of the literature and blog we talked about, the idea is also the same simple and direct, a major feature of the eternal disaster may be cold weapon melee, then we go to find where there are ancient weapons related resources, so we found the Pingyao Wentaofang Ancient Weapons Museum.
Our initial idea was to find some ancient weapons, restore them, and put them into the game as skins as weapons. After finding the Wentaofang Ancient Weapons Museum, we found that the curator Liu Wentao is the inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage forging technology, good at weapon forging and weapon repair, just so we can engage in a linkage that comes and goes.
What comes and goes? That is to say, there is both take-ism and send-ism. Putting the physical object into the virtual, taking the treasures of the museum collection to scan and model it into the game; turning the virtual into the entity is to send the popular weapons in our games to be forged, carved, and reproduced into the entity.
We picked one of the treasures of their museum' town hall: the Horse Head Knife, restored it to the game, and made an out-of-print commemorative dagger skin, which was given to full-service players for free as a souvenir as a reward for worldwide sales of more than 600w.
In fact, there is an interesting episode when it comes to this matter, we put the website of the museum in the game, so that players can go to the museum to see a variety of ancient weapons after playing the game, and appreciate the historical weapon culture of the mainland. It doesn't matter, players flocked to it, and the official website of the Pingyao Ancient Weapons Museum was directly squeezed. Many players also feel very speechless, posting screenshots in our official blog comment area asking us, how can museums also be blown up?
We brought the horse's head knife, so what weapon did we send? We chose the biggest one: the wolf master broadsword, and let the museum curator use the traditional process of smelting and forging in ancient methods to reproduce one. The reproduction of the wolf lord is indeed a big project, and we sent a shooting team to Pingyao to record the forging process with the shooting. In the middle, it was very unfortunate to catch up with the heavy rain in Shanxi in early October last year, the casting workshop was flooded, the water and electricity were cut off, the production progress was stagnant, and the entire construction period lasted more than two months. Coupled with the post-documentary time, we didn't release the film until late December.
We can take a look and see how the Wolf Lord was forged. This wolf lord is really very big, I think of the time when the wolf lord sent to the company, on this courier placed in the express delivery area, the courier brother told us to go to get, no one to go, really can not move, is the wooden board nailed up the box more than two meters high, inside is a pure steel pure iron made of a large broad knife, really not fun.
Later, no one dared to take it for a long time, and then the courier brother of the small post office gave us an ultimatum and said: "This is too occupied!" You must take it today. "We only got two strong laborers, so we went to carry the wolf lord back, and got a bracket to put it horizontally in the studio hoping to suppress all the bugs."
Explore spiritual temperament fits
The two linkages I mentioned above are actually the linkages that were negotiated in the first month of the eternal launch, and our thinking at this stage is very simple. The cultural fit I am looking for is a very specific thing, of course, this idea is not to say that it is not wrong, but if there are only elements around our game, I will find something to link, which may lack some deep, spiritual insight. We still need to broaden our horizons, not only to find the point of convergence of the surface, but also to explore the point of convergence of the spiritual temperament.
So what is the eternity of the spirit? In the early days of promotion, we felt that this kernel was free and unrestrained, and we would emphasize the degree of freedom that never ended: the zipline flew around, the map was fully interactive; it could climb a tree and hang it on the wall, unrestrained. At this point, what we came up with was that I was free.
Later, we hoped to further break through the appearance and emphasize the deeper spiritual core, and we raised this question again. Here may also wish to ask everyone, when it comes to eternal doom, what do you think? Vibrating knife?
At the beginning of October last year, our marketing team went out to conduct a visit to an Internet café in seven cities across the country. In addition to collecting some of the player's most intuitive play feedback face-to-face, we also want to know what kind of spiritual temperament it is in the eyes of the player?
The following are the most mentioned words from players in our Internet café survey. So how do these words sum up a common denominator? It looks like it's just a fight, a fight. We feel that the word "wu" is the most able to arouse the above associations, and it is the most reminiscent of martial arts, competitions, fights, wins and losses, and so on.
Later, we added the second half of the sentence to "I am free of restraint": I am free of restraint, and my martial arts are infinite.
Why talk about this martial arts? In fact, this brings us to a more abstract reflection on traditional Chinese culture, we read modern Chinese history will know the process of learning the West in modern China, divided into three layer-by-layer stages of learning utensils, learning systems, and learning ideas.
The shallowest level is the Western Affairs Movement, which is to learn artifacts, learn shipbuilding, and build cannons. The deepest level is the new cultural movement, learning about ideological culture. When it comes to traditional Chinese culture, we can easily think of some very specific things, such as calligraphy, painting, embroidery, seal carving, and so on. These are actually all at the level of artifacts.
And what is the spiritual level of traditional Chinese culture that is particularly compatible with eternal destruction? We feel that the martial spirit must be counted as one. Some people may say that China is Confucian culture and not martial, especially Confucian and easy-going, but this is not the case.
In the case of Confucius, he was a man of infinite strength, and Confucius taught his students to have six arts, that is, six subjects—etiquette, music, archery, imperial court, books, and numbers. Among them, "shooting" and "imperial" are all skills related to fighting.
Sima Qian wrote the Chronicle of History, which was dedicated to the Rangers and Assassins. Why? He just admired these people very much. Li Bai's writing of "Chivalrous Travel" is also very proud, and it is also very pleasant to read. Therefore, Chinese is talking about martial arts and having martial souls. Why is wuxia culture very popular in China? In fact, it also reflects a martial feeling of Chinese.
After confirming such a spiritual temperament, what kind of linkage or cooperation do you think we can engage in? For example, looking for martial arts novels, martial arts movies, or collaborating with martial arts schools? Looking for the Shaolin Temple? Or can you think of any personal name?
We ended up choosing Bruce Lee. In December, we announced Bruce Lee Linkage at our annual press conference, which is our linkage promotional video.
There are many reasons for choosing Bruce Lee, first of all, he must be able to represent the word "wu" and also represent China, he is a real Chinese martial artist, a monument to Chinese martial arts; and then his influence overseas is also very strong, there are many foreigners who admire him, and Yong hao, as a globally released game, must also take into account the factor of international recognition. Overall, Bruce Lee is the best choice.
Here's our linkage poster and slogan. Immortality is a major feature of the game Forever, immortality is not only the immortality of the immortal mask, but also the immortality of martial arts and the immortality of Chinese civilization.
Why is Bruce Lee a representative of Chinese culture? I believe that everyone may have seen a very famous interview with him, about water. He said that a good martial artist is like water, water can flow quietly, but it can also violently impact, in fact, this central idea is what Lao Tzu called "good as water.".
His martial arts philosophy comes from the inheritance of Chinese culture, which is fully representative of Chinese martial arts, so we use Bruce Lee as a spokesman for the spirit of eternal martial arts.
Bruce Lee's linkage we are doing very deeply, to put it bluntly, by no means to let the player put on the yellow tights is the end, we are also very hard in the game to interpret Bruce Lee's boxing, specifically for this linkage to make a new weapon - double stick.
This is actually to deeply integrate Bruce Lee's martial arts temperament into the player's combat experience, the double stick is a very special weapon in the eternal disaster, with both rigid and soft characteristics, there are some special action performances, in our game, the double stick of a move is a reference to Bruce Lee's own action design.
We also invited Mr. Wen Junshan, the third generation of Bruce Lee, to do motion capture for the game moves to ensure the accuracy of the double stick action and convey Bruce Lee's style as much as possible.
Bruce Lee Linkage also lived up to expectations and set off a heated discussion among overseas players, the never-ending Bruce Lee promotional film reached more than 200w views on Youtube, and the comment area became a large idol meeting. Another Thai blogger was very excited about this linkage, and spontaneously uploaded a reaction video full of program effects, which was also popular.
As mentioned earlier, the artifact level and ideological level of Chinese culture, our golden sand linkage and ancient weapon linkage can be counted as the artifact level, and bruce Lee linkage is the ideological and spiritual level.
Resurrect traditional culture
But in fact, the two are not clearly distinguished, and the example I will talk about next is a traditional cultural project that has been upgraded from the artifact level to the spiritual level by chance.
What is this artifact? It's armor.
Last November, we launched a new hero, Yue Shan, whose character CG came out, wearing a battle armor and wearing a strong and tenacious outfit. Players have said that the handsome fried, goosebumps are up. The image of his armor is particularly popular with players, and we want to work the armor culture, and want to make a set of armor fashion based on the Tang Dynasty Mingguang armor.
We found the top armor team in China - the armor hall. Their Master Wen Chenhua is a famous Tang and Song Dynasty armor restoration master in China, and also the designer of the armor in "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", and we would like to invite him to do academic evidence and physical restoration of the Tang Dynasty Mingguang armor for us.
This is the national style armor catwalk we did together with the top armor team at the YongWu Sword Fighting Conference in December. That artifact is armor, what is this spirit? It is the feeling of home and country.
This is actually the idea that we gradually collided with in the exchange, when we invited the teachers of the armor hall to the company to sit down and talk about the ideas of armor design, and they brought some armor objects and literature to discuss the armor style, material, archaeological prototype, etc. with our planning and art face to face.
According to the Tang Dynasty Ming Guangjiao, we could not get around Dunhuang, we talked about going to the Mogao Grottoes to collect wind, when Teacher Wen Chenhua said of a person, the first general of the late Tang Dynasty - Zhang Yichao.
Zhang Yichao may not be particularly familiar with this person, and we are the same, but after learning his story, we are all particularly touched. After the Tang Dynasty Anshi Rebellion, Hexi fell into the hands of Tubo, and the people of Hexi did not have a good life. In order to safeguard national unity, Zhang Yichao poured out his family property, formed a rebel army, fought hard for three years without the purpose of fame and fortune, recovered Hexi, and returned to the territory of the Tang Dynasty.
Everyone knows that Hanfu is the right side, the Han people's clothes are tied to the right, and the hundred years of left clothes are the suffering of the frontier people for nearly a hundred years. It was precisely because Zhang Yichao was loyal and courageous, and fought alone and bloodily, that the remnants of Hexi finally got rid of the fiery life of the fallen and could wear back the clothes of the Tang Dynasty.
At first, we just wanted to design an armor, there was nothing particularly high, but after listening to Zhang Yichao's story, we felt that such a hero should be known to more people. Traditional Chinese culture must not only pass on things, but also pass on the spirit. The hero's spirit spanning thousands of years is also very touching, if there is no hero, then the bright light armor is just a piece of armor, and the armor worn on the hero's body is bright and dazzling.
In this way, from the artifacts, deep into the spirit, and from the armor culture, sublimated to the feelings of home and country. In the end, we decided to upgrade the original plan for the restoration of Mingguang Armor to the "Restoration Process of Zhang Yichao's Image" and do our best to publicize this national hero to the public.
We and the armor refining team went deep into Dunhuang to collect styles, referred to a large number of academic documents, historical books and excavated cultural relics, and strived to restore zhang Yichao's image of wearing mingguang armor as much as possible. Similarly, we will also introduce Zhang Yichao's great feats in the game, so that the majority of players can see the most vivid face of this lonely and courageous national hero through this bright armor. And people's memory is the vitality of heroes.
After a series of explorations of traditional Chinese culture, we launched the Jin Wu Ji. Our positioning of Jinwuji is a long-term chinese traditional culture development project, which unifies the series of contents of inheriting, integrating and promoting traditional culture that we are currently carrying out in the future into this vein, and is named "Jinwuji".
JinWu is an ancient god that never ends, and it is also an image that symbolizes the origin of Chinese culture. We gave this project the name, which means to use the name of Jinwu to open an era of integration with traditional culture.
We also sorted out the content of three directions for Jin Wuji's planning: First, rigorous consideration, and ingenuity to restore the elements of traditional Chinese culture. This is why we must restore various contents with Chinese elements in the game through solid research and advanced technical means, and interpret traditional Chinese crafts and cultural heritage at a high level.
Second, linkage publicity to enhance the awareness of traditional Chinese culture. We will link up with well-known cultural IP, including museums, places of interest, etc., and jointly promote the new season, new heroes, new weapons, and a series of major nodes, investing large resources and using loud quantities to show global players the treasures and spiritual temperament of Chinese culture.
Finally, there is the public welfare action, which uses creativity and technology to help the publicity and protection of cultural relics. That is to say, it is not limited to the dissemination of game content, but also to put ourselves in the shoes of cultural dissemination and site protection. The above three directions are both our action plan and the mission of JinWuji
Finally, I would like to say that the media carrier of games has a sense of sound, picture and interactive experience, and its advantages in cultural display are very obvious. As game practitioners, we have a cultural mission, we have creativity, technology, and excellent art, which can provide players with a sense of immersion and substitution.
If we can make some efforts to make academic evidence solid, and combine ornamentation and playability, the silent traditional culture buried deep in museums, sites, scenic spots and cultural relics and monuments will no longer be mysterious and distant, no longer obscure and high threshold, and can be revitalized with a new look.
Golden wu volleying, a thousand-year-old dream, traced from it, full of dazzling. Traditional Chinese culture, like a torch like light, you and I are all fire seeds. The nation's is the world's, and my generation's obligation is incumbent upon us.
Thank you, that's all I have to say.
"Moved a small bench to class"
N.GAME is an annual industry exchange event organized by NetEase Interactive Entertainment Learning and Development, which has been successfully held for seven sessions so far. The theme of this year's year is "The Future is Now", inviting 20 heavy guests at home and abroad, university scholars to gather together to share industry research and development experience, cutting-edge research results and future development trends.