In the past two days, many people have paid attention to an online debate competition organized by the Chinese Debate Network. The reason is simple, this debate is very eye-catching at first glance:
"At present, the Chinese game industry needs "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" or "Black Myth: Wukong" more?"
I believe you can also see at a glance how unconventional this debate is - these two games are not completely unrelated, at least they are different tracks and very different, and there is no need to compare them together. Therefore, when many people see this topic, their first reaction is probably confusion, and the second reaction is, is this topic rubbing the heat/leading the war...? Isn't this equivalent to discussing "whether Chinese cuisine needs hot pot or barbecue"?
In fact, the debate about games is not the first time it has appeared in the public eye. In 2021, the Chinese Debate World Cup has a meeting about "Is the appearance of "Genshin" the dawn of domestic games?" The debate, pitted against Guangzhou University and Tsinghua University, also received a lot of attention at the time.
In fact, regardless of the sensitivity of the topic itself, this debate is not completely devoid of room for discussion. After all, the essence of the debate itself is to stand on different positions and around different angles around some topics that are difficult to have accurate answers, and use the art of language to confront each other. The official also released a video the day before the event, saying that they were not rubbing the heat/leading the war, but felt that the topic itself was worth exploring.
The tournament is divided into a main event (final) and an exhibition match, which took place last night. On the Internet, many netizens regarded this game as a farce, because even if the debate itself was not considered, the contestants did not play well in the debate. Both the judges and netizens agreed that under the premise of preparing a week in advance, this was a relatively unexciting and even a bit of a failure. Judge No. 5 is a game practitioner, and he even bluntly said that this discussion is not as good and profound as the discussion between Tieba and NGA.
Note: The small window anchor is the audience, not the No. 5 judge
So why on earth does a debate make everyone so opinionated, and even see it as a farce? Grape Jun here combines the debate speeches, judges and netizen comments, to briefly sort out for you - of course, I hope everyone views and discusses all points of view rationally, after all, this is just a debate competition:
First of all, the arguments and arguments of the debaters on both sides show that they have a very lack of understanding and thinking about the game product itself and the situation of the game industry. For example, when Zhengfang (the current industry needs Star Iron more) in the first round of explanation, one of the arguments put forward is roughly that Star Iron is more profitable than Black Myth, and Black Myth "can recover the cost is a fluke", so Mihayou's mature and stable business model is more conducive to the continuous production of good works.
Even if this business model is not mentioned, whether it is logically related to the industry, what makes the judges and netizens more surprised is that the supporting data given by the contestants is very sloppy. For example, when arguing that "black myths do not make money", the square players probably said this: because Black Myth on Steam ranks 29th on the wish list, compared with the relationship between the number of attention and sales of domestic games in the past 3 years, it can be estimated that Black Myth is expected to sell more than 1 million copies, "even if the top work "Wolf" in the 3A works, the total global sales are only 5 million copies", from which it is inferred that the highest sales of Black Myth are only 5 million copies.
Other arguments have a similar feeling, such as the fact that the total number of bookings on all platforms before the launch of Star Railway exceeded 20 million, and the total number of players on all servers on a given day was 24 million, inferring that Chinese players prefer Star Railway with a relaxed atmosphere and a low playing threshold.
Of course, the opposing (black myths are more needed in the current industry) have similar problems. For example, when it comes to refuting who is more needed in terms of demand, the opponent proposes that products such as Black Myth can tell localized Chinese stories with a relatively complete long-term narrative, while turn-based card draw games such as Star Iron cannot do it.
And more importantly, the opposing players did not combine the specific content of the game to explain why the black myth can tell a good story. In the comments of Judge No. 1, there is a paragraph that hit the nail on the head: You said that Chinese should tell Chinese stories from a Chinese perspective, but mobile games can't do this? What is the difference between Chinese and someone else?
And the rebuttal of the opposite view is even more contrary to the sky: one contestant pointed out that Star Iron has also done a lot of output in traditional culture, while the content in black mythology is biased towards "curiosity", such as "such as Buddha hanging a skull", which is easy to cause misleading rather than cultural output.
Second, even without mentioning cognitive deficiencies, the contestants on both sides got a lot of points wrong at the debate level. A very obvious feeling of many viewers is that they do not really understand the focus of this topic - both sides are constantly raising new topics, but the logic of the topic itself is not very valid, so the extended topic is even more outrageous, and even pulls out some anti-heavenly views.
For example, around the point of "who is more needed in the current industry", they first discussed business value, and then discussed cultural output, but there was no clear discussion direction, and more debated with each other about which side had a lack of argument.
While chatting, the topic gradually shifted to the domestic market situation of in-purchase mobile games and buyout PC/console games. In this paragraph, the two sides continue to put forward quite a lot of analogies, such as mobile games like rice in the south, stand-alone is pasta, why must pasta be developed in the south? For example, the two are different subjects, equivalent to English and mathematics, which need to be developed; For another example, mobile games are commercial films such as "Predecessor 3", but black myth is an exploratory sci-fi film such as "The Wandering Earth", who is more needed? ......
Analogies and questions are raised one by one, but it seems that none of them are really discussed and understood, but they deviate further. For example, when discussing the part of the business model, there is a key question that is not discussed: does a sound business development model have any significance for the development of the industry? But it's no wonder, who can say this kind of problem clearly?
Later, Zhengfang put forward a rather anti-heavenly view: 3A and mobile game products can form a division of labor in the world - China can't do 3A, can not do it. This view was directly described by the No. 3 judge as "stabbing yourself".
Of course, putting aside the point of view, I think the No. 2 judge said a very essential question: "who is more needed by the industry" debate, which should be about the choice of "better and better", but the two players argued to the end, there was a feeling of trampling and rotten, which made the competition ugly.
Finally, during the competition, the contestants also had some deviations from the debate and more emotional and lip-tongue-savvy speeches. Under the premise that these statements themselves are logically wrong, their quarrel seems very absurd. For example, after the positive side used the number of players to demonstrate the popularity of the game, the opposite player proposed that if you rely on monthly activity to argue, the most needed products in the industry are entertainment and fighting landlords. The square player immediately retorted, then you can't just look at the monthly activity, but also look at the active time...
For example, when the two sides debated on commercial value, the opposite side proposed that if you rely on who can make money to argue who is more needed, then everyone may do a small program like "Sheep and Sheep" in the future, because they have made hundreds of millions of dollars in how many days with only a few members...
The above description is all about the main competition, and in another exhibition match without judges, these views are similar, but the debate speech is even more outrageous. For example, when the front side put forward arguments such as "Star Iron meets the fragmented needs of modern people" and "Black myth has a higher threshold for playing", a player on the opposite side said in a very excited tone: "To play games, you either spend money to be a local tycoon, or spend time to go to the liver, you don't have time for the liver, and you don't have money to buy equipment, then play the hammer game!" ”
All in all, this kind of discussion has clearly long deviated from the game itself, is inconclusive, and has little reference significance. The most exciting part of the whole session, but the speech of Judge No. 5, is not fully released here, but there is a paragraph in it that may well summarize the nature of this debate:
Today, the two sides did not think about a question at all, that is, "the current Chinese game industry needs more", is the "industry" more needed, the focus of the discussion is only the opposite side mentioned the two words of the industry when standing the argument, but what does the industry need? What the industry needs, and who needs it? Is it what the player needs? Is it required by the manufacturer? Or do we, the practitioners, need it? I wondered if both sides didn't think about what was needed.
We need Honkai: Star Dome Railway, what do we need is the process of industrializing its mobile game? Is it cost-saving but makes something that works really well? Or do we need it to do some mobile game development based on content? Or do we need Black Myth: Wukong, what do we need is a domestic game that can tell its own story well? Is it a host of domestic standard industrialization process 3A? Or promote the atmosphere of domestic console games? What exactly do we need? In fact, I don't think either side has thought clearly, or never thought about it. Well, I think this kind of discussion is quite sad for this topic.