Traditional culture resonates with modern games
Written by Chen Dengxin
Editor / Li Ji
Typesetting/Annalee
As a national game, every move of "Honor of Kings" has attracted much attention.
Not long ago, "Glory of Kings" launched Li Bai's new skin "Drunken Moon", with "Bright Moon" as the design origin, describing Li Bai's pursuit of a thousand years of bright moonlight.
As soon as "Li Bai - Drunken Moon of the Immortals" was launched, it won unanimous praise from players and #李白举杯回望人生#冲上了热搜.
Behind the popularity, "Glory of Kings" skillfully integrates traditional Chinese culture into the game, which is not only an affectionate look back at the immortals who stand under the moon, but also an in-depth interpretation of the historical context.
Needless to say, Honor of Kings has left the realm of games and has become a cultural phenomenon.
A different "Li Bai"
Li Bai is not only one of the hot characters in "Glory of Kings", but also an important entrance for traditional Chinese culture to enter the spiritual home of young people.
After all, no one knows Li Bai.
"The bright moonlight in front of the bed is suspected to be frost on the ground. Raise your head to look at the bright moon and bow your head to think of your hometown. Almost all the Chinese people knew Li Bai from this well-known ancient poem, and then worshiped the poet immortal who "embroidered his mouth and spit out half of the Tang Dynasty", and Li Bai became the spiritual sustenance of the Chinese people.
It is no exaggeration to say that when the Chinese people arrive in the Mid-Autumn Festival, they can be incarnated as Li Bai.
The documentary "Li Bai - Drunken Moon" revealed that when Li Bai left his hometown at the age of 24, he wrote a poem about the moon "Moon Song of Mount Emei" to express his Top Gun, and since then he has been associated with the "moon" all his life, and has written more than 300 poems about the moon.
Shi Rui, a member of the expert advisory group of "Li Bai - Drunken Moon" and deputy director of the Research Center for Ancient Chinese History of Peking University, said: "The moon is not just a certain stage of his life, a few slices, but his lifelong confidant, his thoughts and ideals for his hometown relatives. ”
More importantly, Li Bai is not only talented, but also extraordinary, "killing one person in ten steps, leaving no line for a thousand miles", using poetry as a sword, sword yongzhi, and ambition to inspire people, carrying the Chinese's chivalrous dream of "helping people with a good heart, serving the country and making home".
In this context, "Li Bai - Drunken Moon of the Immortals" has a historical resonance with young people.
In terms of appearance design, the moon-white color, which symbolizes the "bright moonlight", is used as the main color to create an image of a poet with a head tied up, wearing a round-necked robe and long boots, highlighting the high-spirited charm and the atmosphere of the Tang Dynasty; Through the clothing patterns, weapons, and swords, etc., the immortals took the moon and drank booze, and there were three points of sword qi and seven points of moonlight.
In addition, the skill effects are also in line with Shixian's elegant, casual, and uninhibited character.
For example, Li Bai will light up the passive mark of "Wine to the Moon" one by one, and after the four layers of imprints are stacked, a full moon will appear, and the poem of "This moon once shines on the ancients" will float up with the moonlight.
Traditional culture resonates with modern games
It is not difficult to see that "Glory of Kings" subtly promotes traditional Chinese culture in a way that young people are willing to accept.
As early as 2018, it joined hands with CCTV's "National Treasure" column to launch the "Li Bai - Balcony Post" skin, which integrates Li Bai's only surviving authentic work "Balcony Post", Li Bai's historical allusions and gameplay, so as to achieve the purpose of cultural relics inheritance and cultural renewal.
According to official data, through the "King Word House" mini game welfare activity, you can get the "Li Bai - Balcony Post" skin for free, and the page views of "King Word House" are as high as 480 million, and the number of visitors is as high as 220 million.
In this way, between the in-game square inches, traditional Chinese culture and modern games resonate.
In fact, "Honor of Kings" has been working cultural and creative skins, trying its best to let more young people understand the unique charm of traditional Chinese culture.
"Yang Yuhuan - Meet Feitian" echoes Dunhuang culture, "Miyue - Floating Light Curtain Shadow" echoes shadow puppet culture, "Da Qiao - Baiheliang Goddess" echoes the Three Gorges culture, and "Yixing-Tengwang Pavilion Preface" echoes ancient architectural culture......
In short, "Honor of Kings" opens a door for young people to transcend the limitations of time and space, and experience the beauty of traditional Chinese culture through audio and painting interaction in the game.
In fact, as early as the UP2019 Tencent New Cultural and Creative Ecology Conference, Gao Li, vice president of Tencent Games, pointed out that "Honor of Kings" is a new carrier of cultural inheritance and dissemination: "Try to jump out of the barriers of the game industry, cross age, region, identity and cognition, use the influence of the game to connect the public, convey ideas and cultural connotations, and show the other side of the game." ”
In layman's terms, "Glory of Kings" must adhere to the practice of social responsibility.
Games are a kind of content products positioned as entertainment, and they are born with the ability to inherit and spread culture, and it is naturally incumbent on them to promote traditional Chinese culture and promote social progress and development by superimposing the national game status of "Honor of Kings".
More importantly, "Glory of Kings" has also gained the "cultural" attribute.
It is important to know that culture is the expression of content, and content is the key to the quality of a game, especially in the current era of "content is king", content determines the height and breadth of a game.
In this way, the content power can be called the "first productive force" of the game.
Looking back, "Honor of Kings" launched the concept of "Race Year" in 2021, forming a complete annual story through the story series of 4 seasons, persistently consolidating the game content, and successfully building a wonderful and vivid game world view.
Therefore, "Honor of Kings" takes the game content as the fulcrum, and connects traditional Chinese culture with young people, leverages greater content power, and thus releases greater vitality.
"Glory of Kings" deserves to be an evergreen game
It is precisely with its strong vitality that "Honor of Kings" has become an evergreen game, carrying the important task of Tencent Games' steady growth.
In the second quarter of 2024, Tencent's game revenue in the domestic market was 34.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9%; The game revenue in the international market was 13.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9%.
Among them, the evergreen games led by "Glory of Kings" and "Peace Elite" have contributed a lot.
According to Diandian Data's "2024H1 Global Mobile Game Market Data Report", in the first half of 2024, Tencent's games occupy 6 of the top 10 mobile game App Store revenue in China, among which "Honor of Kings" and "Peace Elite" won the first and second places on the list.
Correspondingly, the industry showed negative growth.
According to the "Report on China's Game Industry from January to June 2024" released by the Game Working Committee of the China Audio and Digital Association and the Game Special Committee of the China Audio and Digital Association, the actual sales revenue of the domestic game market in the second quarter was 74.629 billion yuan, a decrease of 2.125 billion yuan or about 2.7% from the same period last year.
As a result, the illusion of bears was completely shattered.
Before, there was no shortage of murmurs about "Honor of Kings", although they found different reasons, but in the final analysis, they believed that it was difficult to get rid of the fate of the cycle when it entered the second half of the game's life cycle.
In fact, any game product will inevitably encounter temporary difficulties in the process of long-term operation, and "Honor of Kings", which has been in operation for nine years, is no exception, but this does not mean that the game life cycle cannot be broken, and new sprouts can grow and self-recover with the blessing of content power.
This is like a person who will inevitably catch a cold in his life, and he can be cured by taking medicine and resting, rather than thinking that his life is coming to an end as soon as he catches a cold.
Regarding this, it can be seen from the return of "Glory of Kings" to the top.
According to the latest data from Sensor Tower, in August 2024, "Honor of Kings" successively launched a variety of activities such as the Qixi Festival, the Fox Demon Little Red Lady Linkage Skin, and the Miracle Voyage, with revenue increasing by 41% month-on-month, returning to the top spot on the global mobile game best-selling list, and driving Tencent's mobile game revenue to increase by 5.4% month-on-month.
What's more, "Honor of Kings" not only kept the basic disk, but also expanded the basic disk.
On the one hand, "Honor of Kings" has become a heavyweight IP, deriving new games such as "Dawn of Glory of Kings" and "Glory of Kings World", which not only enriches the game ecology, but also creates multi-dimensional commercial value.
On the other hand, the "Honor of Kings" international server (Honor of Kings) went overseas, and the number of downloads exceeded 50 million in the first month, further opening up the growth space.
All in all, "Glory of Kings" has the courage to assume social responsibility, and uses it to refine and use the "cultural" attributes, firmly grasp the young people, the road is getting wider and wider, and the heart is getting stronger and stronger, becoming a veritable "hexagonal warrior".
Then, only "Glory of Kings" can surpass "Glory of Kings".