On October 31, local time, the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) was held in Glasgow, Uk. The reporter learned that the "Youth Green Game" from Shenzhen will be displayed to the world and present another possibility of the game.
As a "ninth art" form of the game, with the concept of environmental protection and carbon neutrality, it further injects fresh vitality into the game industry, but also refutes the prejudice of the game "original sin" to a certain extent.
The "Youth Green Game" from Shenzhen will be showcased at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference
The "Green Power" of the Game
Measure the northwest desert with footsteps, observe China's methods of sand control; read more than 1 million words of references to think about feasible ways to control sand; write down more than 70,000 words of planning on paper and pencil, and conceive and promote new ways of sand control...
On October 27, the 2021 Tencent College Game Creative Production Competition organized by Tencent Game Academy came to an end in Shenzhen, and the members of "Wasteland Linhai", who finally won the gold medal of the green track, shared the creation process of this desert farm management public welfare game on the stage. Players play as Yang Qingsong, a sand ruler, in the game, and fight against the yellow sand with courage and skill.
The team, formed by students from Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen) and China Academy of Art, lasted 11 months, based on the real experience of yin Yuzhen, a national labor model, for more than 30 years of sand control, and used games to tell the story of the governance of One of the four major deserts in China, The MaoWusu Desert, and integrated the concept and method of desert governance.
Wasteland Forest Sea game poster
How to pass on the concept of desert governance and ecological protection to players through the game? In the eyes of the "Wasteland Forest Sea" team, this is a complicated matter, "on the one hand, the ecosystem of desert governance is very complex, on the other hand, this is not a completely determined by technology, or by people." ”
After consulting a large number of ecology and forestry books, Wasteland Forest Sea designed an entire ecosystem as a gameplay framework for the game, adding scene details to restore the characteristics of the desert in reality. The game is set up with 8 different scenes, representing a variety of unique landforms, from harsh conditions of flowing sand dunes to vibrant wet land, players have to adjust the game strategy according to different scenes.
"The well-developed root system of sand fixing plants can fully absorb the moisture in rainfall. The higher the degree of greening in the scene, the more water can be fixed, and eventually a stable cycle is formed, and the plants can grow normally even if they are not watered. According to the members of "Wasteland Forest Sea", they have cleverly combined the real example of desert governance in reality with the automation mechanism of running the game. More than ten kinds of sand fixing plants, such as sand willow, sassafras pine, lemon strip, and shuttle, have also been moved to the game.
"The house where Yang Qingsong lived was designed by us based on a real picture of Yin Yuzhen's family as the main scene in the game." According to the team of "Wasteland Forest Sea", the house with four earthen walls and covered with straw restored the Maowusu Desert where Yin Yuzhen was located at that time, and there was only one family and one tree within a radius of more than a dozen miles.
Team members of Wasteland Forest Sea share the game's creative process
"In more than 30 years, Yin Yuzhen has planted more than 500,000 trees, turning 70,000 acres of sand into an oasis." According to the team members of "Wasteland Forest Sea", in this process, in addition to Yin Yuzhen's perseverance and struggle, the continuous progress of afforestation technology and the strong support of the whole society for her are also indispensable. "Desert governance is not a one-man affair, it is the effort of the whole society."
To this end, "Wasteland Forest Sea" specially introduces the role of researcher with rich afforestation knowledge in the story, providing a skill system; joining the role of a merchant to provide a social commodity support system; setting the role of a town secretary and launching a free sapling policy to help control the desert.
"At present, from the perspective of the entire domestic and foreign situation, in addition to entertainment, other functions such as education and ideology of games have not been particularly fully explored. We hope that Wasteland Forest Sea is not only a game, but also a way of life. According to the team of "Wasteland Forest Sea", they will adopt the public welfare model and donate 30% of their income to the northwest region's sand control fund, so that players can make their own contributions to desert governance in the process of the game.
The Game's "Self-Evident Path"
Violence, pornography, "spiritual opium"... For a long time, games have been labeled as such in some public opinion. Simply attributing negative elements to games, this inherent "original sin" bias has become out of place in today's society, and the game industry continues to use excellent works to effectively counter this prejudice.
"Super Mario" accompanies the childhood of generations of players, the classic is enduring; "Minecraft" with a first-person perspective, independently building a world, the player's imagination continues to break through the shackles; the monthly active players of more than 100 million "League of Legends", popular all over the world, the event is in full swing.
The game is not a flood beast, and it is not a "spiritual opium". The iteration of technology and the disintegration and reconstruction of the global social system by the information revolution have pushed the wave of games to the forefront of the times. Gaming has become one of the most widely used mediums for young people around the world today.
According to Newzoo's 2020 Global Gaming Market Report, the global gaming market generates $159.3 billion in revenue and 2.7 billion players worldwide. The report shows that East Asia, especially China, has driven the Asia-Pacific region's high share of the global market.
While the game market continues to grow and develop, it also has an impact in unexpected areas such as environmental protection and medical care.
As early as March 2 this year, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced that it had invited Tencent Games' Tianmei Studio Group to join the "Play Games, Save the Earth" alliance, hoping to enhance public awareness of environmental protection through the power of games and jointly combat climate change. Other members of the alliance include Sony, Microsoft, Ubisoft, etc. Tianmei is the first game development studio in the alliance to come from China.
2021 Tencent College Game Creative Production Competition
In this year's Tencent College Game Creative Production Competition, Tencent Game Academy joined hands with Tianmei Studio Group to set up an environmental protection theme track. Environmental issues such as desertification, glacier melting, urban smog, and marine debris are integrated into the game. Contemporary young people's concern and thinking about ecological and environmental issues have transformed serious social public issues into more popular expressions through game design.
The VR game developed by the team of the director of the Department of Geriatrics of Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University is used to assist in screening Alzheimer's disease, which can be completed in 10 minutes and can also be trained in cognitive intervention; Nintendo's "Wii Fit" sports TV and virtual coach help dementia to carry out sports training and use somatosensory games to delay the process of cognitive decline.
The new forces of games in the fields of environmental protection and medical treatment are constantly cracking the prejudice of the game's "original sin theory".
As the game's "self-evident path" continues to broaden, more people put the game on an impartial perspective, and the phenomenon of game stigma may disappear.
[Trainee reporter] Zeng Zihang
【Author】 Zeng Zihang
【Source】 Southern Press Media Group South + client
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