What should online games rely on to win the future？
Recently, a number of ministries and commissions jointly issued the Opinions on Strictly Regulating the Management of Online Game Market, and deployed centralized rectification of online game violations and bad content. Bright pictures/vision china
In recent years, China’s online games have developed rapidly and the content forms are constantly enriched. At the same time, it must be noted that the lack of cultural connotation of online games in China is more prominent, some games have a tendency to vulgar violence, and the values of individual works are biased. Recently, the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee, the Central Network Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Culture, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, and the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television jointly issued the Opinions on Strictly Regulating the Management of Online Game Market, and deployed centralized rectification of online game violations and bad content, which opened the curtain of online game industry governance nationwide. Taking this industry governance as an opportunity, online games are bidding farewell to the old stage of barbaric growth and welcoming a new era of transformation and upgrading.
There is an urgent need to standardize the governance of online game market.
To sum up, there are four kinds of problems in online games at present: universal and serious addiction, serious vulgarization of some contents, emphasis on form but light on connotation, and wanton deconstruction of traditional cultural classics and values.
Addiction is a major feature that distinguishes online literature from traditional literature, among which online games are the most addictive. Once a netizen suffers from Internet addiction, it will not only consume a lot of time, energy and money, but also seriously damage his physical and mental health. The main users of online games are between the ages of 15 and 25. These teenagers have poor self-control and their minds are not yet fully mature. Once they are infected with Internet addiction, their physical and mental injuries are often very serious.
Online games are not only the most addictive, but also the problem of vulgarization is serious. For example, in a popular MOBA online game, most female characters such as Wu Zetian, Xiao Qiao, The Story Of Diu Sim and da ji are scantily dressed, wearing sexy short skirts or long skirts. However, in large MMORPG 3D online games such as "Dragon’s Eight Branches" and "Zhu Xian", the role modeling with erotic and seductive meanings has been brought into full play. In addition to visual pornography, many games even add interactive content, such as the 3D online game "Myth", which has a built-in interactive little game called "Ghost Story", so that players can "experience" the pornographic scene of stealing women and stealing jade by manipulating characters. The above-mentioned vulgar pornographic content can be found everywhere in online games, which is extremely harmful to the physical and mental health of young players.
Formalization is also a prominent problem in online games, which is manifested in excessive pursuit of external sensory experience and content almost becoming a vassal of form. Many domestic war games are designed with "skins" that need to be purchased before they can be used, and many games will regularly launch some "limited skins" for short-term sale according to specific festivals. Games such as the glory of the king, Battle Against the Snake, etc. are constantly launching a large number of various "skin" shapes to attract players to spend. No matter what kind of "skin", its function is just to change the audio-visual special effects in the game, which has nothing to do with the content of the game.
There are also some games that arbitrarily deconstruct cultural classics and convey wrong values. For example, in a turn-based role-playing game with The Journey to the West as its content, both the demon and the demon are justified, and the inferno becomes an equal force with the Terran and the Fairy, thus the image of "man-eating monster" in the original work is easily dispelled. Another game with the content of "Three Kingdoms" is mixed with many fictional myths and legends on the basis of deconstructing the story of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". The characters in this game, such as "Yin and Yang Scholars" and "Magician", have supernatural power and can use all kinds of magic. In addition, the excessive deconstruction of history and historical figures is also a common problem in online games. In a popular game, the backgrounds and experiences of all historical figures are deconstructed to varying degrees. For example, Gao Jianli is deconstructed as a wild and uninhibited "genius musician", Di Renjie is endowed with "extremely strong obsessive-compulsive disorder and cleanliness tendency" and other unique personalities, Jing Ke is designed as a sexy female assassin, Huang Zhong is shaped as a gunner who operates a cannon, and da ji is deconstructed as a magic puppet with powers. The above-mentioned question game tells a false story of China, portrays a false image of China, and spreads a wrong view of history, which not only harms users’ physical and mental health,It is also not conducive to the construction of China’s cultural security and soft power.
Build a strong position to tell the story of China well
The problem of online games has a long history. To fundamentally solve all kinds of problems in the production and communication of online games, we need to start with top-level design, take multiple measures and make comprehensive policies.
At present, Tencent, Netease, Sohu, Sina and other private capital or foreign capital-controlled Internet companies occupy the main position on the supply side of online game content in China. While calling on online game enterprises to assume more social responsibilities, in order to fundamentally improve the production pattern of online games in China, we must implement the supply-side reform of online literature and art, and build a number of powerful national teams of online literature and art as soon as possible, and the national teams will intervene and lead the development of online game industry.
In order to ensure the core competitiveness of the national team in the online game market, the author suggests to build the first echelon of the online game national team based on the existing state-owned leading online media. For example, people’s network, CCTV, Xinhuanet and other powerful national online media can open up special online literature and art channels, recruit top talents in online game research and development around the world, develop a number of phenomenal online game products with both social and economic benefits, and build a strong position to tell the story of China on the Internet. For the strong private network literature and art production and communication subject, it can be developed into the second echelon of the online game national team by means of acquisition, holding or mixed reform. In addition, we can also acquire, hold or participate in a number of well-known foreign online game R&D teams with leading content production and network technology to form an alliance of the online game national team. The national online game team constructed in this way is conducive to the optimal allocation of various resources, which can not only lead the direction of telling the story of China in Socialism with Chinese characteristics, but also maintain high market sensitivity and creative vitality.
The governance of online games can’t treat the symptoms only. To fundamentally solve the problem, we need to establish an institutional mechanism to ensure the green, healthy and sustainable development of online games. The author suggests that legislation on online literature and art should be started as soon as possible, so as to clarify the respective rights and obligations of the producers, communicators, consumers and regulators of online literature and art, and clearly define all kinds of illegal acts and punishment measures in online literature and art practice, so as to provide sufficient jurisprudence and legal basis for online game supervision. At the same time, the regulatory authorities should work with online game research institutions to introduce online game quality grading standards as soon as possible to improve the online threshold of online games; Develop a workable mechanism for screening, inspecting and identifying mental damage in online games to provide technical support for supervision. In addition, it is necessary to establish an online game criticism team with experts and scholars as the main body, actively guide online game criticism public opinion, and implement all-weather and full-coverage academic monitoring of online game industry operation.
Deeply cultivate excellent cultural information resources on the Internet.
Online games should embark on the road of healthy and sustainable development. Apart from the macro-level management of the country, it is more important for online games to practice their internal skills, enrich their contents and enhance their cultural content.
Compared with traditional literary forms, online games have inherent advantages in the development and utilization of online cultural information resources because of their own Internet attributes, so they can make use of massive online cultural resources to achieve expanded reproduction based on high-quality IP and traffic factors. For example, the national treasure cultural relics collected in the Forbidden City can be carefully incubated as high-quality IP prototypes. When the traffic is cultivated to a certain amount and becomes an explosion "online celebrity", the first resource development from IP prototypes to online games can be realized according to the preset IP development roadmap. The online games developed for the first time, after gaining huge traffic, can be used as IP to expand the reproduction of TV dramas, variety shows and other products, and realize the re-dissemination from online to offline. By transforming the theme advantage of IP into the traffic advantage, and then transforming the traffic advantage into the content advantage, the social and economic benefits of online games can be maximized.
Online games are a cross-border literary form. In the future development, domestic online games should make use of the unique communication advantages of the Internet, break through the national barriers, capital barriers and technical barriers inherent in traditional literature and art, and realize the global communication of China’s story based on online games. Therefore, the online game industry in China must build a powerful online game communication platform with high efficiency, unique resources and convenient consumption by greatly increasing bandwidth, expanding giant servers, mobile online payment and other advanced technical means, and simultaneously make online games and their derivatives bearing specific China stories and China spirit into multilingual versions for all-weather and full coverage integrated marketing communication for netizens around the world.
Online game enterprises should clearly realize that the competition of online games in the future is cultural competition, and must abandon the commercial motivation of quick success and instant benefit and enhance the cultural content of products. Excellent Chinese traditional culture can provide rich materials for online game creation. In addition to adopting Chinese style in subject matter, pictures and music, we should organically embed the values of benevolence, loyalty and filial piety, benevolence, honesty, chivalry, humility and studiousness in Chinese traditional culture into game products. At any time, online games should correctly grasp the relationship between social benefits and market benefits, consciously put social benefits in the first place, do not be slaves to the market, and prevent economic interests from colliding with the bottom line of social morality.
(Author: Ma Lixin Zhou Ding, a professor at Qilu Cultural Research Institute of Shandong Normal University, this article is the phased achievement of the key project of Shandong Social Science Planning "Research on the Rights and Obligations of Digital Art")