Our generation may still have a chance to wait until the birth of "Eternal Life Online...

If you are not a game enthusiast in the strict sense, the senses of the game should not be very good; although you will not wipe your gun and misfire as soon as you encounter the game, you may even give a more positive evaluation, but if you want them to dig out The game has more advantages, this is a bit difficult.

Because they have far more important things than games; such as writing, listening to songs, reading and even brushing plays, games are really time-consuming and money-consuming things for them.

Of course, the so-called "game" here refers more to the video game that was born in 1952 and first ran on the vacuum tube computer.

Now it has jumped from the earliest arcade, red and white, home mainframe, handheld, computer to the current notebook, tablet and mobile phone. The game experience with lighter, smaller, cooler and lower threshold has attracted countless players.

Under the brutal fighting of one classic game after another, it finally constitutes the basic cognition of the current mainstream group for the game: krypton gold, liver injury and routine.

Krypton gold is fine, it can't stop the liver emperor from doing enough food and clothing.

The liver injury is also careless, and they are afraid that the early stage will fall into the pit and the later stage will be all routine.

However, there is nothing to say as an adult; what is more intolerable is the rise of "primary school students" in the player group.

The key is not that they play the game well and like to steal the limelight, nor that they play the game with joy and send people off.

After all, every primary school student in the game is the "bear child" of other people's family. After they indulge in the game, they "stretch out their hands when they see the mobile phone, make trouble when they don't give it to the mobile phone, and pick up the mobile phone and don't let go". Adults are at a loss as to what to do. What's more, all kinds of minors indulge in games, neglect their studies and lack.

This kind of resentment can't be sprinkled on the children, and it's not the fault of the mobile phone to be investigated. The only thing to blame is the game.

However, not all the noisy Xiong Haizi finally succeeded in forcing the adults around them to "quit" their mobile phones, thus there was the existence of "Thunderbolt King Yang Yongxin" and "a certain academy in human purgatory"; they "use poison to attack poison" in the name of quitting Internet addiction, but they left an indelible shadow on the body and mind of those "problem children.

Blame the parents for being ignorant, their starting point seems to be right.

Strange academies are too dark, they always seem to be resurgent.

In the end, the game was brought out, only it could not argue.

Is the game wrong?

There is nature.

A game, especially those "addictive" games, is an ordinary game on the surface, with a lack of innovation in play, creativity and themes; what is not ordinary is that every pixel, every frame, every skill, every level, every main line of the game... There are several planning artists and procedures behind the layout, just to take up more of your time and extract more business value from you.

The reason why the liver emperor is allowed to exist in a krypton gold game is that the free player as the "bonus" of the game is only an NPC with artificial intellectual disability, which is the soul of RMB players.

In this way, a game that even bytes are immersed in commercial operation is not so innocent.

It is they who have racked their brains to study human nature, think about playing methods, and design routines that make so many gamers addicted to it.

Even so for adults, how can minors escape.

But if you push everything to the game, it will inevitably go to extremes.

The game is only one of the Internet business models. It is not fundamentally different from content, e-commerce, social networking, tools, etc., it is just a "derivative" of modern industry; if we can accept the proliferation of content, the madness of e-commerce, and social The kitsch and the binding of tools, why can't we accept the imperfection of the game?

It's just that compared to games, several other business models are more mature under the packaging of modern business. They have penetrated our lives and become a part of our lives.

However, the game seems to have been wandering outside the mainstream group, especially in some domestic game manufacturers and game players fighting separately. From Chen Tianqiao, who initially looked down on the game, to Ma Huateng, who is now criticized for the game, domestic games seem to have never won mainstream public opinion. fan.

Although in recent years, with the rise of short video and live broadcast, the game live broadcast was once boundless, and the value of the game anchor was doubled. However, due to the fragmentation of supervision, copyright and short video, and the coming from behind of e-commerce live broadcast, the game anchor began to pass off before it was still real, and the game platform was also suffering because of its rough business model.

Even if China's electric competition has been on the right track in the past two years, electric competition education has been put on the agenda, and FPX won the global finals again after IG won the championship in 2018. However, behind the popularity of the competition, it is hard to hide the fact that LOL's income and popularity are declining, and this time the popularity of the whole people is obviously not as high as last year.

We not only doubt whether the e-sports that has been going through for nearly 20 years in China has passed before it is mature?

This time, Wang Sicong, who once fought against half of China's e-sports, was "restricted in consumption". The e-sports empire was covered with holes, which had to be said to be a blow.

The chronic disease of the game industry, "minor supervision", from the "Game Age-appropriate Tips Initiative" launched by People's Daily Online and domestic head game manufacturers such as Tencent, NetEase, and Perfect Time on June 26 to the National Press and Publication Administration on October 25. "Notice on Preventing Minors from Indulging in Online Games", we have a clue.

While not interfering too much in the healthy development of the game industry, it has regulated the game rights of minors and installed a "firewall" for them ".

However, we still seem to have a long way to go in the "e-sports" aspect of the game.

Just as the 1G era belongs to voice, the 2G era belongs to text, the 3G era belongs to pictures, and the 4G era belongs to video, the 5G era will most likely be fully applied to games, a high-dimensional information carrier that "integrates voice, text, pictures and video" and can also be fed back in time.

(1)
Game Story
○

But before that, let's go back to the 2019, let's take a look at the big moves in the game circle in the first year of 5G.

In February, Samsung and Huawei prepared a pie for us, but until now it has not been satisfactory.

In March, Tengxun cloud game platform "START" opened the appointment internal test and just focused everyone's attention on "cloud game".

In March, the game subscription service "Apple Arcade" released at Apple's spring conference brought us thoughts on internal purchase, DLC and subscription charges for host games.

In September, Alibaba Cloud joined hands with its technology partner Ubitus to release Alibaba Cloud's commercial cloud gaming solution to support game companies such as Sega.

In October, Giphy, known as "Google in the world of motion search", also launched its own game platform Giphy Arcade, which focuses on free, lightweight, and more importantly, players can make their own small games.

In November, Steam, currently the largest game distribution platform, also quietly appeared its own "cloud agreement": the game agreement of "Steam Cloud Gaming" appeared for the first time in the web pages used by Steam's parent company to partners.

In November, the once-popular Google cloud gaming platform "Stadia" came late. At present, players need to buy the "founder version" package: a Stadia official handle, a Chromecast Ultra TV stick and 3 months of "Pro" members to experience it.

The Microsoft Project xCloud game streaming service for Google Stadia is also in full swing. It has now been confirmed to add more than 50 games including "Devil May 5", "Iron Fist 7" and "Madden 2020" next year. It will land on the PC in 2020 and support PS4.

The major game platforms are waiting for each other, and the game manufacturers are naturally not idle:

In May, in order to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the birth of "My World", Mojang and Microsoft announced a series of the latest AR mobile phone games: "My World: Minecraft Earth"; Players should use mobile phone App to move around in the real world and collect items. After finding squares and other items, players can use them to build anything they want.

In July, the phenomenal masterpiece "Super Mario Creator", which was once active on the WiiU platform, this time brought its own orthodox sequel "Super Mario Creator 2" on the Switch platform NS; it brought greater Openness and freedom.

In October, Nintendo launched the fitness somatosensory game "Fitness Ring Adventure" on Switch. It is agreed that Xinheng Yui has been used.

In November, Hideo Kojima invited his friend Gilmore Del Toro to participate in the open world game to PS4. This is an open world style action interactive game.

In November, Respawn Entertainment brought the movie "Star Wars" into the game "Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order". The game takes place in the blank period between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy. It tells the story of Cal Kestis, the only remaining member of the Jedi organization, who exposed his identity on the planet Bracca to escape the pursuit and adventure.

There is also the new work "Half-Life: Alyx" by Club V to land on the SteamVR platform.

Although Google Stadia's ambition to overtake at corners seems to have overturned this time, we cannot deny that the giant's intervention in the cloud game field has greatly promoted the entire industry.

It is not difficult to see here that the game platform is busy transferring the storage media to "cloud" after experiencing the transformation of host computer, end game, page game, hand game and small game ".

The game is also busy with movie-level texture, open world exploration, wider freedom and various new ways of interaction.


②
Somatosensory games
○

Somatosensory games were born when game manufacturers and players were no longer satisfied with the "mouse button" game experience.

In the 1980 s, Autodesk tinkered with a virtual reality system called "HighCycle"; it combined with the spinning boom in the United States at that time, and was a "happy exercise" product that could watch the scenery and step on a bicycle.

Coincidentally, Atari has made a similar attempt. The project code is "Puffer". Puffer combines Atari's home game machine with spinning, and also hopes to design a product that can make exercise interesting.

But unfortunately, HighCycle and Puffer were both stillborn soon after.

It was not until Bandai, Japan, that the carpet game controller "Power Pad" designed for Nintendo's red and white machine in 1986 really brought the concept of "fitness game" to the ground.

And to make the "fitness game" widely known, it will have to wait until Nintendo launched the Wii console in 2006. The somatosensory gameplay of two remote controls, one large and one small, is simply amazing.

On October 18, although Yui Aragaki was the most dazzling one, he could not stop the fitness ring from grabbing the mirror.

Although the main story line of the game is in the second place, it is quite interesting to be able to jump and have a happy fitness with Yui Aragaki.

Why don't we try to create more and richer "somatosensory" games on top of existing sensors, cameras and touch screens when most game manufacturers are obsessed with AI's lack of intelligence?

In particular, yoga and KEEP are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and traditional wearable products and traditional homes are busy with "intelligence". Now, we seem to see a new blue ocean of "happy fitness": we have the opportunity to give games a healthier, more open and more natural space.



(3)
AR game
○

Although somatosensory games give us a greater sense of substitution, they are still outside the game.

It was not until AR games that they really opened the door to the "virtual world.

When we talk about AR games, the first thing that jumps out of our minds is probably the naive Pikachu.

But in fact, as early as 1999, there was already an operational AR application on the mobile platform. It is a virtual reality tour guide system that can display the basic information and course selection of campus buildings in the University of California according to the real-time geographical location of users.

In 2000, a video game "ARQuake" derived from the first-person shooter game "Quake" was able to achieve outdoor live-action games, and it was truly tamed the beast AR.

In 2005, "AR Tennis" came out. Players can use their mobile phones as rackets, and use Bluetooth and camera information transmission and another nearby player to play tennis in a virtual tennis court.

In 2007, the AR game "Arcade Reality" appeared on the Palm mobile platform, tentatively bringing traditional shooting into AR design.

Until 2016, "Pokemon GO" swept the world, setting off a "demon catching craze", bringing the virtual into reality on a large scale for the first time.

"Pokémon Go" is a game that explores, captures, fights and exchanges Pokémon that appear in the real world; players can find elves in the real world through their smartphones, capture and fight; players as elves The more the trainer catches, the stronger the elves, and the chance to catch stronger and rarer elves.

Although the gameplay of "Pokemon Go" has not been greatly innovated, the IP supplemented by US $90 billion also shows everyone the charm of AR games.

In the official version of Apple's iOS13, Apple also specially developed the AR game category independently in the AppStore game module. There is also news that Apple will launch AR headsets in 2022.

Finally, Magic Leap, which once burned out $2.6 billion, is said to be raising funds again. It mortgaged its patent to JPMorgan Chase in August to make a comeback.

From AR games that rely on mobile phones to games with AR glasses as the main body now, AR head display makes it possible for players to enter the virtual world. It does not simply and roughly widen the screen of the mobile phone dozens of times, but extends the virtual world in front of your eyes from the visual perception.



④
Block chain game
○

From somatosensory games to AR games, they are all trying to help us "integrate" into the virtual world, but when we come to block chain games, there is a sense of "falling into Tianyuan.

Before we really bring into the virtual world, block chain games are already busy "formulating" various "rules and regulations" of the virtual world.

In 2017, when the myth of bitcoin soaring, plummeting, soaring and plummeting again was shattered; However, the block chain has won a rare opportunity for development. It seems that any project plus the word "block chain" can be exchanged for people's competition.

Block chain finance has always been too far away from ordinary people, but block chain games have made many people see the possibility of development.

At the end of 2017, a Xiao Mao named "CryptoKitties" created a transaction record of $140,000 with its original breeding and trading model.

The birth of CryptoKitties has attracted the attention of many entrepreneurs.

According to incomplete statistics, when the blockchain game is the most popular, a new game will appear on the market every day and a half on average; the simplest thing is to turn "raising a cat" into a concept game such as raising an AV actress, buying a president, and trading a country.

What is more cunning is the "plastic operation" such as BAT, Xiaomi and 360 in China. Typical ones include Baidu's "Letz Dog", Ali's "Ma Jibao", Tencent's AR "Block Chain Monster Hunting Hand Tour", Xiaomi's "Encrypted Rabbit" and 360's "Block Chain Cat.

Since then, the popular Fomo3D has also added fire to the high-level block chain game, even if it is just a real capital game.

The good times did not last long. When the currency issuance was blocked, the block chain also ushered in the industry-specific "cycle problem". A large number of games did not survive the cold winter, either died violently or ran away, leading to the collapse of the entire economic system. From capital to entrepreneurs, even gamers were all lost at that time.

But putting aside the profit-seeking of those fans, the block chain game is really useless?

The greatest value of block chain games is that they can confirm the rights of game assets. It is no longer unilaterally owned by game companies and subject to various restrictions during trading. With the chain of game data, the player's game assets are no longer stored on the server of the game company, but the player's digital wallet, which makes it possible to open up the "virtual economy" inside the game ".

Moreover, once the game assets are not directly bound to a certain game, these game assets based on the block chain may be used in other games. Even if the game characters and playing methods of different themes and world views cannot be common, some "characteristics" given to the game characters by players after long-term operation can be "inherited" in different game worlds ".

Finally, countless games may revolve around the player's same virtual character template and turn them into plug-ins and copies to shuttle through different world lines.



⑤
VR games
○

Although the flash in the pan of block chain games is a bit sad, it is also making us recognize the natural law of game development. Before we start to formulate various rules of the virtual world, we still need some means to break the boundary between reality and virtual.

VR has the power to break the dimensional wall. It "substitutes" perception into the virtual world on the basis of AR's virtual mirror into reality.

Although the romance of VR is ebbing with the "fall" of Oculus VR, none of this can stop us from fantasizing about VR games.

Especially in VR's three platforms Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR and HTC Vive, there are music games as light as rhythm space, heavy taste biochemical games like Doom, leisurely social games like Rec Room, exploratory role-playing games like Star Trek, detective action games like Batman Arkham, drama games like the Elder Scrolls, and love development games like you......

Unconsciously, the VR world has blossomed. Because it has a greater sense of substitution than AR, the feedback from players is obviously more intense.

But it is also because of the sense of substitution that it is difficult to get rid of the relationship between VR and pornographic applications.

So VR is not a fertile ground for the game industry?

Obviously, it's not.

Illusion's "VR Girlfriend" is such a "serious" game.

The main body of the game is only more than 600 megabytes. Compared with the dazzling skills and exploration of other VR games, VR Girlfriend, which leans most of its resources on the female owner, is "fresh and refined.

In front of the extremely "realistic" mistress, after the initial freshness, we will have an illusion of this "reality"; if the so-called reality is this set "stress response", will it be too fake.

Of course, we can't ask too much for an H game; but for VR games, in front of its extreme sense of substitution, we still need to draw a boundary for "reality.

After all, even virtual reality is not reality after all.

However, with the development of technology to a certain extent, when we are no longer anxious about the "sense of substitution", several characters in movie-level games may become a set of skins, or even become "placeholders" of plot trigger points. Players can bring in "wholeheartedly"; before that, the re-engraving and reset versions of some classic games will become a fertile soil.



⑥
Cloud games
○

Of course, there have also been signs of martial arts games, plot games, diffuse games and functional games, but in essence they are still only a kind of traditional games, but they have achieved perfection in details such as operability, immersion, IP development and social responsibility. Even if it breaks away from the limitations of traditional games, they can also shine in "future games" such as somatosensory, AR, block chain and VR.

Back to cloud games, no matter the down-to-earth somatosensory games, the eye-opening AR games, the famous block chain games, or the VR games that confuse reality, they are only various explorations in the essence and extension of the games.

The embryonic form of a new world is slowly unfolding towards us.

What we need in the future is a more open, free and realistic game experience.

The "evolution" of this game experience and the "upgrade" of the game from its own carrier red and white machine, handheld machine, computer, mobile phone, head display to the cloud are parallel.

With the arrival of 5G, its "high speed, wide connection and low latency" determine that the game does not need to be stored locally in the future, and can be directly accessed through the network, and various calculations and effects can also be assisted by external supercomputing equipment; This gives the game equipment the possibility of lightweight, fragmentation and invisibility (game modules naturally integrate into life).

And this is what we call the cloud game.

Of course, the concept of cloud games is not recent:

In 2000, a Finnish game company called G-cluster showed its prototype on E3, but it did not stir up any waves.

Until 2009, an American game company Onlive launched the cloud game version of Crysis, but what it gained was not the fans of the players, but Sony's "attention".

Since then, Sony, Nvidia, Microsoft and other major manufacturers have launched their own cloud game platforms one by one, officially opening the prelude to global competition.

Recently, cloud games have been pushed to the forefront again due to the characteristics of 5G "high speed, wide connection and low delay". When everyone has no clue about 5G super applications, there are countless possibilities for cloud games.

When performance, volume and delay no longer pose a threat to cloud games, the light chase effect and modeling texture quality will have the ultimate performance. This may in turn affect the accelerated changes in the current game manufacturing industry.

Further, in the next step of cloud games, the game world may become a buffer zone for us to accelerate our integration into the virtual world; when more organic humans immigrate to the virtual world, the game itself may also alienate a system.

The future goes to the future. What cloud games need to do now is to consolidate their foundation:

First, create more entrances in the virtual world to shine the game into reality;

Second, gradually blur the boundary between reality and virtual, allowing the game to connect with reality;

Third, expand the virtual ecology based on reality; Enabling reality with games.



⑦
Next Generation Interaction Design
○
Standing in the first stage of cloud games, in the process of "shining the game into reality", what we urgently need to do is to open more "brain holes" to the game world in reality ".

One is to use existing technology to turn a particular reality into a game without adding any variables.

The above is an immersive game "Run, Bangkok!" launched by Nike and BBH Asia Pacific advertising agencies. ", Runners are required to run through the city to participate in special tasks, and then collect game tokens through Bluetooth technology on their mobile phones. When tokens accumulate to a certain amount, there are rich rewards to receive.

This kind of "out of nothing" design is the most basic "no design", which integrates "gamification" into reality; in the future, with the assistance of AR and VR equipment, more games like "Temple Escape" and "Metro Parkour" can be moved into reality.

Both, we can also use existing interactive tools to "deconstruct" some items with cultural connotations ".

The National Museum of Classics recently welcomed the first batch of players. Players searched for "the treasure of Shanhaishe" through sporadic clues and a mysterious envelope in their hands ".

In this way, based on the "redesign" of the decryption link, giving a thing a "gamification" feature is also a part of the game into reality. It gives an item a story and the possibility of extending in time and space.

And in this process, such as some cultural relics, we can actually use some "props" to present some audio and video-based materials. If we can also interact with "players" in the process, then many things can be "revitalized".



Of course, the above process is based on the reality of the "deconstruction" of reality on the basis of not increasing the entity, this way of "breaking the wall" is limited; then in the longer-term future, how should we design?



First: Barrier-free Design

Logitech's adaptive game suite Logitech G contains 12 buttons and triggers that work with Microsoft's Xbox adaptive controller to make games easier for people with disabilities; these buttons plug into the 3.5mm jack of the adaptive controller, triggers are plugged in via USB, and they can then all be mapped to different controller functions to play Xbox or PC games.

As a cooperation project between Logitech and Microsoft Inclusive Tech Lab, AbleGamers, Mount Sanai(Abilities Research Center) and SpecialEffect, the toolkit can bring excellent use experience to people with disabilities, even the packaging is carefully designed.

While designing for the future, designing for some special groups is actually a humanized design trend; while helping specific groups to enjoy the game, cloud games can also accommodate more game individuals and remove the barriers that cannot be broken in the real world.



Second: Modular Design

Designer Sushant Vohra designed the 2.0 version on top of the EXEO series plug-and-play game controller developed last year; Sushant retained the three pillars of the controller design, namely Velox,Brutus and Terra, visually and ergonomically Improve them; they can work together to build more complex controllers from rifles and rocket launchers to steering wheels or hockey sticks.

Although the expansion posture of this modular design is limited, it encourages players to actively participate in reality; once this kind of peripherals open source code to some extent, it will explode the player's cluster wisdom and greatly enrich the game The innovation of peripherals.



Third: Subversive Design

As the second generation of wearable keyboard and mouse, Tap Strap 2 brings AirMouse functions this time. Connecting Tap Strap 2 via Bluetooth allows users to send commands to "remote" devices with AirMouse functions using simple palms without touch screens and specific interactive interfaces.

The Tap Strap generation can type on any object and also support HTC VIVE to type in VR. Although typing requires learning costs, the basic mouse function is quite convenient.

The greatest value of this wearable keyboard and mouse is not to limit the interactive ecology of the next generation of gaming devices, but to provide them with a possibility. Not all keyboards must be woven into one piece, nor are all mice limited to wired and wireless.



Fourth: Space Design

The VR technology service provider configuration space established in 2017 is trying to use a self-developed walking algorithm to compress the VR large space into a standardized 50 square meter "box", which was opened in Shenzhen Wanxiang City in August. The 15-minute virtual waste world supports up to 6 players present at the same time. Different groups of players experience the same content, but the walking path does not interfere with each other.

This algorithm takes advantage of the defects in people's perception of direction and space, and confuses the perception of the experiencer in terms of walking distance, turning radius, walking trajectory, etc., and finally allows the experiencer to "go wherever he sees"; This algorithm is also reversible. The experiencer can return to the original path. This algorithm also supports sensory simulation to make touch matching for the specific wall surface designed.

Although this kind of "space design" is relatively rough, its significance lies in the direct design of the real space without the game itself and the game equipment, which to some extent makes up for the illusion of virtual world perception; before the emergence of new technologies and new materials, it can assist XR games to activate the players' own perception system to a greater extent so that they can be "immersive".

When we are full of uncertainties and fears about AI and robots, perhaps the game is the last "utopia" in the future world; although there may also form classes and classes in the end, it is undeniable that in some specific situations the game is really more friendly than reality.

At least, ordinary people can still krypton liver and try their luck.

Just like Spielberg's "Player Number One.



PS: Some materials come from @ Tiger Smell @ Titanium Media @ Behance @ Geek Park