The national game "Honor of Kings" has been born for 7 years, from the very beginning of the "game history" to now become a phenomenal IP that inherits Chinese culture, what efforts has it made in the past 7 years to bring about this huge change? In this issue, let's talk about how cultural a mobile game can be.
As early as the birth of "Glory of Kings", it was a product with traditional Chinese cultural symbols, and many of the earliest characters and heroes were based on ancient Chinese history and myths and legends, from the pre-Qin period of Ying Zheng and Jing Ke to Xiang Yu and Yu Ji of the Chu-Han dispute; From Zhuge Liang, Sable Cicada, Lü Bu, Sun Shangxiang, and Xiao Xiaoqiao in the era of the Three Kingdoms hegemony, to Li Bai, Wu Zetian, Di Renjie, and Yang Yuhuan in the era of the Three Kingdoms; From the Monkey King in the mythology of Journey to the West to Nezha who is a god.
The attributes and skills of each hero are also related to the characteristics of the prototype character itself, the hero Mulan, chivalrous tenderness, heroic and sassy; The noble concubine fairy Yang Yuhuan was shocked and smiling. What I especially want to mention here is that when the master plays the poetry fairy swordsman Li Bai, the operation is sharp and agile, and he is free, and the line he reads "The sword of the great river comes from the sky", adapted from Li Bai's "Will enter the wine": You don't see the water of the Yellow River coming up in the sky. But many people don't know that Li Bai in history really knows swordsmanship, but because he wrote poems that are too famous, he overshadows the limelight of being a swordsman.
In 2017, after experiencing the fact that the "Jing Ke" of the King of Qin was renamed to "Ake" of "Luding Ji", "Glory of Kings" was painfully decided that because it was too successful commercially, people's expectations for it no longer stopped at worldly success.
Since then, "Glory of Kings" has opened an unprecedented pursuit of spiritual culture, riding on the road of inheriting Chinese culture, and even the scene has been changed to pines and cypresses and aquatic koi in classical Chinese gardens.
Throughout 2021, "Honor of Kings" has two big jobs: first of all, because MOBA games can only fight and kill, there is no time to tell stories like RPGs, but without stories, there can be no culture and IP, so in order to supplement the world view and character stories, "Honor of Kings" announced the "Codename: Daybreak" and the open-world RPG "Honor of Kings World" featuring Chinese aesthetics, and also launched the spin-off TV series "You Are My Glory".
After the initial results, he cooperated with the History Department of Peking University to create a Chang'an race year, showing the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty. Elements related to Chinese culture in this competition year can be said to abound - Chang'an One Hundred and Eight Squares, Amazing Dance, Shangyuan Lantern Festival, Dali Temple, Royal Parade, Three Squares Winner...
But "Chang'an Never Sleeps" is not only a pile of elements, but a complete story line: with the auspicious pattern "Baoxianghua" prevalent in the Sui and Tang Dynasties as the core clue, it tells the suspenseful story that occurred in Chang'an City, and players cooperate with heroes in the plot to help them solve the mystery and grow together. For example, Gongsun Li's Yaotian group bravely guarded Chang'an in order to seek the truth, and there was a game of human heart and force implied between Wu Zetian and Sikong Zhen; On the other hand, Chang'an City competed and showed its talents, showing the posture of prosperity and inclusiveness.
Take Quchifang, for example, "Qushui Liuyu" really allows players to experience a popular entertainment and blessing activity of the ancient literati Yashi. Everyone sat on both sides of the canal and put wine glasses in the upper exile, and the wine glasses went down the river, and whoever stopped in front of them took a glass to drink.
If you go to the Tanzhe Temple in Beijing today, you can see the ruins at the Liubei Pavilion. Wang Xizhi's "Preface to the Lanting Collection" comes from this, and it is recommended that you listen to the course of Shi Rui of the History Department of Peking University in the "Read the Original Text".
In addition, if you want to play a game of guessing wine and meet Li Bai, you can go to Ying Distillery, and the Changle Dance Pavilion in the side box, the beautiful dance of Ah Li and Yang Yuhuan, is about to be staged.
Through the graduation season, "Glory of Kings" cooperated with five major art academies in China to create the "Chang'an Style and Things" college graduation design exhibition. With the theme of Chang'an Race Year, nearly 200 students from more than 10 majors used technical means including two-dimensional and three-dimensional animation, new media interactive installations, mixed material murals, wood carvings, shadow puppets and other technical means to create the various ecology of Chang'an in the story of the competition year.
A small reminder, the above three words, the correct pronunciation should be "cháng lè fāng". There is an idiom called "Changle Weiyang", which means long-term joy and never ends, from "Jinshisuo Han Changle Palace Wa".
In addition to the great work of the entire competition year, "Glory of Kings" has achieved the ultimate inheritance of Chinese culture on the skin of heroes.
From Yang Yuhuan, who inherits the beauty of Dunhuang, Feitian interprets the prosperous Huxuan;
to Shangguan Wan'er turned into a female student of Yue opera, recreating the century-old butterfly change of "Liang Zhu";
From Da Qiao to meet the stone fish and cranes of the Baiheliang Underwater Museum, turning into water spirits;
Go to the "five grain harvest year" of Ghost Guzi (correct pronunciation: 鬼 (guí) 谷 (gú) 子 (zǐ), meaning that Mr. retreats in the place of Ghost Valley), guards the fireworks of the world, and calls on players to revisit ancient Chinese books such as "Qi Min Zhishu" and "The Complete Book of Agricultural Administration".
Later, "Glory of Kings" made this inheritance to offline real scenes. After launching the "Tengwang Pavilion Order" skin for Yixing, it also cooperated with the real Nanchang Tengwang Pavilion to create a digital cultural tourism plan, launching a series of projects including themed light shows and virtual human guides.
In the end, 110 million players became digital patrons of Dunhuang culture in-game, and 147 million players replayed "High Mountains and Flowing Water" in the canyon; 50 million players immerse themselves in the front of and behind the scenes of a century-old Yue Opera girl...
At this point, what we need to see is that not all game products can become cultural IP, and for "Honor of Kings", a game that has achieved unprecedented commercial success, it is its inevitable responsibility to become a national IP that inherits Chinese cultural aesthetics. Fortunately, it has blazed a trail of its own without too many precedent references.
As early as 2019, New York used the music of "Glory of Kings" at the fireworks party celebrating China's National Day; Later, as a domestic original IP, the international version of "Honor of Kings" was also selected as an official competition event of the Hangzhou Asian Games.
In the 2022 Xinhua News Agency's IP Value Index list, "Honor of Kings" ranked third, but few people may notice that a paragraph in the list report explains that IP is a real connection, not only connecting users, creators and upstream and downstream industries, but also connecting tradition and modernity, China and the world, people and the times.
Starting from "fun after tea and dinner, entertainment in the streets and alleys", this enduring mobile game is crossing the crowds of the south and north of the world, wrapped in a thousand-year-old golden iron horse, and transforming into a Chinese super IP that connects everything.
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