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In recent years, many large game companies have a very important business - ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance), which means to evaluate the sustainability of business operations and the impact on social values around the three dimensions of environmental, social and corporate governance.
In the vernacular, ESG means that companies need to prove to the public that they are not just a money-making machine, but also "make the world a better place". After all, in an ideal society, large corporations are expected to have more public responsibility, especially in industries like gaming, which are highly monetized but have "original sin".
To communicate one's worth to the public, one often needs to construct a narrative framework. Fortunately, many important technological developments in recent years have shown that they are inextricably linked to the video game industry - from the "metaverse" that was popular in the past few years, to the current AI that must be called at the forefront of technology, it has provided game companies with an excellent case of "games driving technological development".
Of course, it's not a false proposition that games drive technology. Take the wave of generative AI detonated by ChatGPT as an example, the development of GPU (graphics processing unit), the most important hardware foundation for this wave of technology explosion, is inseparable from the huge demand for 3D graphics processing in video games for many years. Riding on this wave of AI, Nvidia has also changed from a company whose main business is to sell game graphics cards to a seller of technology competition in the new era, and its market value once surpassed that of Microsoft and became the second largest company in the world after Apple.
Nvidia stock price "takes off"
There are many more examples of game-powered technology, such as the use of scanning and rendering technology in flight simulations, archiving artifacts and monuments, digital twin factories, and ...... However, the preaching of some game companies for ESG purposes inevitably gives people a strange "sense of stacking nails" - just like a child who does not follow the usual path and grows up successful, desperately trying to prove to parents that he has always been a good child.
In this context, there is also a strange scene that some game companies spend most of their time at the press conference to talk about how games can help the development of technology, but the game products themselves are only a small space.
What is the relationship between games and technology? Just as a large number of technological innovations throughout history have been the product of unexpectedness, video games often do not think about how far the technology may evolve in the future, but out of very specific demands: better image performance, lower energy consumption, lower content production costs, stronger user targeting and reach......
It can be said that the generation of innovation and the large-scale application of technology are often not for the noble purpose of "promoting the progress of human science and technology".
For example, the inventor of the early Roman Empire (1st century AD) Hero, who not only invented the "steam ball", which is considered to be the prototype of the steam engine, but also the first to invent the mechanical "vending machine", a sacrificial vessel that throws in a coin and water flows out. But it is difficult for modern people to imagine the use of this machine: it tells people that God will give "holy water" only if they give coins.
Schematic diagram of Hiro's "vending machine".
In order for an innovation to have a greater impact, it also needs to find a wider range of use scenarios, otherwise it is easy to become some kind of "trick and trick" that only serves a very small number of people, like Hiro's "vending machine", and be drowned in the long river of history. Historically, the large-scale adoption of many important technologies has often begun in strange places, such as the fact that the early printing press was mainly profitable by printing indulgences, and it is difficult for people in the Middle Ages to imagine that it would cause a seismic change in the future.
Returning to the game's push for technological development, the results are true, but the product of technological innovation and "deliberately concave shape" often benefits from a relaxed environment, a wide range of consumer demand and a good business model.
If one day, game companies no longer need to fold armor crazily, maybe it means that such an environment has arrived.