Game spirit and interesting soul The basic appearance of new citizens of Web3

Author: Feng Guangneng, signed author of Waibo Sanguan

If we hope to reflect on industrial civilization and gradually start the Web3 era, then the first thing that should be reactivated is the spirit of gaming.

In the past, the process of making games was always accompanied by negotiation of rules. When the playing process felt unsmooth, everyone would negotiate the rules, thus making the game more and more interesting. With the development of industrial civilization, games have also been affected by industrial logic, and they have become like part-time work. Faced with the prosperity of the game industry and the loss of the game spirit, we need to recall what Huizinga said: What games actually pursue is fun itself. In the Web3 era, both online digital city-states and offline digital nomads share the same gaming spirit.

Hu Yilin, associate professor of the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua University, believes that in industrial civilization, people can easily fall into a utilitarian cycle and lack leisure, which means they lack the room for reading, social activities and political activities as Marx said, and games can allow people to Man reexperiences the possibility of freedom. At the same time, in industrial civilization, game elements are gradually disappearing. As Huizinga said, "The prosperity of the game industry and the loss of the game spirit are typical contradictions of modernity." **

If we hope to reflect on industrial civilization and gradually start the Web3 era, then the first thing that should be reactivated is the spirit of gaming.

01. The prosperity of the game industry

The prosperity of the modern game industry is reflected in the globalization of the game market and the diversification of game types. The game market provides a variety of game types, such as action games, role-playing games, simulation games, puzzle games, sports games, strategy games, etc., which can meet the interests and needs of different people. It can be found that more and more young people, adults, and elderly people around the world are using various media to participate in various gaming activities. The booming market has also driven peripheral industries, such as music, painting, narrative, film and forums, which have become part of the game culture.

Among many games, role-playing games (Role-Playing Game (hereinafter referred to as RPG)) such as The Elder Scrolls, The Witcher, The Legend of Zelda, Dark Souls, and Assassin's Creed are well received by players. Players can play fictional characters, complete tasks in the game, experience storylines, and gradually immerse themselves in the world created by the game.

At the same time, with the help of electronic devices and the Internet, online multiplayer role-playing games (MMORPG) are gradually emerging, opening up many richer game fields and becoming more and more prosperous.

Due to the large number of participating players, on the surface, the gaming industry is full of vitality, with large gaming companies and startups constantly developing new games, technologies and hardware to meet growing and increasingly diverse needs. **But fundamentally speaking, these game industries are still in the transitional stage between Web2 and Web3, and they still have not really gotten rid of the underlying logic of industrial civilization. **

02. Working in RPG

If we start to pay attention to the RPG field and try to find the core part of the game, we may be able to see that the feelings of a few people still exude a gentle light, but the light is getting weaker and weaker.

I haven’t played Genshin Impact for a long time, but I still remember Wendy’s warning:

"Traveler, when you embark on your journey again, you must remember the meaning of the journey itself. The birds, poems and city-states of Teyvat, the queen, fools and monsters... are all part of your journey. The end does not mean everything . Before reaching the end, use your eyes to observe more of the world."

On Station B, what countless Abyss speedrunning videos and their number of likes tell us is that there are many players who are willing to grind secret realms and hoe the earth day after day just to improve their efficiency a little bit, and enjoy the reputation. As the "Liver Emperor".

Things like this can occasionally confuse players, as Skirmisher says,

"If you are a part-time worker in reality, then when you get off work and play Genshin Impact for fun, you will find out why you are still working in Genshin Impact. Don't make it any more difficult, okay?"

In fact, working has long become the norm in games. For example, as early as 2020, the cute doctor analyzed the reasons why players are more willing to work in games from the perspectives of sense of accomplishment, control, fairness and security. Furthermore, there are players who are trying to understand the principles of the game and try to make workers happier. For example, the HRLogic editorial department proposed that a game-like point-based management system can be implemented in the company based on the feedback principle to create an active and relaxed atmosphere.

However, discussions like this have not changed the fate of players working in games, nor has it changed the trend of working in games. We are still faced with an iron-clad reality: **No matter how interesting an RPG is when you start it, if it continues If you keep playing, you will eventually start to do regular periodic tasks day after day after completing the main plot, and gradually enter a part-time job state. **It can be found that even if the game has paid great attention to narrative, even if the game still retains many elements that stimulate dopamine, and even if players can be deeply immersed in it, after the happiness fades, what is left for players is still emptiness and confusion. Some players You will feel that you have just changed from a painful worker in reality to a happy worker in the game.

03. Instrumental rationality and communicative rationality

From a historical perspective, it is inevitable that such things will happen. The reason is that **RPG is also part of industrial civilization. **

Genshin Impact players brush up secret realms and hoe the earth in order to quickly pass through the abyss. This is essentially a manifestation of the pursuit of efficiency. Nearly three hundred years have passed since the Industrial Revolution when Watt improved Newcomen's steam engine, and the pursuit of efficiency has become a spirit of the times. This is the basic background of internalization in our era, so players will regard improving efficiency as a matter of glory, even ignoring the diminishing marginal effects. In this regard, Habermas has long pointed out that industrial civilization has shaped instrumental rationality. The so-called instrumental rationality is to achieve set goals with higher efficiency.

According to Habermas, in addition to instrumental rationality, we also need to pay attention to communicative rationality, pay attention to the publicity of ideas, actively solve problems through dialogue and discussion, achieve consensus, achieve cooperation with others, and lead to social harmony. Even though this view has long become a consensus among academic circles, it has not yet settled into people's daily speech activities.

The reason is that everyone lives in the environment, and the environment is biased. Obviously, instrumental rationality is more suitable for people to work in industrial civilization. The feedback that the industrial civilization environment brings to us will continue to strengthen our instrumental rationality, making us more and more accustomed to living around goals, based on some operable, Set goals with quantifiable and evaluable criteria rather than talking about ideals about life.

Similarly, while industrial civilization has brought about a new way of life, traditional street culture and community culture have gradually disintegrated. People's social interactions have become increasingly dependent on electronic devices such as mobile phones and computers, or they have participated in some party activities with clear goals. There are no chance encounters in the street for small talk. As Xu Song said, modern cities provide a society of strangers and provide young people with few social opportunities, and social interaction is an ability that requires continuous practice to master. In this sense, the communicative rationality mentioned by Habermas has actually been penetrated by instrumental rationality, so the distinction between the two becomes even more important and eye-catching.

04. Loss of game spirit

When we talk about the spirit of the game, what we are talking about first is the pursuit of fun. The fun of the game is rooted in the negotiation of rules, because a certain rule will always become boring as time goes by. Only by opening up new areas of rules through negotiation can we bring new ideas.

If in the process of dialogue and negotiation of game rules, we have been pre-dominated by the logic of industrial civilization and always design game rules around operable, quantifiable, evaluable and other standards, then the underlying logic of our game rules is different from that of assembly line products. The underlying logic is consistent. This is doomed. If we do not reflect on the underlying logic and development process of industrial civilization, then as people living in industrial civilization, the ultimate destiny of players is to work in games. **This is not only a logical necessity, as just mentioned, this is also a reality that has already happened and is still happening.

The more critical issue is that the logic of industrial civilization has been becoming part of the technological environment through externalization. Even if a game stops updating, it can still run automatically according to the current rules. Players will still play the game according to the rules provided by the game. Moreover, these rules are the rules of the game system, and players have no authority to make any modifications to them. You can only choose to keep playing or give up, and there is no room for negotiation.

In this sense, we can find that due to the lack of reflection on the underlying logic of industrial civilization, in the process of the gradual prosperity of the game industry, the spirit of the game has indeed been silently lost. **

05. Language is the home of existence

Once reflection is injected, we will also discover new possibilities for the same thing.

Let’s go back and re-examine Genshin Impact, and try to ask a question: **Why are people more willing to work in Genshin Impact, or even spend money to work in Genshin Impact, instead of working in a real company? **

When we ask this question, we may notice an interesting but inconspicuous phenomenon: many Genshin Impact players were not used to the "non-skippable dialogue" setting at first, but later they gradually liked it. this setting.

The reason for this is that this setting forces us to spend time listening to the character's dialogue and slowly enter the context of the character's dialogue, and the design of each character in Genshin Impact is very full. When mentioning Mondstadt, everyone recalls not only the statues of gods and windmills, but also many interesting people, such as the six-fingered bard Joseph, the humorous Barton, the innocent and lovely Nora, the homesick pomegranate, and the likes of studying Qiuqiu. Musk, who speaks human language, Said, a scholar who travels around the world...

The words of these characters are rich in interpretation. For example, when we deal with the six-fingered bard Jose, we hear him always complaining that a mysterious bard has come to take his job. As players, we often smile knowingly at this time, thinking that he is actually talking about the wind god Barbatos, that is, the singing Wendy, which leads to the idea of "So you are still kept in the dark." But if you think about it again, might Joseph already know that the bard is Barbatos? Could it be that the entire population of Mondstadt is collectively cooperating with the God of Wind to stage a city-state drama for the travelers we play?

When we listen carefully to what the characters say, we will find that they gradually come to life and become friends with us. Moreover, although the content of each character's speech is different, they have some common styles and follow some basic rules, and each of their lines is carefully designed. For example, in Mondstadt, we will feel that each character is full of yearning for a poetic life and can freely express his or her personality in the process of speaking. In this way, in the process of dialogue with these characters, we gradually transcend the world of industrial civilization and integrate into the world set by Genshin Impact. In addition, the dubbing of each character in Genshin Impact is very attentive. Combined with the exquisite content, we will feel that this new world is not only lively and interesting, but also full of life.

Even after playing Genshin Impact for a long time, we will find that the conversations we have in Genshin Impact are more and fuller than those we have with many friends around us. In fact, the dialogue between travelers, Paimon and many NPCs is also a dialogue between us and the game makers, as well as a dialogue between us and the game makers and the books they have read. In a sense, the game makers may have developed the game Genshin Impact just to prepare for such a conversation.

06. On the stage of history

Being immersed in a world is a wonderful experience in itself. It is true that not every player who is obsessed with Musk Reef remembers the story of Leonard and Pointed Hat Peak, and not every player can realize that the names of Mona and Lisa happen to be Mona. Lisa, not every player can find that Leonard’s wind wing design drawings are highly similar to the aircraft drawings designed by Leonardo, but every Genshin Impact player will never forget that uniqueness. In your own travel experience, you will never forget the lovely Paimon, Mond who pursues freedom, or Liyue who values the contract.

Image source: b station up subject songyuan

Even if the characters in the game, even if what the characters of Genshin Impact say are pre-set, and even if the content of what they say is very simple, the speaking styles of different characters still allow us to gradually perceive the overall cultural atmosphere of the city-state, and there is a sense of The feeling of entering a new world. This is actually because Genshin Impact has conducted detailed research on the city-state culture and character images in history. Against this background, we consider the positioning of each character and seek inspiration from history, which is rich and diverse. When those people who once left traces in history and were later forgotten by industrial civilization change their appearance and meet us in the game, we feel familiar and refreshing at the same time. Moreover, precisely because history is so vast, when Yuanshen brought out many originalists who enjoyed textual research, even if we knew little about history, we had a vague expectation that the original god would have a dialogue with us. The character may be related to a real person in history. Even if we don’t know the specific relationship, we know that this relationship exists. In this way, we seem to feel a distant voice and enter the stage of history.

In fact, if we re-perceive the existence of history and regard many traces (texts, cultural relics, instruments, relics, etc.) as media to access history, then we will join a grander dialogue. Every book, every artifact, every instrument, every relic tells us something about the past in some way. The books written by the ancients are like long letters, which have gone through a long time and been sent to our hands.

When we read the texts of the ancients, we are actually playing a dialogue game with the ancients. Just like any other game, it will only become fun if we take it seriously. For example, we may read the first half of a book, feel a little confused, and then be surprised to find that the author has responded to us just as we asked our questions. Or, when we read the second half of a book, we suddenly think of something the author said before, and suddenly feel the author's good intentions.

Reading is not necessarily a lonely thing. For example, Leonardo da Vinci and Francesco Martini read Vitruvius's "Ten Books on Architecture" in 1490, which mentioned that architectural proportions can be referred to He designed the proportions of the human body and gave many detailed explanations of the proportions of the human body, which made Leonardo da Vinci have a great interest in the proportions of the human body. With the gestation of inspiration, Leonardo da Vinci finally drew the immortal masterpiece "Werther" in the history of art. Luwei people". In the picture, the man's arms and legs are separated, with his feet and fingers as the end points, and the circumference is a circle and a square. This painting shows a synthesis of artistic and scientific ideals and is often considered an archetypal representation of the High Renaissance.

Image source: Wikipedia

Compared to Leonardo da Vinci and Francesco Martini, we actually enjoy a better reading and conversation environment. The books we have access to far exceed theirs, and the platforms we can speak on are even richer and more diverse. If we regard each book as a letter written to us by a friend, carefully communicate with the author through the book, and then communicate our understanding with the people around us, then we will step onto the stage of history and interact with countless outstanding figures in history. People co-exist. Conversely, if we forget books, it is equivalent to giving up resurrecting the ancients.

After all, the ancients who spent their entire lives leaving behind some texts only provide a possibility of reactivation. Whether we choose to accept this possibility and whose texts we choose to read depends on us. Each of us is limited, and the texts that each person can read in his lifetime are also limited, but if there is an atmosphere of reading, then many texts left by the ancients can be reactivated, and their ideas can continue in our era. Shine light to illuminate our path forward.

Of course, we don’t necessarily have to read the books of the ancients. There are many outstanding scholars alive today who have had a lot of conversations with the ancients. By reading one scholar’s monograph, we may establish contact with dozens of ancients. Had in-depth conversations with several ancient people. In this sense, reading academic monographs can actually become a fashionable thing and an interesting game.

Just like any other game, there is a threshold for reading academic monographs. We need to suspend some of our own preconceptions, listen carefully to the author's words, and carefully sort out the author's ideas. After all, games can only be fun if they are taken seriously. However, there is no need for us to set too strict rules for ourselves, require ourselves to understand thoroughly in one step, or require ourselves to memorize the main ideas of the book. These are all prejudices left to us by the past era.

An academic monograph is like a topic starter. For example, I took a copy of "History of Absurd Medicine" and complained to my friends that Cato recorded a prescription for treating constipation, which contained a "slight fruity aroma, mixed with trace amounts of dust, feces and hellebore" (a prescription for treating constipation). poison)." This actually opens up the space for dialogue. If my friend happens to like to explore new things, we might start from here and talk about the good solubility of wine. The reason is that water is a polar solvent and alcohol is a universal solvent. The combination of the two can dissolve salt, Polar molecules such as sugar and acid can also dissolve fat-soluble compounds such as herbs, spices and oils. After explaining the principle clearly, you can open up and talk about various possibilities of wine, such as: traditional Chinese medicine medicinal wine, agave, Rum, brandy, whiskey, vodka, almond wine, cherry wine... In the process, through positive thinking and mutual inspiration, we gradually expanded the topic to the limit of our abilities, and then we created new confusions, which inspired us Let's read more books and search for more information.

Suppose there is a homeless community with more than a hundred people living in it. People in the community have the habit of reading and communicating. They habitually spend some free time reading every day, and then meet by chance in life. When they meet, they habitually ask questions. "Have you read any books recently?", and then chat casually. If you are interested, talk more for a while, if you are not interested, just talk a few words less. Then the cultural atmosphere of such a community will gradually become stronger and stronger, and everyone will focus on it. Many interesting topics formed various learning groups, gradually developing very diverse group memories, and as their horizons broadened, everyone would regard the dialogue itself as a skill and a game, and during the dialogue process, they became more and more knowledgeable The more interesting people are.

For now, many imaginations about Web3 are still limited by the possibilities provided by blockchain technology itself, mainly focusing on cryptocurrency, DeFi, decentralized identity verification, supply chain management, distributed applications, digital city-states, etc. field, and ** does not understand blockchain technology in the ecology of the entire modern technological environment, and lacks sufficient attention to the relationship between online digital city-states and offline digital nomad communities. This is a major problem negligence. **

The history of technology is the history of mankind. If we look back at the Industrial Revolution, we will find that the steam engine brought about innovation in the entire technical order, and the innovation in the technical order brought about innovation in the fields of culture, economy, and politics. In other words, if we put the narrative of Web3 into the history of technology to understand it, listen to the distant echoes of history, and pay attention to the relationship between digital city-states and digital nomad communities, we may see more interesting possibilities.

As Wittgenstein said, the essence of language is a game.

As Huizinga said, what games pursue is fun itself.