Can the in-game food be “rolled” once more?

Nowadays, different types of “food” have once again entered our field of vision – the animation “Maze Rice” is currently on the air, “The King of Sacred Beasts” prominently depicts the enjoyment of food, and “Dragon's Dogma 2” 》 also became quite popular thanks to the barbecue scene. It seems that the game world is about to usher in another version update with food content?

Since ancient times, Chinese people’s love for food goes without saying, and this naturally includes Chinese players. In fact, although “food” does not appear as the main gameplay in most games, for domestic manufacturers and domestic games, if they can do this part well, it will undoubtedly bring some additional benefits to themselves. gain.

Chinese food in the game: absent, but not completely absent

Since the birth of video games, due to various reasons, most of them were dominated by the United States and Japan from the 1970s to around 2010. Although there are also excellent works in Europe, Oceania, the Middle East, South America and other regions, either the cultural system is still subordinate to the Western system, or the influence is still limited. Therefore, in terms of overall coverage, “Western food” naturally has a heavier presence in the game.

The development of electronic games in the United States, whether in terms of core culture, user base or capital affiliation, relies heavily on entertainment industries such as movies. The influence of “Hollywood hegemony” on a global scale is self-evident. When American creators describe food in games, they will naturally use the cuisine pedigree they are most familiar with as the basis, and the stereotypes and misinterpretations of other cultures are quite different. common. Therefore, in a considerable number of games, the status of “Western food” is unshakable, and even if some diversified content occasionally appears, it is more superficial.

As for Japan, although it belongs to the East and has been deeply influenced by Chinese culture in history, on the one hand, it became an economic colony of the United States after World War II and suffered a considerable degree of cultural castration; on the other hand, Japan became strong due to the Meiji Restoration. , believing that the cognitive habit of Western culture being advanced and constantly learning exists for a long time. Among them, the representative “Taisho Era” is, to the Japanese, a popular cultural symbol similar to our country's “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”.

Various factors have led to Japan's widespread blind, inertial, and even outrageous worship of Western culture, and even gave birth to the magical disease “Paris Syndrome” – Japanese tourists discovered the real Paris and their There is a huge difference in the imagination, which leads to mental illness. Under this circumstance, even for games produced in Japan, Western food–and “Japanese-style Western food” that has been localized to a certain extent–will inevitably play a larger role, often overshadowing pure Japanese cuisine.

Not only that, but if we look further ahead, although Chinese culture has had a profound impact on Japan and other Southeast Asian countries in history, this impact has also caused a special incidental problem in the game world – “son” Taking up the position of “dad”.

In many games, we can indeed see foods similar to Chinese food such as fried rice, noodles, and dumplings. However, if we dig deeper, it is not difficult to find that they are often “Chinese cuisine” from Japan or Southeast Asia. “Southern cuisine”, these are the shadows left by Chinese food in Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asian countries, and are not Chinese food in the true sense.

In addition, in a commercial game, the type and quantity of props are always limited, and the production resources are also limited. Under such objective restrictions, “Oriental Food” has to cram a lot of “specious” content into the already limited space. Naturally, the Chinese food deity has no chance.

In short, for a long time, Chinese food has been in a state of complete mismatch with its status in reality in the game world. Of course, this is not surprising. It is unrealistic for foreign manufacturers to understand and produce authentic Chinese food. Therefore, in recent years, domestic manufacturers have gradually emerged. Whether they actively seek cultural exports or not, some games have been successful overseas and have gradually increased the presence of Chinese food.

It’s not easy to incorporate Chinese food into games

Of course, Chinese food has a low presence in the game, and there are also some objective limitations related to technology and gameplay.

The first is the issue of gameplay experience. Take as an example the use of simple QTE gameplay to allow players to participate in cooking interactions, which has become more popular in recent years. Compared with other foods, many Chinese dishes have a much more complicated production process. Even if pre-processing such as washing vegetables is omitted and the knife skill requirements for chopping vegetables are simplified, just using the buttons to add seasonings is enough for the player to be busy. The entire cooking gameplay may be even longer, which makes the game experience very slow. Difficult to balance.

For example, in the recently popular “Diver Dave”, the cooking challenge part of the branch line is the above method. However, the main cooking methods are still biased toward Japanese and Western styles, which relatively simplifies the steps and does not make players feel awkward. If you switch to dishes that players are familiar with in real life, especially Chinese food, it may be difficult to have the same experience.

What's more, this gameplay also supports skipping. Even if you don't skip, you only need to experience it once during the side mission. It can be said that we are doing our best to balance the rhythm of the experience at this stage. If it were in a game that further simplifies the cooking process, Chinese food would be difficult to finish as simply as the barbecue in “Monster Hunter”. Even “Genshin Impact” relies on the “lightweight” mobile game identity to serve as an aid. Easy to use simple UI interactive form to handle the cooking process.

In other words, if you want players to interact with themselves to make more complex Chinese meals, a new design is needed, or at least a major iteration of the current design.

There are also some really good examples of how the cooking process is depicted. In “Shadow Torch City”, although there is no interactive gameplay, the game still very kindly shows players a complete set of cooking animations. Although I learned the cat rice from “Monster Hunter” to a certain extent, and cleverly chose noodles, a category that can be cooked quickly, the experience in all aspects is good, and it can be regarded as a quite successful process.

Secondly, if the food is presented in a relatively traditional way, with only a single prop picture or even text, such as Falcom's “Trajectory” series of RPGs, or AVG works, you will also encounter a problem that is difficult to ignore: the categories and types of Chinese food. The quantity is too “terrible” for the production capacity of many games.

Take “Redstained: Ritual of the Night”, which places great emphasis on depicting various delicacies, as an example. The number of dishes (repair props) in the game has reached 67, which is quite a lot for a medium-sized game. If there were more, I'm afraid It is a dedicated cooking game or a AAA masterpiece. But even so, for Chinese food, this quantity will definitely lead to a situation where there are too many radishes and too few pits. Even if roughly divided into the “eight major cuisines”, each cuisine can only be divided into eight or nine on average – far from enough even if you think about it.

Imagine that even if Cantonese cuisine does not promise to first come up with a “morning tea steamer set” with so many varieties that it is difficult to remember (the variety of pasta in the entire northwest of Shanxi is enough to “make a pot of porridge”, and Tianjin and Shandong next to it also have “crepes”). “There is a duel between the upper and lower positions, and the Northeastern cuisine may have driven a truck carrying a big firewood pot and bumped into it… You can imagine the intensity of the competition. If there is a project team that really wants to do it, the internal affairs will be far apart. The members may have to argue for a long time.

To put it in more “professional” terms, Chinese food's research threshold for creative personnel and game resource production capacity threshold are a bit high. At the same time, the threshold of Chinese players will be much higher accordingly. Judging from the long-standing questions on social platforms such as “should bean curd be eaten sweet or salty?”, if Chinese manufacturers cannot make Chinese food, there may be “social death”. “Risk… Therefore, it is really difficult to develop the game without thorough thinking. After all, the number of “carrot pits” is not enough to sing an “Ode to the Millennium Recipe”.

The third problem is more direct: lack of support from common material libraries and other resources, many things have to be done from scratch.

There are many types of resources. For example, due to the long-term absence of Chinese elements in video games, there is a shortage of 3D models of Chinese food and various 3D character action data for making Chinese food.

This is bound to have an impact on many small and medium-sized games. Art and animation resources have always been a tight spot for small and medium-sized manufacturers and independent developers. A counterexample is that one of the reasons why farming games are springing up is that teams that cannot afford to hire animators can directly apply the animations of lumberjacks and miners from various resource libraries.

Obviously, there are no “spoon-shaking animation” and “stir-frying animation” with similar effects for the time being, or not enough. In the same way, the action of eating these foods is not common, just like the action of making or peeling rice dumplings. Even if it only needs to be completed roughly, it is difficult for many project teams to invest resources to start from scratch.

In addition, the “dish selection” mentioned above is also a manifestation of the lack of information resources. Although the choice of dishes itself should not be a big problem, the chef's preferences also deserve respect. But from a business perspective, we should definitely choose “popular foods” that are easy for the public to accept. So, an important question is: Where can we get reliable data so that producers can accurately know which dishes are “popular” enough?

Unlike pizza, burgers, fried chicken and other foods with distinct symbolic meanings, Chinese food is a very tolerant and open system that can even be described as “chaotic”. It is not easy to establish a certain dish (or type of dish) that makes most people happy. For a brand that is familiar to everyone, it is difficult to use branding effect to increase the popularity of dishes.

Take “dumplings” and “noodles” as an example. Although dumplings that can be stuffed with anything may be roughly equivalent to pizza that can be sprinkled with anything, there is generally nothing wrong with putting macaroni next to pizza. It’s hard to tell which kind of noodles should be paired with dumplings – fried noodles, hot dry noodles, wonton noodles, Yangchun noodles… They all seem reasonable, and players from various regions are also hard to agree on. After careful study, The controversy will never be less than whether to eat sweet or salty tofu pudding.

There are many similar problems. However, if more manufacturers are willing to add food and cooking elements to the game, and with enough accumulation, the “system” of Chinese food in the game will gradually become clearer.

Some methods and discussions

In today's environment, food – or food culture – is no longer limited to cooking games, especially with the help of the general trend of 3D modeling, it may take some different forms.

For example, many shooting and survival games will add decorative pendants to players’ weapons. This idea is similar to the concept of decorative pendants for mobile phones in reality. The “Resident Evil” series has made many attempts in this regard. The pendant system in “Resident Evil 4: Remake” even breaks through the concept of decoration and has a direct impact on the gameplay.

If we use similar logic and refer to the concept of “food and entertainment” that is already quite popular in reality, maybe food can also be used as a decoration in the game world? Anyway, there are many Chinese food dishes, even if they are used to open boxes and draw cards, it is not an exaggeration.

In addition, game engines such as “Unreal” can provide more and more 3D virtual functions. For “cyber cooking” entering the 3D era, even if it is simply displayed, the sense of accomplishment and realism of collection will be far away. It is much larger than the traditional 2D list screen, and it should be a wonderful feeling to be able to enjoy the food from multiple angles. What's more, in addition to simple display, as long as it can be placed in a virtual world environment, there are many interactive spaces that can be used.

But in the end, games must be played, just like food must be delicious. But appropriate embellishments are also needed, just like dishes need a minimum presentation or appearance. Although it is not easy to put real and complete Chinese food into the game, with reference to the cooperation between the game and various traditional cultures – such as Peking Opera, traditional painting, intangible cultural heritage, etc., in the field of “food” and other Industry cooperation is also very feasible.

To put it more sensationally, the future in which domestic games and Chinese food culture support each other should be worth looking forward to – the French may be able to make Chinese kung fu into “The Master”, but they can't rely on others for cyber cooking of Chinese dishes. .