The New York Times: The quark-level humanistic care of "no Brain Games"

Editor's note: The game is becoming a way of life. From "Tetris" to "Happy Farm", from "Plants vs Zombies" to "graffiti jumping", from the "Angry Birds (Micro bo)" to "Draw something", the world's players uneasy, fighting day and night.

However, the game's "no brain" trend is increasingly prominent. In fact, from the day of the birth of Tetris, the "brain-free" gene has been incorporated into the blood of the entire gaming industry. "Halo", "Call of Duty" and other large-scale games, although not spring, but has gradually shrunk to a small number of "high play" the unique hobby. On the other hand, mobile gaming, represented by Happy farm and Angry Birds, relies on social networks and viral transmission to sweep the world at an unprecedented rate.

Paradoxically, many players are well aware that these brain-free games are almost meaningless, but are an infinite loop of simple actions and small achievements. But they have achieved a metaphysical and metaphysical personality split: while scolding "no brain game", while taking out a mobile phone, open "Angry Birds", and then launch a few birds to see if you can play "New high Score."

Put aside all noble purposes, the game can reflect the social background and reality. "Graffiti jumping" and other simple games in the way, fit the people through a small effort, you can get a certain achievement and reward psychology. In a sense, no brain game is a cosmic scale of the quark-level humanistic care.

The New York Times conducted a deep investigation and analysis of the "No Brain Game" and the whole ecosystem of the game. This is a giant and "cock silk" qi, "no brain" total care color singular world.

The following are the main contents of the article:

No Brain Games

The 1989 was a tumultuous year for the world. This year, the communist countries of Eastern Europe began to crumble, and the fall of the Berlin Wall heralded a new Germany rising. In the Far east of Eurasia, Japan's Nintendo company, through a handheld game called "Game Boy", crosses the ocean, bringing another form of "liberation" to America. Players do not have to go to the smoky, overcrowded gaming halls to have fun, and this little plastic box is enough to make them more easily entertained.

On sale with Game Boy is a small game called "Tetris" (Tetris). The game is so simple: different forms of the box combination from the sky, players need to adjust the box in a timely manner, and placed in the appropriate position to eliminate a whole line of the box; it is so addictive, countless players in the "Walls" and "restrictions" unlimited circulation in the sway of youth. It even has a little philosophical color: Your goal is to eliminate the square, that is, "restrictions", but in order to achieve this, you first need to "drywall", that is, the effort to make the box filled with a line-the purpose and method in contradiction to achieve unity.

This is the perfect combination of the game and platform: Tetris's graphical interface is concise enough to run smoothly on the gray-scale display of Game Boy, and its square is slow enough to cause drag-and-drop, and its operation is simple enough to allow players to play in a few innings anytime, anywhere. Game Boy Package sold 70 million sets, whether at the breakfast table, or in the bank line, can always see someone immersed in the "restrictions" game of pleasure.

The birth of a tradition--no brain games (stupid games). The reason for this designation is half factual, and the other half is contrite about the precious time wasted in these games. In the more than 30 years since the birth of Tetris, the game and its "descendants"-including Angry Birds, gem bejeweled and Fruit Ninja-occupied our pockets and brains, and revolutionized the entire video gaming industry's ecological model.

We are in a mixed, game-free world.

Quark-level humanistic care

Game research experts often point out that games can reflect social background and reality. For example, "tycoon" was born in the late 30 's, it was during the Great Depression of the United States that it catered well to the minds of people who wanted to be rich overnight. "Disorientated" was born in the 50 's, reflecting the whole society for the "Cold War" anxiety; "Twister" requires participants to reverse their bodies, limbs, In a special area on the board, the physical contact between players is inevitable, coinciding with the sexual liberation Movement of the 1960 's-some call it "difficult sex."

The birth of Tetris is a good place to be: It was born in 1984 and was born in a computer lab in the Soviet Union. Its play reflects the grim reality of the Soviet Union: the player faces an enemy that is not an absurd villain, but an indescribable, senseless, raging, overwhelming force; the only resistance the player can make is an infinitely repetitive, meaningless permutation. It is the essence of bureaucracy, the futility of futile, the inescapable cage. Its subtlety lies in the annihilation of free will-its futility is obvious, but one cannot help spinning, arranging, accumulating and eliminating squares again and again. Like all brain-free games, Tetris is a form of self punishing obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Therefore, in a sense, "Tetris" is the cosmic scale of the quark-level humanistic care.

"Angry Birds" inherit the mantle

25 years after the "Tetris" was born, a nearly bankrupt Finnish gaming company once again achieved the perfect combination of gaming and equipment: the company's name Rovio, the game called "Angry Birds." The game is simple: launch the birds with a slingshot, eliminate the green pigs hiding in various bunkers. Its basic concept of perfect fit with the ascendant touch screen technology, and a simple operation, humorous style firmly gripping the fingers of many casual gamers.

In just a few months, "Angry Birds" became the most popular game on the iphone and soon expanded to other platforms. Today, the game has been downloaded more than 700 million times. It also spawned a huge business empire: Rovio has filmed the Angry Birds theme film, selling tons of T-shirts and slippers with colorful birds and green pigs, and even plans to build a theme park. Even a car repair shop near my house has a sign: "The Angry Bird" is the signature pen of the car repair. ”

Rovio's latest "Angry Bird: Space Edition" dramatically modifies game play and promotes it in conjunction with Wal-Mart, T, National Geographic magazine, MTV and NASA. The company even filmed a video game on the International Space Station.

"Angry Birds" has become our time "Tetris". Whenever the whole society is confronted with shocks or anxieties stemming from economic, political or existential feelings, people will try to find solace in the beads of digital products.

iphone fueled

I've been refusing to buy the iphone because I fear the power of its game. I spent the best time in my life on video games: Throughout the 1980 's until the early 1990, I contacted a variety of games from "Super Mario Bros" to "real quick play", becoming a master and indulging in it. They accompany me through adolescence: when I start to take off baby fat, Nintendo's gray-scale display consoles began to evolve into 64-bit hosts; When I started my voice, the monotonous track of the video game began to be replaced by stereo, and when my social circle was no longer limited to a few childhood friends, the entire gaming industry was expanding into new areas, Adult and erotic content is becoming a trend.

At nearly 20 o'clock, I finally made a tough decision to say good-bye to the video game completely. I realized that they were addictive like opium. I want to spend my time on something more meaningful. I turned my attention to books-in fact, it was a more socially acceptable and quieter way to escape than indulging in games. I completely "quit" the game, and life has become happier and more productive.

However, as I groped my way through the dark forest of adult life, the iphone broke into my life and created an unexpected problem. It is not only a mobile phone, can not only take photos, navigation, surfing the Internet, but also as a handheld game machine, its performance is that I have played all the game machine three times times. My wife never plays games, but after buying an iphone, she immediately becomes a "senior player", playing a social scrabble called "Words with Friends" all day long. Soon after, she started playing 6 to 10 games with players from all over the world. Sometimes, I was talking to her, her phone suddenly rang, and she immediately shifted her attention and took out her phone to see if any of the players posed a new challenge to her.

At first, I tried to keep my sense of humour, but soon my noble gesture came to an end. About 1 years later, I bought an iphone after failing miserably to withstand the cultural wave. I tried to convince myself that the goal was to buy a mobile phone with a webcam to take pictures of the children. For a while, I only used it to read e-books, send emails and take pictures. However, I downloaded a chess game. I comforted myself by saying that it was a wholesome activity; but things were out of the way, and my game-Madman's heart was resurrected. I downloaded some retarded three-vulgar game, and then began playing "Gem Bejeweled", finally bought the "Little Wings" and "Plants vs Zombies." They occupy a lot of spare time. My wife took me in the face of the game when the high posture jokes, I have a kind of inexplicable anger.

Video games have returned to my life.

I'm not the only one who's addicted to brain-free games. Over the past few years, millions of of users have been involved in the whirlpool. Just like the Silicon Valley VCs John? "These games are not for everyone, indeed," says John Doerr of Vanity Fair, "but it has surpassed any other product in the ' old and young '." Rovio revealed that the 2011 "Angry Birds" players spend an average of 200 million minutes a day on the game. However, the quality of the game's time, and how much of it is fun, is unknown.

Since ancient times, humans have been very fond of playing without brain games. For example, the history of the dice is longer than that recorded in human history. The ancient Egyptians played a game called "Senet", which archaeologists think resembles backgammon. People have also invented "scissors and stone cloth", well word games, chess, dominoes and solitaire-they are simple abstract games, but can also change infinite possibilities. Among them, chess is called "The King of No Brain Game"-it is so brain-free that only geniuses can play well.

On the other hand, no brain game is a corners activity. They are often interspersed with the gaps in other things. They are not so much a daily activity as a complement of daily activities, but rather a short escape from the pursuit of a dream. For example, when you open the phone to view the schedule, found that there are 40 minutes before you need to start, then you may wish to launch a few birds, kill a few green pigs.

Big game abdicated, no brain games

Over the past 25 years, it has been easy to find alternatives to these casual mobile games. The game industry operates in a similar way to Hollywood: big companies are working on heavyweight games, which are like "summer stalls" movies that are designed to be tailored to host platforms, including PlayStation and Xbox. In order to attract young players, these games are often war-themed, renowned for their dazzling lighting and exploding effects. A blockbuster development budget could be as high as $25 million trillion, with hundreds of developers working for it, and a 50 million-dollar marketing fee, which was widely promoted at the time of release. Driven by this model, global video game revenues doubled in 1996-2005, including "Halo", "World of Warcraft" (Weibo), "Call of Duty" and "battlefield" games.

Yet the Hollywood-style industrial model is flawed. Because of the huge cost and long time consuming, the gaming industry has formed a conservative and risk-averse culture. Almost every product is rigidly wedded to imitation, sequel, prequel, Retransmission, and later transmission. For example, Halo 3 has a new game, Halo 3: Hell paratroopers. On the other hand, companies such as Microsoft (Weibo), EA and Rockstar have a monopoly advantage, and independent game developers have little to do with it.

2007, the iphone debut. The development of games has become so simple that it is easy to sell it through the App Store in Apple. Independent game developers no longer have to rely on the mouth of the blog to spread, they suddenly have access to all the users of the new channels-not only for hard core players, but also for their families, postmen and university professors. Consumers no longer need to buy game currency, no longer need to stare at the Xbox 360, just put an iphone in their pockets, that is, the design of a sophisticated mobile game machine.

This has a profound impact on game design. In the mainframe era, users like the host as part of the furniture, and the television connection. This means that players often play games in the living room. Correspondingly, the game's content is dominated by puzzles, wars and instant strategies, and greater space means freedom of operation.

Mobile game development model is completely different. The iphone displays the same size as a card. It does not rely on the traditional physical rocker, but is able to the user's various operations-stamping, sliding, click and so quickly to respond. This spawned an unprecedented type of game: "Tetris" type of concise, discontinuous game time, anytime and anywhere to play, without guidance can quickly start, suitable for all levels of players. They are called "Pure Games": By designing the perfect micro-system, the player is brought directly into the game's pleasure without providing a large text narrative to avoid distracting the player. An interesting comparison: the average player takes 1 minutes and 30 seconds to get through the first pass of Super Mario Bros, but in Angry Birds, this time is shortened to 10 seconds.

Of all the brain-free games I have played, the most addictive is a game called "DROP7". The game combines "Tetris" with "Sudoku." It took me a few days to figure out the basics, and it took weeks to find some tricks, and soon I was advanced. It's crowding out the time when I wash dishes, bathe my children, chat with my relatives, read a newspaper or even write. It's an anesthetic, an escape pod, a breathing tube, a doctor who gives me no sense of comfort. I find myself completely addicted: whenever I open the game and click on "New games," I always think "no more play". But every time it backfired. Not only that, I also recommend this game to my wife, family and friends. I don't even play "DROP7" on Time or occasion: 3 o'clock in the morning, I was playing games, I was playing games after arguing with my mother, I was playing games when I learned that my dog, who had been with me for 12 years, had cancer and was likely to die.

I want to figure out how such a small game, in such a short time, in my life to take root, and then control everything. So I sent Ane-mail to DROP7 developer Frank Lanz (Frank Lantz). He and others set up a small company called Area/code, which is now being bought by the brain-free gaming giant Zynga. I want to ask him: what is the secret of no brain game? Why am I addicted to it? How did "DROP7" take over my brain? But first I asked him if he knew other young design geniuses, those who were busy developing brain-free games, hoping to achieve the next "DROP7", "Angry Bird" or "Gem bejeweled", but not yet the industry's giants.

Lentz replied to my mail, only four characters: Zache Getch (Zach Gage).

Independent games

When I walked into his apartment, the first thing Zache Getch did was apologize for the mess in the room. He had just assembled a retro-styled arcade game in the corner of the room, appearance and the beginning of the 1980 's a few products, but its screen is a huge Mac display, the wooden shell wrapped in a Mac mini host, which means that this weird device can play more than 3,000 games, both the " Space Invaders, the "Bean Eater" and other classic masterpieces, but also with his friend and his friends in the past two years to develop a separate game. They don't have a budget, and some products are only a few hours from the idea into the finished product.

Gage called the arcade the "mini Game shrine". He spent about 6 weeks and 1000 dollars to assemble it. He ordered various parts from Hong Kong, cut about 100 wires, and developed a software to specify different functions for the keys. He had to figure out the difference between the Japanese rocker and the American rocker: the former was accurate, sensitive and fragile, and the latter was "Abhisit", capable of withstanding the player's lack of skill in violent operations.

He did all this out of a deep love for technology. Gage was born in 1985, a year later than the birth of "Tetris". He is a young generation growing up with Nintendo and Xbox hosts. In his imagination, the arcade of the heyday of the scene: smoke-filled, noisy in the game room, the hyperactive people in a row of arcade in front of the same sitting posture, with a piece of coin, to pour themselves into the digital world. So he built an arcade of his own, trying to understand this frenzy and get a lot of amazing ideas from it, which makes it hard for me to believe they came from a young man who was only 26 years old and had a career on the Internet.

"After assembling this arcade, I realized how much I hated the internet." "I mean, I love the internet and how it drives the game-it's always been great," Gage said. But it's bad in many ways. The arcade has done a lot of delicate work, but we have never praised it. Its structure contains many concepts of social psychology. ”

The Xbox, for example, offers only a handful of games that can be played with family members. "No one has designed such a game anymore," he said. ”

Gage is an independent game designer. Compared with giants such as Rovio and Zynga, he has met the Berlin Philharmonic, or the sword-man met Justin Bieber, both popular and resource alike, in the same universe. He works in his apartment with long hair and a beard. In most cases, he develops the game by himself and occasionally with his friends. Sometimes, he would immerse himself in the study for several weeks. A recent research topic is why people like to play word games, such as "Words with Friends" and "Draw something", which has always been a hated category. He spent two weeks playing "Bookworm", "Words with Friends" and "Wurdle", concluding that the games lacked strategic elements, but were carefully dressed words to search for, except "Scrabble".

So he developed a game called "Spelltower". Players need to use letters to form words and eventually build a tower. This is his most successful work. According to him, the game online two months to earn enough money to live two years.

Like many people, Gage enters the world of no brain games through Tetris. One day he saw his girlfriend playing Tetris with his ipod, and the poor touch screen of the game horrified him-his indignant demeanor was always amusing when he saw the bad game design.

"The iphone has a lot of fantastic features, but it doesn't have a game to take advantage of." "Everyone is trying to transplant games on other platforms onto the iphone," he said. "Tetris" is not developed around the touch screen. If there was no such game, only the touch screen, then you will never see this poor product. So I started developing a game to try to figure out what the touchscreen version of Tetris should look like. ”

He developed a game called "unify": it is similar to the two-way "Tetris", the shape of the square from the display at both ends to the central floating, and eventually merged into one. The game is attractive, winning a sound, but in terms of sales, "unify" is not a success, but he does not care. "My interest is just to use new technology to solve problems," he said. As far as I know, "unify" is the first to support multi-touch of the box elimination class game. ”

Gage's parents are artists, and he himself has a master's degree in art from the Parsons School of Design in New York. Like many people, he started a hard career as an artist from a loft, but unlike many people, his room was stacked not with turpentine, canvas and anatomy books, but with storyboards, handles and Xbox discs. Over the past few years, he has moonlighting lectures for life and sold game discs. He doesn't seem to care about money. In fact, one of the projects that Gage is working on is to satirize the status of the gaming industry, especially as big companies want to earn fast money through "shanzhai" popular games. This game named "Unify Birds", play with the "unify" exactly the same, but the original in the box replaced by the birds. According to him, the "new works" in the Friends of the response is very good.

He asked me to take a demo of unify Birds. It gives the impression of a much better game than the original, and even the possibility of a great one. (Yan Fei)