重构媒介语言与文化身份:论国风山水游戏的发展方向

Reconstructing Media Language and Cultural Identity:On the Development Direction of Chinese“Landscape Games”

“山水游戏”蜂拥而起,是近年来国产电子游戏行业的突出现象。作为一种聚合了传统艺术资源、当代流行文化和数字技术的文化生产,这类游戏从图像移植、实景转换、风格仿制三个层面尝试了游戏视效的国风化,其内在的文化逻辑是新媒介流行文化与传统艺术的双向调用,并试图以此推动优秀传统文化的传承、发展。然而,即使是其中较为成功的产品,在双向调用的具体实施中也未能摆脱“山水游戏”的普遍困境,即此类游戏在文化功能与游戏机制之间的错配。而要实现“山水游戏”自我突围、走出困境,重构媒介语言和重塑文化身份是两大关键。前者需要在真正理解中国传统山水艺术笔墨形式与审美精神共生这一特质的基础上,思考发掘数字媒介的表达优势,创造一种文化内涵与媒介语言共生的数字文化形式;后者需要突破在娱乐工业体系中形成的电子游戏的现有范式,确立游戏性与文化性共生的文化身份,扩展游戏文化的参与群体和参与方式。游戏-文化共生体作为重构媒介语言和重塑文化身份的结果,不仅指向一种新的游戏范式,更是对创新数字文化生态,发挥跨界优势,吸纳公众参与、共建数字时代公共文化空间的一种有益探索。

The surge of“landscape games”has become a notable trend in the China's gaming industry in recent years.As the cultural production that combines traditional art resources,contemporary popular culture,and digital technology,the cultural logic underlying these games revolves around the mutual invocation between new media popular culture and traditional elite art.For their own development,digital games attempt to enhance their visual effects,enrich their media language,and expand their cultural attributes by invoking the patterns and styles of Chinese landscape art.On the other hand,it is necessary for traditional culture to step out of classics and museums and integrate into contemporary life in order to spread more widely and innovate more effectively.For this purpose,cultural institutions partner with game companies to launch Chinese-style“landscape games”,hoping to invokes significant influence of digital games on youth.However,even those relatively successful products in this genre have not completely overcome the universal problem faced by such a mutual invocation.Due to the mismatch between their cultural pursuits and gaming mechanisms,and the underestimation of the attenuation of cultural connotations in trans-media conversion,it has led to the dual loss of dissemination effects of traditional culture and expansion of the game itself.We believe that the two essential keys for“landscape games”to get out of this situation are the reconstructing of media language and the reshaping of cultural identity.The former requires us to deeply understand the unique media language of traditional Chinese landscape art,especially to grasp its nature of the symbiosis of brushwork form and aesthetic spirit,and then take it as a reference to explore the expressive potential of digital media.For example,the Oriental aesthetics characterized by fluid and rhythmic forms could be implanted into the media language based on digital interactive interfaces.By doing so,a digital media language that can symbiotically coexist with Chinese traditional artistic spirit would grow from the creation of digital games.The latter firstly needs to break through the existing paradigms of digital games formed in the entertainment industry system and to refuse the narrow understanding of game activities and game users,and more importantly,to re-establish the cultural identity for digital games according to which its gameplay and cultural significance would be viewed as a symbiont or integration,thus expanding the participation groups and modes of engagement within gaming culture.Encouragingly,in recent years not only has there been a deep reflection on the commercial game production practices in theoretical research,but some new media artists have also participated in the design and creation of digital games,rewriting the textual form,cultural attributes,and audience experience of digital games from a practical level,and updating the ecosystem of game culture.The emergence of these experimental game works demonstrates the feasibility of constructing a game-culture symbiosis through reconstructing media language and reshaping cultural identity.As a theoretical conception,the game-culture symbiosis not only represents a new paradigm in gaming,but also constitutes a beneficial exploration of optimizing digital cultural ecosystems,leveraging trans-media advantages,and involving the public in co-creating public cultural spaces in the digital era.