Ugh the entertainment industry
Left: College students in central China’s Hubei Province create a traditional Chinese-style song-and-dance show. — IC
“To be honest, the game has many weak points,” says Mo Shuang, a college student. “It is money-grabbing and battery-killing, and some of its features are so stupid that you can’t believe it is a finished product instead of a beta demo. But I still spend a lot of time thinking about how to make my cities more beautiful. In my opinion, the artists save the game.”
A guofeng fan, Mo said she believes that the game is a good medium for people to get to know Chinese culture.
“In the game, you can build some real historical sites, such as the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing and Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai,” she said. “And some of the residents living in your cities are real historical figures whom I’ve never heard of before. It is an eye-opener for me.”
In a game developers’ session recently
organized by Tap Tap, Wesley Bao, chief executive of Coconut Island, said the game harks back to many ancient Chinese paintings that described city life.
“We want to tell the stories of common people living in an ancient dynasty, so that every resident living in a player’s city has his own story. These are people with everyday jobs, who catch diseases and die. We know that there is not much to talk about in the gameplay itself, and we’ll try to
improve that in the future.”
Bao said the team at first wasn’t very interested in Chinese history, but it wanted to do something different from what other game companies were turning out. But in the process of developing the game, they became captivated with the charm of history and culture.
“I believe that games can culturally influence people, similar to novels and movies,” he said.
When a new cultural trend suddenly becomes all the rage, some concerns arise. Guofeng is no exception.
Mu Yingfeng, a guofeng song writer for years, said he feels sad that writers of the genre today aren’t really motivated by the true meanings behind lyrics. They just pile beautiful words together, creating songs that are flowery but empty.
“Such products won’t resonate with audiences and will be washed out quickly,” he predicted. “If you truly love guofeng, then you know that it is based on a culture extending back for thousands of years. The first necessity is to sit down and study the past.”