Can "Game+" open up a new world of popular science?

Author: Xuan Jing

Playing games, you can even participate in the protection of giant pandas. Yesterday, Le Element brought popular games such as "Happy Xiao Xiao Le" and cooperated with the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum and its branch Shanghai Museum of Natural History to jointly carry out the "Guardian Journey" public welfare science popularization activity. Players can become "rangers", visit the habitats of rare species such as giant pandas, learn about the knowledge of my country's key protected wild animals and plants, and discover the mysteries of biodiversity.

At present, popular science games are popularizing multicultural knowledge to young people and conveying correct values ​​in a more interesting and in-depth way. For example, the innovative text adventure gameplay of "Man in the Forest", which was developed by a Shanghai company, presents scenes with environmental protection themes such as orangutan conservation and rainforest protection. "Spark Journey" jointly launched by Polk City and Shanghai Planetarium, gamifies the online exhibition and leads the audience to review the 30-year history of China's manned spaceflight program...

Can "Game+" open up a new world of popular science? Experts believe that the advantages of popular science games are that they can weave novel gameplay with rich content, stimulate rich imagination with moving stories, and let scientific knowledge enter people's daily life with diversified presentations. "The science popularization model has changed, and the Internet is an important link that cannot be ignored, and has even become an important node for the concentration, aggregation and diffusion of science popularization resources." Zhou Zhonghe, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and chairman of the Chinese Science Popularization Writers Association, reminded that the core of science popularization games is science. Soul is culture, life is innovation. The effective combination of science and fun can produce excellent popular science games, "not only to disseminate scientific knowledge, but also to reflect scientific ideas, scientific methods and scientific attitudes."

"I am an astronaut" game scene. (Photo courtesy of Polk City) "Journey of Guardian" in "Happy Xiao Xiao Le". (Photo provided by Le Element) Drawing: Li Jie

With the help of games, stimulate the curiosity to explore the mysteries of science

At the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, China announced the official establishment of the Giant Panda National Park. This is the first national park named after a single species in my country, and it has given birth to various popular science games. The board game "Giant Panda National Park" recently launched by the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum takes connecting habitats as the core gameplay, transforming the original intention of building a national park into the goal of the game, and realizing the deep integration of science popularization and games. The popular science knowledge involved in the "Guardian Journey" of "Happy Xiao Xiao Le" includes not only giant pandas, but also more than 60 rare animals and plants such as forest musk deer, otter, snow leopard, Tibetan fox, yew, and Davidia involucrata.

Relying on extremely strong immediacy and interactivity, the game disseminates serious popular science knowledge in an entertaining and educational way, and exerts positive value. "Games are human nature. Using the charm of games to stimulate people's curiosity to explore the mysteries of science is a pioneering work for the development of the science popularization industry." Wang Xuan, vice president of Le Elements, believes that "Happy Xiao Xiao Le" has many animals NPC (game character) has a fresh and cute style of painting, and has a natural superimposed advantage in spreading knowledge about wild animals. During the event, the game set up experience week levels for each representative species (giant panda, snow leopard, forest musk deer, and otter), dynamically presenting the relevant fantasy habitats. The game planner and the art team are “full firepower” to continuously innovate and upgrade the form of popular science — “Happy Match” not only creates a complete large map mode, allowing players to swipe their fingers to see the seasonal changes of national parks; it also innovates habitats The scene upgrade gameplay allows players to experience the ecological changes in the bamboo forest of baby pandas, and even see the adorable state of pandas eating.

For the game development team, science popularization is "real". They frequently cooperate with professional institutions across borders to find strong support for the scientific content in the game. "Happy Xiao Xiao Le" contains more than 30 rare pictures of animals and plants, 70 popular science and interesting knowledge and questions and answers, and has become a mobile "Little Collection of Animal and Plant Science". These real photos and rich popular science materials have been strongly supported by the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum and its expert team behind it. Bokeh City and Shanghai Planetarium jointly launched "Spark Journey". Through the innovative design of vision, interaction and experience, it not only makes up for the space limitations of offline exhibitions, but also will be updated synchronously with the spaceflight process to become a "sustainable product".

Integration of numbers and reality, giving birth to a new form of cooperation between venues and cultural and creative industries

In recent years, the agglomeration effect and spillover effect of my country's game industry have been obvious, and a number of functional games that spread scientific and technological knowledge have emerged, allowing people to see the potential of games in cultural education. As a casual game with more than 800 million downloads, "Happy Diversity" has long been committed to biodiversity and earth protection. "IP Linkage" has inspired the enthusiasm of new and old players to participate. In 2018, the game cooperated with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to go deep into Laojun Mountain to protect the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey, attracting nearly 260 million people to participate, and players spontaneously reposted 10 million pieces of relevant popular science knowledge in Moments. In 2021, the game will cooperate with the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum in the "Run! Wild Horse" event, attracting 98 million people to participate in the event within 10 days to help Platt's wild horse return to the nature reserve. Science popularization is a highly integrated industry with multiple business forms, and games well reflect the characteristics of "cultural innovation + scientific innovation".

Popular science games are an important direction for science popularization and innovative development, and have also become an important growth point for the sustainable development of the game industry. Many game companies are deeply exploring a more large-scale and IP-based science popularization model to create multiple application scenarios. The "I am an Astronaut" series of popular science games jointly launched by Polk City and Xinhuanet has launched a variety of H5 mini-games, popular science comics and other content. "With simulated management as the core gameplay, players will act as administrators of the space base to complete a series of rocket research and development, production and launch tasks. They can also build and launch space stations, and experience the excitement of space plant cultivation, deep space exploration, space elevator construction, etc. The game scene." "I am an astronaut" R & D team members told reporters that players can get in touch with the system modules and related knowledge of aerospace engineering, and experience the great responsibility of astronauts and the hardships of work. In the future, they also plan to launch the mobile game "I Am an Astronaut" to create an online "base" for space science popularization.

The development of emerging information technologies such as 5G, AI, AR/VR, etc. has given birth to a new format of deep integration of scientific venues and digital cultural creation. In February this year, the popular science game platform of the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum was unveiled, releasing a batch of original popular science games in various forms and rich in content. Among them, the AR real-scene exploration game "The Lost Doctor of Science" takes the adventure of the Science and Technology Museum as the main line, challenging wonderful puzzles organically connected by more than 100 knowledge points; Food, courtship, avoiding danger and other challenges, so as to understand the living habits and living environment of the crested ibis. "Develop different types of popular science games, serve different audiences, and add to science education, so that students can play games with classmates and parents." Yang Fan, director of the popular science game platform of Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, said. As an open, shared, co-management and cooperation field where resources are gathered, the platform will continue to attract high-level and innovative cultural and creative enterprises to settle in, and continue to launch high-quality popular science game products. (Xuan Jing)

Source: Wen Wei Po