The games behind TGA are driving the rapid advancement of technology.
On December 13 at the TGA Awards Ceremony, "Black Myth: Wukong" narrowly missed the "Game of the Year" award, which was won by Sony's "Astro Bot". As soon as the news came out, regrets and doubts pushed TGA to the forefront.
Regarded as the "Oscar" of the gaming industry, why is TGA the most influential gaming award globally? Behind the controversy, the key to TGA's survival lies in the sponsorship and support of the "Big Three" in the gaming industry - Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. These three companies have played a crucial role in the golden age of game consoles and have also earned them an important say in the gaming world.
Looking back, the rise of the "Big Three" is also the history of the parallel advancement of games and technology. In the process of the rapid development of the gaming industry relying on technology, it has also become an invisible hand driving technological progress.
The History of the Fame of the "Big Three" in the Gaming Industry with a Focus on Technology
Counting the competitions of the "Big Three" in the gaming industry, the prosperity of the golden age of console games is inseparable from the promotion of technological development.
From simple pixel graphics to the emergence of 2D and 3D graphics, and then to the formal introduction of a physics engine, every innovation in hardware products and technological breakthrough has injected new vitality into the game market.
As a company that started by selling playing cards, Nintendo has made the world understand that the integration of games and technology can bring incredible results. Since the official opening of the console game market with the Famicom in 1980, Nintendo once occupied up to 95% of the global console market share.
A few years later, Sony, which eyed the console game business, overtook the competition with its own and its partners' hardware technology through PlayStation.
In the era when 2D was dominant, Sony successfully pushed console games into the 3D era. After the termination of the cooperation with Nintendo, Sony applied the CD-ROM accessory developed for the former to the PS1, expanding the storage space of the game console. At the same time, it also introduced 3D graphics processing technology, making the PS1 the world's first game console that can achieve 3D real-time rendering without any peripherals.
Even so, "Father of PS" Ken Kutaragi was still not satisfied. In order to further improve the performance of 3D real-time rendering, Sony developed the PS2 with the complex design of EE (Emotion Engine) + GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), making the graphics of games such as "Final Fantasy X" more vivid and realistic.
With a successful bet, Sony successfully earned a position equal to Nintendo and even surpassed it. The explosive sales of "Final Fantasy VII" helped Sony's PS1 sales quickly exceed 10 million, surpassing Nintendo's N64 of the same period.
While Nintendo and Sony were competing for the market, Microsoft announced its official entry into the gaming market in 2001 and launched its own game console, Xbox. Different from the former two, Microsoft added an Ethernet port to each Xbox and launched the Internet-based Xbox Live service in 2002, allowing players to easily battle with online users. Since then, the pattern of the "Big Three" has been formally formed.
In this process, the ultimate pursuit of hardware performance and technical capabilities not only improves the quality of games, but some of the technical achievements have also been applied in other fields:
Nintendo's orders have not only supported most semiconductor companies in Japan, but the gyroscope and acceleration sensor technology used in its own game "Wii" has become a standard feature of today's mobile phones. Microsoft's Kinect motion-sensing technology developed for Xbox has been applied in the medical field to help the elderly control their limbs freely when rehabilitating their lower extremities.
In addition, the technology serving the gaming industry has also driven the development of upstream and downstream industries. Microsoft's vision of using data center servers to run the system for cloud gaming in 2009 was still in the conceptual stage. In the next year, Microsoft Cloud was fully launched and has since become one of Microsoft's core businesses.
In the booming 1990s of the global gaming industry, Chinese games went in the opposite direction. Although there were excellent games such as "Chinese Paladin" and "Xuanyuan Sword", the intolerant market environment, coupled with rampant pirated software and counterfeit devices, led China to miss the golden age of the game's rise for a time.
In particular, the release of the electronic game ban in 2000 once led to the stagnation of the domestic game market, and we also missed the opportunity to develop console devices, supporting hardware systems, and technologies.
It was not until 2003 that the online game was officially included in the national 863 Program, and the game market gradually recovered.
Another Path for the Development of Games and Technology
After a brief loss, China continued to follow the global game development pace and embarked on another exploration path.
After 2000, the Chinese technology industry, which lost at the starting line in hardware, began to catch up in the Internet era.
Advertising, e-commerce, and games, as one of the three major business models of the Internet, games are an important driving force for the development of China's Internet industry. In 2015, China's game market revenue reached 37.9 billion US dollars, accounting for more than 1/4 of the global game revenue. Since then, China has officially replaced the United States as the world's largest game market.
Compared with the PC market, the mobile game market has long surpassed the former, supporting the majority of the market share. The above report shows that in 2023, the scale of China's mobile game market is about 327.5 billion yuan, accounting for 78.9%.
In the process of the accelerated development of the gaming industry, in addition to its own prosperity, it has also driven the development of a series of related technologies such as mobile terminals, 5G communications, cloud computing, VR/AR, helping China achieve an "overtaking at the curve" in many important technological fields.
In 2022, the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association and the Industrial Culture Development Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly released the "Super Digital Scene Source Power - Research on Game Technology and Innovative Applications" report, which quantified the contribution rate of game technology across fields with the supernumerary index for the first time.
The report shows that in 2022, the contribution rate of game technology to the cross-industry technological progress of the chip, AI, cloud computing, mobile phone, XR, and autonomous driving industries is 18.65%, 31.37%, 51.08%, 46.76%, 72.45%, and 57.19%, respectively.
Quantification of the contribution rate of game technology across fields Source: China National Radio
With the vigorous promotion of game companies, Chinese game manufacturers have begun to feed advanced technologies back into other fields: Taking Tencent as an example, it not only applies game engine technology to flight simulation systems, introduces artificial intelligence technology into the field of astronomical research, and uses digital scanning and other technologies to restore the Mogao Grottoes Scenic Area at a 1:1 millimeter level.
Focusing on the application of game AI technology in the field of astronomical observation, the AI multi-agent algorithm of Tencent Games cooperates with the "All-Variable Source Tracking Hunter Constellation" (CATCH) project of the Particle Astrophysics Center of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences to achieve functions such as on-orbit autonomous collaborative observation of the constellation.
Previously, Tencent Games' AI multi-agent algorithm was applied in PVP games such as "League of Legends: Wild Rift" and "Naruto Mobile". Through multi-agent deep learning and reinforcement learning training, Tencent uses technology to optimize the combat level of AI, making its ability sufficient to match the level of most players.
And the CATCH plan aims to build an intelligent X-ray astronomical observation constellation composed of hundreds of micro-satellites to monitor a large number of explosive celestial bodies in an all-weather, all-round, and uninterrupted manner.
Imaginary image of the CATCH constellation collaborating to observe the target celestial body with the cooperation of AI technology Source: Tencent
In this plan, Tencent Games' AI technology plays a key role: By applying the multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm, the CATCH satellite can autonomously track the target like a game AI and form a team to complete the observation task. This collaborative observation method not only improves the observation efficiency but also is expected to significantly increase the probability of scientific output.
The Two-Wheel Drive of Technology and Games
The core of the First Industrial Revolution was the loom and the steam engine. Its driving force came from the use of cotton and coal; the Second Industrial Revolution successfully promoted the widespread application of the internal combustion engine and the electric motor, which came from the utilization of oil and electricity.
In the Information Revolution, which is regarded as the "Third Industrial Revolution", games have become the invisible engine driving the development of this revolution.
In fact, games not only promote the development of computer hardware but also cultivate a new generation of technical talents who lead technological innovation.
From the early arcade games to the rise of home game consoles such as Nintendo NES and Sony PlayStation, the demand for performance and display effects in games has driven the improvement of processor speed and the innovation of graphics technology, becoming a key factor in promoting the progress of semiconductor technology, graphics processing, and storage technology.
Looking back at the rise of tech giants, electronic games are also the origin that ignites the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of many tech giants.
One of the developers of the world's first electronic game, "Pong", is the genius Steve Jobs who built the Apple empire; Microsoft founder Bill Gates is not only a game developer but also prompted Microsoft to solve the software and hardware conflicts between games and computers, thus investing a lot of R & D resources in the adaptability of the operating system.
However, in the domestic game market in the millennium, the "stigmatized" entertainment demand, the rampant pirated games, and the promulgation of domestic bans have hindered the development process of the domestic game industry to varying degrees.
This also led to the situation that compared with the business models of domestic and overseas games around 2000, domestic games were far less profitable than overseas ones.
At that time, overseas game companies usually invested a lot of money to develop high-quality games and relied on strong IPs to attract players to pay for playing. Taking "Assassin's Creed: Valhalla" as an example, its development cost is more than 100 million US dollars. High investment has resulted in a high return in the game market. According to statistics, the game sold more than 5 million copies in the first week, and the total revenue has exceeded 1 billion US dollars.
"Assassin's Creed: Valhalla" Source: Steam
The demand for games was curbed, and the development of the chip and PC industry naturally could not keep up with the pace of overseas development. Around 2000, China's semiconductor industry mainly relied on imports, and the domestic chip manufacturing capacity was limited, while overseas was already the world of companies such as Samsung and TSMC.
Fortunately, in the pursuit of more than 20 years, China is catching up with the global game development pace, and games have also become an important driving force for China's Internet industry. According to a report issued by iResearch, in 2023, the scale of China's online game market reached 415 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 8.3%, and the overall scale exceeded 400 billion yuan for the first time.
Unintentionally, with the rapid development of the Chinese game industry, the technologies developed based on the pursuit of game quality have been applied to the development of thousands of industries in China.
For example, the combination of Tencent's self-developed game engine technology and China Southern Airlines' virtual image display technology has jointly promoted the landing of the FFS visual system product.
In the new generation of visual systems, through the use of visual data assets generated by Tencent PCG asset production tools, it truly restores effects such as weather and lighting, helping the simulator create various realistic flight scene experiences.
At the same time, supported by self-developed game engine technology, its production efficiency is increased by more than 10 times, and Tencent's self-developed multi-channel fusion calibration algorithm solves the problems of image distortion, stretching, and color deviation on the curved screen of the simulation cockpit, providing efficient and safe flight training for more than 80,000 civil aviation pilots.
In recent years, game field technologies have been frequently applied to global aviation manufacturers. The full-task flight simulator manufacturer CAE has developed a visual system subsystem - image generator based on the Unreal Engine to provide a sense of immersion and realism. And the cooperation between Tencent and China Southern Airlines makes China the third country in the world that can independently develop a complete visual system.
When it comes to the relationship between technology and games, Ma Xiaoyi, Senior Vice President of Tencent, once answered: "The relationship between games and technology is similar to the concept of two-wheel drive: Only when technology moves forward can the quality of games improve; when games move forward, it can promote the landing of more and more powerful technologies."