Research On The Re-creation Of Traditional Celebrities In Glory Of Kings And The Cognitive Change Of Audience

According to authoritative data,the number of online game users in China reached 626 million in 2018,accounting for almost half of the total population.The most popular phenomenon-level online game,"Glory of the Kings",has already exceeded 200 million users,becoming the national mobile game in China."Glory of the Kings"is familiar to younger generation.In recent years,it has even opened its doors to the overseas market and organized international e-sports professional competitions.Its influence has attracted the attention of all sectors of society.As a hero summoning game,"Glory of the King"has 89 game characters,75 of which are based on traditional Chinese historical myths.Games and culture influence each other.In the process of playing games,players will potentially be influenced by its aesthetic,cultural bias,and even values and world views.Games are entertainment.At the same time,they are cultural carriers.Games are increasingly seen as a medium,they need to bear the burden of social responsibility of cultural communication.As a player of’Glory of the King",I am deeply aware of the impact of the game characters on the prototype of traditional characters in my mind.On one side is a stereotyped portrait of black and white Chinese paintings,and on the other side is a lively and beautifully new character.When referring to a LuBan,the first reaction in my mind is not the carpenter,but the robot in game.The original image seems to be gradually drifting away.Based on such findings and concerns,I want my paper focus on the online game,taking"Glory of the King" as an example to analyze the re-creation of traditional celebrities in the game and their influence on cultural cognition in society.Most of our memories come from the media.From the perspective of media memory theory,newspaper reports are media memories,books’ pictures are media memories,TV images are media memories,since the idea that game is a kind of media is becoming more and more popular,the recreated characters can also be seem as a media memory! What is the impact of this memory?I will use group in-depth interview,to compare the differences between the two groups of audiences in their cultural cognition to find the answer.I will establish the experimental group,whose audience are game players,and the comparison group,whose audience never touched the game.Then selecting 10 traditional characters in game and comparing the differences between the two groups.We will also use questionnaires,in-depth interviews,literature analysis and other methods to help.My paper will begin from the following questions:1.In the Glory of the Kings,what kind of re-creation has traditional celebrities experienced?What is the social motivation for this cultural re-creation?2.The game characters in"Glory of the Kings",can they replace the original images of traditional celebrities?3.If they succeeded,what is the reason for their success?If they failed,what is the cause of the failure?The research found that in the"Glory of the Kings"the re-creation of traditional celebrities is multi-faceted,involving appearances,ages,personalities,occupations,social relations and other aspects.The re-creation process presents many characteristics such as fashion appearance,separation of relationship,and emptiness of the times.The re-creation reflects the culture appeal of the society under the tide of entertainment.In the group in-depth interview,I compared cognition about traditional celebrities of two different groups.The game players are generally know more information about traditional celebrities.That means game have potential in spreading unpopular traditional culture.If we take audience’s cognitive process into three levels:surface appearance cognition,deep knowledge cognition,and underlying value cognition,we can find that "Glory of the Kings" has already become the most important source about the appearance of traditional celebrities in players.33%images of traditional celebrities in the players come directly from the game.Most of non-player group’s images are coming from the various TV works and books,accounting for 25%and 24%.Interestingly,although online games have become the most important source of traditional image recognition for players,they do not occupy the space of images from books and TV in players’ memory.They get the biggest piece of "cake" from the "unimaginable part" in memory area.But in the deeper level of cognition,there is no significant difference can be seen between two groups.Game is a media,and cognition is a kind of memory.Game characters are becoming the collective memory of a generation.It has talent to shape the image,but also shows weakness in front of the traditional culture.When the game came into traditional culture area,there are not only warmly welcome but also resistance.Some images have been successfully penetrated into the minds of players,while others have failed.Memory and forgetting are all cultural strategies to write collective memory of a generation.The process of welcome and resistance are also the exploration process in the cultural evolution.The game has advantages in helping the traditional culture,such as popularization of the unpopular culture,breaking the "old face" of the traditional characters,activating the creativity of traditional culture,building a sense of national identity.However,the entertainment trend also leads characters to the entertainment hell.Lacking of background and spiritual values makes game characters lose cultural core.The "Glory of the King",which only stays in the shallow memory of the media,will face the risk of being replaced in the future.Under the wave of entertainment,the tradition and game that are involved in it are mutually integrated and resistant to each other.How far can they go in the future?The answer still need more researches from all society.