But this old friend is by no means static. Times and technology are developing, players' tastes are changing, and even the best game can't keep changing. So now when we talk about crossing the line of fire or CF, we mean not only the classic first-person shooter game, but a big family under the IP camp: CF end-game and CFHD (that is, crossing the line of fire), CF mobile game (that is, crossing the line of fire: the king of shooting), and even the super online drama Crossing the Line of Fire.
On August 7th and 8th, 2002/kloc-0, a firewire ceremony with the theme of "the latest anniversary in CF history" was held across the firewire. There are not only live broadcasts of CFPL and CFML summer finals, but also the dynamic release of new products and the song and dance performance of AKB48 Team SH. Due to the epidemic, many offline activities were originally arranged online, but the brand-new content, fierce professional competitions and generous gifts released by CF 3 still attracted many people to watch.
The slogan of this firewire festival is "It's so hard", which creates a cool and bloody atmosphere for players and spectators.
This grand ceremony not only commemorates the past 13, but also depicts the future. Therefore, the product launch on the afternoon of August 8th was a heavyweight event. Many new things were introduced into the end tour, CFHD and mobile games, including game updates such as gameplay, maps and skins, as well as actions related to e-sports events and professional player training. What is more special is all kinds of cross-border attempts made a few years ago to cross the line of fire, involving fashion, film and television and other rich content.
As the high-definition competition area of Crossing the Firewire, CFHD is not only the high-definition version of the end tour, but also undertakes the exploration task of gameplay design and technical application. This time, the plot challenge mode initiated by CFHD has taken another step forward in this exploration.
The main theme of "Crossing the Firewire" series has always been competitive PvP, but all versions of the game have introduced content with plot elements for players who prefer to fight. For example, the August edition of Biochemical 4.0 Journey to the West tells the story of human hunters Wukong and Gui Mu Bai Lin, and the new content of the end tour, Journey to the West in Fire, tells the story of Princess Tiefan and Niu Wangmo. However, it is expected that CFHD will launch a more special plot challenge mode in the second half of the year.
The upcoming plot challenge mode of CFHD is different from the classic CF in terms of gameplay and content.
"(CFHD) is a brand-new plot challenge mode, which tells a story that players didn't know before in the form of single-player interactive narrative." Chen Kan, the producer of Crossfire, said. At present, it can be revealed that the player will play an elite special soldier in the defender camp to perform the task, and the task will have many unexpected developments. In the end, the whole story will point to the very classic content in Crossing the Line of Fire. This is the first time that the team has told players about the world view of crossing the line of fire.
The plot mode is also very "3A" in the actor configuration. The team invited a China voice actor who voiced Cyberpunk 2077 to voice these characters. "This level is also top in China."
In the role design, CFHD also has its own new ideas. Players have been eagerly looking forward to when the first female character will appear in CFHD. "In fact, we have done a lot, but we are not very satisfied internally." Chen Kan said. The team is still cautious on this issue, because they not only want to introduce a female character, but also want to provide a feasible design idea that conforms to CFHD style for more female characters in the future.
In this grand ceremony, Natasha, the first female character of CFHD, finally appeared in the August edition. "She is the kind of militarized, capable and powerful female special forces image we want, inspired by Soviet special forces." The team feels that only this image best conforms to the overall temperament of CFHD. Although she is still feminine in figure and looks slightly thinner than the male role, Natasha carries a lot of tactical equipment that is also part of her hit, so Natasha is no different from other male roles in the size of the hit box, which ensures the fairness of the game.
Natasha's image provides a direction for the female role design of CFHD in the future.
In addition, the biochemical pursuit mode and challenge mode, which have always been popular in CF end games, will soon join CFHD's gameplay. Other new contents include a team competition map of Qvanxian Zhang-Volcano Manor. In addition to the optimization of image quality and balance, CFHD's unique dynamic map mechanism will affect the player's play and strategy through the change of climate and structure in the middle of the game. The August version will launch a large number of new weapons skins and props, even including map skins, which can turn the same map into completely different styles such as ship abandonment, hip-hop graffiti and gloomy rainy days.
CF end tour has also brought some new trends, such as map workshops. This function was originally set up because the end-game team thought that "player * * * creation" was the general trend. Feng, the producer of CF Agency Product Center, said: "Many mature games have produced a lot of explosive content among the people through editing functions. "Quite a few players who cross the line of fire are also very creative." In fact, because there are many ways to cross the line of fire, there are also many ways to play, such as jumping music and biochemical pursuit, all of which value the experience of a single game. The demand for maps is very high, and it is difficult to meet the long-term needs of players by officials alone. The map workshop is a good supplement to the official content.
In the past year alone, nearly 10,000 authors created hundreds of thousands of maps, which brought a lot of fresh fun to players. "Many players have their brains wide open, and even the puzzles and puzzles are put in the map, and the content of the problem is there. Under normal circumstances, officials rarely consider this aspect, but the player's imagination will be very open. " I also think this phenomenon of Feng is very interesting. In short, the map workshop will be an important direction of CF end-game for a long time, and will continue to improve in freedom and content in the future. "We will do more adaptation in terms of rules and values, so that the author is less bound. In the future, we may add challenge rules, so that everyone can edit them by themselves. "
Popular biochemical models will also appear on the new map. "We have designed many fresh map mechanisms and scene interactions. For example, adding a new water body, players can drift in the water, and there is a mechanism to break the ice and freeze the scene. There is also a new role of the female savior who is targeted by snipers. She will appear with the new terminator. " Feng hopes that these new contents will bring players a completely different experience.
The aforementioned "Biochemical 4.0 Journey to the West" is a major update of the CF mobile game launched in August. Phoenix Legend's MV "Xi Ai Fu" not only provided a preview of the story version, but also left a deep impression on the players and the audience with the wilderness-style MV.
The Journey to the West, as shown in the MV Ode to a Journey to the West, combines the traditional fantasy elements of China with the sci-fi style of wasteland.
"The end tour of Crossing the Firewire is relatively realistic and serious, but the mobile game has been making some stylized attempts." Gu Yue, producer of CF Authorized Product Center, said that this is because the players targeted by mobile games are younger, and the average age is several years younger than that of end games. So the Monkey King in The Journey to the West wears a gas mask, clothes are metal armor, and the golden hoop is more mechanized. This style is very popular with young people.
It was also revealed at the press conference that the mobile game version 12 will launch the first PvP game of the big map team. "CF innovates in gameplay every year, which is our biggest innovation this year." Gu Yue said. The development team saw that the game Eat Chicken was once very popular in the market, and one of the characteristics of Eat Chicken was its large map. "We think the big map is very good, because the big map will make players have much higher freedom in each game, and the randomness of the events they encounter will be much stronger", which avoids some formulaic problems that may occur in street fighting PvP.
Therefore, this 65438+February version of the team PvP game will be a fusion of "eat chicken" and classic FPS. "Of course, we don't want to do that kind of slow-paced PvP. For example, the game' Eat Chicken' hides 90% of the time, and only 10% of the time is played. We, on the other hand, want you to spend 10% of your time on the map of the earth and 90% on the gun. This is more in line with the tonality of CF. "Gu Yue described the gameplay characteristics of the new version.
In addition, in the 10 version of the mobile game, the previous series of "Mysterious City of the East" will return, and the Roguelike gameplay will also update more professional, monster and resource rewards.
The slogan of this year's Firewire Festival is "Good Toughness". "After all, the gameplay of products crossing the line of fire is very rigid," Feng said. "What' close-range headshots' and' middle-door snipers' continue to rush after resurrection will make the public have a positive understanding of the gun of justice." And he feels that players who cross the line of fire generally have an indomitable character. "I chose this slogan this time, and I also want to pay tribute to all CFer and pay tribute to everyone's attitude of daring to face everything."
This attitude sounds very "e-sports". In the interview, the person in charge of end-game and mobile game also mentioned the importance of product e-sports. Gu Yue said that "e-sports is the foundation of CF series", while Chen Jin, director of the User Growth Center of K 1 Cooperation Department, said that "the degree of e-sports crossing the fire line determines the ceiling of its own development". After all, as an FPS, "Crossing the Firewire" brings players a competitive experience of life and death shootout, and it is also the most important part for core players to rush to this IP.
The products of Crossfire have their own directions on the road of e-sports. CF end tour is the most complete, oldest and influential route in the current competition system. "Next year happens to be the professional esports 10 year of Crossing the Firewire." Jin Chen said. 10 years has formed a very stable e-sports system. Volkswagen, professional and international events correspond to the 100-city league, the Champions League, the professional league, the CFS World Cup and so on. "This system makes it possible for everyone to realize his dream." According to Jin Chen, there are many active professional players, such as Beloved and Nostalgia, who call from mass events such as Hundred Cities League and TGA, and have also achieved good results in professional competitions. White shark, a well-known player who has retired now, has also stepped onto the career path through the 100-city league.
In 2020, the total number of CF end-game and hand-game games will exceed 2,000, and the annual viewing volume of events will exceed 654.38+0 billion. This data may explain the enthusiasm of e-sports enthusiasts to cross the line of fire.
The e-sports system is still developing, and many new moves were announced at this ceremony. In September, CFHD's first professional event "CFHD Champions Cup" will usher in the race; The "1 coin training camp", which combines elements such as e-sports and youth training, will show all players who have dreams or are interested in e-sports the process of incubating professional players.
"CFHD Champions Cup" is the first professional competition held by CFHD.
Chen Kan is quite optimistic about the future of CFHD. "The competition among CFHD players is quite obvious. Among the active players every day, 50% of the game duration is ranked as the king of guns, and the remaining 50% is composed of all other gameplay. It can be seen that our players will have higher recognition of e-sports. " He said. After the success of the Champions Cup, CFHD will also hold folk competitions such as the 100-city league or online platform competition with CF, and hold slightly professional cups with other organizers to form a complete competition system.
"After the CFHD Champions Cup, we will welcome the highly anticipated CFS World Finals in early February. Everyone can look forward to a wonderful game and cheer for the China team. " Jin Chen said.
For rival games, competition is also a core goal in the future.
"Mobile games and end-games have similarities in e-sports strategy, but mobile games face some special challenges." Gu Yue introduced. First of all, the screen of a mobile phone is small, so it is naturally not as visually impactful as a PC. Secondly, most mobile gamers play with two fingers, and some professional gamers use three fingers and four fingers, but the upper limit of mobile games is much weaker than that of end games. These two points will greatly restrict the appreciation of mobile game e-sports events. "So we have done a lot of optimization in this respect, including deliberately restoring some high-end operations, such as ghost jumping and sniper instant mirror. And we have done a lot of research in reducing delays. "
Of course, the most important thing in competition is fairness. In the September version, the mobile game team will basically complete the copy and upgrade of the classic map. In addition to improving the image quality, these upgrades will also take into account the balance between offensive and defensive sides when using terrain, and will also fix the phenomenon that some high-definition maps are too dynamic to affect recognition. The balance of sub-weapons will also be greatly adjusted. "There should be no more cases where some players hit three with sub-weapons." The problem of smoke bombs penetrating smoke unilaterally has also been solved.
At this grand ceremony, LGD team won the CFML Summer Finals.
The September version will also upgrade qualifying, optimize the matching mechanism and increase the classic segment of the end tour. "We will make the ceremony of qualifying more prominent. We will redo all these panels, such as the map and weapon display before the game, the record settlement after the game, telling players where you won, which data are outstanding, how you cooperated with your teammates and so on. This sense of ritual will definitely make players feel more fulfilled after playing a game. "
Jumping out of specific products, Crossing the Firewire has a fairly overall plan for its own e-sports system. The cooperation between Crossing FireWire and Wuhan has been incorporated into the development plan of Tencent E-sports City, and an e-sports related industrial chain will be formed around the IP of Crossing FireWire.
After reading the press conference, it is easy to find that Crossing the Fire Line has always adopted a two-line parallel strategy in its overall operation. One line is a competitive route for hardcore players, and the other line is for players who are relatively recreational. So we will see a huge and developing e-sports system, and at the same time we will see the plot mode in CFHD, and we will see entertainment games such as "Eat Chicken" and Roguelike in end-game and mobile games.
Relatively speaking, CF end-game and CFHD, as well as mobile games, have slightly different emphases. For example, CFHD may pay more attention to the technical level of competition and game production in the future; Pay equal attention to end-game competition and entertainment, and take a diversified direction; While attracting more young people, mobile games also pay equal attention, focusing on a relatively more fashionable and fragmented experience.
However, no matter which aspect is emphasized more, the IP of Crossfire has now taken on a cross-border and universal look. Take the two-terminal Westward Journey Edition as an example. Before that, it might be hard to imagine that the classic elements of China literature would be associated with FPS games.
This is not the first time that Crossing the Line of Fire has cooperated with a literary masterpiece. "In fact, on 20 19, we made a content related to the' Three Kingdoms'." Gu Yue said. Moreover, they hope that mobile games with a younger audience can play a certain educational role: "These young players may not have seen the 86 version of Journey to the West, but through what they have heard, they have a vague concept of Journey to the West. We hope to present the history and literature of China in a national fashion, which will also cater to the appetite of young people. "
The further localization of IP in Crossing the Fire Line is another major reason for choosing China literary classics. "We hope that players' understanding of CF mobile games is no longer a simple Korean imported game. "Gu Yue said," We want to turn the current CF mobile game into a national tide game, and combine it with the creation of ancient China culture in an all-round way. We can find all kinds of domestic cultural symbols here. "
CFHD's brand-new plot challenge mode also has the intention of further expanding the world outlook and bringing richer content to IP. "The first impression of crossing the line of fire is the competitive game between the two camps, but with the development of these years, we have not only launched a variety of gameplay, but also launched an online drama last year and are still preparing movies." Chen Kan said, "We hope to explain the connection between the characters and this world view with the classic elements crossing the line of fire. On the one hand, it can make IP fans who cross the firewire have more content to experience, on the other hand, it also paves the way for us to broaden the worldview of crossing the firewire, and derive more works and stories from this worldview. "
At the firewire ceremony, there are AKB48 Team SH members who incarnate the popular female role of the game, and the design linkage with the street brand Neil Berrett. Online and offline, Crossing the Fire Line has gradually entered the public life.
Cross-border cooperation through firewire and street brands can attract the attention of a new generation of young players.
"Our players are getting younger and younger, so we are really considering the direction of youthfulness when building IP, so that we can influence the mass players while serving the core fans." Bao, head of the IP operation group of Tencent Entertainment K 1 Cooperation Department, said, "We also have different contents for different player groups. For example, there are 10 years ago and 10 years later in online dramas. For example, in 2065,438+04, Nicholas Tse was invited to sing the theme song to arouse the feelings of old users. This year, AKB48 and Neil Berrett are used to achieve the interest culture of the Z era. "
This conference mentioned many new and creative things, and also talked about many topics such as expanding IP value across borders. However, the vitality of 13 crossing the fire line means that there must be something unchanging that can attract generations of players for a long time, and it is "absolutely unchanged" in the minds of the production and operation team.
"The most important thing for the long-term operation of IP is to have its own style and clear development direction and find the' soul' of IP." Bao Zhou Jun said that the core value of Crossing the Fire Line is "never admit defeat". Therefore, we should embody this spirit in games, e-sports and a number of derivative IP works, which is also very obvious in the plot of online drama. Therefore, the online drama has received a very good evaluation, and the reputation of the entire IP has also improved. "
As for the content of the game itself, "we think that the essence of crossing the line of fire is the player's feeling of the gun." Although it is not to say that it can't be modified at all, we should consider the basic muscle memory of the player using firearms, such as the use of shooting, strafing and sniper, the operation of character posture, big jump and ghost jump. These things should be preserved. " Chen Kan said, "Of course, we will introduce new weapons and adjust various weapons, but let players feel' this is similar to CF in my impression' as soon as they get started."
In addition, the characteristics of team competition mode, biochemical mode and challenge mode will always be retained.
AKB48 Team SH's performance on the big stage is very popular with young players.
"Crossing the firewire can operate for 13 years and has always maintained such a market position. In addition to doing a lot of work in operations and product updates, more importantly, our team is a group of people who love CF very much. " Feng said to him. Among his colleagues, there are many old players who have crossed the line of fire, all of whom have played for 8 years on average, and some even played 10 years. "Because I am also a deep CFer, everyone knows what the game is like now and how the players feel, which also allows us to find the right direction and then continue to move in this direction."
As I said at the beginning, crossing the line of fire is like an old friend, which will always bring you freshness and fun. The content released by this ceremony also proves this point-we can expect new actions in the linkage of film and television, brands and other aspects in the future, and mobile phones are also brewing new works, and at the same time, they are constantly preparing for different levels of competitions and are committed to bringing new experiences to players. In the future, "Crossing the Firewire" will gradually penetrate into all aspects of the lives of players and fans, and continue to be "just" as always. I am afraid this is also an old game of 13, which can give players the best companionship.