本文主要讲述的是以Taking魔兽世界为例来关于数字游戏在线进行略论的范文。本文介绍的探讨环绕试点这一主题，英语毕业论文，略论的基本机制，社会的含义和网游业务方面的实践。
ABSTRACT
Nowadays, with the rapid development of the Internet, interleaving of virtual and reality, online games as a common strand of digital games have been increasingly prevalent and raise wide argument. Since game player tends to accept new things easier, trying new lifestyles, therefore, from the perspective of wide range of online player, it is important to realize why online games so attractive. Thus, I am going to study its basic mechanics including objects, attributes and actions. Specifically, investigate online games’ social influence and business model is my ultimate goal and a step further.
This presents a pilot of study surround this subject to analyze the essential mechanics, implication of social and the practice of online games in business area. I investigate the work based on a specific computer games called War of Warcraft, a famous MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) created by Blizzard Entertainment in 2017. I believe my work will be useful in building a knowledge framework for my academic study subsequently.
I. INTRODUCTION
What’s a game? The concept of game is vague, and many any interesting and thought provoking answers have been given. For example, Sid Meier says. “A game is a series of interesting and meaningful choices in pursuit of a clear and compelling goal” and from Clark C. Abt, “A game is an activity among two or more decision makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context.” I believe, everyone has its understanding about games, thus, there is no absolute answer. From the perspective of technique, an online game is a video game played over some form of computer network. Online games can range from simple text based environments to games incorporating complex graphics and virtual worlds populated by many players simultaneously. With the development of technology, the Internet developed enormously and many online games have associated online communities, making online games a form of social activity beyond single player games.
Although computer and video games are most often thought to be an means of entertainment and harmful to young people’ mental and physical health, it is important to learn the opposite sides that computer games can be powerful learning tools or platform at the same time. Understand biennial of it help us face up the influence of computer games. In recent years, online gaming has become increasingly popular. It is ed that more than half of the Internet users, approximately about 55% are currently playing digital games online. And in my country, the number of people engage in online games is increasing fastest all over the world. Having hundreds of million Internet users currently, my country surely has the largest computer user base in world, of which two-thirds participate in online gaming. (Reference 3) Meanwhile, the average age of online player is relatively small, about 18 to 30 years old, majority of them are male. Surprisingly, online players are intellectual and well-educated, having at least received a secondary level of education. Geographically, similar to allocation of Internet users, most online player are in large cities. (Reference 4) Also, in my country, online players tend to be more interested in two primary genre of PC games: MMORPGs and MOCGs, the former have a predilection for persistent online worlds where hundreds to thousands of game players play a role and participate in activities in different scene, interacting simultaneously, like CS and legend of sword and fairy; the latter is a generic term for games played competitively online which don’t require a consistent online realm.
Ⅱ. RELATED WORK AND MY WORK
In a previous work called “The business and culture of digital games”, the author begins the article in economic and culture environment, considering how the digital game fit itself into what is commonly thought to be cultural industries and how the digital games establish its business model and gain increasing economics significance in the world. Also, the author carefully and comprehensively looks into the structure of digital game industry and how it is categorized and developed on new platforms. Then, the writer comes to the conclusion that digital game industry plays an important role in the cultural industries and economics. Examining the data explored, it is sure that the market is far from uniform and consisting of plenty up-to-data techniques and business models and effects from cultural.
Enlightened by the previous work, this will include the following concepts:
Introduce online game of the game industry and concentrate more on the MMOG which has larger user base in the market.
Using World of Warcraft to evaluate the design qualities, including objects, attributes and actions.
Exploring the hidden business model that lead to the success of World of Warcraft.
Ⅲ. THE ONLI GAMES AND EVALUATION OF WORLD OF WARCRAFT
In this part, I am going to introduce one platform of the game industry: PC, studying on MMOG particularly. Then, analyze the game of world and warcraft in three perspectives, including objects, attributes and actions. Since the three basic mechanics are designed to make the digital games more concrete, interesting, repeatable and fun. Mechanics are indispensible in determining the methods, assigning the difficulty level, incorporating the games’ flavor. Then, I will use historical data to measure the quality, evaluating the merits and drawbacks of world and warcraft in the increasing competing digital game industry.
A. Current Situation of Online Games
An online game is a video game played via the computer network whose development is largely depending on the internet access. Online gaming is more than a genre but a technology, a mechanism for connecting players together and interacts simultaneously which is an advantage of online games although single-player games online is commonly seen. Moreover, some of online games don’t require additional payment, thus money-saving entertainment for young people. With a variety of games of all genres, all users requirement can be fulfilled, thus, attracting more online players. According to the historical date, the online game sales in the USA is of 70 million in 1998 (Reference 5), 1 billion of $US and 23 millions of units sold in 2017, (Reference 6) 10.8 billion in 2017 (Reference 7) and 22.6 billion in 2017 (Nayak, M. 2017). The Online Game Market Forecasts estimates that there will be worldwide revenue from online games about $35 billion by 2017. The virtual goods revenue form online games and social networking exceeded 7 billion in 2017. (Kevin, 2017)
With the development of broadband Internet access in many developed countries and developing countries, Massively multiplayer online games(MMOG) becomes available which allows hundreds of thousands of players to play the same game and interact together. There are many kinds of massively multiplayer games are available, and here we discussed MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) mainly which possess the most market share of online games. Massively multiplayer online role-playing game combine the genres of role playing video games and massively multiplayer online games which have a pretty large user base and allow interaction with one another through the network in the virtual world. The game is played all over the world and have a revenue exceeded 0.5 billion in the 2017, 1.4 billion in 2017. And the World of Warcraft as a typical massively multiplayer online role-playing game has more than 10 million users in 2017. (Reilly, 2017)
B. The World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game created by Blizzard Entertainment on November 23, 2017, on the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise. The first expansion set of the game, The Burning Crusade, was released on January 16, 2017; Wrath of the Lich King, was released on November 13, 2017; Cataclysm, was released on December 7, 2017; Mists of Pandaria, was released on September 25, 2017; Warlords of Draenor, was released on November 13, 2017. And by the end of 2017, the total number of paying users of World of Warcraft has exceed 12.5 million which has break the Guinness book of world records, occupying about 62% of the digital online games market share in the world. In January 2017, it was announced that more than 100 million accounts had been created over the game's lifetime. (Samit, 2017) So why is the game so popular? Firstly, we need to know how the game played. During the process of playing, namely the user experience, we can evaluate the quality of the game in three aspects as follows:
Objects. These refer to the characters, props, tokens or other physical component of a game. In the World of Warcraft, online players can register accounts to establish a role in the World of Warcraft. The highest level of role is 100. Based on a high fantasy motif, subscribers can create characters with distinctive looks (faces, hair, sex and characteristics) Characters advance through 60 levels of play. They are equipped with weapons such as swords, armor, and jewelry; and slay an array of imaginative monsters dwelling in caves, dungeons, and encampments in varied landscapes. There are many races in WoW like, night elf, dwarf, gnome, human, troll, orc, tauren, and undead. Classes are druid, priest, warrior, rogue, mage, hunter, paladin, shaman, and warlock. Each class entails a different style of play. There are many objects including simple and complex ones, adding fun and visualization of the game.
Attributes. These are categories of information about each object and the current state of that information. In World of Warcraft, think of them as the basic building blocs of your character. Online players can create characters with qualities such as intellect, strength, stamina, and agility in either alliance or horde in World of Warcraft; develop skills such as attacking and healing; Lyrical or haunting music often plays as the character adventures. All attribute increase via leveling up or sometimes via grinding. These attributes can be combined in interesting ways during game sequence like combat.
Actions. Given the game objects and their attributes, actions define what a player can do. The game of World of Warcraft can be likened to an animated cartoon in which the player controls the character with mouse and keyboard. Characters travel on foot, by boat or air, through fields, farms, deserts, mountains, seas, and Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. The larger the operative, the better the game.
Ⅳ. THE UNDERLYING BUSISS MODEL
A. The Fierce Competition in Online Game Industry
In 2017, there have been 49.36 million of online game players in China in total with actual sales revenue of 183.8 billion RMB, and the actual sales revenue of MMORPG is 150.8 billion RMB, occupying 82% of the market share. All the game developers want the profits of such large “cake”. No matter the domestic or the foreign game developers want to have a foothold in China market. With the development of technology, more and more intellectual game developers coming up with new ideas of the game, including advertisement and game interface. For example, video ads and banner ads about Aion developed by Korea can be seen everywhere on the internet during the period of development to beta. And the advertising appeal points are correspondent to the World of Warcraft to be eye-catching, arising players’ curiosity. Actually, the strategy works well in attracting users, leading to a crowd of servers on the first day of the open beta.
B. The Business Model of World of Warcraft
To gain profits under intense competition, the game developers of World of Warcraft take measures in four perspectives:
Establish a relatively perfect member community. Considering the psychology of most players who want to have higher class and gain more privilege in the games, game developers meet their demands by develop individual game space. Also, the operators organize games among the online players and give reward so as to provide the users with a sense of belonging, thus increase their loyalty to the World of Warcraft. Based on the analysis above, games with such characteristic can attract players persistently by meeting users’ propensity to consume and psychological characteristics.
Make good use of electronic commerce and keep alert, looking out for the offline sales and promotions. Electronic commerce in China is in the key period and the hidden risk of online virtual items trading is the most serious security issue. With the introduction of a third party platform, no matter consumers or sellers obtain stronger safeguard. Consequently, the online trading has become more and more popular and common thing. The World of Warcraft game developers pay their attention not only to the online trading including virtual currency sales but also to the sales of real object according to the needs of online players. For example, many subscribers are fond of specific scenes and meaningful moments when playing the game, then the operators produce related products like some memorial clothes, shoes and books. Such method combine the virtual world to the real one, boost the popularity to gain more users.
Implantable Advertising, searching partners online and offline. Implant the advertisement into the games is incentive to the requirement of online players. One of the most important characteristics of online players is flexible thinking and avant-garde. Namely, they are easier in accepting new things as well as trying new things. For example, the domestic 3D game Legend of Tang Dynasty has implant several brand like beef jerky, Tai Chi teahouse and Geely automobile into the game. Users can by the real beef jerky through credit card payment and cash on delivery. Pizza hut also take the similar measures: players have the opportunity to get the discount tickets of pizza hut or get the chance to eat free of charge when beating the monsters. The players of World of Warcraft are mostly well-educated and young people, thus they have more demands in fashion, brand and digital. The operators of the game can collaborate with the advertisers in the game interface, using such method in marketing. Thus, both the advertisers and operators gain profits, as well as the online players.
Interaction. On the temporary forum of World of Warcraft, some online players put forward new requirements to the cards. The operators can organize games among the online players and give reward so as to provide the users with a sense of belonging, thus increase their loyalty to the World of Warcraft. In 2017, the World of Warcraft cooperated with the coca cola to organize an activity. The participants are asked to take 10 promotional packaging (packaging of World of Warcraft) bottle cap and pull ring. Such network interaction can put into reality to boost popularity and gain more attention.
Ⅴ. CONCLUSION
In this , I study online gaming of a famous MMORPG, the World of Warcraft which is popular all around the world. I analyze how online games attract people, namely, what are the mechanics it possesses, why so many online players interact into game’s virtual world. And I come to the conclusion that the game do well in objects, attributes and actions. In addition, I investigate whether there are some social impacts and business model existed behind such famous games. The scale of online game industry is becoming larger and larger and the game itself in being improved, thus searching for the next profit point is worth further investigation.
Reference
1 Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2017). Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
2 Nayak, M. (2017). A look at the $66 billion video-games industry. Reuters, June.
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11 Samit Sarkar, (2017). "Blizzard reaches 100M lifetime World of Warcraft accounts". Polygon. January 28, 2017.
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