The contemporary game industry has sprung up like mushrooms after rain, and the game “Mingchao” has also stood out among many new games. Xiakong, the new five-star resonator, has a list of materials that is so complex that it is almost an overwhelming list: Tide erosion sail core, burning phosphorus bone, crystallized phlogiston, and so on. There are many names and the number is amazing. Such a list of materials is ostensibly a necessity for the game mechanism, but in fact it silently reflects a certain absurdity and helplessness of modern society.
A closer look at this list of materials reveals the implicit capital logic. Game designers force players to invest more time, energy and even real money by constantly increasing the threshold for cultivation, forming a form of “virtual labor”. The so-called “simple happiness” has long been gradually eroded, replaced by a list of materials that is so complex that it is daunting. Players have become mechanized gears, consuming resources extracted by the game in exchange for the weak growth of the characters.
Regardless of the scarcity and rarity of the materials themselves, those names are like symbols in the dark: Burning Phosphorus Bone, Crystallized Phlogiston, Iris Blooming Day… These mysterious words are actually a cover-up, packaging virtual “capital exploitation” into a beautiful story of “fantasy development”. Players seem to be in purgatory, constantly slaying monsters and collecting, exhausted, but have to be enslaved by this endless task.
The diversity and huge number of these development materials can’t help but remind people of labor exploitation and resource plunder in real life. We are in an era of “overproduction”, and consumerism binds people to an endless cycle of production and acquisition, like a microcosm of this virtual material list. Players charge their characters, just as workers in reality devote their youth and sweat to capital accumulation.
The mechanism of increasing the drop rate of materials such as “stuffed meat tofu” in the game is a typical manifestation of the capitalization process of modern games: through “quick” and “accelerated” products, players are guided to pay for time and resources, and ultimately maximize capital. This makes us reflect that what we spend in the game world is not only virtual currency, but also the deprivation of free time and spirit.
What is even more ironic is that in pursuit of the so-called “top growth”, players continue to accumulate these materials, as if “Xiakong” locked in shackles can never break free from the shackles of the game rules. This passive “growth” reminds people of many people in reality who are bound by the social system. They look bright and beautiful on the outside, but in fact they have long been trapped in the cage of interests and rules.
On the other hand, the phrase “iris blooming day” that appears in the list of materials is poetic, but it can hardly hide the desolation of this virtual labor. It is like a subtle satire on modern people’s pursuit of a better life: beautiful things are often hard to come by, require huge costs and efforts, and even become a guise of consumerism.
In short, this list of materials for the cultivation of Mingchao Xiakong is not only a technical detail in the game, but also a microcosm of modern society. The virtual world and the real world reflect each other here: players work hard in the game, spend time and money, but it is difficult to really get rid of it; real people are also trapped in endless struggle and consumption under the pressure of life.
Faced with such a dilemma, can we only let capital and rules control us? Or should we reflect on the essence behind this “cultivation system” and find a freer and more meaningful way of life? After all, although the virtual summer sky is beautiful, it is ultimately a castle in the air under shackles; in reality, we also need to break free from the burden and strive for true freedom.