Game Technology： Hard-core Technology ＂Delayed＂ by Interest

Recently, the research team of Wang Yanyu of the Institute of Natural Science History of Chinese Academy of Sciences released Game Technology — — The phased results of the research report "New technological population in the process of number and reality integration".

　　In this research report, by reviewing the development history of the game industry and related cutting-edge technologies for nearly half a century, the research team tried to analyze the game technology independently, summarized the definition and connotation of the game technology, and for the first time tried to quantitatively evaluate the contribution rate of the game technology in promoting scientific and technological progress in cutting-edge technologies such as chips, 5G and virtual reality/augmented reality. The full report will be officially released in the middle and late July.

　　Game technology has gone through three stages of development.

　　According to the definition of the research team, "game technology" is a technology cluster that realizes large-scale application in electronic games for the first time, with the main goal of enriching and enhancing people’s interactive experience. Because of its interactive, high simulation, strong immersion, real-time rendering and other characteristics, game technology is gradually being applied to many fields of social economy and has become an important technical support to promote the development of digital and real integration.

　　The report points out that the remarkable interesting nature of video games masks the scientific nature of game technology, so game technology has long been ignored by people.

　　In fact, the development of video games is closely related to cutting-edge technology, and almost every technological wave will reshape the ecological outlook of video games. On the basis of reviewing the growth process of video games in the past half century, the research team summarized the game technology into three different development stages — — The era of science, industry and society.

　　It is reported that from the late 1940s to the early 1950s, video games were born almost at the same time as computer science. At that time, video games, because of their clear rules, strict boundaries and strong gameplay, naturally became an important tool for studying and verifying artificial intelligence. The relationship between electronic games and computer science has been maintained in the laboratory for nearly 20 years, and this stage is the scientific era of game technology.

　　After 1972, the entertainment attribute of video games was gradually released. With the rapid development of the Internet, especially the mobile Internet, electronic games have rapidly grown into the most important digital content industry in the world and become an important part of our daily life, so game technology has entered the industrial era.

　　Based on the huge user base and the extreme pursuit of computing power, image display and network bandwidth, during this period, the game industry became the "invisible traction" and "technology incubator" of many cutting-edge technologies such as chips and 5G high-speed networks, and also accumulated a series of unique technical capabilities.

　　In recent years, with the rapid development of digital economy, game technology has also broken through the traditional game scenes and started to be applied to more and more different fields, such as digital cultural protection, industrial simulation, smart city, film and television creation and so on. Therefore, this period was positioned as a social era by the research team, and game technology began to step out of the game industry, becoming the core tool to promote the digital transformation of different industries, move towards the integration of numbers and reality, and build a digital twin, and began to create greater social and economic value in a wider range.

　　Game technology is also a driving force for other digital industries.

　　In this report, the research team first proposed a cross-disciplinary quantitative evaluation method for the contribution rate of scientific and technological progress, and tried to quantitatively analyze the driving force of game technology to other digital industries and related technical systems.

　　By introducing and measuring variables such as the contribution rate of scientific and technological progress in the industry, the correlation coefficient between game technology knowledge maps and other industrial technology knowledge maps, and combining with the public statistical data of the National Bureau of Statistics, relevant ministries and commissions, and industry associations, the research team initially calculated the contribution rate of game technology to scientific and technological progress in the chip industry, 5G high-speed network industry and virtual reality/augmented reality industry.

　　Among them, in 2020, the contribution rate of game technology to the technological progress of the chip industry will be about 14.9%, especially in the emerging technology field represented by cloud games, which is expected to double the demand for cloud computing power, which is of great significance for China to realize autonomous and controllable graphics computing architecture. For 5G and virtual reality/augmented reality, two important infrastructures recognized by the industry in the era of digital and real integration, the scientific and technological contribution rate of game technology is as high as 46.3% and 71.6%.

　　In fact, video games are born out of computer science research. After more than 50 years of development, digital technology related to video games has become a relatively independent technical system and a digital technology group with many possibilities, and has been gradually applied to more social fields, creating more values and possibilities in scientific and technological innovation, real economy, cultural construction and social welfare.

　　Nowadays, electronic games are not only the largest and fastest-growing form of entertainment, but also the game technology in the fields of digital environment, digital avatar and digital assets for a long time, which is likely to play a unique role in the coming digital-real integration society. A large number of new scenes of digital and real integration will emerge in various industries. On the occasion of the tide of the meta-universe, games will become the first application field of the meta-universe.

　　The research team’s attempt to re-examine game technology from the perspective of scientific and technological innovation will not only help the whole society to have a more comprehensive understanding of video games and the technical panorama behind them, but also better guide the healthy and sustainable development of related industries, and provide a new perspective for the systematic research of digital technology.