A Two-year Effort: The "Competitive Adventure World" of Game for Peace

"The blazing flames burn scarlet with conviction as the light of dawn appears, piercing through the edge of darkness. Guard the dream front with all your might. Face yourselves and move bravely forward." On May 17, Game for Peace released its first official animated short "Courage" for the character Gilly. The animated short film tells the story of Gilly as she escapes, awakens, and then takes up arms and becomes the convener of a 4-person celebrity team in the "Game for Peace" invitational. On the next day, Yuan Yawei sang the character's theme song "Courage." Gilly, a character who represents bravery, has made her official debut.

Game for Peace character - Gilly's animated short https://v.qq.com/x/page/q3246cj0hpy.html

As the game approaches its second anniversary, the first animation and the first formal complete narrative of Game for Peace finally came.

Last year, Game for Peace put forward its product positioning of a "competitive world of adventure for global players." In May of this year, Game for Peace ushered in further brand upgrades, refreshing its overall visuals including the logo, UI, and brand font. At the same time, the game received a gameplay upgrade for its second anniversary version, including cross-over collaborations with global pop cultural IPs such as Gundam, Godzilla, and King Kong, as well as launching a global e-sports event system. Many of these actions seem to indicate that after two years of settling and accumulating experience, Game for Peace has ushered in a golden age for the renewal of the game's ecosystem.

Creating an open world atmosphere has naturally been an important part of Game for Peace's development. The animated short "Courage" starring Gilly as the protagonist opened another corner of the open world of Game for Peace.

From this perspective, we can observe both Game for Peace's exploration of a new game experience and its respect and intention for its players. The animation, music, and other contents work together to create the game's world of "competitive adventure" filled with fun and puzzles, inviting players to freely experience and explore the boundaries of the game's imagination together.

Put Care into Player Experience

When players get on the plane and "parachute" into this unknown world, their adventure has just begun. Players form teams and must constantly explore and unearth secrets in this place to finally win. Here, the environment has already been set, but it's up to the players to write their own stories.

As Game for Peace's project lead Liang Xinghua states, "Game for Peace has many players. They can play a different version of themselves in this game and have different ideologies." In this game, the player is the real protagonist, and all the game's settings exist to stimulate the player's desire for exploration.

In order to show respect for their players, the Game for Peace project team also chose a way of creating an open world that would not ruin the game's experience and not forcibly instill values, instead opting to seamlessly and silently immerse the players through the progression of the plot.

Firstly, in the overall framework, Game for Peace gave up the idea of presenting a mainline story from the beginning, choosing instead to tell a story in fragments and present this world of adventure to players bit by bit. This choice gives players the freedom to immerse themselves in the game and experience it with their own imagination, so that they can join and interpret their own stories at any time in this open world. When a game can depart from the rails of a linear development experience, players can have more choices.

GAME FOR PEACE advances the plot in a fragmented way, which is realized by story clues and the inclusion of Easter eggs. Players need to explore and discover these by themselves as they play the game. At the Tencent Games press conference in 2020, Game for Peace officially announced its suspense story mode. As "Little White Dress" of Game for Peace said at the press conference, "Players can constantly find and collect new clues in the game and understand the stories and secrets behind this competitive adventure world."

Through this fragmented storytelling method, the blueprint of the competitive adventure world is embedded into the game in a way that will not affect the player's overall game experience. Instead, it gives players a full "joy of adventure" and lets them immerse themselves into the game's world and find surprises at every turn.

Secondly, the story of Game for Peace depends not only on the current version of the game, but also on crossovers with multiple universes. In Gilly's "Courage" video, for example, there was a line, "We've got the data Dr. H requested." The background of this Easter egg came from the "Mutation" version launched last November.

In addition, at the end of the video, photos of other members of the star team are displayed, which also paves the way for the star team's future story development.

It's through such ingenious techniques and ideas that Game for Peace spreads the story's details throughout games, animated videos, and comics, stringing a variety of fragments together to finally build a complete story.

Ingenuity in Content and Product Polishing

This time, Gilly, one of the core members of the "competitive adventure world" celebrity four-person team, is shown to players and other audiences through the "Courage" animated video.

In the animation, Gilly, who is an extraordinary marksman, has looked up to her sniper father since childhood. But her father's unfortunate death dealt her a heavy blow and Gilly has struggled with PTSD around guns ever since. She became a model at the age of 21, but in the process of filming an advertisement for the Game for Peace Invitational, Gilly became accidentally involved in an armed attack, during which she constantly witnessed someone paying the price to protect her.

In a desperate situation, Gilly's courage, which had been buried away for years, was finally awakened. She stood up against the enemy. In the end, she also chose to face her own dreams, sign up for the Game for Peace Invitational, and become the convener of the celebrity four-person team.

Gilly is one of the official characters launched for Game for Peace, so players are familiar with her image because she's been present in the game since launch, guiding players to experience the game and take actions.

Her ponytail, sunglasses, dog tags, and bullets constitute her heroic, brave, and resilient character, which also represents the characteristics that many Game for Peace players yearn for and possess themselves. Although Gilly's story has its twists and turns, she went from despair to compromise, from fear to awakening, until finally, a complete image of a person who can face her inner fears with courage appears: "Courage is what makes the dreams you aim for come true."

Gilly's "courage" is exactly what this short video wants every player to feel. It wants most players in the game to identify and resonate with her, because they are also facing each match in the game either seriously or calmly.

Through well-developed characters and the ups and downs of the plot, Game for Peace creates a story with courage, adventure, and imagination for players to immerse themselves in. When the player empathizes with the characters and puts the character's sadness, joy, and resentment into the game, it will produce a more novel and profound player experience. In order to tell a good story and create good characters, the Game for Peace team, together with a superb lineup of Hollywood producers, strives for perfection in every detail.

Members of the core production team for the animated short "Courage" have participated in the production of Hollywood films such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Croods, How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, and more. Therefore, although it is only a short animation with a runtime of six and a half minutes, it still achieved a film-like effect and quality.

When it comes to animation details, the production team strives for excellence. The lighting in the first part of "Courage" is soft. In the middle, when the characters encounter trouble, cold colors depict the scene. Meanwhile, in the later part of the nighttime battle, highly saturated colors and contrast are used, with the colors turning brighter at the end. In order to achieve the greatest extent of color reduction, the production team has specially laid more than 100 groups of lights, with many lights used only once throughout the whole video. In terms of special effects, the production team also made great efforts to develop special bullet trajectory effects, as well as special effects for bullets hitting the ground and shells scattering after a shot, so as to make the fight scenes more realistic and intense.

After seeing the animation, many players praised it as being as satisfying as a movie.

Bullet special effects

High quality animation effects add even more highlights to the short film.
This story is just the tip of the iceberg for the entire open world of Game for Peace.
Several plot lines for GAME FOR PEACE were woven into "Courage" to echo the game's Easter eggs. Perhaps this indicates more surprises the game has in store for the players:

What role will the Game for Peace Invitational mentioned at the beginning of the animation play in the future?

The villain mentioned that "We've got the data Dr. H requested." Will this plot regarding the previous game version lead to more stories unfolding in the future?

The end shows the photos of the members of the celebrity four-person team. What will happen to them?

At the end of the animation, Gilly turned the tides of the battle with a sniper rifle and revealed a corner of the open world of Game for Peace. This is the beginning of the future, just like the end of many movies. Even more stories and fascinating details will be slowly unfolding for players to explore.

The Original Intention of Building an Open World

To create a grand sense of an open world in a game, it's necessary to create multiple main characters, logical storylines, and exquisite and complex plot mechanisms and plot points. It's often difficult to rely on a game alone to show the game's entire world to players and guide them to immerse themselves in and actively explore it. Therefore, a multi-threaded, multi-dimensional narrative becomes particularly important. Game for Peace has created different themes and forms surrounding and creating the experience of an "open world."

On May 1, the first official comic, Game for Peace: Lucky Rookie was launched. This comic, which is updated every Saturday, gives the competitive adventure world of Game for Peace a clearer and more diverse outline. With the Gilly animation and the official comics, players can gradually learn more about the members of the celebrity four-person team. In addition to "Sniper" Gilly, the other three members are "Team Leader" Captain, "Support" Oliver, and "Firepower" Victor.

Now that the Gilly short film is released, the background stories of other characters will be revealed one by one. At that time, more details about the game's open world that have not yet been noticed by players will also be presented. In addition, dubbing and music will also play an important part of the player's game experience.

In 2020, GAME FOR PEACE officially launched the "master" series of music and has successively collaborated with Yamaoka, Brian Tyler, and Austin Wintory to create a series of game music, such as "Gun EP," "Elite War," "War is Coming," and "Burning Battle." These tracks closely fit the spirit of Game for Peace and provide a more immersive experience for game players while maintaining artistry. Game for Peace also won the "Best Audio Award" for casual and social games at the annual Game Audio Network Guild Awards with its soundtrack.

The multiple ways to experience the IP outside of the game echo the suspenseful plot and Easter eggs within the game. Multiple story hints are intertwined, gradually drawing the outline of this competitive adventure world. All of the content creation shaping the IP shows that Game for Peace hopes to present a game world with the core connotation of "imagination, fun, freedom, adventure, and courage."

Diligence, Ingenuity, and Aspiration
Weaving the Story of Game for Peace Together

It's evident through all the actions that give Game for Peace its open-world feeling that the players are the game's true protagonists. All the wonderful content carefully prepared by the developer has been integrated into every corner of the game, which constantly stimulates the player's curiosity and desire for exploration. It can be said that all the multi-dimensional and diversified content is presented in order to accompany the players along their journey in the "competitive adventure world" of GAME FOR PEACE each and every day.

In the process of presenting this rich, inclusive, and diversified in-game world, GAME FOR PEACE chose the uncommon approach of "slow motion." From a higher point of view, they start with details based on player experience. At the same time, they adhere to their original intent of creating an open world, and through the ingenuity of the content and products that shape it, they tell the game's stories surrounding the players in an orderly manner, enriching both the internal and external experience of the game.

Game for Peace will bring players different opportunities for exploration, fun, and freedom through multi-dimensional content and has always walked its diversified road of "adventure competitive world" and expanded the boundaries of gaming imagination.

Now, Gilly has made her debut.

In the future, other members of the four-person team will also appear one after another, and we can expect that players will slowly explore even more fun aspects of the game.