The Research On The Construction Of Traditional Festivals In Online Games From The Perspective Of Communication Ritual

With the development of network technology,many online games have gradually become the communication media of traditional festivals.While impacting traditional festivals,they also bring new connotations into traditional festivals.Among them,"Honor of Kings",a network game developed with traditional historical themes,has also become a new channel for the spread of traditional festival culture.This paper takes the traditional festivals factors in "Honor of Kings" as a research case,takes James Carey’s theory-ritual view of communication ceremony as the theoretical framework and uses participatory observation method to record the activity content,activity time,activity form and festival symbols of the traditional festivals in "Honor of Kings".Based on the research results,paper found that "Honor of Kings" constructs festival scenes through visual,auditory,and language symbols that are rich in traditional festival characteristics to stimulate the sense of rituals,and to recreate or directly implant the folk activities of traditional festivals into games to form grand festivals.Through the virtualization of the custom participation space,the simplification of participation methods,and the autonomy of the participation process,"Honor of Kings" has constructed a festival field with high degrees of freedom and convenient participation for players."Honor of Kings" attracts players to enter the festival field which are rich in traditional festival symbols and ritual sense,where people can interpret symbols and participate in traditional festival customs,to realize the sharing of traditional festival culture and emotions in the festival experience.At the same time,with the media attributes of the game,"Honor of Kings" can spread the culture of traditional festivals among the player groups,share the meaning,and realize the maintenance of the real society through traditional festivals."Honor of Kings" also injected game culture into traditional festivals during the construction of the festival,bringing gamification into the cultural connotation of traditional festivals.At the same time,the entertainment of the game also weakened the sense of sacredness of traditional festivals.All players can equally join the game as participants,making traditional festivals a time for collective carnivals.As the field of traditional festival communication field,online games can break through the limitations of time and space during the festival communication,and enhance the spread of the festival,at the same time,it can also deepen the audience’s experience of traditional festivals through ritualized communication.Besides,the innovative power of online games is strong,which can inject the connotation of the era into traditional festivals and motivate the new vitality of traditional festivals.However,the entertainment of online games has also eliminated the national spirit and emotional connotation of traditional festivals,which weakened the sense of sacredness of festivals,and the exploration researches of traditional festival culture are relatively superficial,lacking festival cultural connotations,and with lacks of the diversity,the shaping of festival custom activities are highly homogenous.