Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

A few days ago, Beryl, the star player who won the championship in the S12 finals of League of Legends, started his live broadcast debut on the domestic platform. However, the game content was not his old LOL, but Original God.

Many fans already know that Beryl has made public his hobby of "playing with the original god" earlier, and he has been nicknamed "brother of the original god." Although competitive competitions have always been "winning and saying everything is right," Beryl still replied cautiously when asked seriously what he thought about "playing the original god helps to improve LOL level":

"Last year or the year before, you definitely didn't see that.

Although the original god in many people's eyes was fixed on the controversy when PV was first exposed, since it was officially launched two years ago, the image of original god in the eyes of players and the general public has been changing.

Take overseas communities as an example, when the game was first launched, even if the foreign media gave relatively high scores, it also had a certain popularity, but in the Twitter statistics "hot topic list" at that time,"original god" was only located in the eighth position, far less than the same year "fortress night,""final fantasy" or even "wilderness action."

However, in the first half of 2021, the topic and discussion of "Original God" rose rapidly, ranking first in the list for the first time. Even until 2022, its influence remained unchanged, ranking first in the hot list in the first half of this year.

Whether it was objective data or subjective feelings, unlike most mobile games that were popular for a while, Original God had indeed maintained stable popularity and traffic for two years of operation. During this period, public opinion about it was gradually changing.

Once the public's perception was formed, it would be quite difficult to change it. The reason why Original God could achieve this was largely related to the continuous update after the game was launched, the linkage of related cultural content, and the operation of the player community.

In May last year, Digital Foundry, a well-known foreign evaluation media, updated two consecutive analysis videos about the effect of the original god on different platforms.

The updated videos compare the number of frames presented by "Original God" in different host configurations and after the new patch update.

One of the special points of "Original God" is that the launch time just caught up with the node where the host alternates between old and new, and its performance on PS4 has been unsatisfactory, the frame rate can only be maintained at about 20 for a time, even if it is a more powerful PS5, it has not been able to guarantee a stable 60-frame picture before.

However, after the release of the new patch 1.51 at that time, the fluency of both platforms has been improved to a certain extent after the real machine test of the number of hair clubs, especially PS5, which can basically achieve stable 60 frames in various scenes.

On the one hand, it shows that the influence of "Original God" overseas has increased day by day, on the other hand, it can also be seen that the game itself is continuously updated and optimized, which is not only technical, but also content.

The steady output of new content is an important part of the long-term impact of Original God. For the past two years, the game has been updated every six weeks with a new version, and each version contains a large amount of new content, including new exploitable areas, character plots or resident gameplay, which is basically equivalent to the volume of a DLC in a stand-alone game.

Take the most important map exploration in the open world for example. When Original God 1.0 was launched two years ago, the map only created a part of the area of Mond and Liyue. This part of the area was basically flat and hilly, and the complexity of the map was relatively weak. As a result, a considerable part of the criticism of the game content itself at that time was related to the lack of scene exploration.

However, two months later in version 1.2, players will be able to see improvements in the map design.

1.2 Version,"Original God" updated the "Dragon Ridge Snow Mountain" area, although its area is significantly smaller than the previous map, but the production team took advantage of the "mountain" itself has a sense of vertical drop, at different heights set up such as caves, tunnels, secret rooms and other internal spaces. These caves have a large internal depth and multi-level structure, and intuitive "treasure chest" and "strange mechanism device" to guide players to explore, and at the same time give consideration to the sense of connection between the inside and outside of the mountain, so that players can maintain the desire to explore new areas without violating and separating.

With map content updates like this, Original God maintained a stable and efficient iteration speed. In 2021, the game released a large area with the theme of "Thunder and Lightning"-rice wife; this year, the theme of "Desert Rainforest" has just been launched.

For the first time ever, lush rainforest and barren sand were placed on the same map. In the Xumi region, apart from the well-defined vertical space and underground world, it is also worth mentioning the desert zone.

Xumi's desert adopted a completely opposite design idea to the rainforest. It directly placed a rather spectacular giant building in the originally empty desert that could not be missed in any direction-Red King Mausoleum. The first time players stepped into the desert, they would immediately notice this building and the abnormal phenomena that occurred above it. Such a spectacular building just happened to anchor a basic exploration direction and motivation for everyone.

Over the past two years,"Original God" has proved its advantages in productivity with industry-recognized efficiency. These subsequent updates accumulate and build its own moat in the market.

But constant new content can also be a double-edged sword. Because for players, especially mobile game players, the addition of any new system may mean endless "work." The more "liver" content you want, the less friendly you are to newcomers or players who have abandoned the pit for a while.

However, even today, two years after the launch of "Original God," there is little talk of "catching up with progress" in the player circle. The most important reason is that the official has been quite cautious about "multiplayer content."

You can see that the game has been trying to avoid players being influenced by others. Apart from no PVP elements, there is no social system like "leaderboards" and "guilds." If you are not allowed, no player can enter another person's world.

Therefore, as long as you don't actively search, you will never see other people's progress, others can not have any influence on your world, even recently launched card games, the official also repeatedly stated that "there will be no PVP related rewards."

This made Original God much easier for ordinary players. Maps and quests are always there, you can explore at any time, and you don't have to worry about the equipment in your hand suddenly "retreating from the environment," naturally there will be no catch-up progress.

It seemed that this design would make people more Buddhist, but it also lowered the threshold for entering the game from another angle. Players would be more willing to understand and even spend time to experience this game, which would also increase the universality of Original God.

I have a good example of this point around me. One of my colleagues used to be a standard "original god leisure player." He didn't study the strategy specially, didn't spend time doing daily work, and even the reward he received immediately after signing in was "fishing for three days and drying the net for two days." He abandoned the pit for a long time in the middle.

Recently, he said in the group that his favorite character finally "reproduced," intended to return to the pit again, relying on the lineup left before also successfully passed a lot of missions. I think his game experience should be good, because I found that he has already started visiting the original god Taobao shop…

3 In addition to the constantly updated game content, the promotion and linkage strategy of "Original God" at home and abroad is also a factor that promotes its continuous activity in the public eye.

Because the "Glass Moon" area in the game is designed with ancient China as reference, one month before the official launch, the official announced a theme activity named "From Stop to Travel," which carries out cross-border linkage with Zhangjiajie, Guilin, Huanglong and other natural scenic spots in China:

In the Glass Moon area, players could find many scenes designed according to the landscape of the scenic spot, and in the natural scenic spot in reality, they could also see the scene of teleportation anchor points and Rock God's Pupils "random entry" in the game.

At that time, such "immaterial linkage" as a transmission anchor point located in Huanglong Wetland of our country also triggered a wave of creation upsurge of relevant content. Many local players took this opportunity to publicize the local customs of their hometown to others, and even made many people have the impulse of "Holy Land Tour."

In 2021,"Original God" was officially selected as a key national cultural export project. This list was jointly published by the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee, the General Office of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the General Office of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, which reflects the more complex cultural attributes of games in China.

From past experience, such activities may touch Chinese players who grew up in similar backgrounds, but it is difficult for people of different nationalities and cultures to feel the same way. For example, the officials had also launched a related linkage in the Alps, but its influence was basically limited to European players, and the discussion level in China was not high.

A game wants to realize the real "cultural output," so that players from different regions are interested in Chinese culture from the heart, in fact, it depends on the opportunity of the game itself, and for "Original God," part of this opportunity is "Zhong Li."

Two months after the game was launched, the official release of Li Yue's character Zhong Li's demo video "Book Listeners", in less than 24 hours, the video exceeded a million views on YouTube, at the same time received 110,000 likes:

In contrast, the video received only 447 "stepping" in the "book listener" video, the soundtrack used traditional Chinese erhu, zither and other musical instruments, combined with ink cut, silhouette special effects, plus music, character movements, animation mutually compatible mirror operation and editing effects, will Zhong Li's personality charm and the Chinese elements behind it to players all over the world.

Soon,"Zhongli" climbed to the top of Twitter game searches:

The original version of God's English version still calls Zhong Li from Chinese pronunciation, but for foreign players, it is more difficult to accurately pronounce "zhongli," so a large number of videos of "original God's exclusive vocabulary pronunciation teaching" appear on the oil pipe:

In addition, in the player community, foreigners who have been involved in Chinese culture also spontaneously popularize the exact pronunciation, specific meaning and historical allusions of Zhong Li's lines:

The influence brought by Zhongli PV not only attracted players outside the circle into the pit, but also led a group of core players to become interested in the Chinese culture represented by "Li Yue" and "Zhongli."

However, these cases of "foreigners learning Chinese" were secondarily disseminated in the domestic player circle after being matched with Chinese subtitles. This example of "export to domestic sales" imperceptibly changed the impression of outsiders on the game, and also made many domestic second creators give more detailed textual research content from the perspective of "family members."

On station b, the textual research video with the theme of "Zhong Li" has a very high broadcast volume. Originally, each country belongs to the cultural linkage of "enclosure self-germination," and finally a consensus is reached at home and abroad because of the PV of a character, which rarely happens in other domestic games before.

After 42021, the linkage strategy of domestic original gods began to shift to consumer goods industry, cooperating with many products such as catering, mobile phones, e-sports peripherals, etc. Although these linkages have spawned awkward slogans such as "meet in another world, enjoy delicious food" and "you also play the original god," the characteristics of "awkward" make the slogan the best material.

During the event, even players who didn't care about the original god would probably be able to see the linked paragraphs forwarded by people in all kinds of unrelated groups. At this time, the rejection mentality of the players outside the circle for the "original god" who is out of the circle has been alleviated a lot, and the large-scale spread of the stem shows that more people are treating this once-controversial thing with a mentality of "watching fun."

Whatever the linkage,"out of the circle" naturally brings different types of new players to the game. Even though the original god is known for its "second dimension" attribute, after the official announcement that it will cooperate with the flying saucer table to launch a new animation, there are still a lot of popular science in the player community asking others,"What is the flying saucer table?" A similar situation occurred when Original God was linked to the console game Horizon.

This meant that after the player circle continued to expand, it was no longer suitable for players with various attributes to use some simple terms. This was the same as the game itself.

In August 2021, in the Chinese Debate World Cup,"Is the appearance of" Original God "the dawn moment of domestic games? "It has become one of the debate topics of the competition, which has caused a large number of spectators to pour into the competition that was originally not highly concerned.

This also allowed sensitive topics that should have been criticized, quarreled, and provoked in the player circle to be discussed openly for the first time.

But neither side focuses on the content of the game. Even the main basis thrown out by the opposition is not the explanation of original sin such as "hand game" or "plagiarism." This is something many people didn't realize before: if you really want to define the emergence of a game as the "dawn" or "darkness" of the entire industry, it is not enough to analyze it from the perspective of game content alone.

At the beginning of this year, because of all kinds of linkage and out-of-circle news brush enough sense of existence of the original god, once again put a big move: announced with traditional opera elements of the character-Yun Jin.

As an in-game operational character, Yun Jin has good performance, offensive movements combined with opera, and clothing design that is not seen in the two-dimensional style as an opera character.

However, what really made Yunjin and the game's drama successful was actually the plot PV called "Goddess Splitting View":

At present, the broadcast volume in station b has been close to 30 million meters. Ha You invited professional Peking Opera actor Yang Yang to act as Yunjin's opera dubbing. Relying on animation and music combined with various operas, the game was successfully released again. Not only did it reproduce the grand occasion of "Zhongli PV" again_foreign players began to understand this art form in real Chinese opera videos:

At this time, the mainstream media in China also noticed this phenomenon. For example, CCTV News and Wen Wei Po reported on it:

If this cultural symbol, which is praised by Chinese and foreign players and has great influence, can be defined as "dawn," it is obvious that there will not be only pure game content behind dawn. It is a comprehensive product that takes into account the aspects of play, music, character design, art, etc. at the same time, and also reflects the particularity of the cultural product of the game. If you lose one of the links and emphasize the culture blindly, you may not get the corresponding results.

5 After experiencing the sharp change of players 'comments and attitudes, the collision of controversy and praise, the original god has indeed become one of the representative works of domestic game culture. It not only carries the confrontation of different player cultures in China, but also is the most successful domestic game at sea. More simply, it was a multi-platform game where most players spent ten minutes a day clearing up daily quests…From it, you could see the love, hate, understanding, and prejudice of the players. The original god was simply defined by a certain symbol and hung at either end of the scale.

But even better, people begin to accept the different symbols implied by the original god and acquiesce in its existence as a dominant culture, which is obviously a more rational choice than playing tricks and stereotypes.

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Game Research Society (ID: ysaag), author: Yingrou Satellite

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