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

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: Feiyun

Similar baggage makes it difficult for many old brands, and the future development is even more cloudy.

Some time ago, the game industry reported that the "Xianjian" series suspended the research and development of stand-alone machines and disbanded the relevant teams, and the experience of domestic stand-alone games once again triggered a heated discussion. Many people are so angry that they denounce the current owner of Xianjian IP, the mobile game company.

From the perspective of business, from the perspective of mobile games, "Xianjian Qianqi" has invested a lot of money in development, and its sales have been less than one million since it has been on the market for more than two years. As far as a single game is concerned, it may not be able to maintain its capital. In addition, the entire game industry is now reducing costs and increasing efficiency. Suspending the research and development of stand-alone sequels is also a reasonable measure in the face of market reaction. But on the other hand, "Xianjian" players, as well as many players who love domestic games, have deep feelings for this series, and when they see its current situation, it is hard to avoid revealing their true feelings.

Will "Xianjian Qianqi" be the last stand-alone work in the series? Frankly speaking, not only "Xianjian", the domestic veteran game IP has been hit by piracy, online games and other factors for many years, and those who can survive to the present are actually faced with similar situations. "Fantasy of the three Kingdoms 5" released in 2018 is a new work of the "Fantasy of the three Kingdoms" series after many years, and the quality is mediocre; the "Xuanyuan Jian Qi" listed in 2020 has mixed reviews, and the "Xuanyuan Jian" series is also rumored to stop development recently. soon after this year, "BJian Xiaoyunlu" is the spiritual sequel of the famous "Heaven and Earth robbery" series after many years, and the result is also plagued with various problems.

In theory, the Gu Jian Qitan series is the best, with sales of 2 million units in 2018, but only one title has been released so far.

What's wrong with the old IP?

According to the official data of mobile games in the sales problem, after the launch of "Xianjian Qianqi", 800000 units were sold on the platform as of the end of last year. It may seem like a lot, but considering several factors, this figure is not good.

According to Yao Zhuangxian, the producer of "Xianjian" series, the R & D cost of "Xianjian Qianqi" is 50 million yuan. The marketing and publicity expenses of the game may also be quite a few. Judging from the huge publicity situation when "Xianjian Qianqi" is released, the investment of the publisher is also relatively high. In addition, due to the game login Steam, the platform has 30% of the game sales, even if the percentage will decrease as the total sales increase, overall, the percentage is still quite a lot.

In terms of pricing, the regular version of the game is priced at RMB128 on Steam and RMB204 on the PS platform. Looking at the sales volume of 800000 at such a low price, it is estimated that it will be more difficult to get back to the original in the end.

"Fairy Swordsman Legend 7" actually sells well, and the picture shows up with the times, but there is no big breakthrough in sales to support this judgment. A few years ago, the sales volume of "Paladin six" was 720000, and the seven generations did not increase much compared with this figure. Yao Zhuangxian lamented in 2016 that 10 million yuan was invested in the development of Chinese Paladin's five prequels, which was basically even in the end, while Paladin 6 invested 20 million yuan, but still lost a lot of money. Yao Zhuangxian said that the later stand-alone sequel is ready to lose at least NT $20 to NT $30 million, "and must be done." However, judging from the situation of "Xianjian Qianqi", there is no significant increase in sales after a substantial increase in the budget, and the final loss may be more than 30 million, so that the "Xianjian" stand-alone sequel has to be pressed the pause button.

When the news of the dissolution of Beijing soft Star and Shanghai soft Star was everywhere, the remade version of Xianjian Qianquan IV, which was developed by the latter, is also rumored to have been cancelled.

Recently, as the middle-hand travel force pushed the open world online game "Xianjian World", the hopeless veteran players began to call on other players to boycott the sales of this game must be a huge problem troubling domestic stand-alone games. In the "Xianjian" series, the highest sales should be "Xianjian Chuanwu", which has sold about 1.3 million sets, which is actually because there is no sequel for many years after the launch of 4 generations. And the halo effect brought about by the high quality and high reputation of the fourth generation. Five generations of their own quality is relatively mediocre, five generations later, "Xianjian" single-machine sequel no longer exceeded millions of sales.

For many domestic stand-alone games, 1 million is a sales threshold, but even if sales reach 1 million or even 2 million, it doesn't mean you can sleep flat.

Sales of Gu Jian Qitan III exceeded 2 million units in 2021, but the game is also a huge investment. according to a summary of various theories on the Internet, it is generally believed that the cost of research and development is between 40 million and 50 million yuan, which may be higher. Moreover, 2 million sales are achieved through long-term discounts and low prices over the past few years-at the end of January 2020, the "Ancient Jian Qitan III" platform-wide discount promotion, only 33 yuan. It was initially priced at 99 yuan.

Nowadays, the secret of high sales of many games is discounts. After the launch of "watchdog 2" and "final Fantasy 15", it took several years to sell at a low price before barely breaking the 10 million sales mark, with a minimum price of only 30 or 40 yuan. Many big game discounts can be sold with full-price DLC or paid props, can also create a small peak of performance, or even achieve a long flow, but if only the ontology discount, the development and distribution companies actually do not make much profit.

Therefore, whether the performance of a game is good in the current era depends on the short-term sales data of the game in the golden sales period of the original price. For example, the Steam version of "Elden Ring" is priced at 298 yuan and the PS4 version is priced at 398 yuan. Sales exceeded 10 million sets in the first month without a discount.

The quality of "Gu Jian Qi Tan III" is very solid in all aspects, the fighting and nurturance system is very good, the picture and plot are also good, which is similar to the millions of sales of many SFC games in the 1990s. At that time, the price of any SFC game was 300 to 400 yuan. Taking into account inflation and the income of people in developed countries at that time was not as high as it is now, we can see how expensive these games were at that time. And these games have not been discounted for many years, so game companies have made a lot of money. Several classic Japanese-style RPG models launched by Square on SFC have sold more than one million, even millions. It was after making too much money that Square poached and expanded everywhere in the PS era, and unwittingly buried years of overexpansion, leading to frequent financial problems.

Back to the domestic stand-alone. Compared with the above games, the single sequel sales of some other series can be said to be cool. The sales volume of "Xuanyuan Jian Qi" is said to be only 300000, and there is no more after the sales of "Fantasy three Kingdoms 5" broke through 50,000. According to all parties' speculation, it probably did not break through the level of 100000 in the end.

On the other hand, in recent years, many domestic stand-alone stars have emerged, such as "Taiwu painting Volume", "Ghost Valley eight wasteland", "Dyson Ball Plan" and so on. They perform better than these old brands in terms of sales and invest much less. It can be said that the waves behind the Yangtze River push the waves forward.

In recent years, there have been many afterwaves such as "Ghost Valley eight Wild Land" that often overturned at the beginning of this century. Knowing that there is a huge gap between domestic games and the world level, players and the media are tolerant of the mentality of encouragement and protection. People often praise the good side of domestic games and do not care too much about the defects in domestic games. But also because the domestic stand-alone has always been in a lack of funds, technology, talent and other adverse situation, the quality of most games is difficult to say excellent, so fall into a vicious circle, for a long time, feelings are not always effective. The more a sequel you haven't seen for years, the higher the player's expectation, the greater the disappointment.

Nowadays, players' dissatisfaction with these domestic stand-alone old IP is common. The "Xianjian" series has been controversial since the fifth generation. Before this, almost every work in the series maintained a relatively high standard, especially the first generation and the fourth generation were talked about with great interest, and the third generation also had a lot of fans.

The legendary five of Xianjian was released in 2011, four years after the last film, legendary four. Although the fourth generation has a good reputation, but due to rampant piracy, resulting in poor sales, the Shanghai soft Star, which is responsible for research and development, announced its dissolution after the fourth generation. Tragic factors coupled with the high quality of the fourth generation itself, the high expectations of the players before the fifth generation came on the market, coupled with the enhancement of copyright awareness, "Xian Jian Qiang Chuanwu" was not immediately cracked, and sales miraculously reached 1.3 million sets.

The sales of "Xianjian Chuanwu" is created by the general environment, it can be said that it can not be copied, but the quality problem of "Xianjian Chuanwu" itself is quite serious, the maze is too simple, the battle is lack of innovation, and the modeling can not keep up with the times. the plot is lack of enough to move people, so that the players who bought the game are greatly dissatisfied. Fortunately, Chinese Paladin's five prequels in 2013 matured a lot in the plot, and made up for many of the five generations of settings, which were praised by the players. Shen Yingyi, the screenwriter in charge of the main line of this work, and Ma Wenjing, the deputy screenwriter in charge of the regional dialogue, have been reused in the follow-up works.

The two protagonists of "Fairy Swordsman Chuanwu" lack enough charisma to make players sympathize. At that time, like many old players, I bought the game at the first time. After customs clearance, I felt that the plot level had dropped too much compared with the fourth generation. I can't figure it out. However, it never occurred to me at that time that this was just the beginning.

After the comeback of Chinese Paladin's five prequels, no one expected that there was a relatively big optimization problem in 2015's "Paladin six", and there were too many Bug, and word-of-mouth slipped sharply. At that time, some people used the top "four-way Titan" graphics card to run the game, which could not stabilize at 30 frames, so the famous "Titan fall" stem was born, which was used to describe how bad the game optimization was.

Compared with the previous work, the picture of "Paladin six" is also less advanced. Shen continued to be the chief editor of the play in the sixth generation, but the plot of this generation has caused controversy because he has taken too much steps. For example, the suspense flavor of the story is too strong, several people in the protagonist group have their own plans, lack of sincere sense of friendship, it can be said that all of them have "ulterior motives". In addition, the world outlook draws lessons from some famous Japanese ACG works and incorporates science fiction elements, which is somewhat baffling on the whole. Due to too many problems, word-of-mouth and sales of "Paladin 6" have declined, and the editor-in-chief Shen Yingyi has also resigned from Beijing soft Star.

Many years ago, producer Yao Zhuangxian promised that if he made money, he would use an "illusory" engine in the sequel. As a result, the sixth generation did not use an "unreal" engine, so many players thought it was a fraud. In 2021, "the Legend of the Swordsman" was released, with a gap of up to six years. And it finally used "illusory", the picture level has been greatly improved than before, especially the grandeur of Tianshimen and Xianxia School and the excellence of art is amazing.

Every part of Xianxia School in "Xianjian Qianqi" is like the wallpaper "Xianjian Qianqi", which solved many problems in the 5th and 6th generations. it conforms to the times and becomes an instant ARPG play, no longer using the previous return system, which is actually the trend of the times. At the same time, exploring and solving puzzles are also good, and some levels are well designed and fun to play with.

However, the overall plot of "Xianjian Qixia Chuanqi" is dull, the early and middle stages of the game lack of wonderful plot turning point, and the overall plot pattern is also small. The plot of this generation seems to be influenced by the popular fairy drama in recent years, and it also adopts the setting of the big actress plus the cold-faced male god, but the final effect is not so good. This may be because Ma Wenjing, the screenwriter of this work, used to be mainly responsible for branch line writing and did not have much experience in main line writing. Writing short and interesting branch lines is not the same thing as mastering long and coherent lines.

The series of "Xianjian" is the most famous and the most influential among these old domestic IP, which can be seen from a large number of TV dramas and mobile games that have sprung up in recent years. But this also causes every problem in the series to be infinitely magnified, and the problems that arise after each release of the 5th, 6th and 7th generations can cause controversy and debate, even for several years.

"Xuanyuan Jian" series has been controversial in recent years, especially in 2013, "Xuanyuan Jian Lu" word-of-mouth fell to the bottom of the series, in addition to optimization and other technical problems are a headache, because there are too many screenwriters, there are too many confused places in the plot, the turning point also appears to be very abrupt, the overall story is more chaotic.

"Xuanyuan Jian Lu" can be called a great collection of domestic game shortcomings, although the later six generations of foreign biographies "Dome Gate" no longer have so many optimization problems, but like the "Swordsman Legend Seven", the plot is too insipid-there is nothing to lose if you don't understand it. I can't remember it after watching it, and the game sales are not very good.

"Xuanyuan Jian Qi" appears as a great innovation, and the exploration of battle and settlement riddle absorbs many elements of the "God of War" and "Soul of Darkness" series, but it may be due to the limitation of funds and development cycle, the game flow is very short, many places can not be launched, compared with 6 generations, the final word-of-mouth and sales can not return to the peak state of "Xuanyuan Jian San" and "Heaven scar".

Fantasy of the three Kingdoms 5 has been criticized for its poor modeling and mediocre plots and hurdles. The spiritual sequel of the "Heaven and Earth robbery" series, "Dajian Xiaoyunlu", went on sale in April this year, and the early stage of the release was very high. After the release, some veteran players of the "Heaven and Earth robbery" series were disappointed because of the picture and some details. Sales may also be low in the end.

"Xuanyuan Jian Qi" looks good, but the process is too short.

After the launch of "BJI Xiaoyun Lu", the popularity is so low that there are not even a few complete game reviews. In 2014, there was a game called "Legend of the New Swordsman" on the market. Screenwriter and producer Li Lanyun was the main planner of the famous "Jianxiaqingyuan" series in the early stand-alone era. After many years, this stand-alone version of "Jianxiaqingyuan" spirit sequel, general word of mouth, sales are not good, hastily ended.

Even more difficult these domestic stand-alone veteran IP have overturned, there may be players "knowledgeable", no longer use filters to look at these previous classic series. In the face of new works such as "Xianjian Qianqi", players may compare with many games-compared with foreign 3A, previous works of the "Xianjian" series, and domestic stand-alone rookies.

No comparison, no harm, compared with these games, players will naturally feel dissatisfied.

As mentioned earlier, it is not easy for the old IP to persist today. many R & D companies are unable to recruit enough high-level talent when they are short of funds, and the size of the game is greatly limited to achieve perfection. Under the "endless cycle", it is even more difficult to break through the predicament.

Another point is that the historical burden of the old series is too heavy for it to be as flexible as the domestic stand-alone rookie. Games such as "Taiwu painting volume", "Ghost Valley eight wasteland" and "Hero determination Biography" can use 2D pictures, changeable forms of play, and the scale is not very large. Because they do not have the baggage of the previous work, they are all brand new, and they do not need to take care of the emotions of old players. They must have a larger scale, a better picture, and a more evolutionary way of playing.

This year's much-discussed Biography of chivalrous ambition uses a 2D pixel painting style. Is "Xianjian" all right? But for the "Xianjian" series, it is a very risky behavior to give up 3D mass production and turn it into 2D low-cost production. If in the future there is a "Xianjian Warrior Legend 8", but become a 2D game, some people must blame the picture level of a big retrogression, after all, seven generations of 3D is already quite good. Similar baggage makes it difficult for many old brands, and the future development is even more cloudy.

Personally, I like the classics of "Xianjian" and "Xuanyuan Jian" series. But after seeing that new works often turn over, I can understand if they decide to suspend the development of stand-alone sequels. This is a very real problem, the stand-alone market is so large, at a time when the cost of game production is rising, if you invest tens of millions of dollars but can not get back to the cost, no company can afford to lose money like this for a long time.

"scar of Heaven" moved countless players at that time. For IP holders, digging into characters and plots from these old classic series and adapting them into mobile games and PC games may be the most realistic choice at present, just like what "Fairy Sword World" is doing. You can say that this is out of helplessness, or you can say that it is a wise move. In short, this is what the market is like today. The choice of commercialization can not only take care of the interests of individual groups-perhaps it is the same way to integrate the needs of stand-alone and online game players in play and plot. Some European and American masterpieces are in season operation.

So far, the middle-hand game has not responded to the recent news on the Internet. Therefore, all kinds of "Xianjian" series stop developing stand-alone sequels and the news that the development team is disbanded is still a rumor. We cannot say that the "Xianjian" series will never be launched as a stand-alone sequel in the future. Shanghai soft Star can be disbanded and reorganized, and who can say for sure what will happen in the future-- whether it is the change of the market environment, or the reuse and resale of IP?

Perhaps by then, there will be unexpected solutions to the problems that have plagued old brands for a long time.

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