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

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Touch Music (ID: chuappgame), author: DLS_MWZZ

Even if it was only a virtual echo, many stories should be known by more people.

Recently, the game "anchor girl heavy dependence", which depicts virtual anchor (Vtuber), sold 1.2 million copies. According to statistics, about half of this sales volume is in China, which makes the producers quite surprised. Although the game was still considered a niche, the fact that it could sell numbers that could be understood from a secular perspective also reflected the increasing presence of virtual hosts as a class or theme.

At this historical anchor, perhaps it's time to look back at the many intersections of virtual hosting, a new industry, and video games to help envision the future. Just as cooking and farming games are booming today, perhaps certain themes and genes for future games have already arrived.

When this article was written, the number of Chinese comments was 14839/28268. Will more than half of love disappear? On December 1, 2016,"stumbling love" officially appeared. It has been nearly 7 years since then. For virtual anchors, she has a certain industry-defining effect. From her beginning, virtual anchor gradually defined several business sectors. Because the virtual image itself has the effect of breaking through the dimensional wall, video games that also allow people to interact with the dimensional wall have always occupied a very interesting position.

Generally speaking, virtual anchor generally needs to establish fictional character design first, mainly to serve users with spiritual content such as companionship. Therefore, virtual anchors often play games live, that is, they use video games as different stages to show their personality and respond to users 'expectations. For example, the classic "flower Q" that makes love out of the circle comes from the game process of Resident Evil 7, without which the effect will not come. As a result, many "biochemical" players at that time, although they didn't know her yet, may not even know the existence of the virtual anchor concept, but they would already use "the AI girl who said 'flower Q'"to represent her.

The legendary "source of all evil" obviously, virtual anchor and real game anchor in the design of game shows or there are many differences. Most game hosts focus on the content of the game, although it will certainly have a personal style, but the focus is still inseparable from the charm of the game. Virtual anchors, on the other hand, tend to prioritize elements that reflect personal style and even "personification."

The two different ideas do not conflict, but often learn from each other. Nowadays, virtual anchors and live game anchors generally do not completely implement any of them, but do business with their own proportion. However, in the early days of virtual anchor formation, it did create two distinct program effects, which may even attract antipathy from the gamer camp. To sum up, it is the common stereotype of virtual anchor_"dish." This "dish" is not only the poor level of the game (such as blank card clearance, stupid to death, fancy being beaten, etc.), but also includes the lack of understanding, acceptance, and even impoliteness of the game content itself.

In the case of the recently popular "Top Ten Dark Moments," one of the darkest moments for virtual anchor paying users is about giving their favorite virtual anchor a game they want to play, but the other party criticizes the game in a live broadcast. Of course, that rarely happens nowadays.

Especially in old games, young virtual anchors are prone to tragedy because of operating habits and design generation differences_press what to change? In the early days of virtual anchor development, it is not surprising that there will be such a situation, because many virtual anchor "middle people" are screened by artists, vegetarian people, voice actor concept, they are not game experts, may not even be game players, it is really too difficult to force them to play some games with thresholds. At the same time, the selling point of virtual anchors is not limited to game shows. Early stereotypes are formed for multiple reasons, and sometimes official events are willing to amplify them.

But from the game enthusiast's point of view, it is inevitable to form a soul question: Is virtual anchor a "consumer" video game? For example, on the one hand, with the help of video games to fill the live content, enhance their own image; on the other hand, they did not show the charm of the game well, even let the audience misunderstand, criticize the quality of the game.

In order to compromise this "consumption" problem, many virtual anchors began to choose some games more suitable for their own play, among which a typical version of the answer is "My World." At this stage, there are also vague concepts such as "virtual anchor-specific game lists," and even some games will be designed for virtual anchor program effects, such as the recent Chained Together, which may be a type of development for video games.

Always see the linkage game "Pummel Party," later there are "sugar bean man," various "werewolf kill" and other virtual anchor game effect, compared with the real anchor has a different gain. Because the virtual anchor is not a real person, the design logic of this set of skin is very consistent with the long-standing commercial elements in the ACG field for many years. Yu Meiman is Spider-Man-style "masked hero after work," while Japanese Man is "magic teenage girl after school," so the game world is naturally the fantasy stage most suitable for them to show charm, and it can attract the audience's attention.

In addition, many virtual anchors have a lot of "unusual" setting elements, combined with the game theme, there is always a magical chemical reaction, this is a real anchor can not do. Take the occasional "snake" in anthropomorphic elements, for example. As an audience, you should be reasonably curious about what the "snake anchor" would look like when he played "eating python" in Resident Evil 4: Remake.

More extension, the same company other anchor may have "can eat colleagues" soul torture with the development of virtual anchor, now there are many original game anchor transformation, or strength excellent people join, game program perception has been greatly improved. For example, in the passers-by station of "Overwatch Pioneer: Return," SelenTatsuki, the virtual anchor, met XQC and Seagull, and won. It was newsworthy at the time, but the fact that it made news in itself shows how strong stereotypes used to be.

In a word, in recent years, the new thing "virtual anchor" born in this century is such an interesting relationship with the "video game" born in the last century, which has not yet completely got out of the dilemma of public opinion and is still a new thing.

Because of the question of "consumption game," the business cooperation between early virtual anchor and electronic game is mainly based on the linkage of image authorization, and its carrier is naturally relatively young user, game type is relatively light mobile game.

For example, virtual anchor love, the second year after his debut, participated in the mobile game "Mito Rafi-MITRASPHERE-" linkage, but also carried out "I pit myself" live broadcast. Later, she appeared in many joint projects, including the familiar Blue Route.

In 2017, this really has a different program effect, which is a step further than playing games by seiyu. At this stage, both virtual anchors and game producers are still relatively conservative. In addition to the moral dilemmas posed by "consumer games," there are practical problems affecting production.

For example, as a brand-new form, the "accident rate" in the early days of virtual anchor development was quite high. Low popularity anchor may not survive half a year, a month, or even a week to graduate dismally; high popularity anchor may live broadcast slip words bring "inflammation," or for various reasons lead to frequent situations, crisis public relations costs rise, jokingly said, it is simply "monthly melon eat."

This was a bit of a panic for the gaming industry, which required a group of people to work together and work hard for one or two years at a time. Even if it was a mobile game, it would take two or three months. For the producers, the situation where the virtual anchor was on fire and graduated before the linkage was online, resulting in a significant revision of the game content, although it was rare, was still a threat that was enough to make people nervous. On the other hand, for virtual hosts, there is little need to bind a game deeply, and the power tilt of both sides is different.

Therefore, in the early stage, it is more "dare to eat crabs," or tentative games will choose virtual anchor linkage. For example, the domestic mobile game "Mobile Team" is not only the senior robot theme works linked with "this major," but also includes the domestic game "Ai Xi," the big brother Sun Yifeng, film and television actors and other fields, crossing the border to the point where it seems that there is no boundary in the world. In this case, the addition of virtual anchor Meng Naiqi (far right in the picture below) in 2019 will be less abrupt.

In the linkage, these four people can put together a table mahjong exploratory situation in the domestic stand-alone independent game "Awakening Road" has been reflected. At an exhibition in November 2020, because the booth was adjacent, the producer who had never known the virtual anchor accidentally met the virtual anchor Hiiro, so the player met a cute pink cat in the game.

In November 2020, Hiiro's personal career was still in development, with about 200,000 fans, and when Hiiro broadcast "The Road to Awakening""I Meet Myself" in October 2021, there were nearly 800,000 fans, and later more than a million fans. For an indie game that is often tight on advertising costs, Hiiro's live stream provides tangible help, and Hiiro fans who buy the game can also be seen in the Steam comments section expressing their joy at being able to feed cats virtually. The response from Vanimals, the producer, was also warm. In a follow-up update, players will be able to bring the wandering Hiiro home in The Road to Awakening-and that's what video game virtual content is all about!

"I feed myself." Of course, where there are positive examples, there will be less positive examples. Because the virtual anchor and fans are separated by a layer of secondary image "leather case," their relationship remains at a subtle level. The anchor is worried about being "opened" and revealing his true identity, while the fans are worried about the relationship between the person in the middle and the leather case. These complex factors make virtual anchor always in a process of friction, iteration and tossing, and the operational risks they bring naturally follow.

For example, the recent "cat thunder return event," summed up is a virtual anchor for some reasons abandoned the original image to run elsewhere business, soon was opened box, plus revenue unfavorable, can only go back to the original skin to do return, public praise and wind evaluation of course also plummeted. This is a typical example: imagine, if she has game linkage words, even if it is only the character image, from the linkage producer's point of view is also a disaster, the project team may have to abandon the content already done, and she "cut the seat."

At the same time, as the virtual anchor industry began to mature and stabilize relatively, the theme game type developed directly around the virtual image of reality appeared. It may have started out as a way for younger fans to burn hot love, known as "I push games for me."

However, similar to linkage, the direct binding between the game and the virtual anchor is also unknown, such as "Kizuna AI - Touch the Beat!" launched on Steam in May this year. This is a music VR game developed around the virtual idol ancestor love. Even if VR users are relatively small, just 31 comments reflect the "dismal" of love today, especially after love himself announced "indefinite dormancy" at his February concert. No matter how high or low the reviews of other VR games were, the reviews ranged from one to two hundred to three to five hundred. This comparison was intuitive.

The last place in the world I'll ever see her,"he said. "But quantitative change can always lead to qualitative change. In this development process, as many younger generation fans enter the world of games, animations and cartoons from watching virtual anchors, the presence of virtual anchors among new generation users is becoming more and more common. So it's only natural that a game with a (fictional) virtual anchor as its core story should be born and get approval.

The new generation of secondary display "anchor girl heavy dependence" hot sales, especially the Chinese market can actually take up half, such results seem a bit unexpected, but if carefully examined the reasons, seems to be reasonable.

First of all, in recent years, virtual anchor unexpectedly develops rapidly in some universally acceptable forms in our country, and occasionally breaks the circle_for example, the participation of Cai Ming, a people's artist, intuitively explains that the core theme of bringing happiness to the masses and fans is inherited in one way or another.

At the same time, a lot of things have shifted online over the past three years, including school instruction. In order to attract students to listen well, many teachers will use virtual images to face students. If you look at the news, you will find that it is not an exception, and it is not a complete work with entertainment nature, but a serious course. Especially for those who go to college in 2019, the days when they can only rely on online social networking for a few years also have the effect of "watching V grow up" or "watching roommates watch V grow up."

In addition to teaching, there have been numerous operations in which virtual images have been used by official institutions and commercial companies in recent years. For example,"Xinke Niang" appeared in 2019. Although her subsequent development is not ideal, the door has been opened. Nowadays, what kind of e-sports equipment brand (Wenwen), weather forecast (A Zhun), even fire brigade science popularization (Mu Mu Bai), there are always things you can't think of are pulled over by the virtual anchor, enthusiastically put on the screen, thus accumulating a large number of users.

Second, under the background of the long-term vigorous development of China's Internet industry, the plot depicted in "anchor girl heavy dependence" is more likely to cause chain resonance.

Whether a story will be widely accepted and understood by people in an era is a big influence point, just as in the early years of the Internet, the novel "First Intimate Contact," which depicts online love, was widely perceived by people who could contact, know or wonder about the Internet at that time.

From the story point of view,"anchor girl heavy dependence" is relatively complete, seriously depicts the virtual anchor (also includes some network anchor) life may have a variety of encounters, more than 20 endings of the generous capacity, almost carpet coverage. For the vast majority of virtual anchor users, it can even be jokingly called "there is always a situation with the people you push." At the same time, the game is supplemented by appropriate dramatic design and artistic expression, presenting the story of the virtual anchor with the right effect, without any excessive, malicious or live interpretation that is easy for young people to resent, so that people can accept and appreciate it at ease.

This kind of "drama" style reliable attitude, not only can let curious passers-by have a more correct impression, for fans who don't know how to introduce the virtual anchor concept for a while, recommend this game to their friends is also a compromise way. Of course, it also included interpretations such as "looking in the mirror" that could cause chain effects among players. In the comment area of the game, one could see all kinds of long and high-quality feedback that shook the soul, such as defense breaking, comprehension, and emotion.

Virtual games, but with a real feel that is, the story depicted in "anchor girl heavy dependence" conforms to some kind of centralized projection in the hearts of this generation of young users, just like kicking a ball to break a neighbor's window in the 1980s and 1990s, or turning on an Internet cafe in the 1990s and 1990s. The era version of the story is always moving forward, and "anchor girl heavy dependence" about touched this era version.

Conclusion The success of "anchor girl heavy dependence" is a good example of the stage, no matter from the freshness, good storytelling, market income and other aspects, all reflect the changes of the times. It reminds me of the paragraph that divides the era of "second yuan":"Triassic second yuan" watching TV programs into pits,"Jurassic second yuan" watching anime game magazines into pits,"Cretaceous second yuan" watching video websites into pits... So, many young users of today's generation should be watching virtual anchors and idols into pits.

Then, even if it was only a virtual echo, many stories should be known by more people. As part of "second dimension" or other popular culture, virtual anchor element should also have more and more presence in games in the future_In August this year, Chilla's Art, which specializes in niche horror games, launched "Parasocial" featuring virtual anchor. Maybe in another ten or twenty years, someone will look back at "anchor girl heavy dependence" as they look back at "Cherry Blossom War" today.

However, in the game to appear in what proportion of virtual anchor elements, still need to wait and see, may have to wait for the second or third sales masterpiece, then a good conclusion.

Nursery rhymes sing: A generation has a generation to push, who will be the next decade

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