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

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

The competition of many two-dimensional games is not to eat the so-called dividend and ascend to the throne of two-dimensional games, but to survive in this game market.

In the first three quarters of 2023, the ecology of two-dimensional games showed a fierce competition of "never-ending". The games of the same category compete on the same stage without avoiding each other, and the mode of operation shows their own talents. Their competition is not to eat the so-called dividend and ascend to the throne of the two-dimensional game, but to survive in this game market.

The two-dimensional games Breakdown: star Dome Railway and return to the Future 1999 are the two most important two-dimensional games in the first half of 2023, both of which are dedicated to creating excellent "visual effects" and are light turn-based games. But even for this kind of "head product", life is not easy.

The early operation mode of "return to the Future 1999" is difficult to be understood by players, and its overwhelming publicity costs too much, but too much publicity investment, making it difficult for "return to the Future 1999" to recover the cost in revenue, and the subsequent announcement will not be sustained. The arrival of "return to the Future 1999" has not changed the dominant secondary market pattern.

After a brief peak, the revenue of "return to the Future 1999" gradually fell back to a lower level and entered a stable operating period, while the revenue of "return to the Future 1999" did not continue to decline. Although the attempt to hit the two-dimensional game throne failed, "return to the Future 1999" has laid a large market in two-dimensional, but some industry insiders revealed before: "the announcement investment of opening service has a great impact on" return to the Future 1999 ". Revenue has not yet leveled out the cost of distribution."

"collapse: star Dome Railway" achieved excellent results in the first half of the year, but also encountered some problems in the second half of 2023. After the freshness of the opening period, both Kachi and sacred relics made people feel more similarities with the "original God".

The high-profile performance of "collapse: the Star Dome Railway", coupled with the label "Miha you's new work", will give people the impression that it is of the same specification as the original God. The similarity between the nurturance system and the "original God" in the game also implies the "sister" relationship between the two games. It's just that "collapse: star Dome Railway", as a newly launched game, does not have the same output capacity as "original God"-compared to the efficient output of "original God", there is an obvious problem with the production capacity of "collapse: star Dome Railway".

Mihayou seems to regard the success of the original God as an "accident" and "exception", and does not think that all subsequent games can reach this level. "collapse: star Dome Railway" is not equipped with multiple project teams to participate in game development like "original God". As a result, while the original God is still iterating through the version, there is not enough content to update "collapse: the Star Dome Railway".

Perhaps with this in mind, compared with the heavy atmosphere of "Breaking IP" in the past, "collapse: Stardome Railway" adopts a short and fast plot mode: a space comedy road movie. Apart from some of the old faces of "Breaking IP", "collapse: Stardome Railway" shows few of the huge and complex elements of "Breaking IP". Instead, it is easy and pleasant to meet partners and go on adventures to the next planet.

This "space comedy" plot mode, coupled with Mihayou's deep ploughing two-dimensional character design, makes "collapse: Stardome Railway" left a lot of impressive characters, but limited by production capacity, the current plot content is less, the character story is relatively short, the shaping is superficial, and the overall temperament of the game is tilted to light players.

At the same time, the "original god" has gradually become an Internet phenomenon, and the attribute of its game product itself is not so important. The original God has built its own content ecology, not just a game. The impact of going out of the circle makes the original God pay more attention to maintaining the popularity and the commercial value of IP, and the update of the game itself tends to be conservative.

Players have new expectations for game content, and hasty changes to the current game model may have an adverse impact, which essentially conflicts with the stability required by commercial value, coupled with the production team's dependence on the path of previously updated content. Although the original god has sufficient production capacity at present, the homogenization of its content is becoming more and more serious. Players in the expectation again and again do not get a response, for the "original God" game production team will gradually lose confidence.

Based on a similar train of thought to the original God, collapse: the Star Dome Railway also chooses to build its own content community. It's just that as a new game launched this year, "collapse: star Dome Railway" lacks enough original creators and often needs to "subscribe" to some well-known bloggers, compared with the mature "second creation" community of "original God" and the original UP owner, increasing the cost of publicity.

Even Miha Tour, a dominant company in the field of two-dimensional games, is faced with the dilemma of rising development costs and publicity expenses. in addition, the underproduction of "collapse: star Dome Railway", the homogenization of "original God" content, and the contradiction between "core users" and "mainstream public". While raising the standard of the two-dimensional game, Mihayou seems to have "involved" himself.

In the summer of July, 2023, the original God fell out of the second half of the top 10 "big fight", starting with the "dusty restricted area", according to Sensor Tower. As a two-dimensional shooting mobile game, the "dusty restricted area" has many problems: whether it is the conflict between the shooting category and the content of the two-dimensional game, or the destruction of the experience caused by the semi-finished "bunker" design in the game, or Xishanju's behavior of abolishing the project team because the data is not up to standard has dealt a blow to players' confidence. These problems seem to set the tone for the second half of the second half of the game.

After the billing test on May 25, 2023, "Dust White restricted area" added the "bunker" system on July 20, which has appeared in other shooting games and can increase players' strategic choices in battle. but this system is not suitable for the upcoming public test of the "Dust White restricted area".

The project team tried to add a new core system to the battle in less than two months. However, the completion of the "bunker" system is insufficient because of the time limit. First of all, the "bunker" is sometimes completely unable to stop the monster's attack; second, approaching the "bunker" has become an obstacle for the player to fight smoothly: its slow loading action also makes it impossible for the player to avoid the monster's attack; finally, the game is not designed around the "bunker", and the meaning of the emergence of many "bunkers" is unknown. In short, bunker not only does not increase the choice of game strategy, but worsens the combat experience and becomes the chicken rib design in the game.

Although the project team failed to fully evaluate the feasibility of this design, which led to this situation, its operational attitude of listening to feedback has also been recognized by some players. "Dust and White restricted area" continues to adjust the direction of the game, starting from the character's art design, hoping to keep its own two-dimensional basic set for the time being, but with little effect.

A month after the start of service, the "dust restricted area" fell out of the top 200 "dust restricted area" of App Store's best-selling list, but came from outside the game. On July 15, 2023, another two-dimensional game, "Bijie", announced that the project was closed because the test data were not up to standard. "Dust White restricted area" became the only one in the two-dimensional game field. Then, on July 20, the public test of the "Dust and White restricted area" resulted in countless voices of questioning. Players began to question the operation of the "dusty restricted area", fearing that the game would one day be suddenly shut down because of data problems.

In the face of a project that may stop updating or even shutting down because of revenue, not only few players are willing to invest their energy, but it is also difficult for the production team to update the content of the game with peace of mind when they may lose their jobs at any time.

The head of the two-dimensional game in the wanton "volume" to seize the market at the same time, driving up the development costs of the entire industry. In the past, mobile games of the same specification may only need 1 million of revenue a month to survive, but at a time when personnel costs are rising, more funds are needed to maintain the development of the project.

This has made the research and development of many games difficult to sustain, or have to be abolished or launched ahead of time, such as "time sequence residual Sound" announced the closure, while "Dust White restricted area" has released an update to the suspected Spring Festival version.

The update of the suspected Spring Festival version of "Dust White restricted area" released by "Dust White restricted area" may be a representative, it can be seen as an attempt into new areas, but it tends to be conservative because of the deterioration of the market. whether it takes months to urgently design the "bunker" mechanism, or "release the game content in advance to keep the players", it is all to "survive".

"Blue Archives" and "horse race Niang" also ushered in their own national service in the second half of this year. With its own unique healing painting style and two creations that have long been popular in major communities, "Blue Archives" has gained a firm foothold in the domestic game market. Just "blue file" as a foreign service has been operating for a long time of the game, the current market performance can only be said to be "in line with expectations", it is difficult to bring more surprises to the market.

The national service of "Azure Archives" has only briefly entered the top 50 of App Store's best-selling list, and only 33 "horse races" are born out of Japan's "multimedia" project. Together with the IP drama "horse race", it has achieved 100 million results in two seasons on Bilibili. The reputation of the play is also quite good, with a high score of 9.8 from 30,000 people in the first season and 9.9 from 70,000 people in the second season. When the IP derivative game "sparkle!" "Youjun Girl" is ready to launch in the national service, not only for the feedback of players in the foreign service game has been optimized, but also in the publicity has been fully prepared.

Even if "horse racing Niang" has created one business miracle after another in Japan, it even surpasses the "original god" in the best-selling list and comes to China's "sparkle"! However, "Youjun Girl" seems to be somewhat "unaccustomed to soil and water". For the Japanese, horse racing is a national culture, and the stories of many famous horses are well known locally, so "horse racing Niang" is actually just a channel for "cultural realization", just like "Arena of Valor" is a channel for domestic "social realization". Previously, the game "Destiny: crown designation" by Bilibili agents also has the attribute of "cultural realization", which coincides with the rise of domestic two-dimensional groups, which has brought a lot of income and users to Bilibili. It is just that China does not have a strong tradition of horse racing culture, and the quality of this game a few years ago is difficult to open the gap with other products.

However, at 18:00 on September 7th, "shine!" Youjun Girl closes the client download entrance of the game, and players who have downloaded it will not be affected. Many people in the industry speculate that the reason for the "technology upgrade" is that there is a "big difference" between the online version and the submitted version of the game, no matter what the reason, this is a heavy blow to a new game soon after its launch.

"sparkle! Youjun Girl closes the download entrance of the game client due to technological upgrades. Until the end of September 2023, the two-dimensional game "Destiny" has temporarily ceased. In this "big fight to the death", new games often fail to gain the upper hand. In terms of content and player emotion, it is difficult for players to have the "stickiness" of the old game for the new game. players often come into contact with a new game because of the freshness, but they will run to the old game after a period of time. If you want to retain players, you need to be more attractive in content than old games, which is extremely difficult to achieve at a time when development costs are rising. Many game companies have used AI to assist in research and development, in order to reduce costs and improve quality, but the current development of AI is not satisfactory.

Many companies seem to have developed a collective subconsciousness in the operation of game products, and the number was released in January 2023. In order to avoid the impact of "collapse: Stardome Railway", the options for two-dimensional games are very limited. Only then will it be concentrated on this year's summer launch, resulting in unprecedented congestion on the track. During the suspension of the version number, great changes have taken place in the market itself, which makes many games suffer losses in the operation of the game.

For game companies, the restrictions on version numbers also affect their exploration in other areas. The version number not only limits the proliferation of skin-changing games, but also increases the cost of game development; the suspension phase of the version number makes the old game top, but also reduces the player's acceptance of the new game. At the same time, the old games can not completely avoid the impact of new games competing for users.

The cost of the head product to seize the market becomes higher and the income decreases, and the increase in development cost also makes the luck of small and medium-sized game projects difficult, while the cost of development does not flow to practitioners. The decline in revenue from the market will make many companies tend to control costs, "reduce costs and increase efficiency" in the industry, unemployment and layoffs occur frequently. In this two-dimensional game, there is no winner for the time being.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.