Last week, the news that "Tencent tried to invest in Miha Tour was rejected" was screened in the circle of friends of ACG practitioners. For a time, the remarks that mocked the big factory for not being able to play the second-yuan explosion game were endless. In fact, while Genshin Impact was online, Tencent also launched the game "The List of Monsters Past Life" adapted from the comic book "The List of Monsters".
Then it jumped.
This "Monster List Past Lives" was released by Tencent. After it was launched on September 25th, even though it had the selling point of "the first 0- krypton 200 mobile game", it fell out of the TOP 100 of the domestic App Store game list in just six days, and the TapTap score was as low as 2.5. Second-dimensional games such as Genshin Impact and High-energy Hand-organized Group, which were launched in the same period, still have sounds (or are constantly purchased), but this game with the endorsement of "Tencent Animation Head Works" has long been silent.
"Roaming linkage" was once the vision of every animator, but judging from the overall strength of two-dimensional game works in recent years, the performance of domestic diffuse game is really unsatisfactory. I sorted out the domestic animation adaptation games that went online in the last four years, and found that the average score of these games on TapTap was only 4.44, and the lowest score was only 2.4, and the highest score was only 6.2, indicating that players were not satisfied with most games.
Nowadays, the explosion of secondary games is frequent and the popularity is booming. Why did it become like this when you changed the game?
Roaming linkage had a glorious past.
This will start with the evil spirits of the originator of China's online comic platform. With the comics, animations and movies of 100,000 Cold Jokes, the IP of 10 Cold Jokes was won by game maker Langang, and the mobile game of 100,000 Cold Jokes was launched on March 15. Once the mobile game of Ten Lengs was launched, it caused great repercussions. According to the news reports at that time, the mobile game "100,000 Cold Jokes" rushed into the TOP 15 of the App Store game bestseller list that day. In September of that year, it was launched in Taiwan Province Province, China, and on September 29th, it reached the top of App Store Free List and Google Play Popular Free List in Taiwan Province Province, China.
On the one hand, the popularity of Ten Cold Mobile Games benefited from the popularity of Ten Cold IP in that year, and on the other hand, it was closely related to the close cooperation of comic platform, original authors, game developers, game publishers and other parties.
At an industry sharing meeting, Zola, the producer of Ten Lengs mobile game, said that there was a demon who did not simply sell the game adaptation rights of Ten Lengs IP to Blueport, but chose to develop it with Blueport and the developers' interesting games. During the research and development of the game project, Yao Dong and comic writers kept in touch with Blueport Hequ, and put forward many opinions on the conception and plot of the game.
Moreover, according to Zola's introduction at that time, a demon did not directly charge the licensing fee to Blueport, but cooperated in the form of game revenue sharing. This ensures the content of the ten cold games, and there will be no magic and hard IP cases that allow game developers to quickly realize.
It is precisely because of the Japanese "production committee" form, the enchanting experience of promoting Ten Leng IP, and the cross-border contacts of Wang Feng, the helm of Shanghai Blue Harbor, that the Ten Leng mobile game has been fully publicized, with cartoons and animation guiding games, new subway and bus advertisements pulled down online, and the "Ten Leng" spread of social media. Although Guo Man's audience was limited at that time, most of the ten cold fans who were perfectly publicized turned into game users, and "100,000 Cold Jokes Mobile Games" achieved success beyond industry expectations.
On 20 15, Ten Cold Mobile Games handed over a beautiful "roaming linkage" answer sheet, which gave domestic animation practitioners unlimited confidence. Many cartoonists and animators feel that as long as their works can be selected by the platform and they change their own games, they can turn over to be landlords and enjoy the wealth and freedom for the rest of their lives.
At the end of 2065438+2006, the mobile game of Ten Lengs was updated for the last time, and soon stopped taking it, ending a generation of classics.
At this time, domestic comics are driving wildly in the fast lane: there is a demon being acquired by Orpheus, the comic works of Tencent Animation are being animated in batches, the story of IP painting cakes is flying all over the sky, and comics are favored by many capitals to complete financing ... The whole comic industry is in a state of going all out. The platform is busy burning money, and the comic CP is busy using "roaming linkage" to post gold for the works. Everyone has not made too many practical actions in the game adaptation.
Also in this year, the glory of the king, a MOBA game owned by Tencent, officially established its dominant position in the field of mobile games, and secondary games such as Destiny/Big Order, Master of Yin and Yang, and Crash Series gradually became fixed items for players. While paying more and more attention to secondary games, game manufacturers have also found that there is not much connection between the changes and outbreaks of secondary mobile games.
According to Er Yuan, the amount of authorization granted to game makers by the expanding Guo Man market at that time was not lower than that of Japanese similar works. The only advantage is that the supervision and maintenance of game manufacturers are not as strict as in Japan. However, it is precisely because Guo Man is unprofessional and does not pay attention to supervision and repair, which also lays a hidden danger for the future game quality.
20 17 mobile game "The Great Sage Returns to the Journey to the West" arrived two years after the film was released. Although the producer said on TapTap that the game was "definitely not a simple skin-changing product", the player found that it was a stitched skin-changing product, which was very enjoyable.
Even so, October Culture, the copyright owner of Return of the Great Sage, did not stop the pace of authorization because of the bad reviews of fans. In 20 18, another licensed mobile game "Return of the Great Sage" was launched. The same MMORPG and the same skin change made more fans flinch. Subsequently, in 20 19, a solo tour with the same name was launched on PC and PS4 platforms. After some Amway by director Ao and other UP owners, players who thought it was an orthodox masterpiece placed orders to buy games one after another, thinking about the adaptation of the light of support, but they were shocked by the poor picture quality and rough gameplay.
In fact, compared with the past film and television skin-changing games, skin-changing games have made some progress. Although the gameplay is similar to other subcutaneous, most of them are quick to force Krypton to harvest a wave. But the difference is that the skin-changing game respects the original work relatively in art, after all, the same paper maker will not be too lame. In the plot, this kind of game will also restore the classic plot of the original work, which can barely appease the fans.
However, changing skin is changing skin after all. The insincere gameplay, poor game balance, and ugly methods of forcing Krypton make the Guo Man fans who are not rich leave quickly.
On TapTap, the operation of Return of the Great Sage once replied faintly to an angry player: "Everyone plays games just for fun." But will players really be happy playing such random games?
In 20 19, the domestic animation industry, which is the first year of its rise every year, was deeply involved in "involution", and the game industry also reduced production due to factors such as the tightening of the version number. After several years of catering, the concept of "roaming linkage" has finally begun to hand in the answer sheet-rambling games have been launched one after another.
20 17 Tencent announced the gamification adaptation decision of Fox Demon Little Matchmaker and One Man, and finally got an echo on 20 19. On June 3 10 and 3 1 day, the mobile game "Fox Demon Little Matchmaker" was released for public beta. Three days before the public beta, it maintained the position of 1 in the domestic App Store game list. This game, operated by Northern Lights Studio, which developed Tianya Yueming Knife, got a 4.8 on TapTap because of its "rough picture" and "too much gold content". Even so, thanks to Tencent's excellent channels and announcements, according to statistics, in 20 19, the mobile game "Fox Demon Little Matchmaker" brought Tencent more than 260 million yuan in revenue. Although it is far from the accumulated income of 3.5 billion yuan from Riman's adaptation games of Tencent, such as Naruto and Saint saint seiya, considering the gap between Fox Demon and Naruto, this achievement is acceptable.
In 2020, Tencent successively released two mobile games, Under One Person and Past Lives on the Monster List. Among them, "Under One Man" has been supported by many core resources including QQ and WeChat Game Center, and it has performed well in the first month after its launch. According to the observation and statistics of Upmaster @ 嗬嗬嗬嗬嗬嗬嗬嗬, the running score of the mobile game "Under One Man" in June exceeded 2.5. But then it dropped rapidly. The mobile game "Under One Man" was only about 56 1 000 in June, only 2% of that in June.
On the other hand, I bought Netease comics and shouted the slogan of "Ten-year Covenant". I very much hope that a self-developed game can replace FGO. Mangai is also one of the attempts. At the beginning of this year, a mobile game of the same name was released based on the apostle cartoon "The King is Unhappy" (formerly known as "The King is Unhappy"). At present, the TapTap player's score is 6. 1, which is second only to the mobile game Bump World (6.2) in recent years. However, with the launch of the annual masterpiece "Princess Lianzhu Re:Dive", the overall resources of the platform tilted towards new tours, and the game "Unhappy King" was quickly forgotten by players. Today, there is no trace of "the king is unhappy" in the hot list of his own game center.
However, compared with the platform-led diffuse game, the diffuse game authorized by the animation CP side performed worse. The comic book Shi Yuling and the game of the same name adapted from the animation of Juvenile Gexing were both beaten, and scored 3.5 and 2.4 on the TapTap platform, among which the mobile game of Juvenile Gexing set and still maintains the record of the lowest score of domestic games.
However, the cooperation between small and medium-sized game manufacturers and Guo Man is often linked. For example, the anime "Unhuman" is a smash hit in Weibo, and it is associated with many games such as reincarnation, Ole Star, unhappy king, and dream formation plan. Relevant characters enter the mobile game as NPC/ non-core characters, and interact by completing tasks. On the one hand, it can attract comic fans to become game users, on the other hand, it can attract comic fans to become game users.
However, this linkage form is not very good for most national IP. On the one hand, domestic animation has been greatly impacted by short videos and live broadcasts. It's hard to have an avatar like "100,000 Cold Jokes" and "Fox Demon Little Matchmaker" in recent years. Game companies are more willing to fight for high-profile overseas IP links like Ghost Blade. On the other hand, most of the IP of the head comics is held by the comic platform, and the comic platform has a weak subjective will for linkage, while the business ability of the animation CP itself is indeed limited, resulting in only a handful of linkage cases.
Indeed, domestic animation games have encountered several problems: IP is not hot enough, and it is difficult for games to get too much traffic through comics and animation works themselves; The audience's age is generally not high, and their acceptance of krypton is low, which affects the income scale of the adapted works; The adaptation period is short, and the communication between IP party, original author and game producer is limited, which ultimately affects the quality of the finished game.
Are these problems difficult to overcome? However, once a successful random game is born, it can be proved that there are feasible solutions to these problems.
Before, many people questioned the possibility of the development of secondary games in China, thinking that this outlet only existed in the Japanese market. However, Fate/Grand Order, the national service, has become a banknote printing machine since it was launched on 20 16, which laid the foundation for the listing and is still an evergreen tree in the game. "Yin Yang Shi" made Netease successfully rush into the head track of the second-element mobile game, providing a stable source of income for Netease games. Nowadays, the national service has an average monthly flow of over 100 million yuan; Popular games such as Crash, Tomorrow's Ark, and The Battle of Two Pamirs have continuously proved to the market that small and medium-sized teams can also rank among the head game companies with a secondary game. Frequent explosions have triggered the investment fever of secondary games, and even "Tencent can't invest in Mihayou" has made secondary game manufacturers proud.
The success of the secondary game also paved the way for the diffuse game. With the expansion of Guo Man's influence, the audience's age groups are more and more extensive. When the user value of domestic animation IP is high enough, all parties involved in roaming linkage will definitely make more efforts for game adaptation.
Now, manufacturers who want to change hands should realize that it is no longer desirable to simply change skins. How to show the content advantages of the original in the game and adapt it based on the highlights of the original is the key to the success of the game.
In addition, mobile games should also find ways to fully display the original works and improve playability. If it is not an antique, it must be made into MMORPG or turn-based when it is uncertain. This "shortcut" does not help the long-term development of the game, and even backfires on the original IP, and all parties lose.
There are many types of IP in Guo Man, from antique to urban, from fantasy to science fiction, and works with over 100 million hits abound. However, the popular animation IP is just icing on the cake for the game. Only when the game is really fun, whether it is IP fans or ordinary players, will it always be recognized. If you want to gain fame and fortune by adapting the game, you need to be down to earth.