Everyone knows that after a phenomenon-level masterpiece is popular, there will be many companies and many projects that follow the trend and copy and learn from. After the success of PUBG, there are many game companies in the world that have done many, many battle royale projects. Some people do martial arts battle royale, and some people do medieval cold weapon battle royale. Some people do battle royale where cars crash into each other, and some even do battle royales that drive boats and fire at each other in the sea.
In our general perception, it is difficult to have cases of copying more than the original, but Fortnite has done it, and its popularity has even reached nearly ten times that of the game Eat Chicken. What did it improve that led to their wave after wave of greater success?
Fortnite is the Game's English name. How successful was it? Let me share a few numbers with you. In 2018, the game was only a few months after it was launched, and it circled hundreds of millions of users. Revenue exceeded $200 million in April 2018 and more than $300 million in May.
Fortnite loading interface
First, the four elements of Fortnite's success
1. The introduction of building elements brings a new experience
The introduction of construction elements has made Fortnite bring a completely new design and a completely different experience to the whole chicken eating game. For example, in a traditional chicken eating game, you can only find existing bunkers to block enemy bullets. But with the addition of building elements, you can instantly build a wall in front of you to block enemy bullets. You can also remove part of the bunker inside the bunker and remodel the bunker. Some players even use the building elements to play the game in this way: when the attack of the enemy in the front cannot be defeated, he quickly builds a bridge from the side, climbs up the mountain, and attacks the enemy from the side. In this way, the gameplay of the game is enriched at once, and the player can open his mind and design the gameplay in a vacuum, which greatly increases the player's game experience.
Build bridges
So how did such an interesting creative new element get added to the battle royale game? There is a little story behind it that you can share.
The developer of fortnite, the company called Epic. This company turned out to be a traditional company that sold game engines. Of course, he has always wanted to make a good game. After all, the game is more profitable, watching others make money, they can only earn some engine fees, which is really a bit unwilling. However, Epic's previous games have been less successful. Fortnite was developed seven or eight years ago and has been in operation for four or five years. Why is the game called Fortnite in English? It is its two English words, one called fortress, which means fortress. A night means night, and together it's called Fortnite, so Chinese translates to Fortnite. The earliest core gameplay of this game is to build fortresses during the day and fight zombies at night, a game in which multiple people cooperate to build Cata Defense. He originally had elements of construction in this game, but it had nothing to do with the battle royale gameplay. The game was tepid for a long time after it went live, and Epic had largely decided to give up the game. At this time, an employee saw the success of pubic players and said, "Hey, can we add chicken eating chicken to the game of Fortnite?" Because this is a product that has been in operation for several years, its development has been very mature, adding a gameplay is very easy for him, anyway, there is no cost, so it only took a few months of effort, they added the game of battle royale to the original "Fortnite" unsuccessful game, and this has become the new game of "Fortnite" that we are playing now.
You may ask, if such an old game was designed seven or eight years ago, would it be far outdated on the screen? This leads to the second element of Fortnite's success, which is the cartoon style.
2. Cartoon style has a wide audience and is not easy to become obsolete
Generally speaking, the games that we say that the screen is easy to become obsolete are actually realistic games. Because realistic games have high requirements for the accuracy of modeling. When the hardware is upgraded. Everyone wants the picture to be more realistic. Then all your previous modeling, all the previous drawings may not be fine enough, you need to improve. Card ventilation is not required. In addition, card ventilation also brings another benefit, that is, many young primary and secondary school students, they prefer card ventilation. Coupled with the addition of building elements, this game has brought many new users to primary and secondary schools. Card ventilation, there is another advantage, because his requirements for the grade of the machine are not very high. So you don't have to use a very high-end p C, a very high-end video game console to play, it is easy to port to the phone. Primary and secondary school students are more likely to use mobile phones to play games. So these reasons add up to a much larger user base for Fortnite than chicken.
3. Update the speed of a ride to the dust
This can also be said to be a coincidence, because it is a big company. When they first saw the Fortnite fire, he made a very big decision: all the resources of the whole company were pressed up, and they must provide the best service for the game. So Fortnite set a record for the highest record in the history of European and American games. Let me share a few numbers with you.
The game has a weekly version, and two weeks is a big version. You know that all of these successful online games in China can reach two weeks with a big version are extremely rare. In just two years, Fortnite has updated more than two hundred weapons and props, and more than twenty game modes have been updated. Let's take a look at other successful European and American games, and their update speed is said to be PUBG eating chicken. Only four new maps and more than fifty weapons and items were updated in the same two years. Overwatch, on the other hand, has only updated four new heroes and five new maps in two years. Previously, there was another chicken eating game, which was particularly popular, called Apex Heroes, and this game actually set a new record. In the first three months, the speed of acquiring users was even faster than that of Fortnite. But it was only a few months after the launch that a new gun and a new hero were updated, so the heat that caused it to fall down very quickly. This is a testament to how attractive a game's update rate is to players and how important it is to maintain a game's popularity.
4. The unique payment mode increases user stickiness
The reason why Fortnite can greatly surpass eating chicken in terms of the number of users is because eating chicken is a paid game. And "Fortnite" chose to use the free business model to do his business model, which is also related to his large number of primary and secondary school students. Primary and secondary school students have no money, simply let them play this game for free. In this way, the number of users has greatly exceeded that of PUBG. But free of a free game, and so many children, why can you make so much money? This is why he creatively introduced a new paid model called Battle Pass, Chinese called Battle License. It's the equivalent of an expansion pack, with every big update with a new map, new gameplay, new heroes, new weapons and equipment, and so on. In China's free online games, these big updates are often provided for free to players. All players who are playing the game can enjoy it directly. However, in foreign games, a large update package is generally sold for money. And this battle in Fortnite is equivalent to updating the big version in the Western world into a semi-paid. Ordinary players can play without spending money, you just need to spend more time, more effort, you can also unlock all the content of this expansion pack. But if you pay for Battle Pass, you can unlock more rewards. In other words, it's free to play, but you can't get a reward from a RMB player. But these rewards are not to make it easier for you to win in the game, much stronger than others in terms of numerical rewards, but more about your skin, your outfit, you look different from others. Because you pay for it, you can experience content in the game earlier that others may have to work hard to experience for a long, long time. And you look different in the game, you can see it at a glance.
BATTLE PASS interface
You're a Battle Pass player and you feel honored. These players are often seen by free players in the game, which actually causes an advertising effect for free players. And why is this advertising effect so effective for free players? It's because the longer you play, because you didn't buy Battle Pass, the more rewards you can't unlock accumulate. But this game offers you the chance to become a Battle Pass player at any moment. That is to say, all your unenlocked rewards are not wasted. You just have to spend money on the Battle Pass at any time, and all the previous unlocked rewards are all given to you. Imagined. For a free player, the longer you play. The stronger your desire to buy Battle Pass, the more likely it is that a large percentage of players end up being Battle Pass players. Just what we know. In the entire Fortnite game, nearly thirty to forty percent of players have purchased battle passes.
Arguably, Battle Pass has created a new free-to-play pay model for the entire industry. Later, even many Chinese game companies and all the game companies in the world, as long as I do online games, as long as I do free, I must do a Battle Pass. It can be said that Battle Pass has made an indelible contribution to the entire gaming industry.
Second, what is the future trend of the chicken eating game?
1. In the future, it will not be easy to produce such a large number of phenomenal chicken eating games.
Because the game category itself has its own limitations. His success stemmed from the fact that he added more randomness and lowered the proportion of skill, resulting in the game being relatively casual. It also leads to professional-level esports players often feeling that the randomness of the game often leads them to lose inexplicably. Their professional level has no way to achieve the highest play. So this game has obstacles when going to professional e-sports. On the other hand, the game still requires skill, even if it is low-proportioned, it also requires a lot of skill. In particular, there is still a considerable gap between professional players who have been trained for a long time and new rookie players. This leads to the longer the operation time, the survival environment of this game is getting worse and worse for rookie novice players, and the situation of forced withdrawal is more and more serious.
To sum up the gameplay of this game, from a casual point of view, you can never be as casual as a landlord; from a professional point of view, you can't be as professional as an e-sports game, so sandwiching in the middle causes him to go to both sides of the road is relatively narrow.
2. As a game play, it is very likely that more games will appear in other games in the future, becoming a game in-game play, rather than existing in an independent game form.
What is actually happening now is that many famous games, like cs, like water summoning, have added the mode of eating chicken, and even many games tetris and civilizations that are not related to eating chicken have joined the battle royale gameplay. So it's safe to say that there will be more games in the future that will join the battle royale gameplay.
As an independent game, battle royale chicken may decline, but it will become a genetic fragment of many games in the future. It will become one of the rich gameplay of many games in the future and will survive in the history of games for a long time.