In recent years, with the acceleration of the integration process in the field of pan-entertainment, the connection between various cultural and entertainment sub-industries such as animation, film and television, and games has become more and more close. Focusing on the field of games, a prominent phenomenon bred by this trend is that the market share of various types of IP adaptation games is increasing day by day, and it has become the mainstay of driving the continuous growth of the game market in the world, so in the future, the boutique IP of various segments of pan-entertainment will still be the focus of manufacturers.
Source: Gamma Data
According to GameRes observation, the sci-fi movie "Avatar", directed by James Cameron and released as early as 2009, can be called one of the "lost pearls" in the IP market.
As the world's first full-3D special effects film, "Avatar" at that time relied on epoch-making 3D technology and highly fantasy world structure, allowing fans around the world to appreciate the charm of 3D movies. And in terms of achievements and status, after the re-screening in China in 2021, "Avatar" once again refreshed its own box office performance and re-ascended to the throne of "global film history box office champion".
From any point of view, "Avatar" is an insurmountable benchmark in the field of film and television, but unfortunately, we have not seen a related game work for a long time.
Until the past January 14, a new Avatar mobile game set in the "Avatar" movie universe ushered in its first exposure overseas.
According to public information, this new film and television IP produced by Unreal Engine is licensed by Disney and Cameron Studio, developed by Zulong Entertainment, and distributed by Tencent Games, which is core positioned as a shooter RPG game that can compete online for multiple players, and is expected to land in overseas markets in 2022.
It is worth mentioning that the scene of participating in the production and distribution of a product by three top manufacturers such as Disney, Zulong and Tencent is quite rare in the entire history of mobile games, which seems to confirm their emphasis on Avatar IP and the "gold content" of Avatar mobile game itself.
Screenshot of the game on the overseas official website
Although there is not much information exposed at this time, because the "Avatar" film itself has many highlights from the inside out, whether it is Director Cameron's reflections on anti-war, people and the environment in the film, or the fantasy "Pandora's Planet" constructed in the film, it provides a complete world view and a full spiritual core for the adaptation of IP games.
On the basis of rich native IP content as a support, Avatar mobile game is undoubtedly a new product worthy of continuous follow-up attention, so if a few keywords are extracted from the currently exposed data, can we dig deep into the hidden information in these words, and preemptively guess what surprises this IP mobile game jointly created by the three major manufacturers may bring to the industry and players?
Unreal Engine + open world, what kind of "Pandora's planet" may be presented?
1. Unreal Engine
"Unreal Engine" is one of the key information exposed by the Avatar mobile game, and the introduction of this advanced technology engine first means that the three major manufacturers have a fairly high quality pursuit of their audiovisual performance.
When it comes to the "Avatar" film itself, it has to be mentioned that even after 13 years, the work can still lead the special effects quality in the film field, all of which is related to the performance and motion capture system used by director Cameron when shooting, the Fusion 3-D Camera System, and the Virtual Producation Studio) is inseparable from cutting-edge technology such as the Simulcam camera.
After the release of Avatar in 2009, the Hollywood Reporter also posted an exclamation: "James Cameron proved that he is indeed the king of the world, as the presidential commander of the visual effects technology army, the biological design army, the motion capture army, the stunt actor army, the dancer army, the actor army, the music and sound army, he brought science fiction into the 21st century in a dazzling way, this is Avatar." ”
Based on director Cameron's consistent forward thinking and imagination, GameRes believes that focusing on the Product of Avatar Mobile Game, the first thing we should look forward to is that in the process of guiding the development of mobile games, it is likely to introduce a lot of new "black technology" at the technical level of game development, and through their organic combination with Unreal Engine, to restore and create a very immersive "Pandora Planet" in the game.
In short, under the synergy effect of Avatar's native world view, Unreal Engine, and Cameron Studio's auxiliary research and development, it has fully given Avatar a very broad imagination space at the audiovisual level of Avatar mobile games, which is a direction worth looking forward to in GameRes' eyes.
2. Open world?
In addition to the predictable high audiovisual quality, In the first exposure information, GameRes also found a rather vast and spectacular "Pandora Planet" bird's-eye view.
Based on the following screenshot of the game, after connecting the strong strength of the three major manufacturers with the core track of the current mobile game field, we quickly have a bold conjecture - if the restoration of "Pandora Planet" is one of the important goals of the three major manufacturers, then they will most likely use the "Pandora Planet" presented in the movie as a model to create a vivid and three-dimensional "open world" in the Avatar mobile game.
Frankly speaking, to this day, the "open world" has long become the key track for major manufacturers to compete for layout, but it is worth noting that even after several years of development, there are always few top products in the current market.
GameRes believes that one of the important reasons for this phenomenon is that the "open world" needs to have freedom, openness, and inclusiveness, and essentially requires a logical and self-consistent multi-game ecology as the underlying support. This is a difficult point that many products have been difficult to overcome in the past, because for non-IP products, it is not easy to create a grand worldview, and for most IP products, their worldview may not be able to support the proposition of "open world".
However, for Avatar mobile games, because the IP original film has a fairly complete portrayal of the climate ecology, environmental ecology and species ecology of the "Pandora Planet", which provides a clear direction for the construction of the "open world" in the game, a major problem plaguing the industry can be said to be solved.
Based on this, Avatar mobile games are likely to create a living open world ecology around the various ecological characteristics of "Pandora's Planet", and rely on the many features shown in the movie to find breakthroughs and design innovative content gameplay.
For example, we can boldly guess that the Avatar mobile game will build a basic underlying environmental ecology for the "Pandora Planet" in the game by restoring iconic landscapes such as "Hallelujah Mountain" and "Homeland Tree" inspired by zhangjiajie scenic spots, as well as the embedding of characteristic vegetation such as "shadow fungus" and "spiral leaves".
"Mount Hallelujah"
"Spiral Leaf"
On this basis, Avatar mobile games may also choose to introduce strange creatures such as "stinging bats" and "spin fan lizards" to further enrich the species structure, and set milder creatures such as "Pandora Monkey" and "Heavily Armored Horse" as pets or mounts that players can interact with and tame.
The most commonly used mount of the Na'vi in the movie, the "heavily armored horse"
In addition, it is speculated that the Avatar mobile game will also have a high probability of designing fierce beasts such as "lightning thunder beasts", "hammer-headed thunder beasts", "viper wolves" and other fierce beasts as wild monsters that can be challenged by players. Even after the introduction of the "Air Battle" mechanic, the "Phantom Dragon" air overlord was designed as a large air boss for the player to collect as mounts after conquest.
The "Lightning Beast" who sneaks up on the protagonist in the movie
Air Overlord "Phantom Dragon"
Just from the above speculations, it is not difficult to imagine that under the support of many unique subdivisions of ecology, Avatar mobile games are likely to build a novel "open world" with a huge amount of content and for players to continue to explore.
And if we think about it further, there are still many derivative directions that we can speculate on, for example, will the Avatar mobile game refer to the original plot, introduce foreign invaders such as "human army" for players to challenge, while enhancing the player's sense of substitution, and restore the Grand Final Battle scene of "modern military weapons" vs "fantasy cold weapons" in the movie?
Is it possible to use mechanisms such as the "magnetic field" of The planet Pandora to design special scenes buff/DEBUFF in different terrains and landforms to enrich the game detail experience and simultaneously enhance the immersion of the entire "open world"?
Undoubtedly, all of the above possibilities based on the derivative direction of the IP original will provide an important driving force for Avatar mobile games to create a unique "Pandora Planet".
After making reasonable guesses about the two keywords of "Unreal Engine" and "Open World", GameRes believes that there is one of the most important information in the first exposure data that cannot be ignored, that is, the Avatar mobile game seems to use a composite core gameplay model that is integrated from the two categories of FPS and RPG - shooting RPG.
To know that in the current field of mobile games, there is no real sense of the shooting RPG masterpiece, then under the cooperation of avatar IP and top production team, the core gameplay innovation carried out by Avatar mobile games may become an important exploration that can affect the future mobile game category pattern?
Test the waters of "shooting RPG", Avatar mobile game to explore a new direction of mobile end category integration?
Since the inception of the game industry, FPS and RPGs with long-term fun and a solid user base have been enduring head categories. In recent years, under the influence of the tide of "gameplay integration" caused by the industry's pursuit of innovation, more and more manufacturers have begun to try to integrate gameplay based on the core characteristics of the two, and the PC side has also successively given birth to excellent shooting RPG masterpieces such as "Borderlands 3" and "Destiny 2".
But it is worth noting that although the shooting RPG has developed rapidly in the PC field, there are few manufacturers on the mobile side to layout, and GameRes believes that this may be closely related to the higher development difficulty of shooting RPGs.
First of all, even if there are fine pearls such as "Peace Elite" in front, the operation feel of mobile shooting has many limitations after all, and it is difficult to compare with the PC side. Secondly, shooting RPGs have always paid attention to the ultimate shooting pleasure and rich cultivation system, standing in the perspective of mobile game development, if you want to meet the pain points of these two major products, advanced research and development technology and huge content volume are indispensable, and behind these two factors is a huge demand for funds, ordinary manufacturers simply can not afford such "trial and error costs".
Perhaps it is the constraints of the above factors, shooting RPGs in the field of mobile games have long been a blue ocean that has not been reclaimed, even if the two major categories have a very high market position and a huge user base disk on the mobile end, no manufacturer is willing to be the first "crab eater".
The "2021 Game Industry Development Trend Report" shows that RPG and FPS are still the "head players" in the mobile game market.
Although the extremely high cost of trial and error makes most manufacturers prohibit shooting RPGs, in terms of the two industry trends of "innovation" and "boutique", shooting RPGs are ultimately a "virgin land" with long-tail potential. GameRes believes that as long as the product itself is properly polished, it is possible to aggregate and convert a large number of FPS and RPG loyal players, and provide the industry with a new direction worth investing in to dig deeper.
Perhaps adhering to the original intention of opening up emerging integration categories on the mobile end and carrying the vision of leading the industry innovation, this Avatar mobile game took the lead in exploring the expression of shooting RPG mobile games.
In GameRes' view, Avatar mobile games dare to challenge the unknown field of confidence, from the avatar IP enough content depth, from Zulong's excellent technical strength and research and development experience precipitation, but also from Tencent's future in the issuance side can give integrated resource support, in the cooperation of the three major manufacturers, "development difficulty", "capital demand" and other issues can undoubtedly be effectively resolved.
Therefore, although it is still unknown how the Avatar mobile game will interpret the charm of the shooting RPG mobile game, we are fully confident that the actual experience after its polishing will not disappoint.
epilogue
Although the first exposure data is only the tip of the iceberg of the avatar mobile game vision, the information revealed in it, such as the synergy of the three top manufacturers, the application of the virtual engine, the concept of the open world, and the exploration of shooting RPGs, is enough to awaken the enthusiasm and expectations of every player.
We can also properly expect that in time, in the Avatar mobile game, every player can swim in the mysterious "Pandora Planet", collect a variety of special firearms, and enjoy the purest game fun related to shooting, cultivation and exploration in the battle with various beasts and invaders.
With the continuous upgrading and leap of industry technology, the current and future game market is destined to become a stage for high-quality masterpieces. In such an environment, I believe that avatar mobile games with both IP, creativity and quality can also play a strong enough influence as scheduled after being launched this year to win the recognition of global players.