Yesterday, it was the second anniversary of the opening of Xiaowai's script killing shop.
For this big day, she began to advertise in the three player groups a few days ago, telling everyone that there will be a discount on the second anniversary of the purchase. She said in the group: "I don't make money on this day, I just want everyone to celebrate together." ”
The three groups added up to nearly 300 people and eventually formed two innings. On the day of the second anniversary, one of the bureaus was not formed because two people temporarily released pigeons.
After the only set of scripts on that day was killed, the customers left the store in a lively way, not forgetting to wish Xiaowai business a prosperous one. Sending the guests out the door, only Xiao Wai and her partner were left in the store. It didn't take long for the partner to open the glory of the king, and the voice in the mobile phone became the only sound in the store for the rest of the day.
"The good times are no more", Xiao Wai thought.
The script kills very hot,
The script kill shop is cold
Xiaowai's shop is located in Huadu District, Guangzhou. Although this place is on the very edge of Guangzhou, because of this, the rent here is cheap, coupled with the abundance of colleges and universities, and the staff living area of China Southern Airlines, there is never a shortage of young people here.
At the beginning of the store, Xiaowai was full of confidence. Indeed, the entire script killed the market, in fact, it still seems to be very prosperous. The data shows that there were only more than 2,400 script killing halls in the country in 2018, which climbed rapidly to 12,000 in 2019 and soared to 30,000 in 2020.
Entering the industry with so many people, Xiao wai felt that he should not make a wrong decision.
The shop did have a good time. This small shop with only four rooms will not have free rooms from day to early morning when business is booming.
Playing scripts to kill New Year's Eve is a new Year's Eve method that young people have suddenly liked in the past two years.
In the cross-Chinese New Year's Eve of 2020, the customer of one room ended the game before 0 o'clock, and came to the living room and Xiao wai to watch a New Year's Eve party, waiting to count down together. The noise drew customers from the other three rooms, and halfway through the game, they were all huddled together in front of the TV.
More than 30 people, counting down in unison, strangers said Happy New Year to each other, and everyone hugged each other, as if they had known friends for a long time. Xiao Wai gave the remaining guests another fruit and drinks, and this evening made her realize her best imagination of the store:
"Let people gather here happily."
There was once a founder of a script killing brand who admitted in an interview with a media:
"On the surface, the script killing is getting more and more popular with media reports, but a survey of the proportion of new/dead stores in various cities shows that going out of the circle is just to meet the novelty of the public, and the real sense of the industry is still in the pioneering stage, and the fire is a 'virtual fire'."
The shop outside the small area confirms this sentence.
I can't remember from which time node to start, the biggest use of the small mobile phone, from replying to customer inquiries, to actively organizing games in different groups, and, when no one comes, playing the glory of the king and brushing vibrato to live.
Also wanting to change the status quo, Xiaowai and his partners have been purchasing new scripts.
Scripts are divided into three categories: boxed, limited, and exclusive. The price of the boxed book is about 500 yuan, and each store can buy it; the limited price is about 2,000 yuan, and one city sells it to three stores; the exclusive book is only sold to one store in one city, and the price is about 5,000 yuan.
The worse the business, the more Xiaowai and his partners want to buy fewer scripts; this also means that the more money they invest in buying scripts, they fall into a financially unhealthy cycle.
Xiao Wai feels anxious, but it is something that must be done:
"The set and costumes are inferior to others, and we can only hope that new instincts will attract people who pursue freshness."
But the reality is that Xiao Wai knows that the script killing has developed to this day, and the script has slowly not been the focus of this game.
All the scripts kill bosses, they know this.
"I want to go back to work"
Once everyone played the script to kill, or purely to the script. Ah Guang missed such days very much, because as the boss, during that time, he made a lot of money.
When the script was just starting to catch fire, it replaced the traditional escape room.
Solving codes, finding exits, and solving puzzles, traditional escape rooms were once brilliant, but soon dimmed. In Ah Guang's eyes, the brilliance is because there are too few social occasions for young people, in addition to KTV, watching movies, shopping, suddenly there is such a thing that can get everyone together to get through difficulties and show their talents, fire is a natural thing.
But escape rooms are well done, and the cost and standards are high. "For example, if you make a room with a spider web that has fallen off, if you don't use special materials to make it really realistic, but just use ordinary wool, the sense of substitution will immediately disappear." 」
Young people just want to escape from life, want to substitute for an illusory space, want to get together. At this time, the script kill appeared in front of the young man who "pinched his nose and played escape room".
Turning off the lights, accompanied by a piece of eerie music, the host was timely and startled, and the sense of substitution was no worse than the small room that took half a year to build.
Seeing the timing, Ah Guang immediately opened a store in Tianjin.
"The cost of killing the script at the beginning was really too low, and the core was that Ben. You have a good story that really immerses everyone, and everything else is less important. I opened the shop at that time was the simplest decoration, a few rooms, a few long tables, a few chairs.
At that time, the industry was not developed, and there were not so many professional screenwriters and writers who entered the creation of script killing, so I could even find an author to write without buying a book, and then let the staff in the store test it. ”
Soon, Ah Guang opened two branches and began to think about brand building.
It was to catch up with the script killing and let Ah Guang fly. But slowly, the wind became too strong, and it began to become a resistance.
The inner volume of the script kill begins unconsciously.
In the beginning, the so-called inner volume still occurred in the field of script creation.
According to the script killing screenwriter's division model, most of the authors are divided according to the fee + sales data, four six, five or five. For example, the purchase cost of a single store is 500, and 5,000 sets are sold nationwide, and the author can at least get a million. Therefore, in the past two years, the script killing industry has no shortage of myths of wealth making that sell millions of books to be reported.
Sounds very profitable. Professional screenwriters are almost in the lowest position in their traditional film and television fields. In a film and television project, traffic stars without acting skills will share most of the shooting expenses. As a result, more and more professional screenwriters began to join the industry.
Therefore, by now, countless new scripts are emerging like a spring. According to the data, in 2020, there will be 18 script killing exhibitions held nationwide, and 16 exhibitions will be scheduled before October 2021, and it is still increasing, according to the new cost of each exhibition of 100-200, the new cost in 2020 alone is about 2000-3000.
The theme, characters, plot reversals, and gameplay of the script are often updated on a weekly basis, and a small loophole in logic may become the reason why a script will be listed in the "Worst Script of the Year, Don't Play" one day.
The authors that Xiaoguang found at the beginning were not very professional themselves. In order to catch up with the trend of specialization, there is a relatively young author who reads the full comic of detective Conan back and forth several times a year, learns the story line inside, and then changes the modus operandi in it and adds it to his own book.
After the degree of specialization was high, people began to set awards for the script. A good script, like a star, everyone will go to play; and the store that did not buy a good script became the first sinking curve in the wave of script killing.
What to do? Without a good Ben, create a better sensory experience.
Some recalled the escape room that had been trampled underfoot by the script. Since then, the inner volume of the script killing has begun to spread to the space outside the script.
The first time I walked into a script killing shop that covered a small hill, I asked Ah Guang, who was already well-informed in this line, or was a little stunned.
There are three apartments throughout the hill, each of which is a script theme. Players need to stay in the scripted apartment of their choice for two days and one night. In the past, people gathered around a table and imagined what a group of people called "coming to the living room and starting to interrogate", "entering the room with an old man crying and mourning", "walking in the aisle someone will say strange things to you", and these descriptions that need people's imagination are all presented by this script killing shop.
"They also have a simple Weah over there, and in order to restore the appearance of the world's highest people falling from the sky, NPCs will fly down from the Wea."
Speaking of this, Ah Guang also remembered the "weeping and mourning dm" he recently saw in the Little Red Book. You may not even know what the specific script is about and what it is playing, but only to hear that there is such a theme apartment for people to live for two days and one night, there is such a dm crying and crying hoarsely, someone flying down from the sky, will naturally want to try.
The refinement of the script is no longer enough to retain a lot of customers, the script killing is more and more running in the direction of "escape room revival", no longer just a low-cost business that "several rooms, a few tables, a few chairs" in Ah Guang's mouth, whether the clothes are good or not, the NPCs are not desperate enough, and the scenes are not exquisite enough, have become more important standards.
In this case, some renovation companies that specialize in providing services for script killing stores can net millions a month at their peak.
In the past, Ah Guang's store relied on the introduction of high-quality scripts, and has always held a high score of more than 4 points on public reviews. But now, his shop's score can only hover around 3 points. Because, "It's so basic. ”
Gradually, many of Ah Guang's colleagues began to withdraw. They run out of money. Unlike the new script killing entrepreneurs, they are not prepared to invest such a large amount of money, and they just encountered the epidemic, which made the already poor operation worse.
There was a peer who struggled for a long time over "how often to wash the clothes worn by the player". Washing once every two days, a few hundred pieces at a time, is too expensive; washing once a week, too dirty. He used to send his clothes to the laundromat, thought about it, and took the clothes back.
They don't have the strength anymore.
"Many people tell me that they opened their own shops because they didn't want to work and get caught up. Unexpectedly, I didn't expect to make a script to kill more volumes, so I still went back to work. ”
"It's all leeks"
But whether or not to enter the wave of rolls, offline script killing operators still have a common problem to face - the rise of online models.
Searching for scripts in the AppStore, a software called "Can Play" has accumulated 990,000 reviews, and a software called "The Great Detective" also has 150,000 reviews.
Following them, there are a large number of app with scripts in their names, and their evaluation volume may not be much compared to some mainstream software, but you know, the evaluation of "Happy Consumption" is only 890,000.
In addition to the APP that can play the script killing itself, there are also some apps that provide "DM to home" service, that is, just like eating without going to the restaurant, playing the script killing can also be played at home.
Script killing sounds popular, but it is always not a plaything suitable for all ages, and in the limited user group, a considerable part of it shows a trend of being divided up by online APP, which is difficult to make the script kill the bosses, not shocked.
The bosses who are still insisting on "taking the store as a ben" have been embattled, and after the online APP has robbed some of the business, the young people who are willing to come to the scene also prefer stores with a stronger sense of experience and form.
Perhaps, the last chance left for these entrepreneurs is to go to a more upstream industry – script writing and script sales.
As Xiaowai's predecessor, Brother Li opened a script killing shop in Huadu District earlier than Xiaowai. He did not lose, but the focus of his life was no longer in the script killing store itself.
Nowadays, in Brother Li's circle of friends, there will be discussion and exchange meetings between the script killing peers every three to five years, sometimes it is a record of cooperating with the Huadu District Government to promote the development of the script killing culture, and other times it is the scene photos of the script killing exhibition that are being arranged. The interview with Brother Li lasted for four whole days, and for four days, he had a different meeting and a different dinner every day.
Just like Xiao Wai, every ordinary script killing shop owner has "buying anxiety", and many bosses are either in the script killing exhibition every day, or on the way to the script killing exhibition.
The script killing exhibition is both for stores and tickets, usually speaking, a store ticket is 300 yuan, a minimum of 2,000 yuan for a ticket, up to 10,000 yuan (depending on the location, room).
"Recently, the industry's largest exhibition, the store tickets sold 2669 (498 yuan / piece) on the black detective products, issued tickets sold 20 (5288 yuan / piece), and the cost of running an exhibition generally does not exceed 300,000, roughly estimated that the organizer can earn more than 1 million." A senior distributor revealed in an interview with the media.
Therefore, in Brother Li's heart, to survive more safely in this industry, then become the promoter and supplier of the script killing industry.
No matter what kind of scene, online or offline, even if the script is not focused on the script, the foundation still has to have the script, and there must be this culture.
He confessed:
"Especially in first- and second-tier cities, the layering of the script killing industry is already very serious. Almost only script creators and suppliers can make money, and the owner of the script killing shop has become a leek. ”
He also said that he started a shop because he liked to play script killing, and wanted to play with everyone. Now, in addition to accompanying the leaders to experience the script, he has not played a game carefree for a long time.
References:
Daily Economic News: Script kill "kill crazy"! Individual investors have entered the market, but the most profitable is not the store
Tiger Sniff APP: The script kills young people, but it does not tie up capital
Deep burning: The script killed the boss and lost a lot, but these people earned millions a month
Interview | pp Tower Cat
Written by | Tower Cat
The source | Visual China