When "Squid Game" helps Koreans successfully achieve cultural export again, China's cultural industry is also quietly promoting more national IP to the world.
Recently, the 3D turn-based RPG mobile game "Douluo Continent - Dou Shen Descending" developed by China Mobile Games landed in the Thai and Lao markets, and once won the first place in the Thai App Store free list, the top three in the best-seller list and the first place in the Laos App Store best-seller list. Although the excellent performance of this game in the two markets is based on its own excellent game quality, it is inseparable from the strong influence and appeal of the Douluo IP itself.
The reason why Douluo IP is also very popular in non-Chinese-speaking areas of Southeast Asia is because its journey to the sea has already begun. Before the game, Douluo Continent novels, manga and animation had become famous overseas. Practitioners who have long been engaged in domestic games going to sea are also pleased to find that in the matter of cultural industry going to sea, game companies have completely bid farewell to "a hundred years of loneliness".
The game has not moved, the IP comes first
As the most widely known work of the Tang family three youngsters, "Douluo Continent" can definitely be called the crowning work of domestic network articles. At the beginning of this year, the "Douluo Continent" TV series not only premiered on Tencent Video, but also broadcast simultaneously on the CCTV TV drama channel, which received positive comments from mainstream media.
However, Tencent, which holds the Douluo IP, naturally does not only bet on TV dramas and the domestic market. As early as 2018, Tencent's Penguin Film and Television launched the "Douluo Continent" animation in conjunction with Xuanji Technology, and this 3D animation with explosive funds has been launched for 178 episodes so far, and the audience is also expressing their love for this animation with "urging" in the comment area. At the same time, the "Douluo Continent" manga is also continuously updated in Tencent Animation, and has now been updated to 302 episodes.
At the end of July last year, Tencent also pushed "Douluo Continent" to overseas markets, launched the original version with English subtitles on YouTube Chinese dubbed animation and adopted the method of synchronous payment update with China. However, cultural differences and payment thresholds still did not stop the enthusiasm of overseas audiences, and the average number of broadcasts of more than 500,000 times fully reflected the popularity of Douluo IP overseas.
Before Tencent entered the market, the spread of Douluo IP overseas was largely "power generation by love". In 2015, an American website called "Blue Silver Translations" began to spontaneously translate the "Douluo Continent" novel, although it attracted many readers, but after all, it is difficult to guarantee the quality and update rate of unofficial production, the latest translated content was uploaded in May last year, and even the translation of the name of the work did not use the official "Soul Land", but directly used the pinyin "Douluo Dalu".
With the entry of Tencent, the multimedia IP matrix represented by comics, animation, film and television dramas has been officially formed, and through the official high-quality adaptation and publicity, it is not only conducive to overseas users to feel the charm of guochuang IP more conveniently, but also invisibly reduces the cost of game publicity and improves the efficiency of publicity.
In fact, this example of "the game is not moving, THE IP comes first" has become an efficient means of publicity in Many multimedia projects in Japan. This year's most phenomenal two-dimensional mobile game "Horse Racing Lady" ignited the enthusiasm of players through two seasons of high-quality TV animation, thus continuously creating new revenue records since the game was launched.
It is precisely because of the unique advantages of multimedia planning in terms of communication power that more and more excellent national IP that are highly competitive in content like "Douluo Continent" are achieving cultural output through the form of streaming media represented by animation.
For example, the fantasy revision novel "Stars Change" written by the popular author "I Eat Tomatoes" was also adapted into an animation by Tencent, and the number of broadcasts on YouTube also reached the level of one million, becoming another successful national creation Xiuxian IP. In terms of games, there are currently two genuine authorized mobile games on Tap Tap that are in the reservation state.
Attack Station B: English and Japanese are invincible
Compared with Tencent, Bilibili has shown greater enthusiasm in the sea of IP adaptation animation. Under the official channel of YouTube's Bilibili Animation, you can almost see the figure of all the new fans in the National Innovation District of B Station, these national innovations that are updated synchronously with Station B all support Chinese and English subtitle switching, and the English translation is very professional and grounded, and overseas audiences living in the English culture circle can easily understand the various new memes.
The formalization of IP going to sea is the trend of the times
In July this year, Bilibili's animation "Blessings from Heavenly Officials" officially landed in Japan and was simultaneously broadcast on two TV stations, Tokyo MX and BS11, the famous TV animation broadcasting platform. This anime is adapted from the novel of the same name by Ink Xiang Copper, in addition to the Japanese subtitle version, Station B also launched a Japanese blowing (dubbing) version, specially invited Hiroshi Kamiya, Fukuyama Jun, Nichikasa Yoko and other Japanese super first-line voice actors to perform Japanese dubbing, and launched simultaneously on Station B and overseas to meet the demands of voice control at home and abroad.
On Twitter, there was countless Discussions in Japanese about "Blessings from heavenly officials", and many Japanese viewers left messages on the official Twitter saying that they were eager to see the animation of the second and third seasons.
It is worth noting that in order to cooperate with the broadcast of this animation, Station B also launched a Japanese official website, which also makes people guess that this work will also have the possibility of multimedia planning. At the end of last year, "Blessings from Heavenly Officials" had linked the "New Laughing Pride Jianghu" mobile game and gained high recognition from players, which also confirmed the possibility and feasibility of this popular IP mobile game from the side.
In April this year, "Blessings of heaven" also landed on Netflix, and ranked among the top ten TV programs in a single day in too many countries and regions in Asia.
In 2014, a Chinese-American named Lai Jingping, out of his love for wuxia novels, began to spontaneously translate domestic online texts, and he gave his website a simple and clear name: WuxiaWorld. What he didn't expect was that in just one year, the site had gained millions of English readers. Due to the limited personal energy and copyright pressure, in the long run, WuxiaWorld will inevitably move towards legalization and specialization.
In December 2016, WuxiaWorld entered into a 10-year translation and electronic publishing cooperation agreement with Reading Group, involving the first batch of 20 works. However, with the establishment of its own overseas site WebNovel in 2017, WuxiaWorld has also changed from a partner to a competitor for Yuwen, so just a week after WebNovel was launched, Yuwen withdrew the copyright of 20 works and asked WuxiaWorld to offline 11 unauthorized starting point novels as soon as possible.
Although WuxiaWorld still retains this very Chinese-style name, because the mainstream online text copyright in China is almost in the hands of readers, it has to gradually begin to rely on translating Korean online novels to fill the content of the website. At the same time, WuxiaWorld has also become a small footnote to the copyrightization and standardization of guochuang's IP output.
From the perspective of market development law, the formalization of IP output is an inevitable trend, not only for the reason of legal compliance, but also because the content quality and publicity resources held by the copyright party are obviously better than the spontaneously formed fan organizations. Just as high-quality translation helped Liu Cixin and Mo Yan win the Hugo Award and the Nobel Prize for Literature respectively, high-quality media output also helps to establish a positive image for Guochuang IP in overseas markets, and as cultural products such as Guochuang animation and novels are increasingly recognized by overseas markets, Guochuang IP adaptation games will also be able to enter overseas markets more smoothly, thereby creating greater cultural and commercial value.