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This week's spotlight: Eldon's Ring of Law and Hidetaka Miyazaki
With little suspense, Eldon's Ring of Law will continue to dominate your social network for some time. More than 860,000 Steam are online at the same time, with almost zero negative reviews of the media reviews, and the face-threatening recommendations of the live broadcast platform, all of which are like urging in your ear: "Are you ringing today?" Only you are not in the ring anymore. ”
But note that continuing from From Software's usual style, Eldon's Ring of Law is one of the hardcore action RPGs on the market, with an open world that gives some room for maneuver, but by and large suffers still sing the main melody, but the good news is that the new world created by Hidetaka Miyazaki and George Martin is enough to arouse the player's desire to explore.
On the day of the release, the poor PC version optimization caused many people to be dissatisfied, and the Steam page of Eldon's Law Ring once closed the comments, and after opening, it remained at "mixed reviews", but this did not prevent players from discussing the relative position between Hidego Miyazaki and the altar. In recent years, the term "altar" has tended to be abused, and "Hidetaka Miyazaki is the altar" is probably the most exaggerated but seemingly acceptable touting we can see.
This is an interesting phenomenon. Four or five years ago, it was hard to imagine that Hidetaka Miyazaki and Soul-like games could cause shocks in the entire game industry, and even be included in the annual "must play" list by default. So, who exactly cast the altar of Hidetaka Miyazaki?
When talking about popular Japanese producers, old players can't help but think of the "star producer" promotion model. Since the end of the last century, Japanese manufacturers have been good at pushing producers to the forefront, deeply bound with game series, convenient for publicity and fan operations. However, with the subsequent breakup between a number of star producers and old owners, resulting in a lose-lose situation, players and practitioners also began to reflect on whether this top-down promotion was exaggerated.
Miyazaki Hidetaka was naturally also "favored" by this system, externally he is the pioneer of soul-like games, and internally he is the president of From Software, with both influence and discourse power. But on the other hand, he is not a typical star producer. In terms of seniority, Miyazaki Hidetaka entered the industry very late, and only launched "Devil's Soul" in 2009; on the KOL image, he does not play social accounts, does not often convey or sophisticated or fashionable ideas, and a large number of interviews that need to face the camera are "done" by marketing director Kitao Taidai.
That's it
Looking back at the rise in Miyazaki's popularity at home and abroad, it is precisely from a bottom-up force that is contrary to the traditional star producers' publicity.
An obvious statistic is that before 2015, Hidetaka Miyazaki, who had become the president of From Software, had almost no public discussion in China, and then experienced three obvious vocal upswings before gradually jumping to become a super-first-line producer. Hidetaka Miyazaki's three "rises" on the Internet in Jane also correspond to the important factors that he can walk on the altar.
Image source Baidu Index
Of course, it all started with the release of Demon Souls in 2009. When the game was first released, the response in Japan was not good, and later public information attributed the counterattack of "Demon Souls" to "player reputation", and the fact is that the popularity of "Demon Souls" in the European and American markets far exceeded expectations, and GameSpot even named it the best game of the year.
In addition to a group of European and American players who are willing to gain a sense of achievement from the cycle of suffering, learning, and breaking through themselves, the more important role is to build the initial community of soul-like players, which is now familiar with the "soul scientists", and the content of the discussion has also shifted from the strategy of the game itself to the exploration of game details and culture, such as the "fragmented narrative" that was later talked about.
In fact, fragmented narratives were originally a recipe that From Software came up with to cover up the thin plot design (as was the case with the "Secret Orders of the King" series), but under the direction of Hidetaka Miyazaki, the worldview and the objects in it were given an indescribable hazy feeling, and combined with the strengths of map design, it increased the fun of exploration. Hidetaka Miyazaki has mentioned the view of "over-interpretation" on some occasions, and he said that he did not resent the player's exploration of worldview and detail. It can be said that the more riddle people are, the more attractive they are.
With the release of "Dark Souls" and "Bloodborne Curse", the first batch of Miyazaki Hidetaka believers were also condensed in China. One of the characteristics of niche subcultural communities is the ability to create memes and words with a high degree of identity.
The first players to contact soul-like games are probably not attracted by the game's graphics and gameplay, but first heard of the distinctive terriers such as "Passing Fire", "Miyazaki Hidetaka's malice", and "Praising the Sun". The secret but efficient meme dissemination has to some extent made up for The lack of Miyazaki's social media, so that the soul-like game has the vitality to continue to attract the audience of Jitter M.
But if it's limited to that, soul-like games may at best be the more popular representative of the niche category, until the release of "Only Wolf: Shadow Death Twice" released in March 2019 completely changed the landscape.
In the past, the difficulty of soul-like games has been criticized, and the shortcomings of watching more people playing more have become advantages in live broadcasting, after all, watching the anchor suffer is a superior program effect, coupled with the "only wolf" "fighting knife and iron" battle method, compared to the previous soul-like game, the viewing of the previous soul-like game has gone up a step, and "Only Wolf" has exploded on the live broadcast platform as soon as it was released.
On the Twitch platform, "Only Wolf" accumulated more than 1.1 billion minutes of viewing in the first week, becoming the only single-player game to enter the top ten in the month, and in China, the big anchors at all levels have basically played "Only Wolf", considering the increasingly mature live broadcast ecology in 2019, most of which are tap water. What is even more surprising is that "Only Wolf" has also gained a high reputation on the short video platform.
As many feared at the time, network effects may not translate into real results — Wolf Only Sells "Only" 5 million (as of July 2020), far less than Dark Souls 3's 10 million (as of May 2020), but it has achieved its historical mission of pushing Soul-like games to the masses, and when it is easier to equate "difficult action games" with "soul-like games", mental education has also been completed.
In 2019, "Only Wolf" won the TGA Best Game of the Year, and in 2021, "Dark Souls" beat "Minecraft", "Super Mario", "The Legend of Zelda" and other masterpieces, winning the title of the best game in the history of the British Golden Joystick Award. Interestingly, these two important awards correspond to top-down and bottom-up two-way recognition – TGA's main winners are industry media and senior practitioners, and the Golden Joystick Awards are all voted by players.
Did Hidetaka Miyazaki create an era, or did the era choose Hidetaka Miyazaki?
There is not much evidence that Souls games hit the pain points of the emerging player base after 2015, or what From Software deliberately did to cater to the spread of the new network medium, in interviews, they still remain humble, and Miyazaki Hidetaka is still the man who claims to "not play his own game" but knows best how to surprise (malicious) players.
The only thing that can be traced is that since "Dark Souls 3", From Software's newly launched soul-like games have been oriented to a larger group in terms of theme and gameplay. The Oriental setting and aesthetic of "Only Wolf" has been renewed, "Eldon's Circle of Law" has added mounts and open worlds, making the game — at least in terms of perception — like a mainstream AAA masterpiece, and George Martin's participation has also added an international scope to the publicity.
Of course, the leaders in the traffic era always have their own troubles, and now the topic of "soul-like player rice circle" is mentioned from time to time, limited to the length of the article we will not talk about here, but it is worth mentioning, "Miyazaki Hideo fell off the altar" Popularity, it is from the Tieba cloud players' evaluation of "Only Wolves", which is also a passive "black and red" bar.
Image source Chicken Dictionary
But in any case, Hidetaka Miyazaki and From Software offer us an excellent paradigm:
How to integrate personal style into artistic expression, how to bring the niche hardcore in stereotypes into the public vision, how to find an outside audience without changing the core design concept - how to go from no one knows, to people love.
NEWS
Industry Watch
2022/2/21-2/27
Large companies
"Tencent will be hammered" was officially refuted. On the 21st, a user in the investor community snowball claimed that "Tencent will be hammered", and tencent's market value also evaporated by 200 billion Hong Kong dollars because of the stock price diving on the same day, and other game companies such as heartbeat and B station have "responded" to the decline, triggering considerable industry discussion. Subsequently, the official debunked rumors, and this user was also cancelled. Previously, it was reported that the head of a game company told the media that "not issuing a version number this year is the biggest bearish." Sina Technology contacted the relevant personnel of the State Publishing Administration for this purpose, and learned that the statement was that "the application is still being received." ”
Nintendo's hardware revenue was higher than software revenue in the third quarter of last year. Recently released third-quarter earnings show that Nintendo's overall net sales for the current period reached the second-highest point in history, with hardware sales reaching $3.2 billion more than software sales and software at $2.7 billion. Among the software, Nintendo's first-party game revenue is much higher than that of third parties, the former accounting for 84%, the latter accounting for 16%, this ecological feature is still unique in the entire game industry.
Hero Interactive Entertainment renamed Hero Games. On the 21st, Hero Interactive Entertainment announced that it had changed its name, launched a new brand name "Hero Game", and was delisted from the new third board. Although it was only officially announced this week, the new brand "Hero Games" has been unveiled in the promotion of many of its partners, including the 11 minutes and 11 seconds of the "Black Myth: Wukong" live test video released last August.
The total number of registered users of the Epic platform exceeded 500 million. On Wednesday, Epic announced the milestone, but didn't disclose specific information, such as what percentage of people use the store without buying the game, or only play Epic's own games. As of 2019, Epic's biggest rival, Steam, had 1 billion registered users at the time.
Fist co-founder Marc Merrill serves as president of the games division. The current CEO of Fist recently mentioned that Marc is not only responsible for supervising existing games such as LOL and Valorant, but also leading future game development. Marc has been running the company before, and now he is back on the front line of game development, which may confirm that Fist will inject more attention and energy into the development of new works.
The two co-founders, Marc Merrill on the right
NetEase released its fourth quarter 2021 financial report. It shows that the net revenue of NetEase Q4 online game services was 17.4 billion yuan, accounting for more than 70% of the total revenue, an increase of nearly 30% year-on-year. The earnings report first mentioned "Forever", which broke the sales record of domestic buyout games, and "Harry Potter: Magical Awakening", which was launched last year. Its classic IP works such as "Fantasy Journey to the West" and "Journey to the West" have also maintained a high popularity trend. For the long-delayed Diablo: Immortal, it is expected to be released in the first half of this year.
Mihayou and Weilai led the investment in nuclear fusion energy technology. The company, called Energy Singularity, completed the first round of financing of nearly 400 million yuan, which was jointly led by Miha Youweilai. The money will be used to develop and build the world's first small tokamak experimental device based on all-high-temperature superconducting materials. Tokamak devices, also known as controlled nuclear fusion devices.
New trends
The State Intellectual Property Office cracked down on the "meta-universe" rubbing hot trademark registration behavior. According to the State Intellectual Property Office, there are about 16,000 applications related to the "meta-universe" in the trademark database, including many large manufacturers such as Tencent, but the applications have been rejected. In this regard, the State Intellectual Property Bureau pointed out that it will resolutely and severely crack down on malicious registration behaviors such as "rubbing hot spots" and hoarding for the purpose of not using. Previously, tencent has registered meta-universe-related trademarks such as Tianmei and Wang, showing that it is still in the process of applying, perhaps as the director of the reunion said, "the game industry will become the leader of the meta-universe".
Cryptocurrency exchange FTX will set up a gaming division. Aiming to promote the adoption of cryptocurrencies and NFTs by more game studios, FTX's game division will operate through its U.S. subsidiary, which this month began hiring software engineers with Unity development experience. Previously, FTX also had a big move into the game field, signing a 7-year sponsorship with LCS and buying the TSM club for 10 years for 210 million US dollars.
Virtual anchor IronMouse became Twitch's most popular female anchor. The pink-haired girl debuted in 2017, and after joining the native English Vtb project VShojo in 2020, she gradually accumulated popularity with a relaxed and leisurely style. In the marathon live broadcast event some time ago, through the stable and high-frequency live broadcast, she broke a number of Twitch records and became the number one female anchor. The most exaggerated thing is that Ironmouse's existing active and paying users are more than the former Top2 female anchors Amouranth and Pokimane combined.
Musk wants a lot of Steam games to run on Tesla. Previously, Tesla could already play wizards, teacup heads and other works. Tesla said that the processor on board has the performance of the PS5, and Musk believes that "it is in the long-term interest" to "let the owner play all the games on Steam". Obviously, the real-life version of Iron Man is very concerned about people's entertainment needs.
other
"Uncharted Seas" has the fourth highest grossing record in its first week of live-action film history. Although the overseas media is not highly praised, the film has already achieved a box office of $51 million last week, ranking fourth in history, and with 90% of the audience word of mouth, it shows that people are still quite happy to watch. As of 2017, the original game series has sold a total of 41.7 million copies, and 2021 data shows that more than 13 million people have played the Uncharted series.
Ubisoft abandoned the lottery six in the UAE due to opposition from LGBTQ+ fans. LGBTQ+ is illegal in the UAE. The special thing about Cailiu is that not only the game has built-in relevant cadres, but also some professional players and some LGBTQ+ people. This made the UAE in the eyes of players not fit the culture of Cailiu, which eventually led to protests, prompting Ubisoft to issue an announcement to move the Major event originally scheduled for the UAE to other places.
LGBTQ+ operator in the game: Osa
The blue-eyed white dragon card reappeared in the judicial auction, and the pure gold version started at 80,000. According to Ali Auction, the Renxian People's Court in Hebei Province will conduct a judicial auction of a group of "Game King" cards next month, which covers a variety of rare styles such as global limited edition, pure gold, platinum blue-eyed white dragon and so on. The auction method is also more professional, with peripheral details such as certificates. In June last year, a blue-eyed white dragon card auction in Chuzhou, Anhui Province, caused a heated discussion on the Internet, and the suspect also appeared on the CCTV anti-corruption documentary "Zero Tolerance".
Wuling Automobile was approved as gameboy trademark. The enterprise investigation shows that SAIC-GM-Wuling has successfully registered the GAMEBOY trademark. And has been added to the new small models of gb logo. Before that, Wuling frequently "linked" with the game circle, one of which was to sponsor the LPL Spring Tournament. The second is that its "god car" Wuling Hongguang S joined "Forza Motorsport: Horizon 5", which is also the first time that domestic cars have joined a well-known racing game.
Thunder Games announced that it is the agent of the mobile game version of "Orbi Island". The game will be officially launched this year, the original version of 2008 online, for a children-oriented web game, and "Sail" and "Moore Manor" similar, the mobile game version will reconstruct the underlying gameplay, strengthen the plot coherence, and social gameplay.
The well-known cracking group CODEX announced its dissolution. FOUNDED IN 2014, CODEX is known for its high efficiency, and often releases cracking resources quickly after the works are sold, which is one of the main sources of most pirated resources in China. In total, more than 4,000 pirated games have been released in the active years, and a variety of encryption technologies have been involved in different platforms. The last cracked game resource they released was the kung fu game Master.
Finally, there are some new games to keep an eye on this week
Sophie's Alchemy Workshop 2, produced by Gust and released in Glory, released on February 25.
"Sophie's Alchemy Workshop 2" and the old man ring collided with the release of the day. However, under the blessing of the gimmicks of the previous games", this JRPG series still maintains a high level of character design, and consistent cultivation and synthesis gameplay. In a group of realistic "demons and ghosts", it can be regarded as a two-dimensional breeze.
"Sword Seal Magic Record", produced by pixel software, released by Happy Best, released on February 24.
Following the landing of "Qin Yan" on Steam, another pearl of the domestic stand-alone golden age, "Sword Sealing Magic Record", was listed on Steam. This ARPG is the main fighting style of combat gameplay, with elements such as combo moves and must kill, and the sense of action is stronger. The game had a very high evaluation that year, and also rushed to the top of the list of overseas RPG games. Want to relive the game time around the millennium, Sword and Magic may be a friendly guide.
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*PS: As you can see, we've launched a new program dedicated to selecting the most noteworthy pan-game information from the past week for readers in a way that is not lengthy or in-depth.
The column will be divided into two parts: first of all, we will select a recent (at least in the past seven days there is a new development) a focus event / game for comment interpretation, obviously our text is very subjective, if you can diverge from it, and to the comment area to exchange their views is better; the other part is the selection of information, compared to the daily B news of pure news, the content here will be more industry-oriented, but it is closely related to the current and future of the player ecology. If you like games and care about the development of the ACGN circle, this featured column may be one of the ways to get high-quality information.
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