If it were not for the news that "Black Desert Mobile Game" got the version number last June, many Chinese players may have forgotten what the Korean game Zhang looked like.
Due to previous changes in Sino-Korean relations, no new Korean game has been released in the Chinese market in the past few years. In this context, Pearl Abyss's "Black Desert Mobile Game" has become the first new Korean game to obtain a version number and be approved for release in Chinese mainland since 2017, and it is a very representative Korean MMO mobile game. At that time, the ice-breaking of "Black Desert Mobile Game" once confused many players - is the black sand really coming?
One step ahead of the Korean game, in March this year, Korean TV dramas have been broadcast on major domestic video websites, on March 3, iQiyi officially broadcast the Korean drama "Pretty Sister Who Often Invites to Dinner", on March 6, station B exclusively launched the Korean drama "Witty Prison Life", on March 8, Youku launched the Korean drama "Now, is in the hands of the hand", Korean dramas in the Chinese market began to enter a wide range of resumption of broadcast rhythm.
After the "Black Desert Mobile Game" obtained the version number, Tencent and Dreamworld, as the joint operators, were not idle, and quickly opened the basic test and elite test in November last year and January this year, and according to Korean media reports, developer Pearl Abyss said at the financial report meeting that the retention rate and payment rate of the test period of "Black Desert Mobile Game" in China exceeded expectations. On March 8-17, the game was also recruiting Beta Beta (CBT) personnel for TapTap, seemingly in time for another round of testing before the game went live.
The reason why this is the bottom of the pocket before the launch is because GameLook noticed that "Black Desert Mobile Game" has officially opened reservations on the AppStore, and the AppStore shows that the game's tentative launch time is April 27, and the official release time is yet to be finally confirmed. In fact, the game opened the national iOS reservation as early as March 5. Android reservations opened in August last year.
As a korean iconic MMO product, "Black Desert Mobile Game" has been harvesting the global market since its launch in February 2018, and even won the first place in the free list and the fourth best-seller list in Japan, where the per capita social fear is feared.
In 2020, Jeonghee Jin, CEO of Pearl Abyss North America, revealed at an exchange meeting that "Black Desert Mobile Game" received 20 million downloads less than two months after its release, and as of December 2019, the cumulative number of downloads exceeded 36 million. In June last year, the official also confirmed that the cumulative revenue of the "Black Desert" IP has exceeded 2 billion US dollars, and the cumulative global users have exceeded 40 million.
Among them, the cumulative number of mobile game users reached 22 million, contributing one-third of the revenue, which translates to 670 million US dollars, or about 4.2 billion yuan. The peak of game revenue occurred in March 2019, when the monthly turnover exceeded 200 million yuan. At present, the monthly income of "Black Desert Mobile Game" overseas is stable at more than 20 million yuan.
Can such an MMO, which has many halo blessings and shoulders the mission of breaking the ice of Hanyou, stand the test of the domestic market?
The epitome of Korean-style MMOs
If you want to define "Black Desert Mobile Game", it may not be too much to call it a Korean-style MMO set.
Even if it has been away from Korean-style MMOs for so many years, most of the domestic players have maintained the impression of poor sense of blows, liver pain, and fixed gameplay. Applying these three points to products such as "Odin" and "Paradise W" that are now at the top of the Korean best-seller list also applies.
Korean-style MMO gives people a lack of criticism of the blow, mainly manifested in the character battle is usually just standing in place pose monsters, commonly known as "standing pile", and the feedback of the monster in the same place circle echoes, and eventually becomes a "you hit your, I hit mine" numerical competition.
Negative example "Gran Saga"
The most eye-catching thing about "Black Desert Mobile Game" is undoubtedly the enhancement of the sense of percussion, which is mainly achieved through smooth, freely connected movements.
The game's action mod has a high-quality smooth performance, the character's attack and skill not only do not stand in place and dance, but have a mild displacement that is very intuitive, and the monster will also have a "tough" retreat feedback after being hit, with screen vibration and sound effects, which strengthens the sense of the game's blow.
In addition, at the combat operation level, "Black Desert Mobile Game" removes the setting of the end game rubbing move and changes it to the skill button output, which reduces the cumbersome operation to a certain extent and better matches the trend of the mobile terminal to pursue lightness.
At the same time, in order to solve the problem that the mobile phone screen can not be stuffed with multiple skills, "Black Desert" has also added a targeted turntable skill slot setting, players can use up to 8 different skills for combat, only need to slide the key in battle, you can easily use multi-skill combo, with gorgeous special effects, greatly improving the operation experience of playing.
Although the game adds "automatic combat" that seems to contradict the "enhanced operation", the reason is more to avoid the situation that new players are dissuaded by cumbersome operations in the early stage of the game. After passing the novice stage, many difficult groups need to be operated by the player.
For example, the perspective problem in the process of playing the group. The game cancels the traditional Korean MMO 2.5D top-down view locking, so that players need to manually adjust the angle during fierce battles, and more distraction also means that the game has a lower fault tolerance rate, which makes the game's combat look quite hardcore.
In addition to combat performance, in terms of character development, "Black Desert Mobile Game" also actively dilutes and alienates the characteristics of Korean-style MMOs "excessive liver explosion, playing games such as going to work", the former is mainly reflected in equipment creation.
In the past, players criticized the Korean-style MMO "too liver", in fact, mainly refers to the equipment building mechanism is too harsh - both require players to spend time and money to raise resources to strengthen weapons, but also set the success rate for the enhancement system, once the equipment fails, it will be downgraded or even disappeared, resulting in a great increase in the cost of cultivation.
The most rare point of "Black Desert Mobile Game" is the cancellation of the weapon/armor enhancement failure downgrade setting, the player can improve the success rate of the enhancement by placing the corresponding materials, but even if the enhancement fails, it only consumes materials and does not degrade or destroy the equipment, which greatly reduces the possibility of krypton.
Interestingly, "Black Desert Mobile Game" will also be used by other online games as a "green leaf" cultivation game, creating a "red flower". In fact, in the "Black Desert" end game, the cultivation element is already strongly related to the game economic system, so it occupies a considerable proportion. This gameplay framework has also been migrated to mobile games, where players can cut, mine, fish, and collect.
How to play fishing
You can completely weaken the numerical battles and concentrate on making money as a lumberjack or miner, and use the capital you earn to buy factories to recruit workers, become a mine boss, and experience the joy of simulating business games. What's even more outrageous is that as a businessman who concentrates on running business, you can even bargain with NPCs like reality, which can be described as making the traditional side business the ultimate hardcore fullness.
On the basis of optimizing the sense of blow, liver degree, and gameplay, "Black Desert Mobile Game" also inherits the advantages of Korean MMO, such as equipment Build, various classes in the group, PVP, super open map, etc., one increase and one subtraction to make Korean MMO have a new taste.
A next-generation quality that Europeans and Americans also fall in love with
From the background of the story, "Black Desert Mobile Game" tells the story of the three kingdoms around the black stone produced in the black desert, and the story of the decades-long war.
Mobile games inherit the same worldview as Duanyou, but they are different in terms of profession. At present, Duanyou has launched more than 30 occupations, and mobile game international clothing is 17. The official display of the national costume is only 5, namely Berserker, Witch, Swordsman, Valkyrie, and Ranger. However, the official said that the national costume will be launched in the follow-up as an important part of the localization work, and the national costume has added Chinese dubbing.
Not only is the world view adapted from Duanyou, but in the art picture of Hanyou's other major masterpiece, "Black Desert Mobile Game" also maintains the next-generation quality comparable to Duanyou.
In the selection of art styles, "Black Desert Mobile Game" inherits the tradition of Korean travel, adopting a style that combines Eastern martial arts and Western medieval magic. On this basis, the game also restores the "pinch face" system with a high degree of freedom in the end game, which not only contains several large options such as facial features, head shape, hairstyle, height, clothing, etc., but also has several more sub-sub-options under each option.
For example, under the five-facial options, the system allows players to adjust the eyes, nose, buttons, eyebrows, lips, and under the eye sub-option, the shape and color of the pupils, eyeshadow, eye shape, etc. can be adjusted more carefully. It's no exaggeration to say that you can even control every muscle in the character's face.
In Zhihu, some netizens posted the comparison between the face pinching map and the real model of the game, and the transplantation of the end game face pinching system from the performance point of view can be described as very successful, corresponding to the next-generation standard that the official previously claimed to achieve end quality in mobile games.
In addition to pinching the face, in terms of overall picture performance, the mobile game also continues the self-developed engine "BlackSpace Engine" of the terminal game, making the picture effect very stunning.
The brilliant light and shadow effects and high-quality realistic picture quality presented by the mountains and forests, as detailed as the reflection of figures and buildings under the sunlight, and even the dust raised when running, have the next-generation performance that far exceeds that of ordinary mobile games. As a mobile game launched in 2018, its quality performance is still very rare today after 4 years.
In addition, in order to further increase the realism of the game, in some details that are easy to ignore, "Black Desert Mobile Game" has also done its best. For example, in conversations with NPCs, the NPC's demeanor will change depending on the context, showing expressions and movements that are either happy or lost.
In the case of such a "next generation" quality performance of "Black Shami", it is no wonder that some players will be so excited after hearing that the national costume will be tested internally.
Even Pearl Abyss revealed at the 2021 earnings conference that after the Black Desert IP updated a wave of content in December last year, European and American users who were not too cold to MMO directly added 230%, much higher than the average of 165%.
The countdown to the black sand mobile game national service may allow Pearl Abyss to usher in growth
On March 9, perhaps it has been too long for Korean tourism to enter the Chinese market, and after the "Black Desert Mobile Game" announced the expected launch date of the AppStore, many Media in the Korean industry have reported on it.
But then, Pearl Abyss officials said in an interview: "The game's listing date has been determined, but it is not April 27, and the exact release date will be announced by the local publisher through the official website and other channels." The market expects the game to officially go live in late April or early May.
Pearl Abyss has not produced a new work in a long time since the release of the Black Desert mobile game in February 2018, which has led to a year-on-year decline in revenue, with revenue gradually falling from 538.9 billion won (about 2.77 billion yuan) in 2019 to 488.8 billion won in 2020 and 403.8 billion won in 2021.
Based on the expectation of the launch of the "Black Desert Mobile Game" national service, on the day of the conference call (February 15), Pearl Abyss's stock price rose by 6.21% from the previous trading day to 104,400 won.
It is not difficult to understand that the market has shown a positive performance. On the one hand, the game itself has high quality, as well as the first Icebreaker domestic market under the Korean order, the two major BUFF bonuses, which are good for normal reactions. In addition, as early as 2017, Pearl Abyss announced that it had reached an agency cooperation with Snail Games, but the follow-up national service end game has not moved. After the mobile game is launched, it is likely to become a window for players to expect a centralized outbreak for many years.
On the other hand, at present, the MMO of the domestic market has been insufficient, and most of the newly produced products are rolled in the mainstream tracks such as SLG, cards, and quadratic elements, and there is a large vacancy in the MMO track. "Black Desert Mobile Game" as a Collection of Korean-style MMO, what kind of positive market effect will be produced after the launch of the national service, it should be worth looking forward to.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
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