Last year, Kakao Games' "Odin: God Rebellion" came out, ranking first in the Korean best-seller list for more than 100 consecutive days, defeating the previous "Paradise M" and "Paradise 2M" myths, becoming the biggest hit in the Korean mobile game market. Recently, this popular South Korean MMO has also landed in the Fanzhong market.
On March 29, "Odin: Rebellion" was launched in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and it topped the iOS free list and best-selling list in Hong Kong and Taiwan at the first time, and continued to win the first place in the double list in Macao the next day.
But in fact, this is not the first time in a year that Hanyou has swept the market. As early as last November, NCsoft's new tour "Paradise W" has repeatedly topped the best-seller list in Hong Kong and Taiwan. At present, the popularity of the game is also not low, still ranked 2nd in the iOS best-seller list in Taiwan and 9th in Hong Kong.
It is worth mentioning that according to the data released by mobile Index on March 10, NCsoft ranked first in the top ten korean manufacturers' mobile game revenue in February this year, accounting for 23.9%, followed by Kakao Games, accounting for 8.9%. Coincidentally, these two game companies ranked in South Korea's top 2 have entered the Fanzhong market in the latest year and achieved good results.
Nowadays, with "Odin: Rebellion" reaching the top of the best-seller list in three places at the same time, it is inevitable to wonder why the Korean Tour MMO can repeatedly attack the city and sweep across Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan in the prosperous market?
A new generation of Korean tour labels - hyper-realistic picture quality MMOs
First of all, from the perspective of game quality, "Odin: Rebellion" and "Heaven W" are obviously hyper-realistic MMO, and there is a significant generation difference with traditional Korean games.
In the traditional perception, most of the characters of Korean MMO have melon faces, big eyes, perfect proportions of nine heads, and are too real. Even if it is based on Western themes, the characters are far from Western game characters and have distinct Korean characteristics. However, since Pearl Abyss's Black Desert became popular, its art style has gradually become popular with more players, and Korean games have begun to metamorphose in the direction of hyper-realistic MMOs.
Today, the new generation of MMOs such as "Odin: Rebellion" and "Heaven W" have changed the previous K-pop routine, no longer oriented by "aesthetic beauty", but completely turned to the hyper-realistic route. To some extent, the realism of the game has rivaled, or even surpassed, the current virtual idol that claims to break the dimensional wall.
Not only is the character model realistic, but the character stickers and scene maps are also more refined, and today's Korean MMO is obviously close to the quality of console games. However, compared with European and American hyper-realistic games, there are still obvious differences between the two. Taking the recent popular "Borderlands 3" as an example, European and American games are often more unique in character design, and the personalized characteristics are obvious.
From this point of view, the new generation of MMOs is still essentially strengthening the inherent advantages of Hallyu, that is, selling faces and selling looks as the first element to attract users. It is worth mentioning that in terms of product performance, South Korean MMOs are leading the industry and opening up multiple platforms early, such as "Odin: God Rebellion" and "Heaven W" are cross-platform games.
In contrast, the two games also do not depart from the traditional Korean MMO routine at the core gameplay level.
Taking "Paradise W" in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan as an example, the game was quickly complained about by some players: the gameplay was fixed; the role matching points and equipment combination leader raiders were pitiful, and the special matching points were not competitive, resulting in no difference in character training; the equipment system was quite simple, the more advanced it was; the automatic combat caused the experience to be extremely poor, and so on.
But in fact, "Paradise W" also has no lack of bright spots, such as the launch of a "global service" transnational war in combination with gameplay, which strengthens the competition and confrontation between players and increases the enthusiasm of users to pay. This design has also promoted a large number of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan players to jointly attack Korean players, which has greatly stimulated user consumption.
But in essence, it is still a "change of soup without changing the medicine" type of innovation.
Because of this, the super popularity of the previous game in Taiwan service is more due to the successful operation strategy during the launch period, that is, through the game anchor "with goods" to divert new traffic and stimulate player consumption, in order to promote significant growth in flow.
Of course, this is not a novel operating model. Not to mention that MMOs have long been responsible for stimulating the tradition of player consumption, in recent years, the domestic game industry has become more mature and normalized in the marketing model of KOLs such as talents and anchors. DataEye Research Institute once mentioned that game manufacturers are reinvesting the resources of traditional delivery channels into the live broadcasting industry, and the number of users provided by Da ren live broadcasting can meet the requirements of a medium and heavy game for new, retained, paid and other data.
What's more, the operating model is not a panacea. It can be seen that with the increasingly obvious marginal utility and the departure of a large number of anchors, the popularity of "Paradise W" Hong Kong and Taiwan services has inevitably declined.
From another perspective, after screening out a large number of pan-users who are not interested in MMO, "Paradise W" has actually precipitated a large number of loyal core players. At present, the product is indeed becoming more and more stable, and it is firmly rooted in the top 10 of the best-seller list in the prosperous region. From this point of view, the new generation of Korean MMOs can still be called a successful upgrade, at least to achieve a significant sense of generation difference.
The MMO of the chinese sub-era is not connected, and the original IP is scarce
For domestic manufacturers, in the past year, South Korean MMOs have swept Through Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan for the second time, which is really a sigh. After all, the current domestic MMO is in a state of inactivity, and the entire market segment has been facing a vacuum period for a long time.
Intuitively, the domestic MMO mobile game market is not without successors. However, compared with emerging categories such as the second dimension, the supply of new MMO games is small, and even the "Against the Cold Water" mobile game that players have been looking forward to for many years has not yet been exposed.
Not to mention, most of the popular MMO mobile games are derivative products of the end game era, backed by classic terminal games such as "Tianya Mingyue Knife", "Fantasy Journey to the West", "Sword Net", or the newly launched "Qing Yu Nian" mobile game, which has a sufficiently influential pan-entertainment IP. In addition to this, almost no new projects with original IP have emerged.
In GameLook's view, MMO coldness is actually related to product quality research and development. Unlike South Korean manufacturers, which have been ahead of the curve for more than a decade, domestic game companies have only begun to popularize Unreal Engine research and development in recent years and put forward the slogan of "industrialization". This also leads to the current boutique MMO projects often jump from 100 million yuan, and the cost investment is extremely large.
Therefore, compared with creating IP products with a certain user base and winning at the starting line, it is undoubtedly a huge risk to start building a worldview and developing an original MMO, and most game manufacturers are naturally unwilling to take risks easily.
It is also understandable that MMO has gradually changed from the only category in the end game era to a category that many companies refuse to choose, and only some of the old manufacturers are left with the track. Or, for example, Perfect World launched "Magic Tower", actively seeking the transformation and breakthrough of MMO.
But in any case, the current domestic MMOs compared with the Korean companies of the same period, the sense of generation difference is still obvious. This is most intuitive in the Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan markets, and the Korean MMO has crushed a number of competitors by quality alone. However, this phenomenon is only temporary, and the ultimate decisive factor is still the game content and long-term operation strategy.
Jump out of the MMO routine, and the original god shows a brighter path
Strictly speaking, the K-pop MMO that relies only on quality upgrades has not yet got rid of the inherent routine, although it has won the Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan markets in a short period of time, but the long-term operation will inevitably have a significant decrease in player enthusiasm. In contrast, in China, there is still no next-generation MMO product that can match it.
Interestingly, although more and more companies are abandoning the MMO, they have begun to explore another direction: not relying on MMOs, looking for more potential RPG long-term development. In terms of current performance, "Original God" is obviously the most representative product among them.
With no leaderboards and no mandatory teaming, Protos seems to be inherently insulated from all MMO routines. Instead of emphasizing in-game socialization, it is more of a stand-alone experience, and the player's social focus is instead placed outside the game, that is, linking other players through a highly active binary atmosphere.
Since its launch for more than a year, relying on high-frequency content updates only once every 15 days, "Original God" has been a great success around the world, and every time it is new, it can always dominate the best-selling list of many countries and regions. According to Sensor Tower data, the total revenue of "Original God" in the first year of its launch reached 2 billion US dollars, and the highest monthly revenue of the mobile terminal overseas reached 230 million US dollars.
Without relying on MMO routines to stimulate players, "Original God" has chosen a brighter path, but it still achieves a steady income and high popularity that is not weaker than MMOs. In other words, compared to Korean manufacturers, they simply focus on quality upgrades and gain short-term high popularity. Only by breaking the routine and deeply cultivating the content innovation that players love can we truly create products that have been favored by players and the market for a long time.
····· End ·····
GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
Global vision / depth is material