Text | Game Pizza, author | Jia Qi, Editor | Zhou Yabo
"Help, can the Byou Paper Man fight too?"
This was a hot topic in the game circle last week, and the "battlefield" was Weibo. "Battle Situation" is mainly concentrated on the paper people "Xiao Yi" and "Charlie Su" from the Otome game "Light and Night Love", around the story line of the two characters in the game, the keywords involve "bastards", "legal coffee", etc., and those who don't know also think that they have entered a traffic star super talk (before the Qinglang Movement). The weibo has been forwarded more than 11,000 times, and the viewing permission has been set.
These players who charge for the sake of "paper man husband" objectively speaking, they do belong to a small part of the B game family, and many players have expressed dissatisfaction with this behavior, saying "Isn't it an 18+ game, why is there such a childish approach?" ”
For many players who entered the pit in 2017, the originator of the domestic B tour "Love and Producer", this scene is not new. As early as a few years ago, the fans of the four male protagonists of "Love and" began to fight for the number of cards, card faces, appearance length and birthday benefits.
However, the "personal attacks" on the characters seem to be on the rise again: if it is only for the sake of tearing X out of the number of cards, at least it is still in the game, and once you start to call Charlessew the "legal café", it is already "too deep".
The B circle near the rice circle
Underneath the battlefield of each B circle, there is a common analogy object - the rice circle. Idols and paper people will be compared, and the fans of the two are naturally inextricably linked.
In addition, Otome games are inherently special in setting, that is, "let the player make a choice" - most people will more or less have a preference for one or more of the characters after entering the game, and after clearly choosing the "Raider Object", there will be a bond between the player and the character that is very similar to that of idols and fans - the difference is that the paper man will not collapse and will always be loyal to you.
The most serious friction between the two circles dates back to August 2020. Yan Haoxiang of the Times Youth League was arranged to voice Li Zeyan of "Love and Producer" during a live broadcast of an event, and during the dubbing process, he spat on Li Zeyan's lines "too shameful" and "very strange", which caused dissatisfaction among Li Zeyan's fans, and thus launched a vigorous cross-dimensional war.
Until now, the war has not completely stopped, in the Weibo search box entered "Yan Haoxiang", the first entry that appeared is "Yan Haoxiang Li Zeyan". In this war, Li Zeyan's fans are not at all behind, not only a huge number, but also a "brokerage company" behind it, and the official Weibo statement said that it "resolutely resists personal attacks and malicious insults against Li Zeyan and even my playmakers."
There are certain inherent similarities between the idol industry and the otome game, such as their existence is to "weave dreams" for girls. In the matter of dream-making, the two sides have places of convergence and have their own boundaries.
In order to make this dream infinitely close to reality, Fold paper almost operates the four male protagonists in "Love and Producer" into "live-action idols", in addition to the game, they will open personal microblogs, make statements that meet the human design on Weibo, and also do public welfare, keep pets, and have their own social relationships.
White microblogging
When their existence is infinitely close to the real person in the player's mind, a series of struggles that are very similar to the "rice circle tearing X" is not difficult to understand: the frequency of appearing in the main story line, just like the appearance time of an MV, the position of a drama, represents whether the official is interested in this role, and similar to the delicacy of the card face, birthday activities and so on.
The disenchantment of idols has also spawned the rice circle of "two-dimensional love beans" on another level. In recent years, the "idol collapse" has changed from a small probability event to a general event, and many people have issued a call for "still paper people", at least in the otome game, there will be no second heroine, and naturally there is no other risk of collapse.
Since the paper people are more fragrant than the love beans, the matter of fighting for the paper people is of course more reason than the solidarity with the love beans.
"If you don't krypton, you'll be fine"
The history of domestic otome games is not very long, from 2017 to officially start, the difference is that the history of Japanese otome games has been more than twenty years.
The industry's recognized originator of the Otome game is Angeliko, from Koei Corporation (KOEI), released on September 23, 1994. This is the company's first female-to-female game, produced by an all-female team formed by one of its founders, Keiko Sagawa. At the same time, KOEI also established an Otome game brand called "NeoRomance".
"Angelico" is full of momentum, not only developed animation, radio drama and other derivative forms, but also in 1997-1999 successively launched "Angelico 2", "Angelico Duo", "Sky's Soul Song" three sequels, covering Nintendo, Sony and other major game platforms.
In 2000, while Angeliko continued to launch a sequel, KOEI released an Otome game called "Distant Time and Space", which sold more than 50,000 at the time, becoming the sales champion of Otome games in Japan at that time. At this point, KOEI formed a near-monopoly on the Japanese otome game market.
The sales record of "Distant Time and Space" was broken in 2002 by "Heartbeat Memories Girls' Edition". The latter was born out of GalGame's "Heartbeat Memories" produced by Konami in 1994. In the following years, well-known Japanese game companies, including QR And OTOMATE, have entered the Otome game track, and the Japanese Otome game market has entered a situation of diversified scuffles.
"In Distant Time and Space"
Around 2014, with the expansion of the mobile game market scale, the original well-known Otome game IP needs to be transplanted from the host side to the mobile end, in addition, the Japanese B super IP such as "Angelico" and "Heartbeat Memories" is still introducing sequels, and sales continue to lead, which imprisons the development space of Day B, and also makes the development of Day B gradually enter a period of relaxation.
At the same time, in the country, orange light games appeared. The first to become popular on orange light is "Counterattack Star Road Shine", in this AVG game (text adventure game), players can attack all male characters and lead to different endings by choosing. This is very close to the setting of the Otome game. Coincidentally, like 1994's Angelique, There is no voice acting in Strike Against the Stars.
In the following years, part of the domestic Otome game was derived from The Japanese and operated by domestic companies, such as "Dream Kingdom and the Sleeping 100 Princes" launched in 2015, operated by bilibili games. The other part is developed independently by smaller game companies in China. Such as "Dream Back to the Southern Dynasty", "Love the World" and so on. However, due to its small size, no large splashes are formed.
It was not until December 2017, the emergence of "Love and Producers" that it really marked the landing of mature Otome games in China. Once released, "Love and Producer" quickly occupied the female gamer market, and once surpassed "Glory of kings" to the second place in the AppStore free game list.
The popularity of "Love and Producer" has allowed more game manufacturers to see the potential of Otome games. Starting from 2020, with the entry of big manufacturers such as Mihayou, Tencent, and NetEase, the market structure of Otome games is gradually reconstructed. Incomplete statistics, there are more than 7 otome games launched in 2020, including the "Undetermined Event Book" launched by Mihayou, the "Painter in Time and Space" launched by NetEase, and the "Legend of the Spirit Cat" launched by Chaoxi Lightyear.
"The Painter in Time and Space"
The louder the player tears, the more the game company earns. When "Love and Producer" was launched a month ago, the cumulative flow had exceeded 200 million. "Love of Light and Night", as the "new top stream" of national B, the income can not be underestimated, which greatly threatens the hegemony of "Love and".
"Kryptonite" and "quarrel" for the paper people, to some extent, share the same set of underlying logic, that is, see them as "idols" in real life, both to maintain their reputation and appearance in the game, but also to spend money to provide.
Compared with the domestic good in-purchase mobile games, the popular Japanese B is mostly a buyout design, compared to the constantly updated national B, more inclined to continuously produce sequels, which is also the reason why the player environment of The Day B is relatively simple - the player's battle will not help the paper people they love.
Therefore, it seems that solving the problem of B circle tearing X is very simple, and it will be fine without krypton. However, in the current domestic mobile game environment, "not forcing Krypton" is the most difficult problem to solve.