Text | Game Pizza, author | Chen Shoucheng, Editor | Zhang Youfa
At 7:00 a.m. on March 29, the SLG mobile game "Return to Empire" developed by Tencent Tianmei Studio was officially launched and reached the top of the Appstore game list.
SLG games, originally meant to simulate strategy games, now refer more to strategy wargames. Compared to Moba games with a larger number of active players, SLG games are more niche, with a larger group of players but stronger spending power.
In the process of domestic games going to sea, SLG mobile games represented by "Awakening of All Nations" have made a lot of income overseas. In China, Ali's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition" and NetEase's "Coast of the Land" both occupy a place in the Appstore's best-selling game list.
Such a piece of fragrant food, Tencent has not wanted to get involved, before "Return to Empire", Tencent had at least two similar games, but neither of them has made a breakthrough in the market. This time," "Return to The Empire" seems to be not only a tribute to the game "Age of Empires", but also like a huge slogan, Tencent, which has been absent from the battlefield for a long time, is now back.
But, with the track already so crowded, can SLG really accommodate one more player?
History is in a mess
The Age of Empires and Civilization series have always been the best in 4X strategy games in Europe and the United States. Compared with the "Nobunaga Nobunaga" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" series, which are more popular in Asia, these two games do not stick to a fixed historical era, but upgrade technology and technology with historical changes, and eventually produce major changes in the times. Players can truly appreciate that history is the protagonist of the game.
Even so, Age of Empires or Civilization has a fixed history and timeline, and players can feel that consistent historical legacy over the course of the game. However, in "Return to the Empire", which claims to have carried out in-depth cooperation with the "Age of Empires", although there is also this advanced gameplay of the times, the player feels not a strong sense of historical inheritance, but a certain degree of fragmentation and the rigid integration of different circles.
Just enter the game, you can see the screen full of alliance recruitment information on the Big World Channel: recruit active players, whether they are new or old players, they are brothers.
As a newly launched game, the so-called "old player" refers to the transfer from games such as "Glory of the New Three Kingdoms" and "Gone with the Wind" to "Return to Empire". Both games are produced by Tencent, but for a variety of reasons, the number of active players is not much today. The "old players" need a new battlefield and new brothers to fight, and "Return to Empire" has become the hope of players who are still sticking to these two Tencent games.
About ten days ago, "Return to Empire" began an overwhelming marketing model, almost everywhere in sight. This also makes the player's expectations increase sharply, there are failures in front, friend business success examples on the side, can Tianmei come up with a real blockbuster?
Obviously, Tianmei's first thought about this is: we need an IP.
"Glory of the New Three Kingdoms" and "Gone with the Wind" did not have IP blessings, and the success of the competitor "Romance of the Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition" has many reasons, the most important of which is perhaps the name borrowed from the well-known "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" series of games in the domestic market. From icons to names to publicity, Ali has made full use of the IP value of authorization.
This strategy was very successful, and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition" attracted many loyal fans of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" series, who used to play pirates, and when they had the ability to pay, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition" became an outlet.
The character design here comes from the original "Romance of the Three Kingdoms"
Looking at the global game market, in the games that have a certain status in the hearts of domestic players and have the value of old IP, Tianmei has found "Age of Empires", and even invited the illustrators and music composers of "Age of Empires" to participate in cooperation. Open the game screen, in addition to Tencent Games, there are also dual icons of Xbox and World's edge, which to a certain extent shows the strength of cooperation between Tianmei and Microsoft.
However, the influence of "Age of Empires" in the domestic market is still not so large, and the game's Western historical background also makes it difficult for players to have a sense of substitution. Tianmei seems to have taken this issue into account, so in the course of a specific game, players will experience a sense of violation due to this mentality.
At a certain stage of the game, a hero wearing green armor and with a full body design that is obviously "Guan Yu" will take the initiative to join the player and provide temporary help for the player's side. But in "Return to the Empire", the hero's name is not "Guan Yu", but "Martial Saint".
Further back in the game, you can see the heroes that are currently available for recruitment. Outside of a bunch of foreign heroes that players are either familiar with or unclear, it's not hard to see very familiar images. However, here, Zhao Yun assumed the pseudonym "Gentian General", Qin Qiong was renamed Qin Yujing, and Xiang Yu changed his name to Xiang Chu.
These practices are obviously consistent with the logic of "Glory of Kings" to change the name of "Jingke" to "Ah Ke". This presents a relatively bizarre picture in the Return to Empire worldview in which Western heroes fight alongside Eastern heroes, but Eastern heroes have to use pseudonyms. The game's original worldview of fighting with Eastern and Western heroes was difficult to bridge, and now, the pseudonym of The Hero of the East makes the game experience even more bizarre.
Of course, if the player does not intend to give money to the game, then even this strange sense of game experience has nothing to do with the player for the time being. At the beginning, the game will give each player a basic warrior "Wei Lan", as long as you follow the tutorial prompts, Wei Lan will help you complete all the tasks. All the player has to do is follow the prompt to touch the screen.
SLG just skinned?
Compared with overseas, the most sophisticated design of the domestic mobile game market may be based on the psychology of human nature, full of various scientific step-by-step kryptonite point mechanisms. As a high-Arpu game type, SLG is more difficult to match in other game genres in terms of making players pay.
When players follow the game tutorial to complete certain basic tasks, they will be asked by the system to occupy enough resource points to increase the power value. However, the resource points allocated by the system may not always be at your fingertips, and at a certain point, players will encounter obstacles from barbarians or other players.
At this time, players will face multiple choices, 1. direct krypton gold to obtain powerful warriors and resources; 2. take the time to study how to enhance combat effectiveness; 3. join the alliance.
Such a choice is almost meaningless, and if 1 is chosen, the player has already completed the consumption of the game. Choosing 2 means that players invest more time in the game, so that players are likely to become more loyal and easier to pay for.
If you choose 3, then, congratulations, you will enter the endless vortex of payment.
At this point, the game's teaching of the player has been preliminarily completed. At the same time, it is also the key node of screening the target user.
In terms of popularity, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms • Strategy Edition" and "Coast of the Land" are far inferior to "Glory of the King", and the number of active players may not be as good as "Original God", but in terms of game revenue, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms • Strategy Edition" and "Coast of the Land" are on a par with "Glory of the King" and "Original God". The way to make money in SLG games is not how hot they are, but in their high user stickiness.
To some extent, SLG games provide players who are keen to point out the country and provide a sandbox simulation battle-style game experience. This "on paper" gameplay experience has always been popular with players.
In the early years, there was no shortage of blockbuster turn-based warboard games such as "The Legend of the Three Kingdoms", "Fire Emblem", and "Final Fantasy Strategy Edition" on the console platform. However, at that time, this type of game was only about simulating the tense of war, and players often only controlled a few troops, fighting through your tactical choice of one turn and one turn of me, but lacking the process of preparing for battle.
Subsequently, partial RTS (real-time strategy mode) games such as "Red Alert" and "Age of Empires" also once gained attention in the domestic market. The "Three Kingdoms Heroes" series, developed by Taiwanese game manufacturers, was once the memory of a generation of mainland players. This type of game goes a step further in the temporal study of war than turn-based wargames. Players get more immediate feedback, and the game demands more on the operation.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 13
Since then, the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" series of Japan's Glorious Company has also reached its peak. In this type of game, the player's control includes a series of actions such as administration, combat, and diplomacy. Players will think of ways to achieve real victories based on the big goal: to unify the three kingdoms.
But for mobile games that require long-term operation, there is no way for players to really win. In a way, SLG games inherit all the kryptonite methods of Journey twenty years ago. Single-player combat is difficult to make players pay, and chemistry can only occur if the player is placed in a field between people: alliances. Players will have a desire to consume.
In order to make players more motivated to pay, game operations often plan a variety of activities for alliances to fight and fight. Alliances must compete with each other for virtual lands in the game world. On the one hand, this depends on the personnel organization between the various alliances, SLG games, many alliances even have special WeChat groups, group members like work, at a fixed time to a key node of the game to punch, and to finally win an effort to pay an effort.
On the other hand, the kryptonite strength of the big man between the two alliances is the key to victory. In order to fight, the alliance gets a piece of land or the first place, and the big guys compete to fill the money and lose each other. In such an almost endless struggle, the player will never be able to achieve a real victory, but as long as the kryptonite continues, the thrill of victory will always exist. And the real money and silver spent by the players, of course, makes the game official behind it earn a lot of money.
Adults need a reason to play the house. Whether it's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Strategy Edition, Leading the Land, or Return to The Empire, they're trying to make such a reason seem less ridiculous.