If there is any game that is the biggest hit in the overseas market by Lightyear, then I believe that the answer in the hearts of many people will be - Ragnarok X: Next Generation (hereinafter referred to as ROX).
Licensed by Gravity, developed by Junmeng Games, and published by Chaoxi Lightyear, the game was launched in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan in October 2020, and landed in the Southeast Asian market in June of the following year.
During this period, "ROX" has soared all the way, successively occupying the top seat of the Google Play best-seller list in Different regions such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia.
(Taking the four countries and regions in Southeast Asia as an example, ROX has been in the Top 35 of Google's best-seller list since its launch))
By the end of last year, it stood out among many strong competitors, winning many awards from Google Play.
Among them, including the "best tablet game" in Thailand and Indonesia, the "best game" in Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and other regions.
When we look at some specific data of the game, the perception of this "blockbuster" will be more obvious. According to official information, shortly after the launch of "ROX", the flow of water exceeded 100 million US dollars, and the cumulative number of users exceeded 10 million. After deducting the share of the IP party and the publisher, the developer Junmeng Game recovered the research and development cost in less than 3 months.
From three years of R&D investment to three months of returning costs, the dark horse performance of ROX has undoubtedly filled the industry with curiosity.
Not long ago, Google and the mobile game had the honor of inviting a number of core members of the "ROX" team to exchange and review the development of the game from the establishment of the project to the present. In the process of communicating with them, my understanding of the game was constantly overturned:
When I thought that the success of "ROX" was due to the core charm of the classic IP of "Wonderland Legend", the producer seal told me that they put "reduction" in the second place when developing, and the most important point that ROX presented to IP users was "seeking difference".
When I felt that the distribution of ROX would focus on the powerful distribution platform "TikTok" behind the light-years of the day, the head of distribution Alan said that in Southeast Asia, they pay more attention to the influence of vertical media, which is ignored by some domestic manufacturers.
Perhaps it is precisely because of their unique understanding of the product and the market that they finally created the explosive game "ROX", which brought the influence of IP to a new height.
Through the opportunity of review and exchange, we can also find some places worth learning and learning from.
01
Project research and development: "We are pursuing a new generation, but also seeking differences"
Turn the clock back to 2017. After a series of communication analysis and market research, Asahi Lightyear and Junmeng Games reached a cooperation and officially established the "ROX", with Jia Pengyang (Seal) as the game's chief producer.
However, not long after the game was established, the seal encountered two major problems.
First, Junmeng's previous successful products were mainly concentrated in the card category, and never made a real-time MMO game.
Whether it is technical strength or R & D experience, it is necessary to accumulate from scratch, and to ensure the progress of the project in terms of time, which is undoubtedly a great challenge for the R & D team.
Second, at that time, there were already a number of "RO" mobile game products on the market, and they also achieved quite good results. Then in the case of user cognition solidification, the "ROX" that appeared later is bound to be distinguished from the previous products.
However, if you blindly emphasize innovation, you may lose the original charm of IP, so how to balance the relationship between the two has become another difficult task in research and development.
In such a situation, Seal said bluntly: "During this period, my team and I have endured a lot of pressure from all sides, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it was not an exaggeration to say that on the day of the game's launch, we slept peacefully and soundly." ”
But pressure is also motivation. After making the DEMO version, the R&D team spent a lot of time and energy to investigate and communicate with IP users, and finally helped them determine the design idea of ROX - emphasizing innovative gameplay and breaking stereotypes.
This is because in the view of the seal, the IP user is first and foremost the game user, and the core of the game still has to return to the matter of "whether it is good or not".
Therefore, IP users themselves are receptive to innovative designs, as long as they are fun enough. Conversely, if the design is not fun, or has deviated from the user habits of the current market, then whether it is restored or not, it is a negative experience for the user.
After clarifying this understanding, all the gameplay design of ROX first considers whether it is interesting and fun, and then considers reduction. At the same time, Seal and his team also named the game "The Birth of a New Generation", hoping to break the user's inherent cognition in the most intuitive way.
"What we want to pursue is a new generation, that is, to seek difference. On the one hand, this is out of anticipation of the team's bright vision for the future, on the other hand, it means that players start a new adventure in the game world and write their own new generation story. ”
So specific to the actual gameplay content, how does ROX practice this concept?
So Seal shared with me a representative example: the "economic system" of ROX.
First of all, the project team believes that MMORPG, a heavy game category, is difficult to achieve without liver and krypton. Secondly, through multiple user surveys, they gradually perceive that players' payment habits are hierarchical.
That said, for users who are willing to pay, their ability and habits to pay have always been good; but for users who don't like to pay, no matter how the game is designed, they are still unwilling to pay.
Therefore, since it is difficult for the game to be liverless and kryptonian, the project team decided to make it a model that can be "liver" or "krypton".
ROX abolished the official store and instead made the "trading house" the center of gravity of the economic cycle. Through complex output design, to increase the transaction demand between users, so as to form a healthy and benign economic ecology, to ensure that players of different circles can have a good game experience.
Of course, in the process of design, the R & D team also encountered many difficulties. For example, how to avoid the negative impact of traditional "gold" studios on the game environment; how to reasonably balance the output and consumption of money and a series of thorny issues.
However, they are happy that this economic cycle model has been highly recognized by many users, especially non-Krypton users, which further strengthens the team's confidence in doing a good job of this cycle.
Talking about this, the tone of the seal revealed a bit of pride. He also told me that another advantage of this model is that it is very suitable for global products.
Because the price of goods in the game is determined by the market, the price of a region or country can be self-adjusted according to the relationship between supply and demand. This not only reduces the workload of R&D and publishing, but also can deeply tap the payment potential of various regions, and ultimately maximize the revenue of game turnover.
Under the influence of this concept of pursuing innovative gameplay, it took three years, and Seal and his team overcame many difficulties to make "ROX" that made IP users look at the eyes of NEW.
02
Launched online: "Turn all ROX players into our spokespeople"
After the game is completed, it is natural to start preparing for online release.
Leaf, head of Asian distribution at Nuverse (an overseas distribution brand of Daylightye), told me that in order to match RO's national IP status in Southeast Asia, they not only began to prepare for the release of ROX six months in advance, from the beginning of 2021, but also used a lot of publicity resources and budget costs.
Then when it comes to specific marketing practices, Alan, the head of distribution of ROX, took over Leaf's words and said: "RoX's distribution strategy is mainly focused on the two time points before and after the launch. ”
Before going online, Chao Xi Lightyear did a lot of market research and found that the recognition rate and penetration rate of the "RO" IP in Southeast Asian countries were very high. "It can be said that there are no players in the whole of Southeast Asia who have not played or heard of RO."
Under such circumstances, Asahi Lightyear has opened up ROX's Social Media Pages such as Facebook and TikTok, and intends to use the classic elements of IP to aggregate this group of users.
For example, they will use a "card system" that is impressed by old players in the early stages of the game. Use the classic "cards" in ROX as a communication medium to increase the exposure of the game in the user group and quickly gather core players.
Because in Alan's view, behind the "cards" is the player's memories and stories in the game.
Therefore, this method is actually to pass on the emotional story, so that more player groups can perceive it, so as to awaken their memory of IP, and finally complete the role of aggregation and diversion.
Because of this, the number of pre-launch appointments for ROX was the highest of any game in Southeast Asia last year.
But after going live, the distribution team encountered a new problem: "RO" as a national IP, it is difficult to find a spokesperson who can match it.
Therefore, after in-depth communication with the project team, combined with the influence of the IP itself, they decided to take a different publishing path in the local area - let every player become the spokesperson of the game.
To that end, Alan did two things with his team. First, the use of the "TikTok" platform gives many ordinary players the opportunity to walk under the spotlight.
In Thailand, for example, they launched a challenge with the theme of #TogetherChallenge. Players can trigger in-game dress-up stickers through specific action gestures to satisfy their desire to perform.
The event eventually sparked a big craze. According to relevant data, the exposure of the challenge is more than 386 million, while the total population of Thailand is only 70 million, so the average person has watched the relevant video at least 5 times. The effect of the hot event eventually helped the game to appear on the front page of the App Store, ushering in a wave of greater exposure.
The second is to further amplify the memories and stories of players through various media platforms in Southeast Asia.
For example, ROX collects their precious memories and emotional stories about the game from all players on the fan homepage. The official weekly selection of the best story is then given a special prize, while the overall winner of the final week is voted for by the player.
At that event, we can see that some players have formed deep friendships in guild battles and become good friends in reality; there are also people who meet and fall in love because of games, and eventually enter the palace of marriage together; and even some players like pets in the game too much, so they opened a pet shop after growing up.
These bits and pieces of memories have resonated with many players and users, and ROX has gradually created a kind and warm game image in their hearts.
In addition, Alan also stressed to me, "Compared with other domestic distributors, we will pay more attention to the influence of big media, such as local TV channels, and some big media in Europe and the United States, such as IGN, Gamespot, etc., which have also achieved good results." ”
In the end, with a series of playing styles, ROX had more than 10 million users in Southeast Asia shortly after its launch, occupying the top position in the best-selling list in many regions.
But rox's team didn't dare to slacken off, because for MMORPG, long-term operations were a bigger challenge.
03
Long-term operation: "Refined and localized user strategies are particularly important to us"
In order to meet the challenges of long-term operations, Sunrise Lightyear has developed a number of strategies, and Leaf pointed out that it is mainly divided into three points.
First, refined and localized user operations.
On the one hand, ROX has different operating methods for user groups in different circles. For example, in the face of the main paying group in the game, we will pay close attention to their demands and solve them in a timely manner to ensure that we can have a good gaming experience.
In the face of middle and low-level users, the game focuses on mining social users. Then for this group of users, there will be corresponding activities and positions to make the game ecology healthier and more benign through them.
On the other hand, within the game, ROX has made some designs that combine the cultural characteristics of different regions in Southeast Asia. For example, in Thailand, the game designed its own elephant mount and kinna crown hat, and in Indonesia, it also customized the corresponding local cultural headdress.
In addition, ROX also provides users with a variety of local languages, including English, Chinese Simplified, Indonesian, and Thai. The purpose is to make the game reach all users in Southeast Asia.
Second, the content of the version is updated with the times.
Through the research and insight of the local market, the Asahi Lightyear Will provide first-hand information for the R&D team, so that the pace of roX version updates is very fast and has a strong pertinence.
Let's take an example. When Songkran Thailand approaches, ROX opens up events for local players. Then, there will be corresponding activity planning for Eid al-Fitr in Indonesia and Malaysia.
This feeling of customizing versions of games for player groups in different parts of Southeast Asia is relatively rare in the same type of product. So, this also becomes a big advantage of ROX.
Third, keep the heat and let the game always have fresh blood to add.
One of the important means is that they will continue to do IP linkage activities. For example, last year, "ROX" and the Japanese comic "About My Rebirth into Slime" have been linked, and this year will also cooperate with some heavy IP.
Nuverse is very cautious in the choice of IP linkage, and different stages have different judgment criteria.
For example, in the early stage of operation, the primary goal of the game is to "acquire customers" and increase exposure. Therefore, "ROX" will use the target user portrait as the basis to select the IP when choosing the linkage, hoping to attract the attention of more players.
After nearly a year of operation, the primary goal today is to "monetize", or to serve the current user group. Therefore, at this time, we must consider more about the preferences of the paid user group in the game, so as to decide what IP to cooperate with.
Finally, Nuverse also said that the good results of ROX are inseparable from Google's help. It not only gives the R&D team a lot of opinions on performance optimization at the technical level, but also provides a lot of channel recommendation support for the release level, so that the exposure of the game is higher.
04
Write at the end
At the end of the interview, as is customary, I asked everyone what their plans and expectations were for the future development of ROX.
To my surprise, both the R&D team and the publishing team mentioned one thing: "I hope that more users can experience roX as a game."
Obviously, the ROX team had high hopes for the game, and they wanted to make it a truly global product that would allow users in different countries around the world to experience the charm of ROX.
Maybe it's not easy, but anyway, they're at least getting off to a good start in the Southeast Asian market. In the future, ROX and its team may bring more surprises to the industry. We will also pay close attention to this.
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