Source: Hedgehog Commune
Big V, big IP, big voyage, SLG unlimited inner volume?
Before the slaughtering army, the city gate was hung high with a battle card, and the soldiers under the wall shouted angrily, and as soon as they opened their mouths, people were stunned: "Luo Yonghao, bald man, the debt of 600 million can not be repaid!" ”
On the other side, Teacher Luo in the ancient set is holding a mobile phone and sniffing melon seeds, with a majestic posture. The unstoppable military master next to him jumped to his feet in a hurry, and bitterly advised: "Saying that you are bald is just enough, saying that you can't afford to pay the debt, how can you mix in the venture capital circle after this!" "
Image source Weibo @ Luo Yonghao
After some tug-of-war, the situation took a turn for the better. It turned out that Lao Luo was only worried that the "combat strength value" was inferior to that of the enemy, and the military division hurriedly pointed out the confusion. So Luo Zhonggong began to read the draft to the camera: "Return to the Empire, do not determine life and death by the value of combat strength, when fighting against thousands of people on the same screen, the battle can be seen..."
At this point, this picture of a strange style of video has finally been seen.
In the SLG game track, Luo Yonghao, who comes from the technology circle, is not the first crossover player, nor will he be the last. Well-known actors, big Vs, military experts, and even Zhonghua Bookstore have joined the war in a variety of ways.
"Glory of the New Three Kingdoms" linked to the Zhonghua Bookstore, the source of the map Weibo @ Glory Of the New Three Kingdoms
SLG games (Simulation Game) originally meant "simulation games", and now refer to turn-based strategy games and real-time strategy games, mostly in the war genre.
In 2022, the war on SLG games continues to burn, and the major manufacturers are in full swing. The battle for deer outside the game is sometimes more dramatic than the dynastic change in the game.
Tianmei's big hand
The battlefield of domestic SLG games is constantly bustling.
From the end of 2021 to the beginning of 2022, Tencent, NetEase, 4399 and other companies have launched new SLG works, and a number of products have been announced to be tested or officially launched. The words "war", "kingship" and "civilization" appear densely in the name of the game, which just forms an intertextuality with the fiery atmosphere of the SLG market.
On March 29, 2022, Tianmei's SLG mobile game "Return to Empire" was launched on all platforms and quickly topped the App Store free game list. The huge "Return to Empire" represents Tencent's determination to bet on SLG, and once again shows a muscle, exposing the resources and potential of the head factory.
"Return to Empire" is the product of the strategic cooperation between Tencent Tianmei Studio and Microsoft Xbox Game Studios, positioning real-time strategy mobile games, and the game world view comes from Microsoft's real-time strategy game "Age of Empires" released in 1997.
Screenshot of Age of Empires
Here, Luo Yonghao does not shout "make a friend", but "make an ally". He filmed a series of promotional films for "Return to The Empire" with the theme of "utilizing strategies", each of which incorporated a reversal of black humor, interspersed with Roche hot memes such as "paying back" and "not believing in rumors and not spreading rumors", which won the attention of the place.
In addition to Luo Yonghao, who served as the game's "strategic officer", "Return to Empire" also gathered a group of game anchors and opinion leaders, and the publicity was staggering.
From the perspective of specific dismantling, "Return to The Empire" first has the inherent advantages of big IP. More than two decades later, the Age of Empires series has been regarded as a generation of classics, laying a solid audience base around the world. At the beginning of the announcement, "Return to the Empire" targeted this loyal group of fans.
In order to recall them, "Restart Empire" released a theme video, inviting game anchor PDD, professional player TeD, as well as senior players, game planners, game media people, etc. to participate in the promotion, the theme of the event is "Back to the Golden Age of Strategy Games", playing the love card.
Second, "Return to Empire" still has to convey the concept to the core audience of the SLG category itself. The day after the game was launched, "Return to The Empire" and the military culture program "Military Base Camp" launched a special content, inviting international relations expert Jin Canrong, former PLA army colonel Yang Xiaolin and the game planner to discuss the ancient war wisdom of "using strategy".
Screenshot of the "Military Base Camp" program, source Weibo @ Return to the Empire
Finally, the most out-of-the-loop step, "Return to Empire" to expand the game's pan-influence as much as possible and absorb more users. To this end, the game and B station to carry out promotion cooperation, so that a million fans of up owners to the front line of publicity.
Tan Qiao and Tan Sir's friend Uncle Erxian Qiao and actor Li Guangqi co-created "The King of Terrier Kings", which was played 3.7 million times in 24 hours. Traffic upstart John Khan Jr. created an issue of "How to Carry Out Sneak Attacks in Belarus?" The hardcore half-Buddha immortal of the head blogger in the knowledge area released a "game of male betrayal". These videos were viewed in the millions and garnered thousands of interactions.
Source B station @ hardcore half-Buddha immortal
Thanks to strong promotion efforts and a clear publicity strategy, "Return to Empire" jumped to the top of the best-seller list. This is an arms race in another sense, and the large investment of resources behind it makes it difficult for many small and medium-sized manufacturers to "get involved" in it, and the advantages of large manufacturers lie in this.
In a nutshell, the combination of "big V + big IP" has become the core playing method for head manufacturers to compete for SLG.
Whether it is the mobile game "Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming" developed by Youzu and released by Tencent, or the mobile game "Thunder Expedition" released by Dawn Lightyear based on the IP of "Warhammer 40000", or the new game "The Lord of the Rings: The Battle of the Rise" that is being tested overseas, all of them are like this.
4399 Content Marketing Techniques
Looking back at the beginning of 2022, before Tencent vigorously promoted "Return to Empire", "Civilization and Conquest" by 4399 also set off a huge wave of publicity.
Today's "Return to the Empire" has Luo Yonghao standing on the platform, and at that time, "Civilization and Conquest" invited the artist Yu Hewei. Among the SLG fans who are eager to attack the city, there is no shortage of historical drama fans. In their eyes, Yu Hewei, who has been immersed in the field of costume drama for many years, is undoubtedly a familiar face.
Yu Hewei played Liu Bei in "Three Kingdoms" and also played Qin Shi Huang in "The Legend of Chu Han". In the "Army Division Alliance of Sima Yi of the Great Army Division", his role is Cao Cao. It can be said that this can be called "imperial professional household", placed in the war-torn game poster without any drama.
Source Weibo @ Civilization and Conquest
Apart from audience-pleasing spokespersons, Civilization & Conquest's core strategy is the invariable law of the SLG community: buying.
If an SLG wants to achieve long-term operation, continuous purchase investment is particularly important. At the end of 2021, 4399 entered the market with a heroic posture and played in a big way. On December 29, 2021 alone, Civilization and Conquest was released with more than 12,000 sets of materials.
In essence, the idea of SLG buying volume is to leverage large returns at a large cost, and the data and logic in it have been verified by too many predecessors. The current disadvantage is that the cost of buying heavy games in the entire market continues to rise, greatly squeezing the conventional formula of "buy-profit".
If Civilization and Conquest is any different, it is to become refined in the buying strategy and bring together the successful experience of SLG content marketing on the market.
Specifically, the materials for "Civilization and Conquest" can be divided into three categories.
The first category is materials for traditional SLG players, with the goal of grasping the vertical pain points of the category, such as emphasizing "strategic freedom" and "game fairness", and finally implementing slogans such as "class restraint" and "no VIP sales". This type of material is not close to pan players, but the core SLG players will be hit with precision.
4399 Civilization and Conquest propaganda map
The second category is material for the general public, whose audience may be non-SLG players themselves. In this type of material, "Civilization and Conquest" emphasizes the strange charm of the game theme, and the key words of publicity include "six civilizations" and "a thousand people on the same screen". In terms of pan-entertainment, "Civilization and Conquest" invited singer Yuan Yawei to sing the theme song of the game "From Here" to further expand the influence of the public.
The last category is the content marketing strategy of the new generation of games, which gives the game more positive value through the combination of virtual and real. "Civilization and Conquest" cooperated with the TangXishi Museum to design several "collections" based on real cultural relics, and cooperated with the B station UP master to carry out content creation, emphasizing the professionalism of game design.
Historical SLG games usually restore the heavy sense of history in the art and other aspects, and Civilization and Conquest further extends these elements internalized in the game experience and serves as a means of publicity to improve the quality attributes in the user's perception.
For 4399, who knows how to buy, the third type of attempt is not in the traditional step, and it is difficult to bring quantitative returns. However, today is different from the past, user needs are becoming more and more diverse, SLG needs to reach more circles, and the "volume" of content marketing has become the mainstream path.
As the market expands from local to global, the competitive dimension becomes more complex.
Out to sea melee
Going to sea is the theme of this era.
According to the "2021 China Game Industry Report" released by the Game Working Committee of the China Music and Digital Association and the China Game Industry Research Institute, the actual sales revenue of China's game market in 2021 was 296.513 billion yuan, an increase of 17.826 billion yuan over last year, an increase of 6.4% year-on-year. Under the influence of the gradual decline of the "home economy" effect and the decline in the number of explosive products, the growth rate has shrunk by nearly 15% compared with last year.com. In 2021, the scale of domestic mobile game users reached 656 million, with a year-on-year growth rate of only 0.23%, which marked the saturation of the game demographic dividend.
Image source :2021 China Game Industry Report
The outbreak of the new crown epidemic since the beginning of 2020 has objectively accelerated the evolution of China's mobile game market from an incremental market to a stock market. At the same time, considering the current situation of the game version number being discontinued since August 2021, new games are bound to explore overseas markets if they want to achieve profitability.
Under the joint action of various factors, the game going to sea is becoming the consensus of more and more local game manufacturers. Among them, SLG is a bright flag flying in the wind.
On the one hand, the research and development pressure of SLG mobile games is not high in heavy games. Compared with MMORPG, FPS and other categories, SLG mobile games are more likely to achieve a balance between cost and volume, and the technical threshold and operational requirements are friendly to most game manufacturers.
On the other hand, the successful case of domestic SLG going to sea has inspired many latecomers. Many SLG games represented by Lilith's "Awakening of Nations" have achieved remarkable results in overseas markets, including "State of Survival" produced by FunPlus and "Age of Kingdoms" produced by IGG.
It is worth mentioning that overseas SLGs are not focused on head starter products like MOBA, and the new forces still have the opportunity to break the game.
Taking the Southeast Asian market as an example, the Sensor Tower store intelligence platform shows that a total of 7 Chinese SLG games in 2021 ranked among the top 20 in the list of overseas revenue, including latecomers such as Pocket Raiders and Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition. In addition, the big IP strategy represented by NetEase Games is also very effective, and the global flow performance after the opening of the test of "The Lord of the Rings: Battle of the Rise" is quite eye-catching.
Image source SensorTower
It turns out that the SLG can not only do it, but also produce results, so the track is getting bigger and bigger. In order to stand out from the competition, Chinese game manufacturers have done their best.
The rise of the domestic "Wanguo" theme SLG is an industry trend that gradually appears in the tide of going to sea.
In the Asian market, the "Three Kingdoms" theme has always been very popular, it is based on a magnificent history, and classics are emerging in an endless stream. The theme of "All Nations" is another way, it is often not limited to a certain civilization, but is committed to creating a "Guan Gong Zhan Qin Qiong" style game experience.
In the "All Nations" theme SLG game, the limitations of the times and regions are broken, which injects an exotic atmosphere into the game, echoing the 4X context of European and American SLG games. From the player's point of view, the "All Nations" theme often offers multiple civilization options, which meets the actual needs of international audiences.
Lilith's "Awakening of Nations" promotional image
Another new trend falls on the level of buying volume, and some overseas SLGs are exploring the publicity strategy of changing from heavy to light. In simple terms, developers try to acquire more casual users, so they choose to introduce more casual game elements into their stocks. Even if the retention rate of such casual users is problematic, the relatively low cost and visible user volume are still attractive enough.
But in the final analysis, the innovation points in various packaging and publicity are always only on the periphery, and the narrowing of the SLG's competitive space is inevitable. Because the fundamental problem of "volume" is homogenization, and the fundamental reason for homogenization is that the iteration of the core gameplay of SLG has not yet been eyebrowed.
In the future, which is visible to the naked eye, new games with more like gameplay and COK-like gameplay will still appear in clusters, and they will still share similar UIs and play confusing names. No amount of dazzling IP and opinion leaders can fundamentally change that.
NetEase "Coast of the Land" promotional map
In a way, this is the price of the SLG category maturing over the past few years. The battle will continue until the next real breakthrough emerges.