Image source @ Visual China
Text| DataEye
The "two-dimensional open world" has continued to heat up in recent years.
Before the Miha tour "Original God" global explosion, after the perfect "Phantom Tower" continuously dominated the list, and in the recent Tencent release, Zu Long research and development of the new game "Noah's Heart" is also officially launched.
What is the current pattern of the two-dimensional open world subdivision track? What impact will the launch of "Noah's Heart" bring to the market?
In terms of marketing, what are the marketing actions of the two-dimensional open world subdivision track, and what kind of marketing ideas are shown behind it?
Market conditions
Miha's "Original God" shows that the theme of the second dimension + open world is promising. Driven by interests, many domestic game manufacturers have begun to try this track. According to the incomplete statistics of the DataEye Research Institute, the current track products are as follows:
From the number of products: there are few players in the two-dimensional open world. "Original God" brought a strong impact to the market, and at the same time unveiled the mystery of the two-dimensional open world. The collation found that it took about 15 months for "Original God" to go online from the first test, and "Magic Tower" was officially launched after 14 months of product polishing since the first test. "Noah's Heart", released by Tencent, has been tested for more than 9 months from the first test to the launch.
From the perspective of download dimension: the attention of the two-dimensional open world category is rising. According to the comparison of three products by Qimai data, it was found that in the first day of download data on the iPhone side, the "Heart of Noah", which was just launched, was ahead of the other two world products, which also showed that domestic players have a certain tendency to two-dimensional open world products, and labeling related labels is enough to attract more players' attention.
From the perspective of income: the two-dimensional open world is not a guarantee for attracting gold. According to the estimated revenue of Qimai data, the iPhone side of "Original God" earned more than $1.8 million for 4 consecutive days in the early stage of launch, while "Magic Tower" also maintained its rise in the first three days, showing good potential. On the contrary, the overall revenue situation of "Noah's Heart" is not ideal, and the gap with the other two products is large, which also shows that the label of "two-dimensional open world" is not a guarantee of high income.
Through the combing of the above dimensions, the DataEye Research Institute obtains several key information from it:
Information point 1: It is difficult to follow the trend this time. The domestic game market has a characteristic: following the trend. It means that which subject matter explodes in the market, imitators will follow. However, since the launch of "Original God", the domestic market has not blindly followed the trend, nor has it rushed to achieve results. For example, the later "Magic Tower" took 14 months from the first test to the launch, and "Noah's Heart" also took more than 9 months to polish the product. There are still many projects in the project establishment stage.
Information point 2: From stand-alone to MMO category attempts. Original God is essentially a single-player two-dimensional open world, and the simplified content helps players explore the open world. "Magic Tower" and "Noah's Heart" add more MMOPRG elements under the foundation of the two-dimensional open world. From the actual situation, at present, these two products have not shaken the status of "Original God".
Message point 3: "Original God" is insurmountable, "Magic Tower" is based on the market, and "Noah's Heart" drops the chain. Judging from the current data, the position of the only file of "Original God" has no product to challenge, and "Magic Tower" is now based on the market, stable in the best-seller list TOP50, and the overall performance is decent.
As a new tour of the two-dimensional open world, "Noah's Heart" has received the attention of many players from the first day of downloads, but in terms of income, it is basically unable to compare with the first two. The product's current TapTap score is about 6.5 points, and the relevant labels include "poor experience", "monotonous plot", "difficult to get started" and other issues, and subsequent products need to continue to be optimized.
Without discussing gameplay, what does Noah's Heart do on a marketing level? Combined with two other excellent two-dimensional open world products, can you get some marketing inspiration from it?
Buy volume
This part of the DataEye Research Institute analyzes in depth from the amount of delivery and creative materials.
From the perspective of the delivery trend: the launch of the Buddhist system. According to DataEye-ADX data, in the early stage of product launch, the average daily delivery of materials was about 160 groups, and the delivery trend was relatively stable. The "Magic Tower" suddenly increased its investment efforts before the product was launched, with more than 3400 sets of materials in a single day, but it dropped rapidly to more than 190 groups the next day, and the amount of subsequent release was slightly "Buddhist".
In contrast, the overall launch of "Noah's Heart" released by Tencent seems to be lower. According to DataEye-ADX delivery data, "Noah's Heart" maintained a stable delivery volume in the initial stage of product warm-up, but the intensity was not high, and the peak of single-day delivery was about 160 groups. And after the product was launched, the amount of delivery decreased, less than 10 groups in a single day.
In the continuous operation stage, the two-dimensional open world category has maintained a relatively stable delivery at the launch level. Since 2022, the average daily delivery of "Original God" is about 220 groups, and the overall fluctuation is not too large. The volume of "Magic Tower" has also gradually increased after the product was launched for one month, and the overall volume has maintained an average of more than 200 groups per day.
At the same time, the comprehensive DataEye Research Institute CPA estimation data shows that the overall fluctuation of the Android side of the secondary category in the past six months is small, while the iOS side is relatively large, and the average weekly CPA of the iOS side exceeds 200/A, but mainly because of the two highs in late November and mid-March. Compared with the observation of the product launch time, the CPA estimate of the "Magic Tower" online stage is at a low peak, while the CPA estimate of the online stage of "Noah's Heart" is also at a medium level.
Through the analysis of the delivery trend, compared with the amount of three two-dimensional open world products, the cost of the launch is not the reason for the release of the Buddhist system after the product is launched. On the contrary, it is because the project team pays attention to the quality of materials and expects to impress users through high-quality creative materials, rather than obtaining users through high-intensity and large-scale delivery.
From the perspective of creative materials: exquisite characters and battle scenes are the main elements. According to the DataEye Research Institute, the three creative materials that are planned to be released by the three two-dimensional open world products are compared:
Original God: In-depth two-dimensional thinking, close to the preferences of subject matter users
The head product "Original God" pays attention to the shaping of the character in the creative material, including highlighting the details of the character drawing, while also showing the character's combat picture and skill moves, the overall creative material does not have a very strong transformation point, but will use the picture to highlight the "high-level sense" of the product. In addition, through PV animation editing, the game plot will be introduced, and fragmented expressions will be used to further attract the attention of two-dimensional players.
Magic Tower: Face value + BGM to promote conversion
The "Magic Tower" hot creative material will add some popular BGM, and then mix and cut with the animation CG of the game characters, and then create a beautiful MV through stepping on the editing technique. At the same time, the project team showed the high-quality standing paintings of the characters, hoping to promote the transformation with their appearance.
Noah's Heart: Try to highlight the MMO gameplay
As a new product under the subdivision track, "Noah's Heart" does not continue the creative ideas of the first two big brothers in terms of material performance, but has a stronger MMORPG creative material thinking. For example, in the hot casting material, the face pinching gameplay of the MMO game is highlighted, while on the real machine display screen, the focus is on the game map is vast and the screen is exquisite. In other words, the product does not highlight the core interests of secondary players in the material, and also causes the overall performance to lag behind at the level of attracting users.
Summary and analysis: In terms of delivery trends, the two-dimensional open world category is relatively Buddhist, and it is not mainly based on large-scale delivery, but pays attention to the quality of advertising creatives, and it is expected that the "sense of premium" and "quality" of the product can be highlighted through the display of creative materials.
The creative materials are mainly used for exquisite character shapes, fight scenes and highlight the game plot, and finally show simple and easy to understand gameplay.
Most importantly, the core of the two-dimensional open world theme must be the second dimension, so the project team needs creative materials to accurately circle some groups in the two-dimensional audience and firmly adhere to the core proposition. In fact, "Noah's Heart" tries to focus on the MMO gameplay elements, and does not focus on the two-dimensional theme audience, and its conversion effect may not be ideal.
Social marketing situation
The two-dimensional open world segment has certain commonalities at the marketing level, including the video marketing of talents and the brand marketing of "music".
Promote talent marketing with the help of short video platforms: According to the observation of open world products by the DataEye Research Institute, two characteristics were found in the dimension of talent video marketing: the cyclicality of talent marketing and the focus on the warm-up stage.
According to DataEye-ADX talent marketing data, "Original God" began to implement talent video marketing in the second half of 2021, and through observation, it was found that the project team will not continue to implement talent video marketing for a long time, but market according to the key nodes of the product, such as the launch of a new game version in October 2021, and the video marketing duration of talent is as long as one month.
In addition, judging from the marketing trends of "Magic Tower" and "Noah's Heart", the project team will begin to promote talent marketing during the product warm-up stage. However, the overall number of videos of "Noah's Heart" is small, but the conversion data is considerable. According to DataEye-ADX talent marketing data, "Noah's Heart" currently has only more than 60 talent marketing videos, and the number of likes is more than 25W.
Brand marketing from the music content: Among the many details that determine the quality of the game, game music is the most important part to ignore, especially for open world products, high-quality game music can bring players a stronger sense of immersion, so that players can explore the virtual world more fully, and the game experience can soar at any time.
In the domestic competition for two-dimensional open world products, game music has become a key part of many details competition. For example, on February 4 this year, the special chapter of the "Original God" Symphony Concert, Ying ChunHuazhang, hosted by Miha you and performed by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, peaked at more than 33.8 million times in station B, ranking first in the live broadcast chart of station B at that time. In fact, the musical performance of "Original God" has always been "strength" online, and since the game was launched, its soundtrack has dominated the top three of NetEase Cloud Music for many years.
Similarly, on the eve of the product launch, "Magic Tower" directly released "Time and Space Echo - Behind the Scenes of the Electronic Symphony Production of "Magic Tower" on the B station channel. It is interesting to note that the project team did not directly release the full version of the game music, but through a video of more than 9 minutes and 40 seconds, it showed players the production of music and part of the recording screen of the music in "Magic Tower", and successfully attracted the attention of more players through "music". At present, the video has received more than 300,000 views on Station B.
Compared with the two predecessors of the theme, "Noah's Heart" is more radical in the performance of musical content, promoting the Planet Music Festival on the first day of the launch, and inviting a number of well-known rock bands to participate. At the same time, the characteristics of each band are integrated with the selling points of the game at the music festival, and a number of bands join hands to burn the first promotional song of "Noah's Heart" on the spot, so that the audience can feel the game content and characteristics while watching the music festival, and establish a high-quality brand sense for the product.
With the continuous internal volume of the quality of domestic two-dimensional games, excellent games that really intend to operate for a long time will become serious in every detail, whether it is from the screen performance, character drawing or story plot, and now the game music has also begun a new round of inner volume.
Summary and analysis: Talent marketing has gradually become an important part of the current game marketing, paying attention to talent marketing can help products increase exposure during promotion and publicity, and overall marketing has a certain periodicity, on the one hand, it is focused on marketing with product nodes, more effectively improve the volume and effect of communication, such as the new version of the line and the product warm-up period. On the other hand, the user repeatability of short video social media platforms is high, and it is easy to form visual fatigue for a long time, and word of mouth is also prone to decline.
In fact, the competition in the two-dimensional game has been very fierce, and every detail of the product can affect the player's reputation for the product. In the case of regular content such as game screens, "game music" has gradually become a new competitive link.
It is precisely in this way that we can see that many two-dimensional products have begun to compete with game music, in addition to highlighting the attitude of manufacturers to make games with their hearts, music belongs to a kind of mass entertainment, through today's network dissemination, a game music out of the circle, enough to bring more attention to the product.
summary
Through the observation of the above three two-dimensional open worlds by the DataEye Research Institute, it can be found that compared with "Original God" and "Magic Tower", "Noah's Heart" labeled "Two-dimensional Open World" is not ideal except for receiving more attention in the early stage of product launch.
In terms of delivery and marketing, "Noah's Heart" gives people a feeling of insufficient budget. In the case of insufficient budget, the marketing ideas of "Noah's Heart" bring several inspirations and reflections:
Focus on marketing promotion in the warm-up stage: From the perspective of delivery data, "Noah's Heart" pays more attention to the promotion in the warm-up stage, whether it is at the level of performance advertising or talent video marketing. In the case of insufficient overall promotion budget, the project team used the promotion of the warm-up stage to emphasize the two-dimensional open world product label and take advantage of the opportunity to gain more attention.
Try to highlight the MMO element: From the perspective of creativity, "Noah's Heart" is different from the idea of "Original God" and "Magic Tower" creative materials aimed at the two-dimensional audience group, trying to integrate MMO elements into the two-dimensional products, hoping to attract the attention of the two theme audience players, and exchange more users for the smallest cost. However, in fact, the core of the two-dimensional open world is still the two-dimensional audience, deviating from the main core entry point, and the overall conversion effect will inevitably be affected.
Game music marketing focuses on band performances that are more interested in Z generation: from the perspective of social marketing, the "Noah's Heart" project team expects to be closer to Z era preferences. Therefore, the project team invited rock bands and singers of the new generation, Chen Leyi, to try to communicate with the target audience through younger languages. But in fact, the Z generation crowd continues to grow, and the ability to appreciate the quality of music is also constantly changing, and whether the relevant music content can mobilize the player's emotions is more critical. Especially in terms of audiovisual perception, such as the grandeur displayed by the symphony seems to be more popular with players.
Through the inspiration and thinking brought by "Noah's Heart" on the marketing side, it can be considered that the two-dimensional open world is still in a relatively high degree of attention in the market, but this is not the "all-round" wealth code. While the marketing level is constantly improving, game products are absolutely critical.
In fact, including ByteDance, they have begun to recruit talents related to the two-dimensional open world with high salaries, and in the foreseeable future, more game manufacturers will join this track, and the competition will be more intense.