Dread Hunger, a multiplayer survival game developed by New Zealand indie studio Digital Confectioners, set in the Arctic, began to be released in the Steam store at the end of January this year, and has sold more than 1 million copies so far. Not long ago, James Tan, one of the main creators of "Dread Hunger", was interviewed by foreign media to talk about the creation inspiration of the game, the characteristics of the gameplay, and the views on why it can become popular in the Chinese market.
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Try micro-innovation on the basis of popular categories, but don't blindly follow the trend
In the game, the player plays as an explorer trapped in a ship bound for the North Pole. Of all the crew, two were traitors. James points out: "When we first started working on social reasoning and survival categories, we decided to focus our research and development on survival (gameplay) that was even hotter at the time. ”
However, "misinformation" is always a key component of the game. James added: "We really like those moments of betrayal, they give players more room to play out the story themselves and try all sorts of fun things. I must admit that when Among Us started to take the world by storm, we made a slight adjustment to our marketing message. ”
This means that Dread Hunger has a deeper level of charm than "finding imposters." "Maybe in order to survive, I need to do something I wouldn't normally do. We're trying to put players up to that situation... In Among Us, if you're a liar, you'll know exactly what to do. But in Dread Hunger, the situation is much more complicated. ”
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Complex social gameplay helps increase player retention
According to James, in terms of graphics and background setting, the development team was inspired by the American drama "The Terror" when making "Dread Hunger", and its "social reasoning" gameplay design was inspired by board games such as "The Resistance".
James says that by combining survival and social reasoning gameplay, Dread Hunger's player retention rate is pretty good. "In our previous game, Depth, I remember that the average player's play time was about 4 to 5 hours, while Dread Hunger's average play time was 30 hours. This figure far exceeded our expectations. ”
Why do players want to play Dread Hunger for a long time? James believes that in a way, the attention of the streamers has driven the enthusiasm of players for the game. "If a group of streamers are playing a certain game, then its player retention rate is naturally not bad." Conversely, as a large number of players pour into the game, more and more anchors will do live broadcasts around it. ”
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The secret behind the game low open high go
"Dread Hunger" didn't go viral overnight. If you watch the game while watching the game, the number of online players (CCU) changes, you will find that in the Early Access stage, the game's CCU is only a few thousand. But in January 2022, when the development team launched an official version of the game, its CCU suddenly soared. What really happened?
James pointed out that the performance of "Dread Hunger" in the European and American markets is relatively slow. "We think it's possible that this is because Western players are feeling some aesthetic fatigue with the social reasoning genre, and almost everyone has played Among Us."
In China, however, the game's popularity far exceeded the development team's expectations. "We didn't get any form of help from outside publishers. What's even more interesting is that we don't have any partners in China either. In addition to translating the game text into Chinese, in terms of publicity, we have focused all our energy on the European and American markets... So we were really surprised by the influx of Chinese players into the game. ”
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In China, social reasoning games may be a "hidden vault" that has not yet been excavated.
Recently, the Dread Hunger development team has further studied the cultural background of China. "Social reasoning games have a long history in China, and we didn't know anything about it before." James said, "Many years ago, Chinese players used to play a speculative board game called werewolf killing. ”
James added that live videos and spin-off film and television dramas of werewolf killing board games have accumulated high popularity in China, so most Chinese young people are very familiar with the social reasoning category. But on the other hand, there have not been any blockbuster games in this category.
"Some games try to capitalize on this trend, but the problem is that the development team tries to directly transform a real-life werewolf killing game into a mobile game, so those games play like meeting on Zoom software..."