Spend tens of millions, Jackie Chan endorsement, how profitable is the legendary game?

Recently, the video of "Jackie Chan Persuasion" has landed on the B station.

The original intention was to advise children not to indulge in the game, but the UP master turned out the "Attack on the Sand" series of advertisements that had been endorsed and edited together. The two contrast, successfully created a comedic atmosphere of being "punched in the face", and is expected to become a new ghost animal hot terrier after "Huaqiang buys melons" and "chicken soup is coming".

In fact, this advertisement was first filmed in 2018, and it has recently become popular as a "Renaissance". There may be small partners who are curious about how much the legend spent to ask Jackie Chan to endorse. Here is a simple science popularization, Gree chairman Dong Mingzhu in the "Financial Covenant You" program, talked about Jackie Chan's endorsement fee, the answer is "tens of millions" a year, Jackie Chan began to endorse Gree advertising from 2010. That is to say, the developer of "One Knife Passed Down" Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, spent at least 10 million endorsement fees a year, which can be said to be a large amount of money.

When it comes to the legendary brainwashing advertisement, Zhang Jiahui is the real "source of all evil". This year, "Greedy Blue Moon" became popular on the whole network, "Hello everyone, I am a slag slag Hui", "Brother, just cut me together", Zhang Jiahui's magical Mandarin, making the advertisement once released, it became a hot meme on the Internet. Subsequently, the videos of "Gu Tianle Green" and Jackie Chan "Tonight at eight o'clock, everyone and I attack the sand together" also successfully joined the ghost animal family barrel.

In fact, almost all famous Chinese celebrities have endorsed legendary games. Seeing the figures of Liu Yifei, Gulinazha, Aaron Kwok, Sun Honglei, Feng Xiaogang and other first-line stars, everyone may be surprised, is the legendary game really so profitable? Today, the brand brother will take you to explore the enduring secrets of the legend.

history:

Looking back at history, at the end of 2001, Shanda Company, which failed to invest, used only $300,000 to stud the game "Legend" developed by Actoz in South Korea with only 300,000 US dollars, and obtained its exclusive agency rights in China.

As it turns out, Shanda's choice was the right one. "Legend" can be described as a brilliant debut, and soon became the hottest online game at that time. Shanda made a lot of money, and chairman Chen Tianqiao became the youngest chinese richest man at that time.

"Legend" can be said to take off with the east wind of the times, in the early 21st century, China's rapid economic development, the rise of the Internet, urban and rural areas have appeared in the figure of Internet cafes. At this time, the game market is not mature, and players mainly play stand-alone games. Before Legends, there were few online games in China that were playable.

Because there were no competitors in the market to fight, Legend quickly formed a dominant situation, even occupying 68% of the entire Chinese online game share. In just one year, the number of registered people reached 40 million, and the number of online users of the game exceeded 600,000. In 2002, Shanda Network's turnover was 680 million yuan and net profit was 100 million yuan.

True to its name, "Legend" really created a legend, almost in a dimensionality-reducing blow, sweeping the entire online game player market.

In addition to the special era background, the success of "Legends" is also inseparable from its own unique game mechanics.

New players can get started in a matter of minutes, and the barrier to entry is extremely low. The simple operation attracted the first player group, and at that time, there was no such mature game website and player forum as it is now, and most players were still in the stage of playing games together.

Pass ten, ten pass a hundred, other online game players also began to turn to "Legend", the number of games began to increase explosively. The hot situation in the Internet café has also attracted the melon-eating masses who do not play games in the first place. Even some players are exposed to computers because they play Legends.

With a certain number of player groups, Legends' unique rare item design and freedom become the key to retaining players. When the player fights monsters and explodes into rare items such as paralysis rings, teleportation rings, verdicts, etc., the joy in the heart is indescribable.

On the one hand, the extremely low explosion rate gives players a sense of surprise and achievement; on the other hand, valuable items can be monetized through free trade. This gives the player a reason and motivation to continue playing the game.

Similar to today's CS:GO cosmetic system, players can play games to obtain chests, which can be skinned. The wear and tear of each skin is different, and players can sell it for a high price if they open to a rare skin.

The process of opening the treasure chest is stimulating, and the feeling of opening rare skin is no less than winning the lottery. Explained in this way, perhaps everyone can understand why the "Legends" players at that time could endure the boring process of spawning monsters, and even enjoy it.

In addition to the killing monster explosion equipment, the core PK gameplay of "Legend" also gives players a great sense of satisfaction. Around 2000, the "Ancient Puzzle Boy" series of movies was popular in China, leaving an indelible impression on the youth group. The image of Liu Huaqiang, who is on fire because of the melon stalk, comes from the police and bandit TV series "Journey", which premiered in 2003, which reflects the social situation in this period to a certain extent.

Compared to reality, there is no legal constraint in the game. So form a gang, PK to seize the treasure, and together with the brothers to capture Shabak, become the best way for players to realize their dreams. Every night before the sand attack at 8 p.m., the number of people in the Internet café is full. The sound of the president's command, the angry scolding of the equipment being exploded, and the surprise sound of the civilians picking up the leaks are mixed together, a noisy scene of gongs and drums, which is no less than the current scene of e-sports competitions.

Pull gangs, attack dungeons, and call the wind and rain in the game, giving high play and local tycoons, a sense of psychological satisfaction like a king. The consumption of local tycoon players has also driven studios that make a living from games, leveling up, playing gold, exploding equipment, hiring PK, etc., and doing meticulous services around the big guys.

Shi Yuzhu, chairman of Giant Network, was once a heavy player of "Legend". Because he had just played the game backward and was cut down, he bought the account of the first level at that time, and then spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to create the best equipment.

In addition to spending money on equipment and hiring studios to level up, IT male Shi Yuzhu also delved into game vulnerabilities and took advantage of the map loading delay bug to copy equipment. However, it was soon found that the account was abnormally blocked by the background. After the account was blocked, Shi Yuzhu personally asked Chen Tianqiao to unseal the account. It's just that "the thief's heart is not dead", and after taking advantage of the bug again, his account was banned again.

Later, the game development team of Age of Heroes left Shanda to look for investors. Shi Yuzhu invested 20 million yuan in the development project, named "Journey", which is another story.

After the popularity of "Legend", private servers have emerged in an endless stream. Some continue the grand template, and some change the gameplay. At that time, the private server was somewhat similar to today's player mod. The emergence of private servers has affected the operation of genuine games at the same time, in a certain sense, it has also extended the life of the game. Today's endless stream of legendary games can be seen as a continuation of the private service of that year.

Now legendary games:

After introducing the hot history of that year, let's explore why the current legendary game is still so profitable, and even can afford to pay tens of millions of endorsement fees for celebrities.

First of all, the large number of legendary private servers in that year shows that this type of game has almost no development and maintenance costs, and only a small number of employees can afford the server work. The so-called development is just to use the ready-made game template and change the texture, and there is no need to change the kernel of the game.

Marketing only needs to ask a few big-name celebrities to endorse and increase exposure. Then buy traffic through channels such as websites, such as pop-up ads that everyone hates, and then you can lie down and collect money. Compared with today's games, the development costs and thresholds of hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds or even tens of millions of star endorsement fees, are really insignificant.

For example, Liu Wei, president of Mihayou, disclosed that the research and development investment of "Original God" was as high as 100 million US dollars. And "Play blue moon", after becoming popular with the advertisement of slag slag, according to the 2018 annual report data, its highest monthly flow exceeded 200 million yuan, and by the end of the reporting period, the cumulative flow exceeded 3.2 billion yuan.

Coincidentally, the monthly flow of the 37 mobile game "A Knife Passed Down" also easily broke through 100 million. In 2019, the company achieved operating income of 13.227 billion yuan and net profit of shareholders of 2.115 billion yuan, which is simply incredible.

Comparing the investment with the return, it can be said that it is "no cost". In addition to billions of streams, Blue Moon has also entered the official list of the top ten most popular games of 2018.

Seeing this, everyone may wonder who is playing this kind of game, and can actually support billions of flowing income. The answer is simple, mainly the group of Legends players of that year.

The main force of the game is middle-aged people around 30-50 years old. Or the small boss who runs the supermarket, or the successful person sitting in the office, throwing money into it. When people reach middle age, there are old and young, unlike youth, who have time and energy to leave for games, the only increase is money.

These people were mostly the main players of Legends and Journey more than a decade ago, and they didn't touch many other types of games. If they are allowed to play today's game masterpieces, they will undoubtedly be unable to face the long process and difficult operation.

In fact, after daily hard work and consuming the little energy left, it can be called difficult for strong people to let them play the mainstream games sought after by young people.

Take the recent fire of the Eldon Ring for example, this kind of hardcore game against the soul system, characterized by great difficulty, abuse of ordinary players are eager to die. In order to overcome the BOSS, play equipment, learn skills, check strategies, often 2 or 3 hours, not the average middle-aged people can play. While the liver can't hold up, the hand is not allowed. After all, after getting older, the reaction ability and operation will be greatly reduced.

Just like some of the league of legends in the past, in the previous few seasons, they may have been technical anchors who have been on the king. Now it can only play entertainment bureaus, or turn to genting to play chess, the reason is that the decline in operation and the adaptation after the version change.

The limitations in energy and ability make them more inclined to choose casual games. The legend of changing the soup without changing the medicine perfectly meets their needs. Fighting monsters, leveling up, and receiving tasks can hang up with one button, making full use of fragmented time and sneaking time in a busy time.

In this way, it seems that the use of game templates to continue the original gameplay is not a minus, but reduces the threshold of game learning, which is a positive "optimization". Best of all, the follow-up operations don't have to be painstakingly changed versions.

As long as I don't change, I won't lose players because I don't fit in with the version. Belonging to the real "Hello Me Too", game operators and players have reached a win-win situation. The biggest change in legendary games may be the transplantation from end games to mobile games, which is more convenient for middle-aged people to use fragmented time to play games.

In addition, in our view, the simple page games with zero-year style, poor picture quality and unbearable are precisely the games that these middle-aged people want to play and have fun when they are young, but they have no time and money to play.

For them, familiar and simple operations, cool mounts that can be owned by a few yuan, equipment that glows all over the body, and the pleasure of cutting grass with a knife 9999 are the simplest pleasures, and can also evoke the good memories of their youth.

Local tycoon players are simpler, as long as they charge money into the game, they can harvest superior happiness. Usually there is no time, you can also spend money to find a studio to practice. As soon as you open the computer, you can see a high-quality equipment and the attribute values of several numbers. Teleport to the map to slash people, kill monsters, and enjoy the thrill of simple and rough crushing.

These local tycoons are basically people with status and status, and the game is recharged with millions, which is just a small amount of money sprinkled with water for them. In reality, a brand name, smoking cigars to drive a luxury car, front and back. In the game, it is natural to dominate the storm, dominate the full service, subdue many little brothers, and be worshiped by thousands of people.

If it is not strong enough, then it is not enough money, and the logic is simple and crude but useful. In a word, the simple and unpretentious happiness of rich people cannot be imagined at all.

Game companies are also understanding people, they firmly grasp this psychology of local tycoon players, artificially through internal employees to create conflicts, comparisons, stimulate consumption and profit. In addition, big stars are invited to do advertising endorsements, improve traffic at the same time, but also use the celebrity effect, enhance the sense of belonging and glory of local tycoon players.

In particular, the stars of the golden age of Hong Kong and Taiwan movies are some of the idols they were when they were young, and it is not unusual to recharge their idols. Seeing this, everyone is not very familiar with it, to put it bluntly, it is still the set of rice circle marketing economy.

Marketing is marketing, and what really makes us pay is still feelings. The regrets of being unable to bear in adolescence are turned into precious memories in the mind as adults. The reason why the legendary game can still flow over 100 million yuan a month today is precisely because the young people of that year have grown up, have the ability to make up tickets, and have the ability to pay for their youth.

In 2022, more than 10 years after Tencent released Dungeons & Dragons in 2008, DNF still ranks first in China's game revenue. Blizzard, which Microsoft bought at a sky-high price of $68.7 billion, even if it fried cold rice, there are players who pay for it. All this proves that feelings are indeed priceless. After starting a family, feelings, or player inertia, seem to weigh more than the banknotes in your hand.

Today, the hot meta-universe concept on the market is just a gimmick. In the future, after the birth of metaverse games, I don't know whether dota, LOL, PUBG and other popular games will become the white moonlight in the hearts of a few players.

Perhaps one day, in the new era, we will also be ridiculed as the remnants of the old era because we can't adapt to the rules of the metaverse game. After all, now after the 90s and 00s, some have already lived in advance the "pension" life of soaking goji berries in the thermos cup and downloading a bunch of casual games on their mobile phones.