Glory of Kings is a great game, and if you share a few stats, you'll know how hot it is. First, it's the number of users. As of now, the number of registered users of "Glory of Kings" has exceeded 400 million, and the number of daily active users has exceeded 100 million, what is this concept? There are 1.4 billion people in China, and one in fourteen people have played Glory of Kings in the same day, which has surpassed our game industry's perception of game statistics.
Second, it's its revenue. In 2018, its revenue exceeded 20 billion yuan, and the income from the sale of a single skin alone exceeded 150 million yuan. According to financial institutions, 80% of China's listed companies have a year's income that is not worth a "glory of the king".
In addition to the number of users and revenue, "Glory of the King" also broke through the gender circle, and among all players, female users accounted for more than 50%. In today's game field dominated by male users, such a gender ratio is also a height that all e-sports games cannot reach at present.
Therefore, no matter from which point of view, "Glory of kings" can be described as the peak of its debut, and it occupies the top position in the rankings of all games in the world for many years. It can be said that "Glory of Kings" is currently the most popular game in the world, and there is no one.
The popularity of "Glory of Kings" seems to be a matter of course today, but in fact, in the evaluation of professional gamers, it is not the highest. There has always been an interesting chain of contempt in Chinese esports circles, StarCraft players look down on Warcraft players, Warcraft players look down on DOTA players, DOTA players look down on League of Legends players, and players in all of the above games look down on Glory of Kings players. If you follow this chain of contempt, the most popular is "StarCraft", which can be seen from the game data but it is the complete opposite, and "Glory of Kings" at the bottom is becoming more and more popular. Why do you say that?
I sum up, we can't evaluate the success of a game from the perspective of professional players, we should look at the evaluation of the public and the actual behavior of the public to determine whether a game is really successful. In my analysis, the success of Glory of Kings is mainly due to the fact that it did two subtractions correctly and found two weapons.
Let's start with subtraction. How can a game catch fire? According to our general understanding, first of all, its research and development technology should be more advanced, the gameplay should become more complex, the plot design of the game should be more ambitious, and the cutscene alone should be worth a few movie tickets to be enjoyable. In short, it is necessary to keep doing addition, only in this way can you make yourself different from other games and be competitive. For example, in the past, we played a game, the client is only tens, hundreds of M, and now the game, just an installation package will have dozens of G. For example, the "chicken eating game" we mentioned in the first lecture is also doing addition, its earliest version does not have so many complex operations, there are not so many changeable rules of play, and now players are eager to be able to get through the family in the game.
But what I'm going to tell you is that Glory of Kings is different, and the reason it's on fire isn't because it does addition, it's because it does subtraction, which makes the game easier.
Glory of Kings mainly does two subtractions. The first subtraction, an indirect subtraction, is not directly related to Glory of Kings itself, but it lays the foundation for its fire.
To illustrate this, I need to first popularize some knowledge of the history of games. A dozen or twenty years ago, there was a game that swept the world: RTS, real-time strategy games. You may not have heard of it, but I guess you've probably heard of Red Alert or StarCraft, right? That was the most classic RTS game of the time. The time when the RTS game first came out was not too much to describe it as a crowded alley. But the RTS game fell silent after a while, do you see who else around you is playing RTS now? Very little, right? There were even people shouting "RTS games are dead".
Why? Why are RTS games on the decline? It's because RTS games are so hard. It's not hard to do, it's hard to play, and it's especially hard to play well.
I take the more familiar RTS game "Red Alert" as an example, players who have played "Red Alert" should know that your role on the battlefield is a "general", what is a "general"? That is, all the big things and small things in the game need to be worried about, you have to command every unit on the battlefield to work for you, fight for you, in addition to these, you want to play the RTS game also need to have a very fine mouse and keyboard operation, and even need to be fine to which farmer to mine, which building to build in what position, which soldier to how to go, the purpose of doing this is to maximize the role of each combat unit. In in-game battles, whoever has the faster hand speed and the finer operation of the unit is likely to win the final victory. This also gave birth to a proper noun called APM, which is the full English name of Actions Per Minute, which means the sum of all your actions on the game in one minute. Chinese players have another, more appropriate term for APM, called "cramp efficiency." It is said that the most powerful professional player APM can reach more than 500 times, and you can make up that picture in your brain: 500 times per minute!
Of course, the strategy of RTS games is also very important, when to harass each other, what soldiers to create to restrain each other, sometimes it is not enough to rely on the tactics of the sea of people, "sneak attack" is also an important strategy that affects the final victory or defeat of the game.
Players who have played RTS games should be deeply touched, a game down, not only hand pain, brain pain. In the course of the game, every moment requires you to keep full concentration, and usually a game of RTS is as little as forty or fifty minutes, and more than 1 hour, which is a test for people's physical strength and brainpower. This shows how difficult it is for the average player to play an RTS game well. In the previous lecture on the interpretation of PUBG, we said "exit cost management", RTS games are not like the "chicken game" in the 1V99 chance of winning only 1%, RTS game battles are usually 1V1, the probability of winning is five or five, players are very confident about being able to win. At the same time, 1V1 also means that winning or losing can only be up to you, and if you are not as skilled as others, you may be losing all the time. If you keep losing and losing, this game may dissuade you directly. At that time, the empty alley was actually the illusion of the game fans themselves, mainly because there were no other games that could directly fight with people at that time, and the game market at that time was as rich as it is now. This situation has also caused the status quo of RTS games, there are many people who watch others play, but there are very few people who really play by themselves, and fewer people play, which will lead to developers not making money, then turn to developing other types of games that can make money, which objectively causes the death of RTS.
Just when RTS games were bottlenecked because they were difficult to play, another category of games seized this opportunity and turned out to be moba (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena). What is a MOBA game? Simply put, it is a simplified version of RTS. The most classic MOBA games are DOTA, League of Legends, and Glory of Kings.
How does MOBA game subtraction? I summarize these subtractions into four key words: casual, automated, accelerated, and free.
First of all, the biggest change in MOBA games and RTS games is that it has introduced the concept of "hero" from multi-unit operation to single-unit operation. MOBA game only need to manage the hero you choose throughout the process, upgrade the hero's level, skills, buy equipment, consider the hero's position and the timing of the launch of skills, which is equivalent to turning real-time strategic control into role-playing, you no longer have to be a god like an RTS game, even a creep needs you to worry about it personally, there is no need to abuse the mouse madly. This is a key change in MOBA winning RTS, and with this change, the rhythm of the game has found a better balance, not tiring both mental and physical at the same time.
In addition, MOBA games are usually 5v5, in addition to you, there are 4 teammates, there are 5 enemies on the opposite side, it turns the RTS game's single-player battle gameplay into a teamwork battle, of course, in addition to matching passers-by you don't know, you can also gather friends and family to black together.
A teamwork game can also bring the advantage that even if you are a little less skilled than the enemy on the other side, if the 4 teammates are very powerful, or if your team cooperates more tacitly, you can win the game. Even if you lose, sometimes you can throw the pot to your teammates, thinking that it is because your teammates do not give strength to lose, not that you can't do it yourself, and the next time I match a few reliable teammates, I may be able to win.
Speaking of automation, MOBA, the creeps have become automatically controlled by computer AI, the creeps will automatically refresh at regular intervals, and the game map is also clearly divided into three ways, each road is a fixed number of defense towers, one by one in order, the complexity of tactics is greatly weakened, and it is also convenient for the design of AI and the tactical communication and coordination between you and your teammates.
Then there's the acceleration, which speeds up the pace of the game compared to RTS games, reducing the length of each game to about 30 minutes. In today's fast-paced society, especially the time of adults is becoming more and more fragmented, it is too difficult to want a full two-hour break, and even when you sleep, you may be called up by the boss to work, and it is likely that you will have something new to do just half an hour after you have been idle. Too long game time, your body and mind will not only be very tired, but also many people do not have so much complete time, especially IN MOBA such a team game, you did not finish playing because there is something in the middle of the line, then your four teammates were pit by you, such an example is actually often heard in the mouth of MOBA players.
Finally, it's free, and it's free! As we said in the previous lecture on pubic read, Fortnite is not the inventor of the battle royale category, but it has greatly won over its founder PUBG in terms of rapid accumulation of users because it is free. "League of Legends" once again proved the charm of free, although the MOBA category was started from "DOTA", but "League of Legends" used the free mode for the first time, plus it more fully used the advantages of the previous few advantages of this category, and played several characteristics such as leisure, automation, and acceleration to a new height, resulting in its popularity quickly reaching the peak, and even this category name was invented by "League of Legends". By the way, this game has a nickname "Shake Ah Pick", which was developed from its English abbreviation (League of Legend abbreviation LOL, read as Shake Ah Pick), before the "King" came out, almost the whole people "Shake Ah Shake", no one dared to go out of the right, even the "DOTA2" developed by V Society All in could not surpass.
Having said that, I believe you should be clearer about the relationship and difference between these two game categories, MOBA games not only subvert the charging model but also increase the entertainment of the game by doing subtraction while maintaining the core gameplay of RTS. The free mode can bring you a steady stream of new users, and the increase in entertainment means that the entry threshold for newcomers to the game has been lowered, and there will be fewer people who are forced to quit. We often say that if a game is not good or not, it must not only be able to pull people, but also retain people, and the people who retain will bring more colleagues and friends to play through his circle of acquaintances, so as to form a benign closed loop. A few seemingly simple differences actually made a whole new category of games and almost buried its predecessor. That's the magic of game design evolution, and cases of this radical evolution are very rare in the history of games.
At this point, I have finished the first subtraction of "Glory of Kings", which inherits the direct advantages brought by the MOBA category, although it is not its original, but it is the basis for its popularity. Next, let's focus on the second subtraction, which is the direct subtraction that the game "Glory of Kings" does itself, which I call mobile game.
Before the launch of Honor of Kings, the MOBA game market was largely dominated by League of Legends and DOTA2, both of which had to be played on a computer. At this time, although THE MOBA game has become more casual and entertaining than the RTS game, the entry threshold is still very high for most people. Far more people watch these two games esports every year than they play this game regularly, is it a reminder of the RTS era? I'll take League of Legends as an example, at league of legends last year's S8 World Championship, 99.6 million unique viewers watched the final alone. And how many people play League of Legends? In 2018, the total number of online players in League of Legends worldwide was about 62 million, which is a total of the number of players for a full year. It can be said that the number of spectators watching the game is at least twice the number of players, and there are still more than half of the players who are in a state of only watching and not playing.
So, how did "Glory of Kings" achieve the peak of the MOBA game category?
The biggest pusher is the mobile phone! "Glory of the King" was launched in 2015, when major domestic operators have reduced mobile phone traffic tariffs, which is when the Internet began to enter the mobile era from the PC era.
As the focus of people's life and entertainment shifted from PCs to mobile phones, the concept of mobile MOBA began to be proposed, but there were many doubts in the industry at that time, and the mobile game market at that time was dominated by chess, light card games, match-3 games, or 2D games with automatic combat. These games are mainly to pass the time of fragmentation, and even do not need to be connected to the Internet, basically the game can let you put down the mobile phone at any time to do other things, MOBA so requires accurate operation of the game is really suitable for porting to the mobile phone? But as you all saw, it can be said that Glory of Kings did what all previous MOBA games did not do, bringing MOBA to almost all the general public.
How does it work? Or do subtraction.
The first is the mode of operation, the PC has a mouse keyboard, and the mobile phone has only one touch screen, the traditional solution is to make a virtual joystick on the mobile phone touch screen, plus several virtual keys. Of course, the mobile game MOBA is the easiest thing to think of: the virtual joystick on the left is used to control the hero's movement, and the virtual button on the right is used to cast the hero skill. But here's the problem: tapping with the mouse gives you more precise control over your character's target location and targets. The virtual joystick is more like the handle of the game console, this control feeling is actually completely different, you can only control the direction of the hero's travel in real time, and it is impossible to do accurate and extremely fast with a thumb on the screen, so it is necessary to change the rhythm design of the game in details, to give full play to the advantages of direction control, to avoid the need for accurate positioning, and instead emphasize the sense of involvement between the hero and the player, so that the player is no longer the commander of the hero, but feels that the player himself is the hero, Let players focus on the direction of the role-playing experience, which is why few mobile MOBA games use "precision operation" as a selling point to promote themselves. The operation accuracy is precisely a high wall in front of many newcomer players, "Glory of the King" to use a virtual joystick to reduce the accuracy of operation is to improve the tolerance for low-level users, which is why most newcomers can quickly get started with this game after passing the novice teaching level of "Glory of the King".
In terms of ease of operation, Glory of Kings also adds an "auto cast" function, which you can use to automatically find enemies near you. To be honest, because without a mouse, you can't choose the target accurately and quickly, so it's better to make it automatic. This simplification does not completely affect the strategy of the game, but it can greatly simplify the difficulty of the game. Let's take the hero "Wang Zhaojun" in "Glory of the King" as an example, many of the skills of "Wang Zhaojun" are range control skills, which require you to put the skills in the enemy's pile, if you have this function, the chance of you deflecting or even emptying the skill will be much smaller. This design is very friendly to novices, especially those who have not even played MOBA games, and can help them get started as soon as possible, which has played a great role in reducing the game's dissuasion rate and expanding the game user base.
Secondly, in terms of game rhythm, we can see that "Glory of the King" compared to the previous MOBA game, the overall game rhythm is faster than the PC version of MOBA, it shortens the length of each game to 20 minutes, it also shortens the skill cooldown time of all hero characters, shrinks the game map, the purpose is to increase the intensity of the battle, shorten the time for hostile players to meet, and allow you to break out multiple battles in a short period of time. After all, for most ordinary players, wonderful confrontation and suppression are much faster than complex operations and exquisite walking pleasure.
In addition, "Glory of Kings" has also made small changes in many details, which have played a role in lowering the threshold and speeding up the pace of the game. For example, in terms of the economic system, the knife repair mechanism has been improved, whether the enemy creep is killed by the defense tower or by your own creep, you can get economic income; it also cancels the eye insertion mechanism, and the vision of "Glory of kings" can only rely on their own face to explore the grass or rely on the skills of some heroes; modified the defense tower attributes, the defense tower in "Glory of kings" becomes more brittle, if no one cares, even creeps can push off your defense tower for a short time.
Well, this way down, you see whether it is RTS evolving into a MOBA game, or "Glory of kings" continuing to evolve on the basis of MOBA to achieve greater success, it is constantly simplifying the operation difficulty of the game and accelerating the pace of the game to get happy.
Glory of Kings approach actually brings us back to the question, what is the ultimate purpose of the game? Is it to let players play complex and advanced games? Or do you keep the player paying? In fact, no, the ultimate purpose of the game is very simple, that is, to make the player happy, and whether you are happy or unhappy is actually not directly related to whether you have the technology or the complexity of the game operation.
In the 14th century, the English logician Ockham, William of( proposed a "Occam's Razor" (Occam's Razor, Ockham's Razor), which is an important theory of business management, the core of which is to grasp the key and simplify the complex.
Not only the game industry, whether it is the state, the company or the individual, whether it is managing investment, product design or personal life, this is the truth. Making complex things simple and simple things to the extreme is a success in itself.
Apple mobile phone is a good case, the entire keyboard is not needed, and now even the home button is not needed, not only makes the mobile phone screen large to no boundary, but also makes the mobile phone operation more simple, thus opening a new era of large-screen mobile phones. Jobs has been practicing minimalism all his life, can be simple and never over-designed, and must let people who do not understand it at all get started in the shortest possible time. That's why they designed their products, so Apple products never come with instruction manuals. But even now, there are a few games that can do without a novice tutorial at all, whether it is a three-year-old child or an 80-year-old grandfather, just click and have a good time?
Of course, how to go further in the direction of simplifying, casualing and accelerating happiness as much as possible without losing the core fun and long-term playability of the game is by no means an easy problem to solve. The success of "Glory of Kings" is by no means accidental, but the crystallization of the team's long-term accumulation and careful study. In fact, I have had some intersections with the boss of the creative team, and I remember when he soaked in the online name of the Sina Game Forum, he was like me, he was also the first generation of game practitioners in China, and he had been working for so many years to reach the peak of his life, and there was really no successful person in this industry who was easy.
Well, here I told you about one of the core factors that makes Glory of Kings popular, that is, to simplify complexity and do subtraction.
However, just do the right subtraction, "Glory of the King" still can not become a national game, it is at most in the crowd of people who often play games, in order to become a popular national game among the masses of the people, it must also find a weapon to break the barriers of the circle, what is this weapon?
The first is: "social". Glory of Kings creates a snowballing social network that not only takes acquaintances to the extreme, but also makes it easier for strangers to socialize. First of all, acquaintance social, I have seen a news report before, a student said in an interview with the media that 80% of the entire class play "Glory of the King", if you do not play will be isolated by others. The comparison between classmates is who has a higher rank in the game, and students with higher ranks are more likely to become "heroes" in the eyes of other students, and students who do not play well may also be rejected by other students. This is actually the same as whether the academic performance is good or not, but now the standard is replaced by "Glory of the King" to play well. This phenomenon actually exists in adults, "Glory of the King" because of access to Tencent's own social platform, you can log in to the game through QQ and WeChat, QQ and WeChat friends are definitely your acquaintances, you can invite them to play the game together, you can also see the record and position of each friend in real time, who plays well who plays well can not play at a glance, and people who play badly will easily be put on the hat of "primary school students". The "elementary school students" mentioned here do not refer to students who are in elementary school, but to those who are poorly skilled and often pit teammates. In order to avoid being put on this hat, many people will spend money to find someone to train on behalf of them, and as the demand gradually increases, a new peripheral industry has gradually emerged: professional game training.
So, what about strangers socializing? In real life, strangers will not socialize out of thin air because they do not have credit endorsements, and sometimes they may be forced, such as because of work relationships, such as blind dates. "Looking at the face" can be said to be the first step in the social interaction of strangers, that is, the first impression, and the first impression of a good person will make you more willing to communicate. People who have had a blind date experience should be very touched, that is, in the early stage of establishing a relationship, there will be a problem of "awkward chat", and these problems do not exist in the game, in "Glory of the King" instead of the value, technology is more important than the value. Ironically, the friendship in the game will actually be stronger than in real life, because in reality, most of your friends are colleagues or classmates, and there are many intersections of interests, while the friends you know in the game do not have any intersection of interests between you, it will be more pure.
"Glory of the King" has created a lot of conditions for strangers to socialize, such as you can automatically match strangers to play the game with you through the system, after the game is over, you can like each other with your teammates or add friends to each other, after becoming friends, you can form a closer relationship with them, give them medals, become lovers, girlfriends, friends, mentors and apprentices. In addition, you can also see people near you who are also playing Glory of Kings through the LBS function provided by Glory of Kings, and you can also invite them to play games together.
Especially for many female users, their focus is not on whether the numerical balance between the heroes is balanced, but whether the game characters are good or not; they don't care whether the game is played well or not, but whether there are new skins to show. In addition to playing games, they will also give each hero group CP on social media like the Star Chaser, such as Lü Bu and Sable Cicada, Li Bai and Han Xin, and even set up a post called "Glory of the King CP" for this purpose. Of course, at this time, the official will also keep up at the right time, and launch some heroes' CP skins for players to buy during major festivals. "Glory of the King" maintains the rhythm of launching a new hero or new skin every month, which ensures the user's freshness at the same time, but also increases the user's discussion point, male users will discuss whether this hero skill is strong or not, female users will discuss whether it is handsome or not, beautiful or not. Therefore, such a heavy game type as "Glory of kings" has become one of the games with the highest proportion of female users, and it is also due to the production team's efforts to attract female users. The most frequently quoted phrase in the game industry is that those who win female players win the world, because with female users, there are naturally male users, and there are social networks.
The second weapon: grounding. "Glory of the King" very well plays the characteristics of the heroes in the MOBA game, fully docks with the traditional Chinese mass culture, and is very grounded. You can find that the heroes in the game are some Chinese historical celebrities, mythical gods, such as Li Bai, Hou Yi, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, etc., are some household names, these Chinese "superheroes" for the Chinese general public than the Western sense of substitution, take my words to sum up: the most grounded IP is all in our primary and secondary school textbooks, I guess the creators of "Glory of the King" must have turned over the primary and secondary school language books, right? It can be said that "Glory of Kings" has taken China's largest free IP to the extreme, which has also helped it maximize the target user base of the game. For friends outside the game industry, this is also the key point worth learning from the success of "Glory of the King": don't be high and widowed, not grounded; those who get women get the world; those who get the little white get the world. Simple and fast happiness is what everyone wants, even expert experts. Tired of working during the day, who can still stand to fight wits and courage in the game at night, and if you are accidentally destroyed, you will be scolded?
What will happen to MOBA games in the future?
In the last issue of PUBG, I predicted that Fortnite might decline, but now it's really not very good, so will Glory of Kings be cool? What about MOBA, the entire game category? Looking forward to the future of MOBA games, I think there are still opportunities in both directions, one is to expand in the direction of heavy e-sports on mobile phones, for example, many people are asking me, after the launch of the "League of Legends" genuine mobile game, can it be successful, will it have an impact on "Glory of the King"? My answer is that the positioning of the "League of Legends" mobile game is very clear, that is, the main heavy e-sports route, taking a relatively niche high-end direction, and the current positioning of "Glory of the King" does not conflict, but is expanding the market for heavy users of mobile games; the other is to continue to do subtraction, I personally feel that the subtraction of this category has not yet done the head, but also simpler, more casual, faster! Can you use AI technology to assist more operations, imitate reliable teammates, imitate abused opponents, and make players feel faster and easier? Is a 20-minute inning still too long? Is it possible to play a round in 10 minutes, or even 5 minutes? Is it possible to start quickly, without matching five people, ten people, two to two lines? Can you not do three roads, two roads or even one road? I think it's all possible! So I think there is still a possibility of further expansion for players of MOBA games, and the market opportunity still exists!
Starting from the gameplay itself, can there be such a huge epoch-making evolution of MOBA to RTS, and when will it appear? It is really not easy to predict, the strength of R & D manufacturers is strong, whether their original will succeed, it is also difficult to predict, so I see a more certain trend is happening: the big manufacturers are becoming more open, the power to participate in game design more to the player, is the so-called UGC (user-created content). Many people may not know, in fact, MOBA is a college player in the "Warcraft" open editor to create a new way of play, his screen name is "ice frog icefrog", and now in the MOBA circle is already a god-like character. The "eat chicken" model we talked about in the last issue, the first time it appeared in the game, it was also an experimental product created by the player in the "Armed Assault" game. New ways of playing like the recently and hugely successful "DOTA Self-Propelled Chess" are also the inventions of players spontaneously on the open platform of DOTA2.
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