Life and Death Sniper 2 has been online for two weeks.
Since the establishment of this product, Grape Jun has written too much about its research and development process. After all, in this mobile game domination market, developers rely on the "life and death sniper" page game to earn a lot of money, but also willing to spend another 4 years, invest 400 million to do a shooting end game, whether from the perspective of business or feelings, this matter is worth recording.
Judging from the actual effects before and after the public beta, "Life and Death Sniper 2" did cause a flurry of topic discussion. Most of the popularity stems from Jay Chou's endorsement marketing, and according to unprovoked statistics, their Weibo topic exposure during the public beta period reached 570 million. But at the same time, players' evaluation of it has gradually polarized, some people admit that it has taken the domestic shooting end a step further, and some people think that its actual quality has not reached the expected appearance.
So, in the face of this heat and controversy, how do we view "Life and Death Sniper 2"? Is it really not worthy of the name? Today, I will review "Life and Death Sniper 2" from the two levels of product and marketing.
01 It's not the AAA shot you think
Before discussing Life and Death Sniper 2, we can be clear: it is certainly not an AAA level shooter.
Previously, Li Xin, chairman of Gratuitous Technology & producer of "Life and Death Sniper 2", had said that they had paid a lot of tuition in 4 years to improve the quality of the game, but the current product was still some distance away from the A-level quality in their hearts. At the time of the project, they did not position the game as AAA, but a high-quality "shooting platform" - hoping that every player could find their favorite content in it.
So in terms of high quality, did they do it?
From the picture point of view, compared with the slightly rough picture of the first generation and the previous tests, the artistic quality of the public beta version of "Life and Death Sniper 2" has been greatly improved. The game uses PBR rendering, the texture materials of scene modeling and texture maps are more realistic, and the vegetation and small objects in the map also have a more refined performance. At the same time, most maps have water bodies, lights, volumetric fog, and special effects to show the effects of light and shadow.
In terms of weapons, according to the production team, they have clear design specifications for small rivet screws, chamfers of various sizes, fillets and other details in the art design stages such as concept, high mold, lowpoly, texture and so on. From the actual effect, when the character holds the gun, the material, reflection, and wear marks of the gun have a certain sense of realism.
Secondly, in terms of sound effects, "Life and Death Sniper 2" is also pursuing a sense of presence as much as possible. The game includes a variety of guns and footsteps in reality, and the characters walk on the ground of different materials such as lawns, puddles, and deserts, and they can roughly distinguish the scene by listening to the sound. The sound of each gun changing bullets, the feedback sound of bullets hitting different objects is also different.
In addition, the game introduces the HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) audible positioning system. Players are in 3D space and can accurately determine the location of the source of sound through hearing.
In different environments such as indoors and outdoors, the sounds heard are also different
In terms of the 3C experience of shooting games, we can see that the game draws on the gun feel design of many mature shooting products. For example, like Apex Heroes, a crisp kill sound effect was introduced, and the crosshair was amplified during headshots to enhance shooting feedback; Similar to the aiming mechanics of Call of Duty 16, during the shooting process, the crosshairs will then randomly jump with a stack of recoil and deviate from the center of the screen to enhance the recoil performance...
What is slightly deficient is that the current action connection of the character in running, jumping, climbing, and sideways is not smooth enough, and when climbing, it will cut into the climbing animation, and the player can only wait for the end of the animation to continue the operation, which affects the coherence of the operation to a certain extent.
But in general, if we compare "Life and Death Sniper 2" with domestic shooting online games from the above three aspects of picture, sound effects and 3C experience, then its quality performance should be up to standard.
After polishing the basic quality, the game did not hard spell each shooting subdivision category through gameplay innovation, but through optimization to reduce the player's play threshold, released many micro-innovative gameplay.
The game offers a variety of modes such as chicken eating, team battles, blasting, and biochemistry. Among them, the chicken eating mode introduces vocational skills and store shopping mechanisms; The large map provides a large group battle of 50 people, simulating the large battlefield effect of Battlefield; Biochemical mode combines a Roguelike-like talent system... In addition, the game also incorporates the series's characteristic big head mode into the above part of the gameplay, so that it has both leisure and entertainment attributes.
From this point of view, the gameplay of "Life and Death Sniper 2" is like a hodgepodge, trying to include a variety of shooting genres to meet the different preferences of shooters. However, this practice has also been criticized by hardcore players to a certain extent.
As a simple example, the game introduces sideways and crouch shooting operations, which should be intended to give players more tactical options indoors and outdoors. But the problem is that most of these operations in "Life and Death Sniper 2" can only be used in the chicken eating mode, and in the fast-paced team battle mode, we can often see a group of players shaking left and right from each other in order to dodge bullets, not only the actual effect is debatable, but also affects the overall look and feel of the game and the shooting experience of competitive players.
As a result, different gameplay modes are mixed together, inevitably leading to a conflict in the overall detail design of the game. On the other hand, most of the popular shooter games in recent years are mature foreign AAA products, and the standards of domestic hardcore players for good games have long been improved. Under this premise, the gameplay is not polished enough, and the lack of obvious characteristics of "Life and Death Sniper 2" is likely to receive bad reviews, showing a two-level differentiation of word of mouth.
Of course, whether it is the picture quality or the gameplay details, these should be the parts that domestic shooting online games need to work hard to make up. But for unprovoked, from page games to next-generation end games, the production difficulty of all aspects of "Life and Death Sniper 2" should not be low. As Li Xin said before, after communicating with the top shooting team, they found that if they wanted to achieve true A-level quality, they needed years of accumulation and could not ascend to the sky in one step.
Therefore, although "Life and Death Sniper 2" is not yet called AAA, it also builds a pipeline foundation for the next product under research for no reason. In the words of Zheng Ming, the president of the unprovoked, they hope that through the accumulated experience, the next product can really compete with the foreign AAA masterpiece.
For "Life and Death Sniper 2", more importantly, it does follow the idea of setting up a project, trying to meet the needs of a group of fans and pan-users with a low threshold free play mode.
02 Layers of marketing
Speaking of the product level, the marketing of "Life and Death Sniper 2" is also worth mentioning. For example, many people should be curious about it inviting Jay Chou to endorse: does it use Jay Chou in the end, so is it worth it?
In fact, the game's publicity rhythm has already begun to lay the groundwork before Jay Chou.
First of all, the "Life and Death Sniper" page game has been operating for 9 years, and its global user registration has accumulated more than 500 million, with a stable player circle. In 2020, its 7th anniversary live broadcast landed on the top of Huya Hot Search, with more than 3 million viewers, which is enough to prove its user stickiness.
In order to wake up these core users, "Life and Death Sniper 2" first passed 9 tests and invited old players to study together. During the test, they held several live events to plan face-to-face and produced tuning videos to build trusting relationships with players. When the public beta was launched, they released a list of players who had participated in the joint research for 4 years, creating a sense of belonging to fans.
Secondly, in order to attract shooters, "Life and Death Sniper 2" has also found a lot of KOLs to cooperate. For example, during the test, they found professional players and anchors such as Eggplant and Chen Zihao, and made their classic quotations into a special voice package in the game, radiating their influence to anchor fans and a wider group of shooting players through the whole live content and KOL endorsement.
In order to achieve a wider range of dissemination, the game extracted the brand concept of "Hualiu Shooting" from the domestic shooting end game, and found jay Chou endorsement on behalf of Hualiu music.
In the process of spokesperson marketing, "Life and Death Sniper 2" can be said to have stepped on every time point in time when Jay Chou released a new album: when the new album was officially announced, the game also released a mysterious poster of the spokesperson, attracting the attention of fans;
Subsequently, when the new album was finalized, they released the micro-film that Jay Chou participated in filming, as well as the reservation activity of "Jay Chou called the player";
With the official release of the new album, the game was also launched in public beta, and even invited Jay Chou to broadcast live.
It is worth noting that this spokesperson marketing is not just asking a spokesperson to say two sentences, or singing a theme song and sloppily. "Life and Death Sniper 2" has been through the brand concept of Hualiu shooting, and Jay Chou has done in-depth content cooperation.
For example, in the micro-film "Loaded for Love", they repeatedly mentioned the hardships of doing domestic shooting end games in this era, and associated it with young people's inner love and Hualiu music.
For another example, the game updated the content of the national tide theme in the public beta version, using Chongqing as the prototype, integrating the characteristic buildings of the national style, designing a cyber-style national tide map, and a new character with panda elements. Among them, Jay Chou's character image and voice package were also made into the game.
It is said that in August, they will also join hands with the science fiction world to launch a planetary power version, and simultaneously launch sci-fi-themed guns, maps, avatar frames and other content.
From the content point of view, the main audience of "Life and Death Sniper 2" and "Science Fiction World" are men, and this linkage content can meet the needs of science fiction fans in the player group. From a brand point of view, "Science Fiction World" has bred famous IP such as "Three-Body Problem" and "The Wandering Earth", and the linkage with it should also improve the influence of game IP again.
Finally, to sum up, although the effect of the 716 Jay Chou live broadcast night was not ideal, it was complained about by players. However, its market publicity is still layer by layer to help the product to achieve an outbreak in the public beta, and with reference to the follow-up linkage content, perhaps "Life and Death Sniper 2" will also maintain a stable publicity rhythm through similar brand cooperation in the future.
03 Conclusion
Frankly speaking, when Unprovoked said in the past few years that it would invest in a high-quality shooting online game on a scale of 100 million, I think many people may not be particularly optimistic, and even feel that this matter is a bit unreliable. From the perspective of public beta performance, its gameplay and detailed design do have a long way to go.
However, after reading the above analysis review, we can also draw a conclusion - "Life and Death Sniper 2" from the beginning of the target is not a foreign AAA masterpiece, its target is more of its own core fans, as well as the category of pan-users. Whether it is product design or market publicity, it has always been consistent with this idea.
Combined with the basic quality of the game, the unprovoked should be to achieve the goal of making a high-quality "shooting platform", and build a pipeline foundation for high-specification products through "Life and Death Sniper 2".
At the market level, the key to the success of "Life and Death Sniper 2" depends on its long-term operation. Like the Life and Death Sniper page game, they all chose the big DAU route and tried to accumulate players through stable content updates.
Previously, Zheng Ming said that the "Life and Death Sniper" page game in more than 7 years, a total of nearly 100 modes, it is this frequent gameplay attempts, so that most of the moderate shooting players' preferences have been found out for no reason, accumulating 500 million users around the world, and after 2 years of official launch, the monthly flow exceeded 100 million.
Therefore, after the public beta was launched, "Life and Death Sniper 2" immediately released a PVE gameplay preview with a high voice from players, and from the comment area, the new gameplay mode did attract a lot of player analysis and speculation.
At the same time, Gratuitous is also recruiting a large number of experts in art, engine, technology and other aspects to ensure their update frequency and content production speed.
From this point of view, although it has invested 400 million yuan in research and development expenses for no reason, in fact, the business model it has chosen is mature and verified. This means that it can accumulate technical strength while ensuring that it can recover its costs with a high probability, and gradually move towards higher goals later. This way of not blindly holding back big moves should also be the choice of most companies now.
Today, although "Life and Death Sniper 2" has not become a product that everyone cheers, its thinking has been very clear, and it has achieved good heat at the beginning. If it can play its own advantages in user understanding and ensure output, then perhaps in the future it can also gradually gain a place in the mainstream market of mobile games like the previous game.