#头条创作挑战赛 #
After "Bird Soul", Japan's chess and card market ushered in a two-dimensional transformation?
Image source: | pexels
In 2022, the editorial department has written many games, and "Bird Soul" is one of the more impressive ones ("Japanese young people play mahjong online, bringing an annual turnover of 300 million yuan to this overseas product").
From $4 million to $10 million, Soul of the Sparrow proves the chemistry of quadratic and mahjong along the way
In April 2022, "Bird Soul" entered the Sensor Tower China mobile game overseas revenue growth list for the first time, and just began to show revenue potential, when the double-ended turnover was about $4 million (Sensor Tower data). And November, which may be the best month for "Bird Soul" in 2022, reached $10 million in monthly turnover according to Diandian data, and also entered the top 30 of overseas game revenue.
"Bird Soul" entered the top 30 | of China's overseas game revenue in November 2022 Image source: Sensor Tower
Of course, the game's revenue level fell in December, which also proved the operational pressure in the later stage. But no matter what, this game with a start-up team of only 5 people, of course, and the blessing of the long-term operation ability of Ustar Network in the Japanese market, let the industry once again see the possibility of board games to be small and broad.
After the two-dimensional transformation of chess and cards has been verified to be feasible, manufacturers have also started their brains in different categories.
Lost opportunities on the mahjong circuit, Japanese manufacturers have to make up for them in poker and reversi
In the previous topic, we "restored" the history of the development of mahjong games in Japan, which has experienced a period of "stigmatization", and after that, local manufacturers tend to conservative routes, lock the target audience on deep players, and continue to work on "professionalism", do dan rank system, professional mahjong dan rank certification and so on. It is difficult for young people in Japan to integrate into it, which is the opportunity for "Soul of the Sparrow" to differentiate its positioning.
In the past few years when "Bird Soul" has been popular in Japan, Japanese manufacturers have also silently tried in the field of two-dimensional + chess and cards, betting on "the next "Bird Soul". Recently, the author observed that a two-dimensional poker game called "Poker Chase" (Japanese name is "ポーカーチェイス") two-dimensional poker game rushed to the top 30 of the Japanese iOS game free list, in addition to the two-dimensional transformation of board games, what new thinking will Japanese manufacturers have on this type of game, with questions The author opened the game.
Poker Chase app store poster
Poker Chase: A two-dimensional puff that can be played by both male and female players
"Poker Chase", as the name suggests, is a two-dimensional board game with poker (specifically Texas Hold'em) as the main gameplay, officially released worldwide in August 2021, but "Poker Chase" has been launched in Japanese so far, mainly for Japanese players.
Although Texas Hold'em is called "the most popular public card poker game in the world", in fact, the penetration of Japan is not very high. According to the figures mentioned in a 2021 report by "Yabohui", Japan's Depu players are roughly between 800,000 and 1 million, compared to the same type of board games such as mahjong, shogi and Go, Depu's mass base in Japan is weaker.
However, similar to mahjong, Depu is a game that tests both luck and strategy, but compared to mahjong, Depu has the advantage of simple rules and easy to learn. In other words, "Poker Chase" chooses two-dimensional + Depu to cut in, which may value the wide range of two-dimensional themes in Japan, the simple gameplay of Depu, and the intention to develop Depu players in the non-traditional sense.
That said, as with Soul of the Sparrow, the idea of audience coverage is similar, opening up new audiences beyond traditional players. The difference is that the existing board is much smaller, but the simplicity of the rules + the probability of the hand and the test of human nature may give the game room for further play.
In 2020, the number of participants in Japanese offline mahjong, Go, and shogi was 4 million, 1.8 million, and 5.3 million, respectively, all of which exceeded the above-mentioned Depu data | Image source: Japan Productive Headquarters "Leisure White Paper 2021"
Here is a brief introduction to the gameplay of Depu. A round usually involves 2-10 players, and at the beginning of the match, each player gets two hole cards, followed by three rounds of dealers, for a total of 5 hole cards. Each round of the card dealing, each player in turn needs to decide whether to bet/fold, the ultimate goal is to wait for all three rounds of the card deal, use the 2 hole cards and 5 hole cards in the hand, match the 5 best combination cards, win all players in the hand bet chips... "Poker Chase" uses a very Japanese-style video to demonstrate the gameplay at the beginning of the game.
Poker Chase begins the game with a very Japanese-style video demonstrating how Tokupo plays
Similar to "Soul of the Sparrow", "Poker Chase" uses a combination of De Pounce + Card Draw. What is more interesting is that the game has designed the card drawing interface to the style of a slot, players can obtain characters, gifts and other items through card draw, and the gameplay is relatively conventional, players can get special character voices and stickers by giving gifts to characters to improve their favorability. Although it seems that there is not much innovation, these gameplay containing two-dimensional elements still really brings a group of players to "Poker Chase", and in the two-dimensional community QooApp, many players mention that it is because the artist/CV/character linkage of "Poker Chase" "entered the pit".
Poker Chase game homepage
Poker Chase card drawing interface
However, "Poker Chase" with Depu as the core gameplay is also facing a very embarrassing situation, "two-dimensional players who are not Depu fans" feel that the game is too monotonous, and the cultivation gameplay of new IP is also limited to the attraction of players, so the users who bought in are lost one after another.
Depu is attractive because the rules are simple at the same time, with the unpredictable changes of the card game, comprehensively testing the player's ability to calculate probabilities, psychological games and comprehensive information collection and processing capabilities, relying on luck but also very competitive. If a white player has no intention of refining his card skills after the novelty fades, it is difficult to continue to experience psychological stimuli such as "small and broad" and "desperate to take risks" in the process of the game, and feel the fun of Depu. Secondly, when we watched "Bird Soul", we found that in 2019 and after the launch of "Bird Soul", the participation intention of young Japanese players to play mahjong online is getting higher and higher, and Depu itself has a general mass base, and it seems that there is currently a lack of an opportunity to enter the public eye. Taking advantage of the situation and doing market education for yourself, the results may be very different.
Yokota Shiki, who participated in the marketing of the "Poker Chase" game, revealed in a sharing that in the third month after the release of "Poker Chase", the DAU dropped to only 1/7 of the beginning, and the entire game was almost facing shutdown. "Our game operates in a very tight management system, so we can survive as long as we keep receiving tens of millions of yen a month. However, during the trough, the monthly turnover is less than 10 million yen. That is to say, the monthly turnover of "Poker Chase" can break even in the order of millions of yuan, but the monthly turnover of "Poker Chase" once fell to less than 500,000 yuan, basically operating at a loss.
At that time, "Poker Chase" came up with the idea of referring to "Bird Soul" and cooperating with Vtuber to hold the Depu Tournament, and the popular Vtuber of the 3 Rainbow Club joined the game card pool as limited characters. However, Yokota also replayed after the event, and if he only relied on the popularity of the tournament, he was very sure that the popularity of Poker Chase would drop immediately after the event, so he chose to have Vtuber appear in the game as a game character. This attempt almost brought "Poker Chase" back to life, and this round of climbing is also due to a new round of linkage with the Rainbow Society.
"Poker Chase" × Rainbow Club joint event poster
And this time the linkage, as can be seen from the poster, there is a more counter-common sense place. In the past Depu games, due to the excessive emphasis on the image of the "dealer girl", many players would think that Depu was a game for men. "Poker Chase" chose three male Vtubers for the first time, hoping to break this stereotype and attract more female players into the game, according to the data, the proportion of male and female players in "Poker Chase" is basically equal.
According to the dot data, after this round of linkage, the double-ended monthly turnover of "Poker Chase" is about 80,000 US dollars, a slight increase from the previous month, considering that "Poker Chase" also opens the PC side, the overall flow should not be a problem to break even.
In addition to mahjong and poker, Japanese manufacturers who are good at "whole work" have also set their sights on board games early, and the gameplay transformation of the latter is undoubtedly more thorough, and the flow results are almost the same as "Bird Soul".
"Reverse Othello": Reversi with a user base of 60 million, obviously easier to make money
Reverse Othellonia is a reversi-based RPG real-time combat mobile game, but in fact, the two-dimensional transformation of this board game, which predates "Bird Soul", was launched in 2015.
In Japan, Reversi is a mass-based board game, and according to statistics from Japanese board game expert Goro Hasegawa, there are about 60 million Reversi fans throughout Japan. The target players of "Reverse Othellonia" are not only existing reversi lovers, the reversi itself is simple to play, the game has transformed the traditional reversi gameplay, added RPG real-time combat elements, making it more in line with the game interest of two-dimensional players.
Reverse Othellonia app store poster
The traditional Japanese game of reversi is not complicated, and the rules are understood as a whole, a bit like the combination of Go and Gomoku that we are familiar with, with similarities and differences.
First of all, on the chess pieces themselves, in addition to distinguishing the two camps of players in black and white, the chess pieces are black on one side and white on one side, which is different from the black side of Go and the other side holding white. As a rule, the chess game is usually played on an 8X8 board, and at the beginning of the game, two pieces in black and white have been crossed on the board, usually with black falling first. When a pawn envelops the opponent's pawn in a straight line (horizontal, vertical, or oblique), it can flip the encircled pawn to turn it into its own color. The two sides play chess in turn until the board is full, and the player with more pieces on the board wins.
Experienced, slightly more complicated than backgammon, and much simpler than Go, on YouTube, many bloggers recommend teenagers to play reversi to strengthen their brains.
Reverse Othellonia doesn't use a traditional 8×8 board, which is usually smaller and irregularly shaped, given the size and fun nature of the phone
"Reverse Othellonia" introduces the concepts of chess colt (character), skill, hp and other concepts under the rules of reversi. Before the match starts, players choose 16 chess horses from the chess chest to form a team, these chess horses are from the three races of gods, demons, and dragons, each with different skills and abilities. When the player wraps the opponent's piece in one line in the game, the character will attack and the opponent will lose blood. There are 3 ways to win in the game, one is to zero the opponent's HP through the character attack to win; 2. All the pieces on the board become one of the pieces; When the board is full of pieces, the one with the most HP wins.
It is not difficult to see that compared to games such as "Bird Soul" and "Poker Chase", "Reverse Othellonia" has more changes to the board gameplay, in other words, when it comes to "Reverse Othellonia", it is difficult to classify it as a reversi game, but more like a mobile game that uses the rules of Othello to play differentiated RPG real-time battles.
Two chessers in Reverse Othellonia
Also because of jumping out of the "shackles" of the reversi game, "Reverse Othellonia" is also closer to the two-dimensional game in monetization, with more imagination space, according to the dot data, "Reverse Othellonia" in the past 30 days is roughly $4 million, in the highly competitive Japanese market, nearly once a week broke into the iOS game best-selling list Top 50.
After "Bird Soul", can domestic two-dimensional board games be followed by someone?
Board games are one of the categories with the longest existence and the most mature gameplay overseas. From January to October 2022, the total mobile game revenue of the global chess and card market reached 6.6 billion US dollars, and the overseas chess and card mobile games from China occupied a place. According to Sensor Tower data, from January to October 2022, China's overseas chess and card mobile game revenue Top10 accounted for 590 million US dollars, accounting for almost 1/10, but slot machines and bingo accounted for the majority of seats, and the narrow sense of mahjong, card and other games discussed above did not appear much, only the Texas Hold'em Poker game "Texas Hold'em Poker" from KamaGames, and the 21-point poker game "BlakJack 21" Both are card games with relatively traditional product forms (oddly enough, Wikipedia information shows that KamaGames is an Ireland-based company).
From January to October 2022, China's overseas chess and card mobile game revenue was | TOP10 Image source: Sensor Tower
In the recent hot new chess and card products, you can see some attempts made by current overseas manufacturers in the integration of board and card gameplay, such as "Solitaire Dragons" from Polar Bear Studio, according to the app store, this is a story-driven solitaire + development game, and "Solitaire: Card Games" from Happibits Game, which is also plot-driven, However, the gameplay has been changed to playing as a card + home improvement, and from them you can more or less see the impact of Beta's "Solitaire Home Design" on later product design ideas, and the main direction that can be seen at present is to use home improvement and cultivate a type of gameplay to screen users from large casual players... Even if 2022 ushered in a wave of two-dimensional mobile games concentrated and new, from the current results, regardless of large and small factories, the path of two-dimensional + chess and cards chosen by "Bird Soul" seems to be rarely taken on the side of domestic manufacturers.
Whether it is "Poker Chase" or "Reverse Othellonia", we actually let us see some ideas of Japanese manufacturers doing two-dimensional + board games, the former is to cut into the easy-to-use Depu, while reusing the experience and ideas of "Bird Soul" marketing; The latter is based on the traditional reversi gameplay to give players a sense of freshness. Although the former is still far from catching up with "Bird Soul", feeding the team should not be a problem; The latter has been verified by the market over the years, and it has basically proved the feasibility of this idea, and the attempts of Japanese manufacturers on this track are always visible.