Last week, NetEase's wasteland survival mobile game "After Tomorrow" announced that the number of gamers had exceeded 200 million. Many players are sharing and reviewing the days and nights of the past four years on social platforms, and the newly promoted emperor Li Peinan also claims that he is one in 200 million tomorrow. Unexpectedly, Feng Bing, the actor of Lao Mo in the film and television drama "Crazy", also recently entered the pit "After Tomorrow", and he had a doubt: "Can you really make 50,000 gold bars a day as a hemp picker?" ”
Old Mo wondered
You know, before "After Tomorrow", the theme of doomsday survival has always been labeled as hardcore on the PC side, because the difficulty and high learning cost have always been relatively niche. However, NetEase took the lead in launching the wasteland survival mobile game "After Tomorrow" in 2018, trying to popularize this hardcore niche gameplay to the mobile terminal and dig this unmined gold treasure. Living up to expectations, "After Tomorrow" landed in the iOS global free list TOP1 on the first day of its launch, and then topped the App Store overall list for 7 days; In the past four years, through the content of five seasons of American drama, it has created an immersive wasteland world unique to players, and gradually accumulated to achieve "breaking the circle" to reach more than 200 million players.
This makes the teahouse curious, "After Tomorrow", as the leader of domestic doomsday survival mobile games, what has made players willing to play for a long time in the past four years? And how is such a doomsday wasteland world that emphasizes the difficulty of survival but at the same time needs to give players a sense of belonging? Its answer may lie in the answers of After Tomorrow players.
01
Survive:
One person, one dog, one world
"I used to be afraid of the cries of infected people in the sandstone castle, and goosebumps came up, but now I am not afraid."
- Gamer cookies
There is a kind of romance, probably a kind of doomsday wasteland exploration and exploration, ignorance and fearlessness. It's like Erbeimian's "Blame! The protagonist goes all the way up the tall buildings, and the hope and future he wants to find is at the top.
But how to let players actually feel the post-apocalyptic atmosphere, but also to establish an emotional connection between players and the world? Perhaps this is the first problem facing After Tomorrow.
The answer is simple, maybe it is enough to send a dog at the beginning (the cat party is not convinced). In After Tomorrow, players will arrive in a desolate and decaying world after the virus ravages, where supplies are scarce, infected people are everywhere and even some areas are contaminated, you don't know what happened here, but you arrive at a park called "Happy 101", abandoned buildings and signs on the side of the road hint at the afterglow of the past, and you will try to build your own home and survive. Although lonely, there is a puppy who will follow you and rub your legs when you turn on the motorcycle, indicating that he also wants to ride with you. This small design brings a touch of warmth to the player and encourages the player to embark on a journey through the fog.
On the other hand, how to reduce the difficulty of getting started with survival games on the mobile game side, so that players can get started better? "After Tomorrow" is different from the normal operation of the market, providing a 30-minute beginner's tutorial, allowing players to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of apocalyptic survival when they land. During this period, NPC guides will take players to familiarize themselves with the dungeon (if the regener is selected initially), take a helicopter to the happy wheat field under the guidance of the survival manual, cut down trees, collect wood, hunt the first deer or take down the first infected.
infected person
The environment and sound effects also add a lot to the sense of doom. Whenever you encounter a passing building on the side of the road, think a gas station, a church, or an abandoned old villa, the system will remind you to take pictures and draw attention to the new location you pass by. These landscapes are based on the real world and can give players a feeling of familiarity and unfamiliarity. The game also has realistic day-night cycles and rainy blizzards, where you can see the moon quickly falling to the west, or you can see the sun rising from the east. Sometimes while walking on the road, ambushed bandits will surprise them with a sudden attack, or when an infected person passes nearby, a terrible howl rings in their ears, making the survivors shudder.
View on the road
Finally, he returned home, built his home with every grass and tree harvested from gathering and fighting, added furniture, farmed cattle, cooked, and ate some food to feed his hunger. Let the cottage you built with your own hands gradually fill up and warm up. Playing a game of ball throwing with your dog for a while may be a lot more reassuring.
And this may be the charm of the simulation management gameplay, when it is equipped with the world view of the doomsday wasteland, the sense of achievement and management is amplified. Whether it is an infrastructure mad player, a dog that accompanies him to death, or a passing landscape photo, players gradually establish an emotional connection to the world and stabilize the first batch of players. Perhaps this is also the common thing that wasteland survival games have in common: the longer you survive, the deeper the sense of accomplishment and bond.
The home of the infrastructure boss (Source: Great God @ Far Star City, Yuan)
The first shot of the survival track, "After Tomorrow" is unexpectedly and reasonably fired. On November 6, 2018, this day also became the common memory of many players who opened the server, the server exploded, and the 10 new servers added in one day could not accommodate the influx of players.
02
Cooperate:
Grow and bond friendships in the camp
"When I first started the service, I opened my eyes in the morning to play until I went to bed, and even at night, I was afraid that someone would come to steal my home, so I took turns to keep vigil with my friends."
- Player kitten
In the apocalyptic world, players can choose to go it alone while also growing with their partners, which is the philosophy of After Tomorrow.
The producer of "After Tomorrow" reviewed the game project establishment process at the NetEase Game Developer Summit in 2019, and mentioned that "After Tomorrow" as a survival game on top of the core gameplay of the resource cycle, the key to achieving long-term operation is to introduce growth and socialization. These two functions are mainly implemented through camps.
What's more special is that the camp in After Tomorrow is not only linked to the player's growth, but also allows players to huddle together, share resources, and provide players with a harmonious guild atmosphere in a doomsday world like an island.
More than twenty players gathered together in a small area of the private camp. It was also at the camp that the teahouse gained the first friend made by bumping fists. In the camp, players can visit each other's doors and go to the neighbor's house to enjoy a meal prepared on the table. In order to protect the growth of the camp, it is more important to go to the bulletin board in the central square of the camp to pick up tasks, or respond to the "help" of campers and make the first friendship. At the same time, there will be a reminder from campers to donate resources, which can increase the level of the camp and open up more advanced mining techniques. Players do feel more at the camp than living alone.
More socially satisfying is teaming up with campers. Playing is also meant to be explored in an open map of the apocalypse. Alone is a bit overwhelming, but it's even more interesting to explore and fight with three or two friends. The teahouse's favorite is the Autumn Forest, and as the first novice map, players can not only collect resources but also flow through streams in the mountains. At night, go to the hut with friends to hide from the zombies. However, be careful not to run during heavy rain, otherwise you may catch a slight cold. But the treatment is also very simple, just drink plenty of hot water (laughs).
Infected with rain
As the version continues to be updated, After Tomorrow has now been updated with nearly 20 exploration areas. Different maps have different gameplay methods of PVE and PVP. Players can play a PVP battle in White Star City, or go to the White Tree Heights to obtain tree resources in a blizzard, or challenge the Yellow Sand Gobi replica countless times, facing the final boss and losing again and again until finally victorious. In After Tomorrow, camps can also play against each other. In the town of the Shire, the race will divide the camp according to the strength of the camp, and start a fierce resource grab.
After Tomorrow seamlessly connects to the big map
Shire Town Appointment Frame Video
Compared with the open version, "After Tomorrow" later also opened the cohabitation social gameplay. After taking off the order, the house is more and more beautifully repaired, which is breathtaking. On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2020, the game also increased cohabitation actions under the strong voice of players, such as hugging, touching the head to kill and other excessive sugar content, etc., setting off a wave of "show affection" among players.
According to the big data of 200 million players in After Tomorrow, the most popular action is hugging, and players have created more than 80 million hugs in four years.
In addition to the story of bursting sweetness, of course, there are also the early days of shared suffering. The same server player told the teahouse that when the game did not initially open the cohabitation function, it was usually to build a house near a friend's house. At that time, the house did not have a combination lock, and at night you had to remind each other with friends to save the materials from disaster.
It is these social logics that come from the gradual social logic of playing teams, cohabitation, camps, etc., and gradually establish emotional connections between people in the world of "After Tomorrow". When you live in a camp, you fight for the camp.
03
Experience:
Shared experiences shape players' collective memories
"National server players must arrive in Levin City first."
- A certain UP master
Of course, "After Tomorrow" did not stop after laying the basic gameplay for exploration, combat, and socializing.
When players are accustomed to fighting in camps and "lying flat" in their homes, "After Tomorrow" increases the attack power of the infected in the second season; Then creatively use the concept of American drama to launch themed activities that require players to participate together, constituting major events that change the era of tomorrow's world, such as the Great Human Migration and the Great Volcanic Eruption. At present, after the first four seasons of updates, the fifth season of "Capture, Mutation Power" has arrived, and players have come to the legendary sea fortress Ark City to find the future of the survivors.
Ark City
The pain and pleasure of all individuals seem to be insignificant in the face of the calamity facing the universe and all of humanity. This collective experience like a community of destiny brings a sense of historical grandeur and epic, and also shapes players' collective memories with a sense of achievement and honor.
For example, the direct "Great Human Migration Program" that occurred tomorrow on January 16, 2020. Players need to build and repair a transportation line from scratch, across the entire Western Plain and Hokuriku Highlands, relocate the camp set up at the central railway station to Levine City, end the wandering life, return to the city, and restart human civilization. Of course, the route is full of infected people, which means that the migration is not destined to be easy.
However, it seems that it is difficult for hardworking and powerful national service players. It is worth mentioning that in this great migration event, a "battle for honor of national uniforms" was also set off. Because of receiving the pre-match challenge, the UP motherboard mother Xiaowei "After Tomorrow" took the lead in drafting the migration plan version of the "Alliance Agreement", expressing the honor of swearing to defend China's infrastructure madness. In the end, it also lived up to expectations, and the national server players arrived in Levine City first ahead of the foreign server players.
Subsequently, humans worked together to defend the city of Levine against magma flooding the city. These sense of achievement and mission nourished by community events, and even the emotional bond of helping each other, players have sublimated "friendship" between each other and even all players, which further strengthens the player's sense of belonging to tomorrow's world, and enriches the layered sense of tomorrow's world in contradictions and conflicts and even the struggle with nature. In 2021, with the addition of regenerates, the camps and relationships of this world have become more confusing, and the worldview has become more three-dimensional.
Regener
04
Linkage:
Premium content "invades" three-dimensional life
"Good luck to mankind, good luck to the world tomorrow, and a happy new year."
——moss
In addition, "After Tomorrow" often uses the Spring Festival file to create momentum through film and game linkage, shoot high-quality all-star New Year live-action films, or launch linkage versions that are appropriate to the theme of the game, broaden the theme and tone of the game, and "invade" the real three-dimensional life of players with high-quality content outside the game, which further enhances the immersion of the world of tomorrow.
In the Spring Festival of 2022, the all-star live-action movie "Wasteland Road" released by "After Tomorrow" on Station B received up to 5.557 million views. The movie is played by UP master Big Eggplant, actor Mai Changqing, "Tan Talks about Traffic" host Tan Qiao, etc., under their wonderful interpretation, not only the world view and story under tomorrow have a witty reinterpretation, but more importantly, with the bloom of fireworks in the movie, a large number of players gathered in the movie to send each other New Year wishes.
In this year's Spring Festival, "After Tomorrow" also launched a linkage version with the domestic sci-fi blockbuster "The Wandering Earth 2". The high-quality version of the pilot PV, borrowing the theme and construction gameplay of "continuation of human civilization" in the "Wandering Earth 2" movie that fits the game, not only allows tomorrow's players to carry the multi-functional mechanical dog in the movie to walk in space and build a space base, but also creates a "Wandering Earth" plan that is no less exciting than the quarterly event - all survivors build engines together and set sail with the Earth Home. In addition, during the linkage period, the game even made #moss call event # on Weibo hot search through ARG (invasive virtual reality game) gameplay, and it is reported that more than 200,000 users call moss back every day.
"After Tomorrow" invades reality through the phone, bringing the immersion from tomorrow's world to the extreme and further deepening the connection between players and each other. And this may be the reason why "After Tomorrow" has accumulated 200 million players, and the entire open world has expanded from land to sea, constantly refreshing the boundaries of the wasteland theme. Different players have found their place of belonging in free gameplay.
As one player put it, "While the game data is virtual, the feelings are real." ”
epilogue
The apocalyptic wasteland world is not refined in a day, and this sense of bonding and belonging established with companions and the world is not only hidden in every battle and collection of 200 million players, but also relies on the never-stop pace of content and gameplay in the 7 years since the project was established in 2016.
Four years ago, "After Tomorrow" tore a hole in the market as a track leader, making the doomsday survival category a hot track for domestic manufacturers to invest capital resources. With the popularity of games, NetEase has also announced a number of doomsday-themed games. Perhaps, as the game's curator once said, although "After Tomorrow" still has room for improvement, its greatest value is to provide the industry with the courage to innovate the theme. I believe that this courage can make "After Tomorrow" better, and I expect it to bring more gameplay and excitement to players.