Game variety shows enter a new era?

The eighth season of "Detective" arrived as scheduled, but what was surprising was not the variety show itself, but a new game "Forest Evolution" presented in the pilot episode "Advanced Party".

"Evolution of the Forest" attracted the attention of the public before the latest season of "The Great Detective". After all, the relationship between "variety" and "game" has always been deep, and this discussion about "game variety" and "game in variety show" has once again been put on the table.

The definition of "game variety show" has always been vague. Scholar Jiao Qingzhong believes that "game variety shows" generally refer to comprehensive entertainment programs that are mainly entertaining, interesting and knowledgeable in content, and highlight game, participation, and non-artistic performance in form - from the earliest in-studio variety shows "Happy Base Camp" and "Ace to Ace", to outdoor variety shows "Extreme Challenge" and "Run", to more immersive scene-based game variety shows "Star Detective" and "Escape Room", etc., can be included.

At this level, "game variety show" was almost synonymous with "national variety show"; Today, like the overall category, it is showing a trend of specialization and stratification.

However, "Game Variety" also has its own problems. On the one hand, this category seems to have a variety of forms, but for a long time, there are not many programs with high reputation and high ratings; In the presentation of the theme of "games", in recent years, it has often fallen into plagiarism, repetition, and uninteresting evaluation. The lack of creativity has also become one of the reasons for the decline in the vitality of game variety shows.

On the other hand, although domestic game variety shows have a "long history", more often, "games" can still only appear as an "addition" to the variety show situation, and there are many well-known games in variety shows, but there are very few games that really come from variety shows and get rid of accessories.

The combination of the two aspects means that although the position of the game in the variety show is lively, there is not much compound interest, and it is difficult to bring substantial benefits to the variety show.

There are people who are trying to change that. Poison Eye learned that in the future, Mango TV may also produce new programs on the game "Forest Evolution" - perhaps, this will become a "game-breaking" attempt, using games to create IP, so that the derivative interests of games and variety shows are more closely combined, to create a healthier combination of ways, has become the industry needs to boldly run things.

Games in variety shows

The emergence of "game variety show" itself represents an important innovation in the history of domestic variety shows.

In 1997, "Happy Camp" was born, becoming a well-known TV variety show, and also initially established the status of "mango series" (although there was no "mango" nickname at that time).

Especially in the heyday of TV shows, "Fast Ben" combined entertainment and culture, designed or adapted a variety of in-studio games, and attracted the attention of the audience through the participation of star guests. The popularity of the show has also led to a number of offline games. For example: who is undercover, you draw me guess, make it difficult for you to open your heart, have a soul and so on. These games became essential games for parties at that time from the show to the offline, and "played in the fast book" also became a common phrase for young people at parties.

Although during this period, many of the games in many domestic variety shows were imitations of Japanese variety shows (such as "VS Arashi", "マジカル頭悩パワー!!). "). But it is undeniable that it is these games that have revolutionized the concept of variety shows among domestic audiences and created one "famous scene" after another.

Since then, "Game Variety" has targeted another neighboring country. Domestic variety shows have also entered the second period, and the outdoor reality show model has begun to prevail in China, so game variety shows have gradually moved from indoor to outdoor - born out of Han Jiao's "Extreme Challenge" and "Run" two programs, pushing outdoor reality shows to a new height, and also opening the second peak of game variety shows. The emergence of "Let's Run" also brought a trend of offline "tearing up famous brands".

From on-screen to off-screen, Game Variety has completed the output of online content to offline entertainment. In the years since, domestic game variety shows have basically evolved on the basis of "Fast Ben" and "Run". The programs led by the "Wu Tong-style" variety show, "Ace to Ace", "Youth Travels", and even the reasoning variety show "Meng Detective Detective Case", are almost all "changing soup without changing medicine".

Taking "Ace vs. Ace", which was born in 2016, as an example, each season is two teams relying on competitive games to compete to determine the winner and loser, coupled with the theme of feelings, and so on for eight seasons. Although the show has gradually grown into Zhejiang Satellite TV's trump card program, in recent years, both the program mode and the game mode have been criticized - many complaints from netizens include but are not limited to "too high game repetition", "no innovation" and so on.

According to the 2020 China Online Variety Show Business Monetization White Paper released by iResearch and Tencent Data Lab, from 2018 to 2020, the number of top network ensembles has been on the rise. Coupled with the emergence of various emerging youth cultures, observational variety shows, talk shows and talk shows have become market leaders, while the once backbone of variety shows, game variety shows, ranked low.

The gears are difficult to turn, and the innovation and lack of power of game variety shows have become the cause of a genre bottleneck, and it has also become the result of losing market attention and lack of vitality. The fatigue of "game variety shows" for a long time, the decline in game quality, and the solidification of program models have reduced the attractiveness of the audience, and it is naturally difficult to appear "variety games" that have swept the country.

When the game becomes a variety show theme

Influenced by youth culture and the innovative needs of variety shows, "Game Variety Show" has also begun to try another path in recent years.

This road can also be traced back to around 2016 at the earliest. At that time, the emergence of the reasoning reality show "Star Detective" and the werewolf killing reality show "The Temptation of the Dinner Game" pointed to the "game variety show" beginning to develop towards immersion and plot. The scene is established through a story line, relying on the interpretation of star guests and the suspense of the story itself, as well as the suspense that comes with reasoning, so that the audience has a more immersive and substitutionary sense.

From this stage, "games" - began to become a direction of variety show innovation.

The emergence of "The Temptation of the Dinner Game" is the feedback of offline board game culture to online variety show content, and it is a combination of werewolf killing and variety show content; "Star Detective" introduced the copyright of Han Jiao's "Crime Scene", bringing the board game genre of script killing into China. A view recognized from the main creator to the audience is that it is the emergence of "Ming Detective" that has the initial opportunity for the development of the entire domestic script killing industry.

With the popularity of the program, a wave of script killing has been set off in China, and more and more stores have opened and the script exhibition has been launched, which has promoted the industry to prosperity. According to iMedia data, 25.9% of respondents learned about script killing through TV programs, ranking second among all channels, and "Star Detective" occupies the main position. Until last year, the market size of the domestic script killing industry had exceeded 20 billion.

Since 2021, "reasoning variety show" has ushered in its own climax in the variety show market, and major platforms have begun to enter the reasoning track. In 2021, iQiyi launched the "Enigma Season", in order to segment the audience and meet different needs, the platform even took three programs "Meng Detective Detective Case", "Strange Script Shark" and "The Last Winner" to experiment.

Among them, although "Meng Tong-style" is a "Wu Tong-style" variety show with reasoning in the guise of reasoning, it still has achieved good results.

In 2022, Tencent Video also invited part of the main creative team of "Ming Detective" to launch its first variety show "Start Reasoning" in the reasoning track, and strengthened the narrative with the structure of "total score", presenting six independent unit cases and one final case, and the clues in each independent case are associated with the final case.

Different from the more reasoning "Ming Detective", "Kai Tui" pays more attention to the plot and narrative, and its positioning is more inclined to the mass circle, and the young guest lineup with traffic also brings new audiences to the show. The emergence of "Kai Tui" from another dimension, trying to break the circle for reasoning game variety shows.

It can be seen that all kinds of game variety shows have begun to broaden the audience's experience through the transformation of scene installations and increasing the story. Including "Escape Room" and Youku's upcoming infinite stream reasoning variety show "Infinite Detective Group", all of which are among them.

In recent years, through the continuous output of online variety show content, script killing has gradually replaced werewolf killing and killing games, and has become one of the favorite social activities of young people. As the promoter of this phenomenon, variety shows are also initially trying to get a piece of the consumption of these scenes.

For example, "Ming Detective" established Mango M-CITY flagship stores in Shanghai and Changsha in 2022, and fans can go to the store to experience the same scene of the show and experience the live-action script killing. At the same time, you can also buy Mingzhen universe-related peripherals in the store.

The significance of "opening up the industry chain" is to obtain "compound interest" outside the existing content industry business model - not only to do programs to attract audiences, but also to land offline stores, welcome audiences to experience it firsthand. The immersive transformation from online viewing to offline experience makes the game truly move from on-screen to off-screen, and then feed back from offline to the popularity of the program, forming a "mutual communication" of the crowd.

In addition, Tencent Video's "King Strike" and last year's "Battle to the Top" are attempts to combine variety show content and e-sports games. But on the whole, "real-life reasoning programs" will also be the main genre of the next stage of "game variety shows".

The next step for the game variety show

From the perspective of variety show innovation, in the face of some bottlenecks, the industry itself is constantly trying to innovate and break the game.

From the result point of view, doing game variety shows itself has to face many problems, once it involves the "combination with the offline industry" that has not yet been done in categories, further deepen the variety show content, rely on the content to radiate the public, feed back the offline game industry, the increase in difficulty is geometric.

What is the relationship between variety shows and games? This is a question that the industry continues to think about. In the last period of game variety shows, many producers also tried to simply and rudely want to link the popular "online game" and "online complex" to create revenue, but did not balance the relationship between the two and the logic of content transformation. And now more variety artists have found that the various elements of the game are ultimately to serve the variety show content.

At the same time, the interactivity emphasized by the game originally put forward higher requirements for the new era of network ensemble. Game network ensembles need to bring interactive and immersive experiences to the audience, and give full play to the advantages of game web ensembles.

At this stage, although most game variety shows still stay at the viewing level, there are more and more such as "Great Detective", "Escape", "Kaitui", etc., by creating the same offline game, etc., so that the audience and the guests of the show can participate synchronously and gain a sense of participation.

Perhaps in the future, the combination of cutting-edge information technology and content production and communication, such as the envisioned meta-universe, VR, XR will become the main innovation direction of game network ensembles, and in the current period, some combined attempts at the game design level have begun.

For example, after the broadcast of "Let's Start Reasoning" last year, the online mini program game "Disappearing Mrs. Lin" was launched to try to maintain the long-tail effect of the program and further stimulate user participation; "Forest Evolution" in this year's "Detective" advance party is "from a variety show to a board game", which is also a new scheme.

In the past, whether it was variety show content feeding offline, or youth trend culture affecting content creation, it was more in a state of performing its own duties, and the rotation of the two gears was not coupled, but once the idea was opened, some "supporting settings" would follow, which would even affect the overall commercial "break" of the platform.

At the reality show level, iQiyi's "Trend Partners" and other programs, as well as the entire team represented by Che Che, have vigorously tried to combine the show itself with offline consumption, but since then it has stagnated with iQiyi's strategic adjustment; At this level, "game variety show" is lighter and can be more closely integrated with the presentation of content.

As an original game tailored for "Detective" "Advanced Party", the board game "Forest Evolution" not only tries the innovation of variety games, but also enriches the program content; More importantly, the program group made the game into a physical board game for sale, with the program IP as the center, to realize the variety show content itself to the physical game "goods".

It can be seen from the Xiaomang e-commerce platform that the game of the same name of "Forest Evolution" has received 3,000 reviews, and discussions in social networks have occurred from time to time.

Poison Eye learned that Mango may launch a program of the same name in the future, and the first experience sharing meeting has been held at the end of last month. It can be seen that the possibility of the game becoming an independent IP in the future is not small.

And this is not the first time Mango has done this, Xiaomang, which is rooted in the mango system, has slowly tried to bring content out, to the offline retail format, and use long content to "transfusion". On the Xiaomang platform, you can find derivative products of many self-made variety shows such as "Escape Room 3" and "We at the beginning of our career"; And in the M-CITY offline store to play the same script of the show to kill and escape room, is another type of attempt to the content and consumption cycle.

"Game Variety Show" continues to prove that it is still the easiest variety show type to produce peripherals and establish an IP industry chain. In turn, this category needs to become a pioneer in "commercial development". At a time when variety content is less attractive to audiences, we also need something new, which in turn promotes the vitality of the content itself - perhaps, we are witnessing the emergence of a catfish.