The blockbuster debut of Shine! Youjun Girl", can she become the next FGO on Station B?

For the current B station, the handsome girl is enough to quench her thirst, but it seems that it is almost interesting to want to replicate the miracle of FGO. Of course, as a long-term operating product, it will take time to answer how its future is.

Wen 丨 Chen Wenjian

Figure 丨Source network

On August 3, the two-dimensional game "Shine! Youjun Girl (hereinafter referred to as Youjun Girl) first exposed PV, and the number of omni-channel appointments exceeded one million in one day. On August 30, Youjun Girl stepped on the tail of the summer file and officially went online, topping the iOS free list, and hot memes such as "Hakimi" and "Horse Dancing" around the product were also wildly spread on major platforms, and the number of views of the topic of "Horse Dancing" on Douyin alone increased several times after the open beta of the game, and related challenges also ranked among the hot lists of Douyin.

So what kind of divine is the handsome girl, and why can she have such a large voice? As the blockbuster game product of station B this year, can it become the "minister of ZTE" of the game business of station B?

1

What is sacred

The name of the handsome girl international suit is "Horse Racing Girl PrettyDerby", which is a two-dimensional simulation idol development game developed by Cygames, a well-known Japanese game manufacturer, according to Sensor Tower data, the game collected $130 million in the first month of its launch in Japan in 2021, and its global revenue has exceeded $2 billion as of March this year.

To be able to perform like this, it is natural to start from the game itself. As its original name suggests, in the area of character creation, the traditional two-dimensional beautiful girl has made players begin to aesthetic fatigue, and Cygames has set its sights on the Japanese horse racing industry and anthropomorphized horse racing. Before it, the two-dimensional game "Azur Route", which was launched in 2017 to anthropomorphize ships, performed well, with annual revenue of 1.2 billion yuan in 2022, while its research and development costs were only millions.

It can be seen that the handsome girl has achieved differentiation from the role, and because the game refers to the real Japanese horse racing industry, most of the characters have corresponding horse racing prototypes, and the characters are anthropomorphic while restoring the characteristics of horses.

For example, some characters, including the Emperor of the East Sea, will have a pinch of white bangs on their heads, because their racing horse prototypes also have white stripes on their heads. This kind of restoration is not only a respect for the prototype of horse racing and the owner of horse racing, but also the interpretation and restoration of Japanese horse racing culture by the game.

In Japan, more than 16,000 related events are held by the two major associations of Japan Regional Jockey Club and Central Jockey Club every year, and according to the International Federation of Horse Racing Organizations, the sales volume of Japan Horse Cai in 2018 reached 913 million euros, and the revenue of Japan Horse Cai ranked first in the world for many years.

The developed horse racing industry and heavy horse racing culture in reality can naturally win over a large number of horse racing enthusiasts for the game, and respect for reality is a compulsory course for the game. At the same time, the game that beautifies the event on this basis conveys more of a positive image of being enthusiastic and never giving up, such as the East Sea Emperor who returned from a serious injury and re-ascended to the top, making it easier to cause emotional resonance with players and horse racing enthusiasts.

In addition, Yujun Girl is also a comprehensive IP project covering anime, stage drama, music and other forms. The second season of the fan drama "Horse Racing Girl" introduced in 2021 has a score of 9.9 on station B, and now in order to cooperate with the launch of the game national server, the Horse Racing Girl series of fan dramas has also opened a limited time free. In the game, in addition to the content of the event, the victory performance after the game and the music singing of the characters are also important contents of the game experience.

Through a variety of expressions, Cygames has allowed the IP of the handsome girl to penetrate all aspects of the player's life, enveloping the entertainment methods of today's young people, and under this set of combination punches, the emotional connection between the player and the character is further strengthened. Returning to the game, the gameplay of the entire game is also deeply bound to the emotional link of the player and the character.

In most two-dimensional games, character development is largely the foundation of other gameplay experiences, such as character upgrades→ → card levels→ cycle mode of character upgrades, but in Youjun Girl, character development is the core experience of the game itself. Players need to choose an initial character, through the 1-on-1 training method of accompanying the character training and competition, to increase the character's value until graduation, and then choose other characters to start the next cycle.

In this process, accompanying character training is the core of the gameplay, each training time is about 1 hour, requiring players to weigh the "assistance card" that randomly increases the player's value and the stallion gene that inherits the previous value, and in the process of the game, there are random elements such as the competition venue and skill trigger.

The hour-long companion training allows players to focus on the character enough to meet the core needs of two-dimensional players for characters, and random numerical changes and events support the game's playability. In order to further amplify the effect of the two, Cygames has put a lot of effort into technology.

Cyagmes chose 3D as the form of expression of the game, on the one hand, the game characters will be more vivid and three-dimensional, on the other hand, it can also present horse racing events more realistically. During the development process, Cygames set up a related studio in Tokyo in 2018, which has a 3D scanning studio for the creation of 209 DSLR cameras for the creation of full-service 3D assets, a face scanning studio for 67 high-speed continuous shooting cameras for face 3D asset creation, and a motion capture studio with 72 high-precision Vicon cameras to meet all motion capture shooting needs. The mo-cap studio alone invested more than 500 million yen.

All kinds of BUFF blessings, it is not difficult to understand why the handsome girl will have such momentum after being introduced into China, Chen Rui, CEO of the B station that connects the mobile game business, also mentioned at the earnings conference that he will be optimistic about the handsome girl to applaud and speak, but is this really the case?

2

There are high hopes

Before predicting the prospects of Youjun Girl in China, let's talk about why Station B is so optimistic about it.

According to the Q2 financial report data of station B, the revenue of station B in the second quarter was 5.3 billion yuan, an increase of 8% year-on-year, and the net loss was 1.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 23%, specifically for the game business, the revenue of the game business of station B in the Q2 quarter continued to decline to 890 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 15%.

Achieving breakeven in 2024 is the core goal of Station B in recent years, and "de-gamification" has become one of the ways for Station B to achieve this goal. However, this does not mean that station B will completely abandon the game business, in fact, behind the "de-gamification" is the growth of other businesses of station B, and the diversification of the revenue model of station B.

Looking at the financial report of station B over the years, it can be found that its game revenue in the past three years has hovered around 1.1 billion yuan, which reflects the problem of stagnant development of station B games, resulting in a continuous decline in the proportion of game revenue, Q2 has reached a historical low of 17%, corresponding to the Q2 quarter advertising business revenue of station B increased by 36% year-on-year.

For the game business, Chen Rui said that the self-developed games of station B will focus on advantageous categories, and the success rate is an indicator that is very concerned internally. In addition, long-term operation is also a major standard for subsequent B station games, and games that cannot be operated in the long term will not be approved and will not be agented.

Prior to this, when Chen Rui rang the bell of the NASDAQ, Station B was once defined as a game company, with the game business accounting for 83.4% of the total revenue of Station B that year, and its single-generation mobile game FGO accounting for 71.8% of the game revenue.

Therefore, the game can be regarded as the foundation of the B station, and at the moment when the B station pursues the diversification of revenue models and the high success rate of the game business, the handsome girl who has achieved great success overseas has naturally become the "palm treasure" of the B station. And in the first half of this year, station B only launched the buyout product "Warm Snow", and the performance of the three self-developed and agency products launched a while ago was not satisfactory, and they could not be found in the best-selling list. So far, FGO and "Azur Route" are still the pillars of game revenue on Station B.

In addition to historical accumulation and practical dilemmas, Station B values handsome girls because it is a cross-media project, while Station B itself is a multicultural community covering most young people's interest circles, whether it is music, comics or animation, Station B can provide suitable living soil. Just as FGO can become the cash cow of B station games, it is indispensable to help its derivative anime FATE series explode, and its many works on B station have exceeded 100 million views.

But when we return to Yujun girls, we can't ignore the problem that, on the one hand, the success of Yujun girls overseas is actually limited to Japan. Before the launch of the national service, its Hanbok and Taiwanese clothing were all about 10 million yuan in July, which was very different from the popularity of Japan, and the mainland did not have such a strong horse racing culture, and even due to regulatory reasons, Youjun Girl also needed to cut some game content.

On the other hand, as mentioned above, the game is about 1 hour per training, such a heavy time investment is too "jailed" for players, why Mihayou's new game collapse iron chooses turn-based, of which the lightweight and fragmented game experience is one of the reasons. Almost missing the launch time of the summer file also makes many players have no time and interest to experience the game, which makes it difficult for the game to attract a pan-game audience outside the IP.

3

epilogue

To sum up, in the lack of new games but still working on the game business of the B station, the handsome girl with the right attributes and has already made a name for herself must be one of this year's blockbuster game products, but considering its heavy liver play experience and a certain threshold for play, for the current B station, the handsome girl is enough to quench her thirst, but it seems that the miracle of wanting to replicate FGO is almost meaningful.

Of course, as a long-term operation product, it will take time to give an answer to what the future of Youjun Girl is.