When a global hit, it brought Chinese players to the sky for the first time
Text: Yan Jinyan
One hundred days after its launch, Valorant players ushered in the most anticipated content of the year - this year's third new hero "One Showdown", and the "Heroes of the World" series of sets.
As early as when the version information was announced, some players said that this time Riot really didn't play, and it was clear that they wanted to raise the national service to the most important position in the global market. After seeing this update, many passers-by expressed their interest and wanted to enter the game.
And in the pre-hot offline activities around this version, the enthusiasm of players is even more visible to the naked eye. In Chongqing, you can see a large number of players crowded and taking photos in front of the leaderboard. Grape Jun couldn't help but be in a trance, it seems that there has been no new terminal game in the market for a long time, and it can harvest such a hot scene.
There are even many players who praise Tencent and Riot, saying that this new version and publicity event of Valorant is not only limited to the game, but also promotes Chinese cities, and they want to travel to Chongqing after watching it.
What did Valorant do this time to make players cheer collectively?
01
When the Chinese element becomes the protagonist of the world
As a game that is "3 years late", the reason why the above-mentioned "grand occasion" can occur is that Valorant has contributed to the importance of national players.
Let's take a closer look at the contents of this edition. Duel is Valorant's first new duel slot after nearly two years, and compared to other games, you can understand duel as the most beautiful C-slot, which is naturally more popular with players. The most important thing is that the duel comes from the mountain city of Chongqing.
In the comment area, you can also see that players have given praise to its character - there is no stereotype of foreigners, not squinting, not gentle characters such as wet nurses, but tall and tough Chinese trend guys.
In the warm-up of the intelligence of the first decision, Riot released a number of suspense pictures, including Chongqing noodles designed according to Chongqing's characteristics.
The follow-up character song not only invited Chinese singers to sing, but even in the English version of the character's PV, Chinese lines also appeared, which attracted many overseas players to "empty ears" to discuss what the character said.
The same is true for "Heroes of the World", as a series set with a purple (medium) quality positioning, Riot has made a rare theme music for it, which shows that it attaches great importance to it.
And the "Heroes of the World" uses Monkey King's golden hoop stick as the main design element, in which the knife skin is directly replaced with a golden hoop stick, and the inspection action is a flower stick. This long stick-like knife is the first time it has been seen in Valorant. It is not difficult to imagine how many Chinese players will suffer from "cutting gun cancer" when this skin comes out.
In other words, this major update of Valorant is completely based on the theme of Chinese elements, and has made a wave of Chinese cultural output on a global scale. It's no wonder why it was favored by a large number of players as soon as it was launched.
02
3 months after launch,
It has become the most popular game in recent years
Before the launch of Valorant, there had been no atmosphere of "looking forward to the launch of a terminal game" in China for a long time, and the achievements of Valorant overseas in the past two years naturally made China have extremely high expectations.
The grand occasion on the day of the launch of the national server left a deep impression on Grape Jun: the server was full, the Tuban live broadcast platform, and the offline activities were overcrowded...
Despite this, there were still many people who were skeptical about the sustainability of the game's popularity. After all, Tencent's traffic boost, coupled with Riot's past domestic influence and reputation, it is not difficult for them to make the new product gain popularity when it is launched, but can a terminal game that is 3 years late really roll up a storm in the domestic FPS market? Including Grape Jun, it also put a question mark on it.
But the development of things has slapped many people in the face.
Since the launch of the national server, Riot has been launching new national style skins or heroes on average every month, such as the main products of the national server open beta "Fire Blade" and "Glaive Dragon" series sets, and then to today's Duel and "Heroes of the World"... This has never been seen before in Riot's past R&D history.
Take "Glaive Dragon" as an example, in fact, the theme skin about dragons has long been available in Valorant. However, in the past, the dragons they designed were more like western dragons with wings, and Riot designers went through many rounds of discussions about how to design the eastern dragons.
For example, what should the Oriental Dragon do to show the majesty of the majestic atmosphere, instead of giving people the feeling of a "snake". To do this, they magnified the dragon in the finishing effect several times until it covered the entire sky, so that players could see the dragon entrenched in any corner of the map. It's also the skin with the biggest special effects in Valorant to date.
Moreover, after making the skin, Riot also invited Chinese players and celebrity KOLs to the headquarters to try out the experience and exchange design concepts with them. Obviously, their skin is to cater to the domestic market.
You must know that Riot, as a global R&D company, has never done content with such a high market inclination in the past.
For example, at the Tokyo Masters, they made a Remix version of Chinese player Kang Kang's improvised Chinese rap, which was played on a loop in the venue. When it came to the Global Championship, all the people in front of and behind the scenes learned Kangkang's iconic gestures and made relevant tidbits, calling it the best gesture of the year.
While Chinese players enjoy this content, these cultures are also exported to the world. Whether they understand, like or envy, as a Chinese player, you see the pride and identity of the official affirmation and promotion of CN culture around the world, I believe it is needless to say.
Riot employees imitated the iconic moves of China's Kang Kang
Obviously, under such an "offensive", the popularity of the game is also rising.
On Weibo, Valorant has long maintained the second place on the game hot list and new product list, and every content update and important news can become a hot topic. For example, a few days ago, the hero of the world was just exposed, and it was on the hot search; Two days later, the EDG team fell into the lower bracket first in the domestic evolutionary competition, and then won the championship, and the relevant results appeared on the hot search list several times. It's hard to imagine that this is a product that has only been online for 3 months.
There aren't many games that can be searched for new searches through the version
Similarly, on Station B, the attention of Valorant is also increasing. It can be clearly perceived from the official account data - in the past, the game video of the game may only have tens of thousands of plays, but with a large number of players entering the pit, the daily playback volume has now risen to hundreds of thousands, or even millions.
Even many newcomers who are only a few dozen fans can gain hundreds of thousands of views on the video of "Valorant", and more creators have begun to increase investment, striving to stand out as new first-line creators or anchors in this rising ecology.
When the national server was first launched, Huang Lingdong, the head of Tencent Interactive Entertainment's Valorant China, said that among the total registered users of the game, Gen Z under the age of 25 accounted for 60%. This data is really rare for today's domestic FPS terminal game market.
An interesting case is that when Razer held a university challenge in Chengdu, the organizers originally booked a venue for 400 people, but the number of applicants was too large, and they were temporarily coordinated, and finally changed to a venue with 1,000 people - even so, there were still many students in the aisle area to stop and watch.
has developed to this point, and Valorant is gradually revealing a hint of circle-breaking temperament. For example, some lifestyle bloggers set up a "electronic targeting" booth on the side of the road, teaching uncles and aunts to shoot guns in Valorant, and the more targets they hit, the more prizes they can get for free.
It's a full-fledged video, of course, but you should get a sense of how popular Valorant is through it.
03
It takes three months to catch up with the world for three years
Looking back at the 3 months after the launch of the Valorant national server, it is not difficult to find that the underlying logic of its ability to achieve phenomenal popularity in the national server is nothing more than enough attention to Chinese players, and through actual content and actions, let them feel that they are being valued. As a result, even if it is 3 years late, players will not feel estranged, but can integrate into the entire ecosystem more smoothly and become loyal users willingly.
But in recent years, we've seen too many cases of games that are overturned and treated differently by region, where the test is the attitude of the manufacturers themselves, the insight and understanding of different player communities, and all the details of execution. Valorant is clearly a good example of this.
As for the future, there is a question about "Can CN tile become the next CN-FPS representative?" "Can it be successful enough to dominate the domestic FPS terminal game market for 10 years?" We've thrown these topics up many times.
In Grape Jun's view, if Valorant wants to further stand out, it may need to have a high market share and sufficient international representativeness, and now the Valorant national service should hand over an excellent answer sheet in the stage.
Previously, we may all think that the market share of domestic terminal games has declined, and FPS is an old category, but Valorant still tells us through crowds of events again and again, and far more than 200 million hours of game time, that as long as it is done well enough, players will never refuse a good product.
Globally, CN tile culture has become very recognizable. Characters such as Sage and One Decisive and related promotional materials have deepened the understanding of Chinese culture among players around the world. Many overseas anchors and players are fans of the dark horse performance of Chinese teams in the e-sports arena, and they will also run to domestic live broadcast platforms to watch the live broadcast of Chinese players and learn Chinese. Like the Tokyo Masters champion team FNC, their European player Boaster speaks fluent Chinese. Even in the commentary seats of the Global Championships, we also saw Chinese and overseas players and anchors talking on the same stage this year and confessing to each other's world-famous paintings.
At this point, the potential of CN watts is evident enough. With further content updates and a series of community activities such as Valorant Campus Tour, Streamer Competition, and Creative Incentive Program, the game will definitely reach more and more people. With the official launch of the official league and the landing of the VCT Masters in Shanghai, the game should also continue to make efforts at the e-sports level, precipitating more exclusive culture of national servers and topics out of the circle. For such big DAU competitive games, we have seen a lot of such a "snowball" development path.
Therefore, as everything unfolds, we will also be more curious, what height will the Valorant national server stand on when it reaches its first anniversary?