Everything has its own "lifespan", and in the highly competitive game industry, the "lifespan" of each game is even shorter, and the lifespan of most games is generally only a few years, or even a few months.
However, many games have recently played the "long-term operation" card in the announcement content to attract players into the pit, so let's take a look at the games that have been announced to be long-term in this article.
"Against the Cold" mobile game
Starting from the end game of "Against the Cold", the IP of "Against the Cold" is NetEase's trump card IP. After making a lot of money in the terminal game, the mobile game "Against the Cold" launched this year also made a lot of money, and it won 2.4 billion in the first month of its launch.
In addition, in addition to various promotional selling points such as not selling values, the mobile game "Against the Cold" also boldly announced that it would make the "Reverse Cold" mobile game a long-term operation game, and the money was not in a hurry, and the update plan for the next 10 years had been planned!
According to the development team, the project has been supported by the company's long-term R&D fund for SSSS-level projects, as well as the benefits of national brand implantation that have been negotiated, and there are enough guarantee funds to maintain the development of the game for 10 years before the game is launched, and even in order to ensure the operation of the ten-year period, the core R&D personnel in the development team have signed a ten-year labor contract.
In addition to the guarantee of funds, the brand of "Against the Cold" has also been authorized by Mr. Wen Rui'an, the author of the original work, for a long time, and there is no interference from IP instability, which is also the basis for the development team to formulate a long-term development and operation plan. From the fundamental system guarantee level, we will not change the game for short-term revenue KPIs, and never let the game deform or deteriorate.
As for the content of the next 10 years, the official also revealed that the content reserve of the development team's logo research and development has been extended to 2028, and the update plan is planned to 2033.
At the technical level, we will continue to use the latest graphics technology, and be ready to update the graphics and engines at any time to ensure that we will always be in a dominant position in the next ten years. In terms of game content, the open world map will gradually be rolled out throughout the Eurasian continent. The area to explore will get bigger and bigger. Even the "Eurasian continent" that spanned the time will appear in the subsequent expansion content of the mobile game, becoming an open world area that players can explore.
In terms of content update form, we began to try the time deduction mode of the expansion film to promote the "world turmoil event" year by year. Players may experience many versions in the past ten years, such as the Immortal Thunder Sword, Lianyun Shocking Change, Fog Capital Dream, Northern Wind and Snow, Trap Maze, Miao Jiang Gu Technique, Mystery of Life Experience, Dali Wind Flower, Imperial Palace Bloody Case, Head of the Dragons, Silk Road, Lost Realm, Jingkang Great Change, Clothes Crowned Nandu, Rebuilding Martial Arts, Nomadic Storm, Rise of Mengyuan, Battle of Xiangyang, and so on.
"Egg Boy Party"
In recent days, the promotion of Tencent's "Metadream Star" can be said to be overwhelming, and party games have become a new outlet. In fact, NetEase has already begun to enter party games, and its "Egg Boy Party" has already been replaced.
Data shows that "Egg Boy Party" has dominated the iOS free game list for 34 days since the end of last year (as of January 26), and after the launch of new skins in December last year, the best-selling list has continued to climb, and has entered the top four iOS game best-selling lists since January 21 (Chinese New Year's Eve), and has topped the iOS best-selling list for many times since then.
In addition, in August, "Egg Boy Party" completed the "Double 100 Million Breakthrough" achievement, the game exceeded 100 million monthly active users, and the number of maps built in the in-game park mode also exceeded 100 million.
Such a popular and lucrative game, of course, NetEase officials also attach great importance to the box list. Previously, NetEase revealed in its financial report and conference call that "Egg Boy Party" has become the game with the highest daily active users in the company's history, reaching 30 million.
NetEase CEO Ding Lei also said in a high-profile statement on the 2022 Q4 and annual earnings call, "In the future, we will invest more in R&D and operation to do a good job in the long-term service of (egg boy party) games." The 'long-term' here I think is at least 10 years. "With the guarantee of the boss of NetEase, it seems that the long-term operation of "Egg Boy Party" is still very stable.
Tower of Fantasy
With the success of "Genshin Impact", there have been many two-dimensional open-world games in China. Unfortunately, most of them are either cool or on the edge of coolness. However, "Tower of Fantasy" developed by Hotta Studio, a subsidiary of Perfect World, can be regarded as surviving, and has created its own market, and the more it lives, the more nourishing it becomes.
"Tower of Fantasy" only uses the background setting of two-dimensional + sci-fi + post-apocalyptic elements, and the production quality of the game is also extremely high, built with Unreal Engine 4, using film-level motion capture to give the characters real dynamics, high-freedom world exploration gameplay and wasteland light sci-fi art style, interactive puzzle-solving elements in various scenes and refreshing combat feel, which has attracted the attention of a large number of players.
On December 14th, the new version 3.6 "Nine Boats Vision" was launched, and the second anniversary celebration was also launched. A new map is opened, the main story is unlocked, and the mimic character "Palotti" appears. In the new version, a new map "Cannes" is available. The new main story "The Shower is Coming" is also unlocked in Update 3.6.
It is worth mentioning that on the occasion of the 2nd anniversary, the official broke the news post that "Tower of Fantasy" will accompany players for another 10 years, in other words, it will plan to operate for more than 10 years. Under the premise of continuing to serve the current players, "Tower of Fantasy" will continue to take the road of co-creation, continue to inject fresh vitality into Adastar, and ensure the continuous operation and development of this world.
Azure Archives
"Azure Files" is a two-dimensional role-playing game developed by MX studio, a subsidiary of NEXON Games in South Korea, and published by Shanghai Youxing Network. Previously, it officially obtained the national server version number in March, and the game was officially launched on August 3, and landed on iOS and Android platforms simultaneously.
The story of "Azure Files" takes place in the super-large federal city of [Kivotos]. In this mysterious and vast land, there are active girls with strange halos on their heads. They belong to different faculties and have their own unique activity clubs.
As the advisor teacher of the Federal Search Agency [Schaller], "You" will meet girls from different colleges and societies in Kivotos, help them overcome various difficulties, and solve one emergency after another in [Kivotos].
In December, "Azure Archive" participated in the G-EIGHT game exhibition, and the development team was interviewed by Taiwanese media, in which game director Jin Yonghe said that the development team of "Azure Archive" has been ready for long-term operation, hoping to make the game operate for more than 10 years.
Jin Yonghe said that the development team is already preparing for the next year of the game, and there will be no problem in operating it for 15 years according to this plan, and they have made plans until 2025, and will continue to create more new content to bring players in the future, so please ask players to give more advice after that.
The Seventh Epic
"The Seventh Epic" is a turn-based RPG mobile game, the game is based on turn-based combat, incorporating many distinctive combat gameplay, various game elements in the game can bring players a unique game experience, the game focuses on the unknown, adventure and grandeur of the three main salient points, to show the difference of the game.
In addition to the main plot that takes players into the game's world and story setting, this game also has a variety of levels for players to explore freely. In addition, there is an alchemy system to strengthen equipment, a camping system to restore stamina and switch settings, and so on. At the same time, each character has its own story to explore.
It is worth mentioning that although the national server was only officially tested in June this year, the game's foreign server was launched as early as 2018, which means that the game has been in operation for 5 years and still has a high degree of popularity. As a mobile game, 5 years have passed, and what is even more exaggerated is that the official has previously stated that they intend to let "Epic Seven" operate for more than 20 years.
Interestingly, the planner who said the phrase "20 years of operation" has now left the game's development team, and I don't know if talking counts.