Approaching the Spring Festival, all major products are working hard to do New Year activities, and the best-selling list is also your singing and I appear, highlighting one and no one will let anyone.
However, on January 25th, a familiar old friend, NetEase's "A Chinese Ghost Story" mobile game (hereinafter referred to as "A Chinese Ghost"), quietly returned to the top of the best-selling list again, and even surpassed "Egg Boy Party" and "Genshin Impact" to the 13th position, which also aroused our curiosity again.
As the flagship product of NetEase Leihuo, "A Chinese Girl", which has been in operation for 7 years, has actually achieved good results, with more than 120 million registered users, and the ranking of the list can basically be maintained in the top 50 of the best-selling list. Especially this year, the launch of the mobile game "Against the Cold" has had a great impact on the operation of a number of old Chinese-style MMO games, but the Chinese girl, who is also produced by Lei Huo, has not been affected at all, but has a kind of "blossoming" posture, the momentum is not fierce but full of stability, the best-selling list and hot search on the list are not falling, and it is also frequently mentioned in NetEase's financial report because of its excellent long-term operation.
In addition, "A Chinese Girl" also grasps both technology and brand. In January, in addition to returning to the top of the best-selling list, Huawei's official account officially announced that the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" became NetEase's first game adapted to Huawei's Hongmeng native system, and the new Year of the Dragon fashion launched by the Spring Festival file "A Chinese Girl" also detonated players' emotions again.
Our curiosity about "A Chinese Girl" has also reached a new peak. You must know that the MMO track is a battleground for major game manufacturers, but it is also the most competitive and brutal track, and there are not a few MMOs that "fly down to 3,000 feet" after a few months of operation. It is a small miracle that an MMO on the market that has been operating for 7 years can still have such stable results and be valued by players and major platforms. Coupled with the strong performance of the mobile game "Against the Cold" this year, why can the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" still be as stable as Mount Tai?
Roll technology, but it's more than just technology
Recently, players of the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" have proudly called it "Princess Lei Huoyan", because of an official announcement blog post on Huawei's official account.
In fact, as early as last year, at the Huawei Developer Conference, NetEase Thunder Fire announced that the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game will be adapted to the Hongmeng system, and demonstrated the leap in game performance in all aspects after accessing Hongmeng, whether it is picture performance, frame rate or power consumption, it has made a qualitative leap in the Hongmeng system.
In January this year, the official account of Huawei station b officially announced that the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" has become the first Unity Chinese engine game to complete the adaptation of open source Harmony, allowing more people to re-examine the current technical level of this 7-year-old MMO.
After all, when it comes to technical prowess, MMO tracks are mostly followed by extremely beautiful 3D graphics and vast game maps. And these two points are not the main advantages of a Chinese girl.
However, the Hongmeng system has been the top topic in the digital technology circle since its announcement, and it also represents the top strength of the domestic self-developed mobile phone system, why did you choose the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game to take the lead in adapting to the HarmonyOS system?
This is enough to prove that the technical strength of the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" has been recognized by experts. Just like Huawei's "far ahead" is not just lip service, the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" is also "far ahead" and focuses on an "involution", but the direction of the volume is different from most MMO games on the market.
Indeed, in the current situation of other MMOs, the 2.5D and some 3D of "A Chinese Girl" mobile game are sometimes a little out of place. But when you open the app store and download it for yourself, you'll know why. The "involution" of the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" is most intuitively reflected in the size of the package. Nowadays, most games often have more than ten Gs or even dozens of gigabytes of package + data, coupled with frequent updates that crowd out memory, and problems such as heating and Caton occur frequently, making it really impossible for people to have a good time.
What about the mobile game "A Chinese Girl"? An MMO that has been in operation for 7 years, contains 20+ scene maps, and 26 career models, in the process of art iteration, the package body has grown step by step from 400M that year, but it is still far smaller than the vast majority of similar MMO games, firmly grasping users in the past 7 years.
In addition, the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game can run smoothly on low-end models, which is beyond the reach of many games, and it is also the optimal solution obtained by the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game development team after putting the player experience as the highest priority, and the two-way game of technology and care.
For example, the fashion appearance of MMO is the main payment point of many games, and before September 23, the fashion of the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" was "monthly throwaway", and there was no such thing as permanent fashion. The reason for this, as the development team explained back in Q&A in '21, is that permanent fashion will make the bag larger and increase the load on the player's mobile phone.
Therefore, the mobile game development team of "A Chinese Girl" always adhered to its own rhythm and worked hard to overcome this problem, and finally completed the merger of professional character bones in September 23.
In addition to permanent fashion, this 3.0 iteration also realized the improvement of character accuracy modeling and the launch of a face pinching system. The upgrade of these three core contents has brought the technical performance of "A Chinese Girl" mobile game to the first echelon of the market. Looking back at the previous iteration, it was a large-scale material technology upgrade in 2019, and official information shows that the game used advanced PBR, anisotropic and other technologies at that time, so that the clarity, material, light and shadow of the characters have been significantly improved.
Iteration of the iris system of the eye
Hair material iteration
Clothing material iteration
It can be seen that the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" has been making technical reserves but is not aggressive, but puts user experience first. Perhaps it is this step-by-step mentality that has made the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" always stable in the fierce market competition and involution, and has received good feedback from users while completing self-evolution step by step.
At the beginning of 24 years, the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game and Huawei's offline flash mob activities, the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game players who came to check in and even traveled across the city may be a strong proof of this conclusion.
The appearance of the volume, both the price of the volume and the feelings of the volume
As a Chinese-style MMO, fashion appearance is a crucial game content in this track, which is not only related to the game's revenue, but more importantly, it is also an important part of showing the game's quality content, players' personality and social interaction.
In September last year, the 3.0 iteration of "A Chinese Girl" mobile game finally launched a permanent fashion, which was also recognized by players as expected, which is reflected in the fact that only two sets of world-class permanent fashion have been launched so far, both of which have helped "A Chinese Girl" return to the top 15 of the best-selling list.
The first set of hand-me-down fashion [Tu Shan Charm]
This is not only due to the long-term fine polishing of the content and the brilliant design of the fashion content of the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game, and the establishment of the brand concept of "A Chinese Girl's production, it must be a high-quality product" in the hearts of players, but also because the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game is indeed infinitely involuted when designing the heirloom fashion.
Taking the recent Year of the Dragon fashion [Dragon Singing World] of the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game as an example, almost every product during the Spring Festival has launched a dragon-related appearance, but the fashion design of the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game is a little different. It is not a simple "dragon" element to be pieced together, but takes into account the spiritual totem of the Chinese nation represented by the "dragon" and the cultural meaning behind the "descendant of the dragon", inspired by the exquisite decorative dragon pattern glazed bricks on the Ming Dynasty architecture, to create this set of cultural relics anthropomorphic theme fashion.
Previously, the cultural relics protection short film "Escape from the British Museum" exploded, and the development team of the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" also paid attention to the proposition of cultural relics protection, and deeply regretted that the dragon pattern glazed bricks far away in the British Museum could not return home.
However, after massive information retrieval, they found that on the roof of the Confucian Temple in Changzhi, Shanxi, on the mainland, there are dragon-patterned glazed bricks that are very similar in shape and craftsmanship, and the degree of exquisiteness is not much better, which can be said to be in the same vein, and may also be said to be the "root" of dragon-patterned glaze.
Lizhuang Confucian Temple dragon pattern glaze
The development team of "A Chinese Girl" mobile game believes that while paying attention to the loss and recovery of overseas cultural relics, we should also pay attention to the protection of existing cultural relics in China. So they joined hands with the China Cultural Relics Exchange Center to visit the Lizhuang Confucian Temple in Shanxi Province to study the story behind it when the mountain was closed by a snowstorm of minus 10 degrees.
Thus, the story of a "twin brother and sister" cultural relics separated from the two places was born. The dragon pattern glaze color scheme of Daying and Li Zhuang Confucian Temple was extracted, and the fashion was finally set as blue and yellow, red and white two sets of colors, creating a charming image of the red dragon Yingsa and the blue dragon.
Not surprisingly, "Dragon Singing World" was well received by players as soon as it was launched, not only because of the high quality of the fashion, but also because of the inspiration and meaning behind it, so that the "Dragon Singing World" set of fashion has a strong emotional resonance with players.
From this point of view, the fashion appearance of the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game is indeed excessive, and the appearance is no longer simply "beautiful", "handsome" and "sassy" in the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game, but a spiritual totem with more cultural connotation. And with the quality, there is naturally no shortage of popularity, and looking at the content of A Chinese Girl's two sets of permanent fashions, they have also received tens of millions of broadcasts on Douyin.
The spread of heirloom fashion on Douyin
Of course, the volume of "A Chinese Girl" on the appearance is not only reflected in the quality and connotation. At a time when all major products are promoting "bringing down the price of fashion", A Chinese Girl has already given players a free permanent fashion "Deer Tune".
This set of "0 yuan purchase" fashion used to be the "white moonlight" in the minds of many players, but it was no longer available for purchase before. With the launch of permanent fashion to give all players such a set of quality and sentimental online fashion, the pattern of a Chinese girl can be said to be far ahead.
With the multiple blessings of cultural feelings, fashion quality and price advantages, the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" has rolled out its own style in MMO fashion, and from the perspective of long-term brand operation, this layout is really far-reaching.
Volume ecology, player word-of-mouth is the best promotion
Looking at the products on the market, the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" does not seem to be a popular player in recent years, and even many times, everyone may forget that there is such an evergreen tree in the MMO track. But if you look closely at the mobile game "A Chinese Girl", you will find that this low-key evergreen tree seems to be a bit muffled and rich.
Behind the success of the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" must be a large number of loyal players, who have established a healthy and loving player ecosystem. In other words, the relationship between A Chinese Girl mobile game and players is not the relationship between products and users, but more like the mutual companionship and achievement between friends. And this good player ecology is built on the excellent social system inside and outside the mobile game "A Chinese Girl".
A Chinese Girl player even brought their children to the carnival
Needless to say, the conventional team PVE gameplay in MMO products, the social interaction of "A Chinese Girl" mobile game has a great feature, that is, it pays great attention to life, and players turn this kind of social interaction inside and outside the game into a part of life, out of the heavy sense of game tasks.
For example, the built-in social platform "Dream Island" in the mobile game "A Chinese Girl", a large number of players regard "Dream Island" as another circle of friends, on which they pay attention to each other and share dynamics, and some content that is inconvenient to complain in the circle of friends can be vented in "Dream Island", becoming another outlet for everyone's daily emotions. Coupled with the interweaving of in-game gangs and worship functions, the social interaction of "A Chinese Girl" mobile game has a strong social driving force for players, and for players, they are more like starting a second life in "A Chinese Girl" mobile game.
The official mobile game "A Chinese Girl" also has a "sense of ceremony", and will carefully prepare different gifts for players on different festivals. During the Spring Festival last year, players who participated in in-game activities had the opportunity to get a large bag of "Qiaqia melon seeds" delivered to their homes free of charge, and on Women's Day, all female players could get a bouquet of customized physical flowers, and they could even go to Dali for free to take pictures.
During this year's Spring Festival, they ingeniously teamed up with NetEase to prepare 10,000 pieces of natal dragon totem Hongyun red underwear for players, which will be randomly dropped when completing the Spring Festival event. Many players shouted "explosive but a little wanted", and some players threatened to return to the game immediately because of the red underwear.
In addition, the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" may be the favorite game that invites players to eat hot pot, and on the 7th anniversary, the official linkage with Coucou hot pot will be contracted to cover 7 hot pot restaurants and players. And just last night, on Chinese New Year's Eve, the mobile game "Qiannu" linked up with Xiaolongkan, continuing to contract hot pot restaurants in seven cities to invite players to eat overlord meals, while listening to players' most authentic feedback.
Also in February last year, the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" also linked with Confucius Temple Cultural Tourism to hold a national style collective wedding for 5 pairs of chivalrous couples who became acquainted with the game.
There are many more such stories. For players, the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" has long been integrated into all aspects of life, covering their own food, clothing, housing and transportation, and meeting like old friends from time to time. In such a game, how can the player stickiness not be high?
In addition to companionship, the relationship between the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" and players has another key word - mutual achievement. Different from the traditional publicity model of placing orders for external KOLs for traditional game products, the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" has achieved many real player anchors who have risen from amateurs. For example, an amateur player who was selected in the previous travel photography activity later became a good-looking anchor with many fans on Douyin, because he loves the mobile game "A Chinese Girl", and usually does not do much publicity for A Chinese Girl, and this behavior of "generating electricity with love" is a two-way street, and it has also achieved the most stable ecological structure of A Chinese Girl.
Source: Douyin @倩女手游-Berryberry, the picture on the right is the Chinese Shadow Character cos
Princess Lei Huo, step into a longer-term future
In our opinion, the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" has been able to make a fortune so far, in addition to excellent product quality, superb operational strength may be an important reason why they not only did not fall behind but also rolled out of the track to new heights, among them, rhythm is the key word of their operation.
In a nutshell, the operation of the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" was not passively rolled by the market, but actively rolled itself. For example, the technical iteration solved the problem of the volume of the package before it began to push permanent fashion, the prominent social life style of the game, the stable and high-quality version of the content update, and so on, all of which have made the "A Chinese Girl" mobile game become the "Princess of Lei Huo" praised by everyone today.
Of course, Princess Lei Huoyan, who is already 7 years old, obviously still has a long way to go.
Frankly speaking, the current market is not friendly to MMOs, and it can be seen from the list that there are not many excellent MMO products, and players are not as interested in MMOs as before. However, the mobile game "A Chinese Girl" still proved its important position in the market with its achievements, and the future of "Princess Lei Huoyan" is still exciting.