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7 months ago, when the popular interactive movie game "I'm Surrounded by Beautiful Women!" was officially released on Steam, with the world's top 100 turnover and tens of millions of recharges, the short drama game concept index was directly born, which made countless players, game producers, and capital look sideways.
First-person perspective substitution, love simulation, full-motion images, visual novels, the superposition of beauty elements + love plots, and simple program design, the success of "Finished" seems to have a very low threshold.
After that, the surprise turned into execution.
In the past 7 months, in addition to traditional film and television companies, MCNs, and game manufacturers, Youku, NetEase, Tencent and other major Internet companies, new and old Gal Game manufacturers, two-dimensional teams, solo game teams, illegal content workshops, and short drama teams have opened the book.
On the water, 21 "finished" games have been launched on Steam one after another, all kinds of beauties have appeared, knee pillows, uniform play and other side-rubbing content have emerged, live room rounds, anchor interaction, diversion Douyin mini programs, distribution of brush volume and other behaviors appear frequently.
Beneath the surface, there are many people who claim to understand the "Finished" mode and are preparing to replicate the output.
But up to now, no work has broken the circle and achieved amazing returns commercially.
Some players are bored, "It's over, I'm surrounded by a game like "It's Over"/Rubbing Edges/Dung Making"; some have brushed all the games, glad that they have accumulated good deeds in their lives, and can finally play games while hanging the corners of their mouths, "talking about electronic girlfriends, and tasting cyber life".
Is the success of "Finished" a flash in the pan or a signal of the new Hailan? What is the core value of "Finished"-like games? Why are they hitting the streets? Is there a methodology that can be replicated? How will it develop in the future? Entertainment Capital visited more than a dozen companies that make "Finished" games to try to find answers.
The next part is the first part, today we will focus on solving the emergence and existing problems of the "quasi-finished" pile-up, and this week we will continue to launch the next part, when the time will focus on the analysis of the distribution, marketing and future development trend of the "quasi-finished".
"'Finished' has made the interactive video game industry stand up again"
"The interactive video game made me feel for the first time what it means to be a pig that can fly on the tuyere. ”
In late October last year, Hui Yi, a producer who had started his own business in his hometown Chongqing for two years and called himself a "film and television migrant worker", felt a little broken when he played the game "Finished" at home, "I can fall in love with so many beauties for 45 yuan, this is a romance film, it's a science fiction film." Finally, a game is beginning to gain insight into the emotional needs of men. ”
In addition to sighing, Hui Yi rummaged through the relevant reports on film and games on the market and found a new direction for employment, "The male market has great potential, and the production threshold for games like "Finished" is not high but the ceiling is high, so it is worth trying." ”
Previously, Hui Yibei drifted for three years, did all kinds of film and television work, and returned to Chongqing to become a film commentary blogger during the epidemic, witnessing many ups and downs in the industry, "The film market is shrinking, and it is difficult to get ahead, but interactive film and games are still an incremental market." 2 million you can make a product directly for the C-end, which is worth trying. ”
What makes him even more excited is the content form of the interactive video game, ""Finished" is a stand-alone game, you need to immerse yourself in the game from a first-person perspective in front of the screen, and communicate directly with the characters, players will feel that this is what they say to you, and things happen in front of you." After a few hours of playing, the player's psychology will change, which is very interesting. ”
After that, Huiyi created the interactive film game project "Custom Girlfriend", from the preparation of the team, financing to the current April 22 launch on Steam, the progress of the project is fast compared with the movie, and he couldn't help but sigh at the beginning.
Compared with Huiyi, the director of the film games "Invisible Guardian" and "Fame and Fortune Game" Emperor Jin came into contact with film games earlier.
In the second half of 2015, the newly graduated Emperor Ima, saw the interactive game "428: Lockdown Shibuya", which was taken by a Japanese real-life person, and became interested in interactive works. After that, he successively filmed a number of live-action interactive short dramas to accumulate experience, and in 2019, he made the hit "Invisible Guardian". At the beginning of last year, "Hurricane" exploded, and the emperor now hopes to tell the story of a person like Gao Qiqiang who keeps choosing to grow up, and began to prepare for "Fame and Fortune Game".
"The Game of Fame and Fortune" mainly tells the story of the protagonist who relies on his own efforts to grow into a big man. At the stage of writing the script, the emperor encountered the explosion of "Finished", and there was uncontrollable excitement in his tone, "The reputation of "Invisible Guardian" is too good, and the production is also at the top level, I don't dare to easily touch the same theme again, thinking about whether this is the only way to be recognized? At that time, the market was in a downturn for a long time, and we also experienced a lot of doubts. But "Finished" opened my eyes to new possibilities. The mentality of many practitioners around me is that they have finally stood up, and everyone sees the possibilities of the market. ”
The interactive film and game works before "Finished", such as "His Smile" and "Antiques in the Game", are mostly film-oriented works launched by long video platforms, taking the idea of drama customization. For creators, Yingyou takes the To B route and pushes customers. In other words, if a practitioner wants to make a film game, first, he needs to have a platform relationship, and second, he or she is always working for the platform, and he can only earn production fees, and the profit is limited.
And the appearance of "Finished" breaks the above limitations.
Game creators can directly target C-end users around the world. Steam has a low threshold for online and distribution, and the concentration of users on Steam has a strong ability to obtain information, and good works are easier to get attention.
At the same time, Huying Technology Yanpeng, located in Beijing's 798 Park, has also received many invitations for cooperation.
In 2023, the Mutual Imaging team insisted on spending four years to build the editor and engine of interactive film and television from 0 to 1, and also launched popular IPs such as "Flying Over Room 13", gaining a firm foothold in the industry.
"From the first day of our establishment, we have been building products while accumulating infrastructure capabilities, including game design, technology development, and publishing and operation capabilities, hoping to empower our peers. Last year, "Finished" and "Flying Over Room 13" both entered the top 10 of the domestic sales list on the Steam platform, and many people who do interactive content are more confident, and they want to participate in the industry by cooperating with us. ”
Before "It's Over", the public would think that interactive movie games were more inclined to film and television production, but the feedback from Steam players made creators see the importance of games.
Huiyi also said, "After "It's Over" became popular, my friends who were film and television at that time felt that it was a game and didn't dare to touch it, and friends who made games didn't dare to touch it because they thought it was a movie. If you do this, you have to understand both film and television. There are still a lot of things that need to be run in. ”
But the appearance of "Finished" suddenly made the industry have a reference template, "everyone dares to do it".
Hurry up, and hundreds of "shadow games" will be released
"Come on! long shots are enough!. ”
Just as Gong Liang was running around for "Custom Girlfriend", director Fu Hong, who was in Beijing, was struggling with whether to turn to mini program short dramas for life, "The film and television drama industry has shrunk, and short dramas are so popular, I have been struggling with whether to do it, but I think that the production logic and the creation logic do not match well." Later, Hui Yi found me and asked me if I wanted to shoot an interactive video game, which lasted more than two hours, and it was an all-subjective long shot, and there was room for creation. ”
"I have friends who are doing post-production in Songzhuang, and they often say that interactive film games are the wind and should be seized. Later, when it came time to raise money, I really believed it. Fu Hong recalled.
"At that time, after we established a group in Xiamen, we went back to Beijing to select actors, but because of the problem of scenes and art costs, we found that there was still a shortage of hundreds of thousands of funds. I asked a friend out to tell him about it, so he could see if anyone around him wanted to vote. In the process of chatting, my friend called the investment money. There is also an investor who is the CEO of my former company, he has worked in Byte, he is very keen on the market, and he has been looking at the movie game, and he also invested. ”
Hui Yi sighed, "I have done so many projects, this is really the smoothest investment, and I have completed an investment of more than 2 million yuan in ten days." If we're going to make a movie, it's going to be hard. ”
How hot was the market at that time? Yang Sheng, the producer of "Finished", still remembers it vividly, and it is not an exaggeration to describe the endless stream of people who are looking for him to cooperate, "After "Finished" became popular, the people who came to me were divided into several waves. At the beginning, they were people who made the content of film and television dramas, and they used to shoot people who were filming ancient costume palaces and house fights, and they asked me to change the material for them, and they made the original series into an interactive film game. There are brands and technology companies in the back. ”
Wang Daoniuwa, the game UP master of station B, also had similar feelings when he watched the game "Finished", "After "Finished" became popular, there were a lot of them, and they were stillborn in those works, and asked them if they could use that interactive form to do it again?"
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The most typical is a Tanmei theme, in which five or six male characters can be paired in pairs on the plot line, but it can't be broadcast because of a paper order, and a director complained: "Their producer asked me to change it to a female-oriented interactive film game, I don't think there is even a heroine in this play."
But not long after, he went to the steam page and found a short drama-style interactive video game called "After Divorce, the Sect Master's Vest Can't Hide", which was actually a vertical screen short drama directly put on a game program shell.
"Open the vertical screen, have you ever seen a Steam game vertical screen?"
Wang Daoniuwa took "Reverse 21 Grams" as an example to illustrate that this is a rare sci-fi action game in China that adopts a similar cyberpunk future world view, "This work gives me the feeling that a martial arts team wants to make a cyberpunk script to kill, but cyberpunk and reasoning are not good at it, so make do with it." But because he is good at martial arts, no matter whether the plot needs it or not, it is a fight every three or five times. Their development log says that it took 2 years to finally make it, and as a result, cyberpunk and script killing are outdated. I wanted to rub the beauty of "Finished" again, so I temporarily changed my direction and made a love cultivation system that was popular 20 years ago. It can be seen that the production team is attentive and powerful, but they don't have their own direction, and they always want to rub hot spots. ”
Player Niu Meimei added, "I don't know where the programmer invited to make the old program 10 years ago, loaded on the server and not locally, and it will take 10 seconds to load it when you click it, and the experience is too poor." “
The emperor also remembers it very clearly, "After "Finished" came out, there were a lot of new contents, such as spy warfare, love love, film and television, games, and short drama companies are all entering the game. ”
Zhou Ze, an executive of a drama company, was originally in charge of administration in the company, and after "Finished" became popular, he submitted a plan to the company to make this kind of game, but he didn't expect to be agreed, and now the project is being filmed. Zhou Ze plans to make the first vertical screen interactive video game in China to launch his own mini program.
An investor said frankly to Fugu Jun: "Don't care what they did before, as long as it is like "Finished", my boss said at that time that he wanted to see and invest." ”
How did they come to be filmed?
Yan Peng revealed that when November last year was the hottest, many MCN companies and film and television companies were looking for them, and their commonly used casting teams went to the "Finished" project to select beautiful women, "There are also some companies who ask us to cooperate in spy warfare, costumes, suspense, thriller, female and other types of interactive film games, and we have cooperated with more than half of the head projects in the industry." Basically, they do the theme and shooting, and we are responsible for game design and technology development, distribution, co-investment, or we can make the main investment. ”
It is also based on the purpose of exploring the market, as an open platform of mutual filming, has recently helped the head partners and launched several film and game projects similar to "Finished".
"The industry has been immersed for too long, and there must be new explosive models to attract more people to enter the industry and the market to usher in a new outbreak. Recently, Emperor is recruiting for new projects, and it has not been smooth, "The industry is so new, practitioners have to learn a lot of new things, and there are not many people who are willing to gamble their careers for interactive video games." ”
In the process of doing "Custom Girlfriend", Hui Yi brushed up on similar products on the market, and found that everyone either focused on beauties, or wiped the edges of death, and tried on the edge of the law, "I think if you really want to see the edges, why don't you just look at the colored ones." What boys want in love is emotional value, just like online dramas for women, which are committed to sprinkling sugar on girls. ”
Based on this, "Custom Girlfriend" should provide users with emotional value on the one hand, and build a more realistic and solid world view on the other hand, "Our project will have some light daily interactive plots, the stories are interlocking, and the male and female protagonists will experience some things together." It's like Titanic and so on. In order to do a good job in this story, make the story line fuller, and also in consideration of cost savings, we abandoned the strategy of having more heroines, and mainly made two heroines and two story lines. Give users enough emotional value. ”
During the shooting, "Custom Girlfriend" used a large number of 35 lenses, which are similar to the visual perception of the human eye, creating a more intuitive and immersive visual experience for players.
Yang Sheng also talked to Xiaoyu about his experience when he was doing "Finished", "We can find creative rules from dramas and movies. These tens of thousands of works have been handed down in history, and they are all good content of certainty. ”
He took Hao Hao's mother, who is the most popular among players in "Finished", as an example, and pointed out the underlying design logic of the characters, "Hao Hao's mother's hotness is on the surface, but the core is very tragic. gave birth to a child at the age of 16, did not receive a complete education, and was entangled with her ex-husband. When we shape the story, we will ask the screenwriter to think about the worst details, if the protagonist does good things step by step and helps Hao Hao's mother grow, then the protagonist can get a lot of positive emotions in the end. ”
Yang Sheng will consider the player's experience from the perspective of system achievement design, "The achievement system design in Steam games is very important, we will think about what the anchor can do if he plays, so that more people can send barrage, then the achievement badge is actually the barrage system of our production team." ”
There are a lot of "fun people" designs in "Finished", such as the option to jump out of the dialogue with the landlord when the beautiful woman is around, and the option to talk to the big brother on the opposite hospital bed. These add to the fun of the game.
Among the sales of more than one million, the refund rate of "Finished" is extremely low, and Yang Sheng summed this up to the success of the "emotional maze", such as the hero and heroine playing rock-paper-scissors, "A very beautiful thing in love is not a life and death, it is these moments, the memories of this moment." A lot of players can play all day and be reluctant to quit. Our creative team believes that love is made up of countless tiny details. ”
Now, there are 417 games marked with a "full motion image" tag in the Steam game library, including a total of 21 in the love simulation type, through the analysis of the xx website, except for "Finished", none of them broke a million dollars, most of the game reviews have not yet exceeded 1,000, and it cannot be called a hit, of which the least "After the divorce, the suzerain's vest can't hide" only sold 960 copies.
While the entrants are frenzied, there are also questions, what do "finished" players want, and can "finished" become a category on its own?
Why can't anyone replicate the success of the genre "Finished"?
Many players have reported that there are too many competing products like "Finished" now, which is no longer a question of whether the product is good or not, but that users have begun to feel emotionally uncomfortable.
Wang Daoniuwa began to complain to Xiaoyu after evaluating the game, "This batch of games like "Finished" generally doesn't pay much attention to the script, and I always think that the man who sells some meat will buy it. Selling meat is only the most superficial thing, and the core is to have content and give us a good emotional experience. ”
Yang Sheng also pointed out, "When boys play interactive love games, they want emotional experience. It is difficult for you to find such a person in your life other than your loved ones, who trusts you unconditionally and loves you. Rubbing games are a false proposition because you can't play a game and rub edges at the same time. It is equivalent to drawing a circle with one hand and a square with the other, and it is impossible for players to get a good experience. ”
In Yan Peng's view, "too many "finished" genres focus on beautiful women in love, just like chili fried chili peppers, and it is very boring if you eat too much." That's one of my feelings that I've been feeling particularly strongly lately. Beauty is just an element, it can't support a project independently, there is no good plot, only appearance, this is not a sustainable content direction. ”
"The most important thing in a dating game is to let players avoid negative emotions and get positive feedback. Yang Sheng said, "The main reason for the "finished" works that are hitting the street now is because they have mistaken the direction of love, and the focus of love is not to get someone, or conquer someone, but to get close to each other. ”
Yang Sheng proposed that game makers should "grasp the big and let go of the small", that is, do a good job of controlling the main line, and let users have the illusion of control, "The core of interactive games is to let players have the illusion of free will. People have free will in love, but often they don't have a choice, and the meaning of love interactive games is to give players more possibilities. ”
Specifically, there is a lot of freedom in the player's choice. Like at the end of "Finished", Comet Shen will ask the player to play with scissors and tell the player that she will come out with rocks. And the player can choose to defeat her, or lose to her. "Players have a choice. ”
Player Ono revealed to Xiaoyu, ""Finished" is the benchmark, the actors have professional acting skills, their looks have their own characteristics, and the process of chasing people. As long as the heroine is good-looking, the plot is passable, and she is comfortable to play. You see, my requirements are not high, but now a lot of games are really unplayable, and the setting is unacceptable. ”
Obviously, some creators are biased in their settings.
Wang Daoniuwa complained to Xiaoyu about his "Proud! Beauty Strategy", "The producer set the male protagonist as a dick, and every day is to eat instant noodles at night in an Internet café, and the most heroic thing is to charge 5,000 yuan in an Internet café." When something happens to the heroines, he plays games to escape. Think about it, the threshold for being willing to spend dozens of dollars to play stand-alone games on Steam is already very high, at least with a PC and network capabilities, can this person be a dick?"
"The Game of Fame and Fortune" did not have any content in production, but it also received a lot of criticism. At the beginning of the game,The male owner needs to sell his girlfriend to get a new opportunity to be a director,Some players resolutely resist the plot of this kind of minotaur,"Users play the game with the purpose of wanting to fall in love,It turns out that the male owner is green.,It's still a minotaur.,Start a wild spray.,I think it's quite wronged.。 ”
Director Emperor Jin explained that when he first designed it, he also considered designing the plot of the male protagonist being abandoned by his girlfriend, but he was worried that it would become the cool text mode of the Dragon King's counterattack, so the male protagonist had a lot of tangled choices, in order to more deeply reflect human nature.
Emperor Jin also mentioned, "The players of the movie game are very cute and simple, if you like it, they will praise you vigorously, and if you don't like it, they will scold you for two days and two nights." In the future creation, we will take into account the player's feelings and the depth of choice, and communicate with the player more. ”
And this also reflects a major characteristic of gamers like "Finished", that is, the ability to disseminate information quickly and the fermentation of public opinion is fast.
Before doing "Custom Girlfriend", Hui Yi said that he was also a "game troll", and when he saw that others were not doing well, he scolded shoddy production, rushing to make money or something online, and now he is much calmer, "After all, he is a newcomer, and he needs to hurry when big players and capital have not yet entered the market, seize the opportunity, and he can't invest a lot of money, and there is inevitably something not refined enough in the production, no way." In the end, the work was completed with continuous compromise. We're doing our best and we want players to feel what we do. ”
At this point, only the first half of the content selected by the quasi-"Finished" game will be broadcast, and more dry reports on the Steam mechanics and future development of the "Finished" game, how to integrate with AI, brands and other industries, please push the headlines of the [Finished" next part after Entertainment Capital.