Before we know it, we haven't seen a new COK-Like product in the domestic market for a long time.
As the foundation content model of the SLG category on the mobile terminal, COK-Like games have had a very strong performance in the embryonic stage of SLG mobile games, but with the passage of time, its core design ideas such as heavy value orientation and strict law of the jungle have gradually produced mutually exclusive reactions with the needs of players. In addition, during this period, the user recognition of Rate-Like has been increasing, and the trend of micro-innovative variants such as ROK-Like, more and more domestic manufacturers have given up on the domestic distribution attempt of COK-Like in recent years.
In stark contrast to the domestic market environment, COK-Like continues to be popular in overseas markets, and to this day, overseas manufacturers are still relying on various theme innovations such as doomsday, ice and snow, and animals, as well as the implantation of various eye-catching "side plays", and continue to seize the minds of global users.
Source: Data.ai "2023 SLG Game Market Insights Report"
Looking back at the global hits born in the past few years, one product that cannot be avoided is the survival SLG "State of Survival" (hereinafter referred to as "SOS") launched by FunPlus in 2019. As a game that received the dividend of SLG's "theme innovation" earlier, since its launch 5 years ago, the game has not only accumulated more than 210 million players, but also exceeded 10 billion yuan in cumulative turnover early.
And on April 10, this game, which was a little belated in "export to domestic sales", and was named "Dawning Defense Line" in Chinese, officially landed in the domestic market, surrounded by 3.5 million pre-registered users, and was sent to the top 1 of the iOS free list on the first day.
In GameRes' view, the "return to China" itself is burdened with "multiple negatives".
The first is that as a 5-year-old "old game", the quality of software and hardware will be somewhat out of touch with the industry; second, as a COK-Like game, it does not fit the content aesthetics of the current domestic mainstream SLG users; and the third is that the "infected" theme on which its global fame depends, although it also has a large number of fans in China, the natural lack of cultural identity makes it somewhat less competitive than overseas.
So the question is, what is the reason for the confidence of the work to return to China under pressure?
A doomsday SLG tailored for Chinese players?
In the general direction, "Dawning Line" can be said to be a fairly standard COK-Like.
In the apocalyptic environment, the player's "internal affairs" are basically recruiting survivors to build shelters, cleaning up surrounding threats, and expanding their territory little by little.
In the "big world" dimension, players need to form their own army, sweep up the wandering "puppet men" or collect resources such as wood and gasoline, and at the same time join the corresponding survivor organization to fight against other alliances in order to compete for more survival materials and territory.
On the basis of following the established framework of COK-Like, the work itself also tries to create its own differentiated characteristics by introducing some "micro-innovations" in the personal RPG experience of internal affairs.
For example, in the internal affairs link, players do not stick to "one acre and three points of land", but can advance along the plot, and explore and expand step by step by completing events such as clearing obstacles, rescuing survivors, and attacking puppet gathering places, so that their shelter area is getting bigger and bigger.
Some events enhance the sense of substitution by adding broadcast animations
At the same time, the "radar" system based on the worldview is reasonably packaged and implanted, which also provides players with a clearer guidance and sense of purpose for "jungler" - you must know that one of the reasons why many players can't perceive the fun of SLG games is that they are stuck in the big map and don't know what to do after the big map is opened.
In terms of combat design, the game introduces the "strategic tower defense" gameplay, players can control 3 characters to resist the puppet attack in each game, during which the player can intervene in addition to the release of skills also involves positioning, and in actual combat, you can even dodge the boss skills through micro-manipulation, with a certain degree of strategy.
At the same time, due to the fast pace of the battle and the dense number of enemies in most of the battles, there is also a faint feedback on the pleasure of "mowing the grass".
Of course, the premise that the above content can be called "differentiated features" should be viewed in the context of 2019, because in the following years, many COK-like games have also borrowed this kind of thinking.
The more core changes of its national service are mainly reflected in a series of "localization" measures to cater to the needs and aesthetics of national service users.
In addition to the above-mentioned "puppet man" and other adaptive vocabulary improvements for compliance, for example, in the most superficial "skin" link, the overall art look of "SOS", which was previously intended for European and American users, is relatively tough and realistic. This is not the case with the national version, in addition to the obvious upgrade of art rendering, the characters have also been adjusted to a more anime 3D modeling on the basis of the modernization of the appearance details.
International server
National Uniform
At the same time, the work has also been "localized" and optimized many characters, such as Sarge, the American hardcore soldier protagonist in "SOS", has become a more "wolf warrior" "Lu Ting" in the national uniform.
Not only that, the national costume also launched a new character "Cheng Lan" who is holding a leather whip, wearing a red cheongsam-style shirt + black leather skirt, and is set as the owner of the Chinese Martial Arts Gym, to further narrow the emotional distance with players.
In addition to the "localized" tuning of the audio-visual experience, "Dawning Defense" also adds several new sub-gameplay that is more in line with the current content preferences of Chinese people.
The first is "unboxing", where players can obtain various treasure chests with high frequency through missions, junglers, etc., and obtain equipment of different quality from it after the interpretation of the "axe slash" unboxing animation with a round of cool points, which is also an important part of the combat power development of national service characters.
The second is "Battle Pet", where players can cultivate their own pets along the gradient cultivation logic of "summoning→ synthesizing, → leveling".
Obviously, the prototype of the gameplay of "Unboxing" comes from the mini-game represented by "Seeking the Way" that has risen at the speed of light since last year, and the inspiration of "War Pet" comes from the "synthetic" gameplay that has been popular all over the world for many years and is known for its simplicity and lightweight.
There are even "darts" and "robbery darts" gameplay that were common in some games such as national war MMOs in the past, and similar content is also presented in the work.
It is not difficult to see that in order to win the recognition of Chinese players, the work has put a lot of effort into "localization", and it is not an exaggeration to describe it as a doomsday SLG tailored for Chinese players.
In GameRes' view, the "traffic halo" that comes with the apocalyptic survival theme itself, coupled with the visual packaging that is more in line with the aesthetics of the Chinese people, as well as the harmonious coexistence of the three popular sub-gameplay of tower defense, unboxing, and synthesis, can bring the most intuitive positive impact to the work, which is not only to improve the recognition of the game itself, but also to smooth out the underlying logic of low-cost and efficient customer acquisition in China, which is also the main reliance on its ability to successfully accumulate 3.5 million reservation users.
Frankly speaking, there were not many "returnee games" that implemented new content on a large scale like this in the past, after all, the optimization cost and profit and loss ratio involved in this cannot be ignored. The reason why "Dawning Defense Line" dares to "localize" and do all aspects is largely due to the experience and achievements accumulated in the previous overseas distribution, which gave it the courage to try and make mistakes again.
This is not the first time it has tried to win by "localization".
In the five years since its overseas launch, SOS has gradually spread all over the world, starting from Europe and the United States, and in the whole process, the idea of comprehensive "localization" packaging based on the cultural characteristics and user preferences of different regions has become more and more mature over time.
Looking back at the distribution of the work in the two core markets of East Asia in South Korea and Japan, it is not difficult to find that many of the "localization" strategies are similar to the landing of the national server.
For example, when entering the Korean market in 2020, "SOS" not only tried its best to package Korean culture on the marketing side such as promotional materials and spokespersons, but also added "localized" designs such as traditional Korean architectural skins to further resonate with Korean players.
At the same time, it also used South Korea's mask culture as a starting point to launch Kang Eunjoo, a regionally customized Korean style character.
Similarly, when it was released to Japan in 2021, SOS also featured two characters with a distinct Japanese style, one being Kaya, who was armed with a bow and arrows and dressed in a Japanese shrine maiden costume.
The other is Nanami, who is armed with a katana and wears a Japanese-style sailor student uniform - including in the plot at the beginning of the game, the character that the player encounters has also been changed to Nanami, which can be compared to the new Chinese character "Cheng Lan" that the player encountered at the beginning of this national server version.
Even in-game operations include localized designs such as "Tokyo Crisis" that guide players to kill enemies and defend Tokyo Tower.
Based on this, we can see that thanks to FunPlus's years of accumulation in overseas markets, in the process of global distribution of the work, it has already explored a set of "localization methodology" based on the cultural identity and content preferences of regional users, integrating art, activities, character packaging, and localization publicity outside the terminal.
It is precisely because of this methodology that has been proven and has the characteristics of efficient reuse, that we were finally able to witness the launch of the new version of the national server compared to the international server.
epilogue
As of press time, the iOS best-selling list of "Dawning Defense" is still stable at around the TOP60, and the overall trend is slowly rising.
In response to the achievements of the "export to domestic sales" of this work, GameRes believes that its success cannot be generalized to characterize its success, because if you look at it dialectically from different angles, you can actually get two results: "good" and "bad", which reflects the two signals it released to the industry.
On the one hand, if it is required according to the standard of "global hit", then its results are currently unsatisfactory. However, this also once again confirms the current ecological pattern of COK-Like in the domestic SLG track, which is particularly weak, and I believe that it will also make the R&D team or publishers who are preparing the corresponding "returnee" plan more cautiously examine the development of this segment in the domestic market;
But on the other hand, if we lower our expectations, we can capture the uniqueness of their "localization" approach. After all, in the context of "returning to China" in the face of multiple negative effects, how can its results not exceed expectations in some sense? It is foreseeable that without the blessing of a series of mature localization measures, the performance of the work will most likely be even more sluggish.
More importantly, most returnee games have always been difficult to avoid the negative impact of "adapting to the soil and water", but the game has successively used Japan, South Korea, China and other publishing cases to confirm the effectiveness and replicability of its "localization" strategy, and I believe that in the future, it will be enough to inspire manufacturers who are interested in "exporting to domestic sales", so that more overseas hits are expected to return in a way that is more recognized by mainland players, and inject more vitality into the Chinese game industry. (Text/Nanshan)