2024 is a big year for MMO games, and there are quite a few new MMO projects on the market. But it's hard to be optimistic that MMOs have seen a resurgence in the genre, and many MMO fans are even more disappointed after experiencing these games.
All the prosperity and frustration originate from a game, the mobile game "Against the Cold".
There is no doubt that the mobile game "Against the Cold" is an important driving force for the recovery of this MMO. It is precisely because of its miraculous excellent results that it not only formed a circle-breaking effect that allowed many players to come into contact with the MMO game genre for the first time, but also made many manufacturers in the game circle begin to chase the outlet, either accelerating or setting up their own MMO games.
But these games can't replicate the success of the "Against the Cold" mobile game, and you can even say that even if you look at the entire history of MMO mobile games, except for the "Against the Cold" mobile game, you can't find a national-level hit that can be handled.
The emergence of this phenomenon inevitably makes people wonder - Why?
The reason is actually very simple, because in essence, the mobile game is a different species than other MMO games.
The reason for the decline of MMO games is mainly because this genre has long revolved around "numerical pay". In order to better sell values, developers have habitually created a variety of combat power development systems and gameplay that are produced in conjunction with these systems. If you don't want to spend money on krypton, you need to invest a lot of time in a variety of boring and repetitive game content, and in the long run, the inherent image of the game "forcing the liver and forcing the krypton" has been solidified, and the game will naturally not be able to retain people, and the MMO will become a "online and peak" fast throwing product.
Although the mobile game "Against the Cold" retains the long-term and in-depth gameplay content such as character development and dungeons in MMO, it has made clear the direction of "not selling values" from the beginning, and all values in the game are gameplay outputs, and a lot of optimization work has been done around the core of "no liver and no krypton", removing the stubborn disease that has plagued MMOs for a long time.
In the mobile game "Against the Cold", whether you like PVP or PVE, world exploration or manor building, you can only choose what you like and play it to the end. And in the game's original "different paths" system and season-based mode, no matter how you play, you can guarantee that the rewards are the same as other players, and you will always be in the mainstream player group.
This painless gaming experience, combined with the cost-effective fashion appearance, supports the huge user base and amazing micropayment rate of the mobile game, making it not only achieve a breakthrough in the number of players, but also more durable in player retention and payment curve.
However, because of the design of "no liver, no krypton" and "different paths to the same end", the "addictiveness" of the mobile game "Against the Cold" is much lower than that of traditional MMOs, and players will fall into the "long grass period" if they graduate too easily. In order to solve this problem, the mobile game adopts extremely high-speed updates and iterations, constantly enriching players' game goals with a steady stream of new content, and continuously adding their new target nodes to maintain the long-term stability of the game.
It's not so much a traditional MMO as it is an enduring casual game like Candy Crush Saga—only with richer content, more playability, and higher technical requirements.
If you understand this, you will be able to understand why every domestic MMO can be used except for the mobile game "Against the Cold". Because only with strong R&D capabilities, abundant capital investment, and industrialized production line production capacity at the same time, can you be able to "imitate" the basic conditions of the "Reverse Cold" mobile game, and what you have to face is the continuous consolidation of the player base, the continuous iteration of the gameplay content and the irreplaceable first-mover advantage of the "Reverse Cold" mobile game, which is simply impossible for game manufacturers.
Therefore, not only now, but also in the foreseeable future, the mobile game "Against the Cold" is unique in the MMO field. However, because of the emergence of the mobile game "Against the Cold", traditional MMOs have to think more about the player experience, so that MMOs can develop in a more benign and healthy direction.
What do you think of the mobile game?