NetEase "shoots the eagle", bends the bow without sounding

Snow Leopard Finance Club

2024-04-23 09:33Posted in Beijing, creators in the field of science and technology

The "Jin Yong's Curse" in the gaming industry

Author | Yan Xuegong

Cover source | The official website of "Condor Shooting".

Unlike Ma Yun, Ding Lei is a low-key Jin Yong fan.

24 years ago, Ma Yun invited Jin Yong to the West Lake to "discuss the sword in Huashan", and the only few entrepreneurs who could sit opposite Jin Yong were Ding Lei. At that time, Ding Lei told Jin Yong that he liked Duan Yu and Wang Yuyan the most.

In business, Ding Lei is closer to Jin Yong than Ma Yun.

Previously, NetEase owned many martial arts IP games such as "Under Heaven" and "Against the Cold". In 2024, the centenary of Jin Yong's birth, NetEase invested a team of 600 people, 6 years and 1 billion yuan to unveil Jin Yong's IP game "Shooting the Condor", and the public beta time was set on the day after the commemoration of Jin Yong's centennial.

Ding Lei said that the current market is in need of very high-quality martial arts-themed games.

However, with Jin Yong's most prestigious IP, the high-profile announcement of "Shooting the Condor", as of April 21, 25 days after its launch, the iOS side has a turnover of 27.45 million yuan (Diandian data), with a score of 2.5. This number is less than one-tenth of the same period of "Fellow Senior Brother" "Against the Cold", and it is dozens of times different from "Genshin Impact" that wants to be benchmarked.

Looking back on the history of Jin Yong's IP game adaptation, cases of failure abound. From online games to stand-alone games, from large factories to independent studios, most of them cannot escape the fate of "hitting the streets".

Why did Jin Yong's IP, which has its own traffic and hundreds of millions of book fans, become a "curse" that game manufacturers can't get out of?

NetEase bent the bow, "Shooting the Condor" was not completed

Ding Lei once ridiculed Jin Yong like this: "Jin Daxia, you have delayed the time of our generation of young people." ”

Now, "Condor Shooting" has "delayed" NetEase.

NetEase has high expectations for "Condor Shooting", and smashed in 1 billion real money, which began to warm up two years before the game was launched. In exchange, there are overwhelming negative reviews and worries from investment banks.

According to Diandian data, the first day of the launch of "Condor Shooting" on iOS was $220,000, less than 1/6 of the same period of "Against the Cold", and the daily turnover has not risen significantly since then, but has fallen all the way.

JPMorgan Chase pointed out in a research report that due to the weaker than expected initial performance, the first-month turnover forecast of "Condor Shooting" was lowered from 400 million ~ 500 million yuan to 100 million ~ 150 million yuan, and the turnover forecast for the first 12 months was lowered from 3 billion ~ 4 billion yuan to 1 billion ~ 2 billion yuan.

At present, the iOS score of "Condor Shooting" is only 2.5 points, which is significantly lower than "Against the Cold" (3.5) and "The Moon Knife at the End of the World" (4.5). Some players commented with disappointment, "It's a waste of Jin Yong's such a good IP".

Since the launch of the server, the official Weibo of "Condor Shooting" has been full of voices from players who are dissatisfied with the picture quality and optimization. After many updates and optimizations, there are still a large number of players who report problems such as blurry picture quality, stuck and overheating on the mobile phone, and some people even complain that this is "2014 picture quality".

In terms of gameplay, "Condor Shooting", which tries to find a middle way between the social-light "Genshin Impact" and the social-heavy "Against the Cold", has been commented by many players as "I don't understand how to play". The young art style and young character modeling are also the hardest hit areas for players to complain.

Source: "Condor Shooting" official website

The reason why NetEase invested heavily in "Shooting the Condor" is largely because of the IP power behind the word "Jin Yong".

NetEase's "Condor Shooting" covers Jin Yong's most famous works "Condor Trilogy", including "The Legend of the Condor Heroes", "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" and "The Legend of the Sky and the Dragon".

At the beginning of Jin Yong's establishment of "Ming Pao", the sales volume in the first year was only 1,000 copies, and it was once on the verge of bankruptcy. However, after the serialization of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" and "Heaven and Dragon Slayer" was completed, the annual sales of "Ming Pao" have reached 50,000 copies. In the words of writer Ni Kuang, "Ming Pao did not go out of business, it all relied on Jin Yong's novels."

Ni Kuang also commented that "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" "established Jin Yong's status as a giant of martial arts novels, and people no longer doubt whether Jin Yong can write a great work."

According to incomplete statistics from Snow Leopard Finance Agency, up to now, the Condor Trilogy has been remade more than 30 times. The 83 version of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" and "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" have broken the ratings many times, according to the "Hong Kong TV" magazine, the ratings of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" once exceeded 90% in Hong Kong.

And the combination of well-known IP and games can indeed collide with surprising sparks.

The martial arts-themed game "Against the Cold" developed by NetEase is adapted from Wen Ruian's three novels, "The Four Famous Catches", "Who Are the Heroes" and "The Wonder of China". According to Sensor Tower data, in 2023, the mobile game "Against the Cold" will bring NetEase more than 10 billion yuan in turnover. Tencent's "Tianya Moon Knife" is adapted from Gu Long's martial arts novels, and it is still the top player in the martial arts game track.

NetEase's mobile game "Harry Potter: Magic Awakening" launched in 2021 has moved Hogwarts to the screen and attracted many players because it largely restores the magic knowledge class, prom, fireworks show and other activities in the original book. In the first week of its launch, it beat "Glory of Kings" and ranked first in the revenue list, with a turnover of more than 1 billion yuan in the first month.

NetEase, which has tasted the sweetness of IP adaptation, this time, why did it make a mistake on Jin Yong's IP, which is regarded as a myth by the film and television industry?

The "Jin Yong's Curse" in the gaming industry

Jin Yong's IP gamification began in 1993 with "Smiling Proud Jianghu" launched by Zhiguan Technology, and has a history of more than 30 years.

With the name of Jin Yong's IP first game, "Smiling Proud Jianghu" sold more than 100,000 sales. Zhiguan Technology, which was little-known at that time, took the opportunity to quickly launch a number of Jin Yong IP games. Among them, "The Legend of Jin Yong's Heroes", which is a mixture of 14 Jin Yong novels, has become a masterpiece, and in the 90s of the last century, it was once as famous as "The Legend of Sword and Fairy". To this day, many game forums still have players discussing this ancient game.

A game that mixes all of Jin Yong's writings has been popular for nearly 30 years

After entering the millennium, games have moved from the stand-alone era to the era of online games, and a new martial arts trend has been set off.

Yuquan International's "Smiling Proud Jianghu Online Version" became popular with the first domestic 3D martial arts game, driving the "XX Jianghu" series to follow the trend. At its peak, Sohu Changyou's "Deer and Ding Ji OL" had more than 300,000 people online at the same time, and "Xiaoao Jianghu OL" launched by Perfect World after acquiring a subsidiary of Yuquan International achieved 400,000 online users, which was the highest record for martial arts online games at that time.

However, at this stage, the aura of Jin Yong's IP has gradually failed in the game industry, and martial arts-style online games have finally been short-lived.

On the one hand, the more mature South Korean, European and American online games entered China at that time, and "Running Kart" and "World of Warcraft" squeezed out the position of "rivers and lakes". On the other hand, leather martial arts games and "title parties" have emerged in an endless stream for a long time, and games with Jin Yong's IP have become a means for many manufacturers to make quick money.

They quickly attracted a large number of users with the aura of Jin Yong, but players were quickly dissuaded by the shoddy game content, and even PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) appeared, resulting in the gradual loneliness of the entire martial arts game track.

The once popular "Smiling Proud Jianghu Online Version" and "Lu Ding Ji OL" both ended with the closure of the service. The only survivor of this stage is Sohu's "Tianlong Babu OL", which was launched in 2007 and is still the company's most important cash cow, accounting for more than 70% of its revenue. However, the absolute value of 3.3 billion yuan in revenue is far less than popular games such as "Honor of Kings" (10.7 billion yuan) and "PUBG Mobile (Peace Elite)" (8.2 billion yuan).

In the era of mobile games in the past 10 years, Jin Yong's IP is no longer a sweet spot in the eyes of game manufacturers. Perfect World is still trying to gamify Jin Yong's IP in its hands, and launched mobile game versions after the end games of "Heaven and Dragon Slayer OL" and "Legend of the Condor Heroes OL" were suspended, but the response was mediocre and unpopular.

The recent open world fever has brought Jin Yong's IP into the player's field of vision again.

NetEase's "Shooting the Condor" has wanted to benchmark "Genshin Impact" from the beginning, and the production team once mentioned "Genshin Impact" 23 times in a documentary. Tencent's "To Jin Yong", which is still under development, is also positioned as an open-world martial arts game.

The natural audience of Jin Yong's IP-adapted games is users who have watched Jin Yong's martial arts novels since childhood, but this group is mostly males between the ages of 36~45 (Editor's note: The data sample comes from users who buy Jin Yong's books on the Jingdong platform, disclosed by "Jingdong Big Data"), which is neither the current mainstream gamers nor the main consumer of game products. At the beginning of the planning, the production team of "Condor Shooting" tried their best to get rid of this confinement, adopting a younger approach in modeling, and benchmarking the gameplay against "Genshin Impact".

On the other hand, "Against the Cold", which is better in terms of commercial performance, was written nearly 30 years later than "The Legend of the Condor Heroes", and the gamers are younger. According to the data, the proportion of players aged 24~30 in "Against the Cold" is more than 60%.

Throughout the history of Jin Yong's IP adaptation games, in the past 30 years, games that have fallen under Jin Daxia's "sword" abound. When the knights are getting old, how much aura can Jin Yong's IP be given to this condiment?

Success is also IP, defeat is also IP

For adapted games, IP is not only a guarantee for cold starts, but also a shackle for content and word of mouth.

As a national-level IP, "Condor Shooting" unsurprisingly enjoyed dividends before it was launched. According to NetEase, there are more than 14.5 million pre-registered players for "Condor Shooting". But it is precisely because the story of the Condor Trilogy is so deeply rooted in the hearts of the people that it is very difficult to adapt the game.

Players are already familiar with the story text, and are familiar with the endings and plot trends of the main characters, so the game naturally has a lot less room for exploration. In contrast, games that do not have the restrictions of the original IP tend to be more free in terms of content creation. Original stories such as "The Legend of Sword and Fairy" and "Xuanyuan Sword" make it easier to give players a new game experience. "Genshin Impact" creates freshness by releasing a new character and a new plot almost every month.

And the creation of new plots and content is often not bought by fans of the original book because of "subverting the classics", and is even considered to be "magically changing" the plot and being labeled as "skin".

Ke Zhen's evil shape in the game "Condor Shooting" Source: "Condor Shooting" official website

On the other hand, games adapted from big IPs have a large number of initial players, but they also have to withstand more rigorous scrutiny from fans of the original work. IP will also become an amplifier of word-of-mouth. Good game content + big IP will gain double the attention and volume. But when the quality of the game is not high, the IP aura will instead put the shortcomings in the spotlight and expose them to discerning players.

For example, "Harry Potter: Magic Awakening", which was well received for its high degree of restoration in the early days, started high and low in the later game content, and many of the original content in the original book was not updated for a year after it was launched, and the PVP (player vs. player) balance was poor, which eventually led to a decline in revenue.

At present, "Harry Potter: Magic Awakens", which has been online for more than two years, ranks outside the top 100 on the iOS best-selling list and has become "others". Games such as Perfect World's "Zhu Xian" and "Wulin Gaiden" also replicate this curve of opening high and going low.

The pit that NetEase's "Condor Shooting" stepped on is precisely because it attaches too much importance to IP and is obsessed with amplifying the influence of IP itself, but ignores the content.

According to a report released by the Game Working Committee, more than 60% of core mobile game players pay the most attention to image quality, gameplay and painting style when choosing products, and only 20% of players attach the most importance to IP. And the influence of the IP of martial arts works itself is gradually declining.

According to Gamma Games, from January to September 2023, game IPs adapted from novels only contributed 1.83% of the mobile game IP market revenue.

The ability to attract money from the top works in the IP adaptation of literary works is also very limited. From January to September 2023, a total of 12 products adapted from cross-domain (including animation, literature, sports, etc.) IP have been listed on the TOP 100 list of mobile games. Among them, animation IP adaptation products accounted for 59.16%, while literary IP only accounted for 21.43%.

If you compare it with martial arts novels, the content is the internal force, and the IP is the mastery that people in the rivers and lakes dream of. Jin Yong once described the importance of internal force in "The Legend of the Condor Heroes": "Internal strength cultivation is the accumulation of the whole battle, and it can be achieved without a few wonderful tricks. ”

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