Domestic martial arts, which has always been the white moonlight in the hearts of our players, is also the theme that can best reflect the mysterious oriental power in many game categories, and Chinese designers are the best at grasping.
Ran goose, I don't know if it's because the times have changed, or because there is a problem with the thinking of those martial arts production teams, in previous years, there would be a small surprise from time to time in domestic martial arts, but this year it is generally "thunder" very thoroughly.
There are those who have been on sale for more than two months and run away with buckets, some who haven't even dubbed all the characters within 3 months of being online, and there are those who abuse AI painting to cause the character image to collapse......
So, what's wrong with domestic martial arts? Today, let's talk about it.
Key point 1: Sell semi-finished products as official versions?
Without further ado, let's talk about the conclusion first, the root of the problem of Dr. X's general thunderstorm in domestic martial arts this year lies in its "old" business model, which is difficult to keep up with the current pace of player consumption. I don't know how to make the martial arts audience willing to pay for the dilemma of buying, which has led to many manufacturers invariably facing the commercialization dilemma of "doing more and more losses".
To put it bluntly, it is how domestic martial arts sold semi-finished products as finished products twenty years ago, and how do domestic martial arts still sell them twenty years later, I don't care at all that consumers are no longer the hot-blooded young man they once were.
Let's not talk about it far away, let's take the 1.1 version of "Ancient Dragon Fengyunlu" that just updated on April 25th: this game officially landed on Steam on February 1st, but it was only on April 24th that most of the characters were dubbed and completed, and it was also called 1.1 major version update.
(It takes 84 days to find a voice actor and tuner?)
In the face of such a "genius" big version update, players will naturally not get used to it, and 59% of them are waiting for mixed reviews.
It is true that this game has indeed made a breakthrough in terms of plot and combat gameplay compared to Heluo's past works, and it is also a work that can be called "the future can be expected".
But times have long since changed, and this market is no longer the situation in the 80s and 90s when a new game popped up for a few months, and players have long been impatient to wait 84 days to complete the dubbing.
Even if you take 10,000 steps back, since you want to package this dubbing supplement into a major version update, you can spend a little money to invite well-known domestic voice actors to participate, how can there be this kind of self-care operation of adding seasoning to cold rice, or forcing players to eat it?
And similar to "Gulong Fengyunlu", a magical operation that would rather spend a lot of money to do small things than spend a small amount of money to do big things, was also posted on "Next Station Jianghu II.", which was launched on April 18.
Strictly speaking, this game is more half-finished than "Ancient Dragon Legend", although the game has made all the character standing drawings and voice acting, but the dissonance of the AI at a glance still continues to affect the gameplay experience.
The most important thing is that the endless BUGS of the game give people the illusion that the designer is in a hurry to put the game on the shelves without playing the game at all. Even though there is a big movement of 8 times in 15 days, this bug has a faint tendency to repair more and more, and the negative feedback it brings to players can be imagined......
So the question is, with this idle time to fix bugs, why can't you open a few free trials first, or launch Steam with EA version to test it?
Even if it is polished well and launched a few months later, it is stronger than the current kind of thunderstorm when it is launched, and the praise is all supported by the reputation of a generation of old players.
Key point 2: Selling games only relies on feelings to drive sales?
In addition to selling semi-finished products as finished products, in a vain attempt to rely on patch updates again and again, and the "fantasy" of earning the favor of players, the common problem of new domestic martial arts works is that they hold the dream of "exchanging feelings for sales".
Among them, "The Legend of Zhao Yun: Yunhan Tenglong", which ran away with a bucket after more than two months on sale, is a typical example.
This game is not as excessive as the first two.,Dubbing、Character design、Plot polishing is also serious.,There are some deficiencies in the game's picture optimization and mid-to-late gameplay.,The difficulty of optimizing and changing can be said to be the lowest.。
Even if the production team gives some effort and adds a DLC expansion pack of meat pigeon and survivor gameplay, there will be a large number of audiences who are willing to pay.
But what no one expected was that the game was not cool yet, but the production team ran away first.
Judging from the apology letter given by the producer afterwards, it boils down to one word - money.
Basically, the money earned from the game in the first 2 months has not recovered the project development funds, and if it continues to be updated as players hope, everyone in the studio will have to "go to work".
So the question is, when the project was first established, where did the producer get the courage to be sure that the older generation of "The Legend of Zhao Yun" players were willing to pay for this work?
Or, in this year, can the purchasing power of veteran players really carry the ambition of the producer?
Obviously, whether it is the self-contained "The Legend of Zhao Yun: Yun Han Tenglong", or the Heluo Studio and Bai Yujing Studio that insist on being old-school martial arts rivers and lakes, the first thing they have to consider is not how to tell a martial arts story to make old players happy, but how to please new players.
Even if you look farther away and make a martial arts game that allows foreigners to have fun, this sales may be able to increase.
Summary after class
In fact, compared with these independent martial arts game development groups, the ideas of the big factories that made their fortunes by relying on martial arts online games are relatively clear. Last year, the goose factory tried to buy out the martial arts mobile game "The Last Knife", and also hoped that "Xia Yixing: Wandering World" would open the market for survival and construction of martial arts......
It's just that the former gameplay is niche, and the latter developer is not kind, so he just ran away.
NetEase, on the other hand, first used "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun" to roll up the global market, and even the console track;
Later, he came up with a mobile game that plans to be released in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan in 2024, and indeed has the idea of opening up new markets.
As for Xishanju, it is even more bold, and has taken out the industry's first unbounded version of the terminal/mobile game interconnection, trying to use the influence of martial arts terminal games to radiate mobile game players.
In short, now it seems that more and more martial arts manufacturers are realizing that the domestic user share is not "enough", and if you want to make a big profit, you have to change the track, and you have to go overseas to earn tickets.