Text / Li Big Cat
After "Genshin Impact" became popular, domestic game manufacturers have become the consensus of the whole industry to go overseas to earn foreign exchange on the premise of ensuring the local market.
According to last year's "2023 China Game Industry Report", the total revenue of Chinese games going overseas in 2023 reached 16.366 billion US dollars. Although the total value is lower than in '22 and '23, it is nearly nine-fold higher than 10 years ago.
Although the data is significantly slower than the growth rate of more than 30% of the stay-at-home dividend during the epidemic, overseas is still a market with great imagination today, when the domestic and foreign economies are gradually recovering. So this year, whether it is the Cologne International Game Show or the Tokyo Game Show, they are occupied by Chinese manufacturers and Chinese.
During the TGS period, I often just finished looking at the booth of the second tour of China, and then turned to the booth of another Chinese counterpart. Compared with the "dead dog one" that comes to mind in previous years, this year is full of Chinese people's "". What's even more interesting is that the two-dimensional game, which was originally Japan's home stadium, also ushered in a collective counterattack by the enemy on the other side of the sea this year.
In fact, looking back, the word going to sea has been said for 20 years, from terminal games, page games, and now mobile games. Basically, in areas where there are living people, you can basically see the presence of Chinese game manufacturers, and the paid form of free + in-app purchase has also changed from controversial to acceptable.
The difference is that the manufacturers pursued more to go out, so the marketing methods were simple and crude, and the purchase volume and hard breadth emerged in an endless stream.
And now, they want to stay.
Overseas marketing is high-quality
In terms of difficulty, the absolute difficulty of going to sea in the past two years has increased.
From the outside, the stay-at-home dividend has disappeared, anti-globalization has gradually prevailed, and with the tag of Chinese games, there will definitely be no less suppression in the open and in the dark. And internally, when going to sea can be said to be using the domestic volume of millions of times, the value and business to reduce the dimension to attack foreign countries, but no matter how stupid the foreigners are more than the blow, they will learn to be smart, everyone has learned the set of Skinner boxes to open the box, and the rest will have to fight for internal strength?
In addition, there is a common trend at home and abroad - the cost of buying volume is rising. Originally, everyone didn't know that such a number, one or two dollars, and even every cent could buy a user. Now that the rest of the people are all proficient, the world will not fall into a new market with a population of more than one billion, buy a player for more than ten dollars, and as a result, the first 6 yuan will be lost. Isn't it a loss of money to make money?
In such an environment, when domestic manufacturers face the new rise of overseas manufacturers, they are bound to come up with new moves, otherwise their dominance in this field will be easily challenged by latecomers.
The most obvious thing is that when I talked to industry bigwigs about going overseas the year before last and last year, everyone's expressions became very complicated. Because with the competition in the industry, many strategies that were once regarded as "common sense" by Chinese manufacturers are no longer effective. Compared with the traditional operation strategies of localization and national cultural identity, it is more and more necessary to do advertising and marketing according to the preferences of players in each region.
In human terms, you can no longer rely on cheating, sneak attacks, and defenselessness, and trap people into the game first. It's about using the purest and most fundamental quality of the game to attract players to play, like, and stay in your game.
Make people players, not users.
As a recent example, last week at TGS, he had the opportunity to talk with producer Sledgehammer about the strategy of domestic games going overseas at the booth of "Calabichu", and he shared the unique harvest of "Calabichu" in Japan.
Hardcore shooting on the other side of the sea
"Calabichu" is a PVP shooter game based on 5V5 blasting and team competition mode, and the biggest selling point is the "stringing" gameplay of transforming into a paper man.
It is to make the paper man become a real · paper man.
The transformation of the string into the paper man is not to cater to the gimmick of the game's art style, but to have a lot of tactical operation space for the operation design. Stringing not only allows players to turn into pieces of paper to dodge bullets sideways, but also derives more unexpected tactical depth with the help of actions such as sticking to walls and levitating in the air. In addition, each character in the game also has their own skills, so if you play with the mindset of a traditional shooter, you will obviously feel at a loss.
When the national server of "Calabichu" was launched this year, a dilemma was that second-game players could not accept the hardcore gameplay of the game.
Let's explain it first, it's not that second-game players can't play hardcore games. I've seen a Hatsune chef galloping around Tarkov, and I've met countless Kamisato Ayaka dogs in CSGO. What I mean by this is that most of these players will focus on the art and story of the second game.
As a result, many light players who came to the beautiful girl were killed indiscriminately by various e-sports gun masters, and finally broke their hearts. This is not due to the lack of excellent game design, but because the shooting gameplay is too good, attracting core shooter players, so that there are too many pro brothers, and new players can't find the experience.
Interestingly, the string-based gameplay not only attracts hardcore shooters, but also attracts the attention of many overseas players. "Calabichu" attracted a group of Japan players to follow when X and YouTube opened accounts, and after the national server opened the test, it even crossed the sea with delay.
And the reason why this group of Japan players pay attention to "Calabichu" is because of its freshness in operational and tactical depth. If the average shooter tests instantaneous reaction and concentration, then Japan players prefer the body control. As a console shooter enthusiast, I often play against Japan players in the East Asia server every time I play COD and Battlefield.
The biggest difficulty in shooting guns with Japan players is "how to show up", not "not winning against guns". There is basically no Japan player who is not a master of sliding and jumping, and they will appear in the form of a sliding tackle or jump at any corner, disrupting you with the gun while surprisingly getting close to you to ensure a hit rate when you are close.
This kind of operation and consciousness gap in body method is a gap that many people can't learn. This is one of the reasons why APEX has quickly become a national game after entering the Japan market. As mentioned above, the stringed gameplay of "Calabichu" adds more dimensions to the thinking of shooting, if the traditional shooting game pursues a realistic sense of shooting and a shorter, faster and exciting competitive experience is a "vertical" development, the design idea of "Calabichu" is to carry out "horizontal" thinking at the level of gameplay, and gradually break free from the shackles brought by "space" to shooting games and players with the ingenuity of stringing.
It is precisely because of the attention of these overseas players that "Calabichu" chose to participate in the Tokyo Game Show for the first time. During the exhibition, the "Calabichu" team invited some Japan players to participate in the on-site exchange meeting. Producer Sledgehammer thanked Japan players for their support at the exchange meeting, and introduced the future development direction of the game and anti-cheating strategies. During the communication with the on-site players, the team also learned about the actual experience feedback of Japan players, which further strengthened the confidence of making the sea.
E-sports is the most two-dimensional, and two-dimensional is the most e-sports
In addition to player exchanges, the "Calabichu" booth also featured an esports exhibition match, inviting players from the Esports World Cup (EWC) Japan team and well-known KOLs from Japan to perform.
Esports World Cup? You heard it right, Calabichu hosted an authentic esports event this year at the inaugural Esports World Cup (EWC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Four teams from China, United States, Saudi Arabia and Japan competed for the championship of the world's first two-dimensional e-sports event.
Although this is only the first time that "Calabichu" has held a world-class event, as part of the game's overseas strategy, this attempt to promote global e-sports has received an unexpectedly good response. Based on the depth of body operation and tactics brought by stringing, the creation of e-sports in "Calabichu" is a direction that the project is very confident in. The success of this year's EWC event has also given the team enough experience feedback: as long as they find the right direction, they can do it.
The exhibition match at the Tokyo Game Show also attracted a large number of players to stop and watch, and the wonderful performance of the players directly showed the players passing by the difference between "Calabichu" and traditional shooting games: the game has a high-level shooting experience, the string operation is often surprisingly successful, the rhythm of the 5v5 blasting battle is appropriate, and there will be no feeling of dragging, for players who enjoy competitive shooting, "Calabichu" is both novel and solid.
Sledgehammer emphasized three key words at the player conference: differentiality, sportsmanship, and good socialization
And the most important thing in esports competitions is the ability to grab the audience's attention, and the fast-paced, on-the-spot operation of "Calabichu" is undoubtedly the best in its category.
epilogue
As a new game that hasn't been cut until it's been online for less than a year, Calabichu isn't perfect. Many of the expected directions have not been achieved, and many of the desired directions have not yet been achieved. There is no instant hit, and there is no proud record of dominating the list.
In an era of more "rational projects" that seek to invest money and manpower, such a game that does not follow the mainstream voice seems so maverick. Calabichu is one of the most sincere games I've ever seen, and the seamless communication between the officials and players has helped the game move forward in a positive way. Whether it is an attempt to go overseas or do e-sports events, it seems to be an effort based on the characteristics of "Calabichu" itself, but in fact, it is the attention and participation of players that contribute the most. In the same way, the official never ignores the feelings of players, actively responds to and adopts players' opinions, balance, anti-cheat, content expansion, etc., to give players the most timely feedback.
Back to the beginning, "Calabichu" chose to go to sea is both inevitable and accidental, if it were not for the players' spontaneous support for the official and the most direct opinions for the development team, the so-called going to sea may only stay in the imagination. This also reflects the current industry environment, and no longer pursues big and complete, because there is no perfect game to meet the needs of different people, as long as their own shortcomings can be above the level line, and have a long enough long board, then it is still very promising to get their own piece of the cake.