Text: Game Observation
During the National Day holiday, tourism has become the focus of social media, and this time, game + cultural tourism has become a conspicuous package.
In many reports on the analysis of National Day tourism, they all mentioned the help of "Black Myth: Wukong" to Shanxi cultural tourism. According to CCTV reports, Shanxi has become one of the most popular tourist destinations on various tourism platforms, among which Linfen Xi County, which became popular due to the game "Black Myth: Wukong", has become a "tourism upstart", and Xiaoxitian Scenic Area ushered in "pouring traffic", receiving 91,700 tourists, a year-on-year increase of 335%.
Of course, there are many such combinations, Quanzhou and "Demon Domain", Chengdu and "Dream New Zhuxian", Yangzhou and "Ru Kite", Anhui Huangshan and "Seeking the Way" and so on.
On the road of exploring the "combination of virtual and real" between games and the real economy, this year's cultural tourism is an important direction for the display of digital cultural creativity. Through the in-depth connection of online and offline, games + cultural tourism want to develop sustainably, and there are still new difficulties waiting for challenges.
Causes of concentrated outbreaks
Game + cultural tourism has been promoted for many years, why is there a concentrated outbreak this year?
The "14th Five-Year Plan for Culture and Tourism Development" mentions that "new scenes of tourism experience such as immersive museums, theme parks, and tourism and performing arts will be created." Build a number of smart tourism cities, tourist attractions, resorts, and tourist blocks, and cultivate a number of smart tourism innovative enterprises and key projects". The stimulus of the pre-holiday capital market has obviously also had a positive impact on National Day tourism, but these are not the most critical factors in this round of outbreak.
In the early days of the outbreak of mobile games in 2015, leading enterprises began to study the possibility of combining some projects with cultural tourism in the process of trying to create new cultural creativity. After 2018, in exploring more cross-border value of games, cultural tourism is also a clear direction.
For example, in 2020, when Tencent's "Tianya Mingyue Knife Game" was launched, it chose the form of a grand ceremony in which ten cities rise to the moon together to help the recovery and progress of the cultural tourism industry. At the same time, focusing on the theme of "national style", it covers a series of cross-border cooperation in clothing, food, housing and transportation, and actively carries out a series of diversified and innovative cultural practices such as "IP + real economy" with IP as the core.
With immersion as the core (an important symbol to measure neo-cultural creativity), cultural and creative cooperation at that time could extend the two lines of "cultural tourism" and "Chinese costumes". The rich scenes in the game can be used as the basis for cooperation with local tourism culture, such as cooperation with Zhangjiajie tourism resources.
These ideas are in line with the current game + cultural tourism, and the real crux lies in the more "abstract" immersion breakthrough.
In May this year, the China Tourism Academy (data center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism) released the "2024 Research Report on the Possibility of Game IP & Cultural Tourism Co-innovation", which pointed out that players who play games more than 3 to 5 times a week will travel more than 3 times a year. These players have a high willingness to participate offline and a high degree of attention, and have high requirements for the storytelling, real-life, and time-traveling experience of the game. The integration of game IP and tourism makes tourism more gamified and games more offline, which is the main driving force for players to become tourists, and it is also the advantage and attraction for tourists to become players.
In contrast, the survey shows that tourists' perception and evaluation of the game IP live activities or scenes they have participated in are only at the upper middle level, and only "can meet the realistic fantasy of the game" and "meet their own spiritual needs" reach the "basic satisfaction" range, and the satisfaction and sense of gain are not very high in terms of immersive experience, scene restoration, story coherence, and cross-dimensional travel sense.
The increase in immersion requires support
The connection between online and offline and the support of technical capabilities are the two most significant points in this round of game cultural tourism improvement.
First of all, the in-depth integration of online and offline involves a problem, and the investment and benefit cannot be unilateral or one-way. In the past, more game companies took the initiative to seek cooperation with local tourism resources, and the cooperation content was often short-term and single-time.
Although there will also be items such as linkage game peripherals for sale, it is more regarded as a node marketing behavior.
Taking the cooperation between Sanqi Mutual Entertainment and Anhui Dahuangshan in August as an example, in addition to the implantation of Huangshan scenery and humanistic elements, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment also set up interactive gameplay in the game, and players will have the opportunity to win tickets to Huangshan Scenic Area after completing the Q&A challenge, which is online to offline.
By reproducing the game scene in the Huangshan Scenic Area, the South Gate and Yungu Temple ticket offices in the scenic area have been transformed into the "Treasure Pavilion" in the game; On the mountaineering road, tourists can also enjoy the wonders of Huangshan along the way, while participating in interactive games, and understand the humanistic stories contained in the beautiful scenery of Huangshan, which echoes offline to online.
To put it bluntly, game + cultural tourism is no longer a one-sided shouting, but an online-offline-online cycle, with more in-depth investment, transformation and output from both sides to achieve a win-win situation.
Another important factor affecting the sense of immersion is the improvement of game technology, that is, the "game +" digital empowerment technology support.
The combination of AIGC, motion capture, virtual humans and other technologies makes gamers more willing to pay for immersive content both online and offline.
For example, during the Spring Festival in 2023, Tencent teamed up with the Sichuan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism and the Zigong Municipal Government to create a 2,200-square-meter immersive mobile game lantern festival scene. The theme lantern festival integrates mechanical transmission, high-pressure fog forest, light group detection and sensing and other technologies, so that every grass in the canyon can have intimate interaction with visitors. At the same time, the League of Legends mobile game and Ctrip travel have accessed the WiFi privileges of the League of Legends mobile game in many hotels in Zigong, and provided discounts such as travel and tickets. In addition to offline visits, this event also drove 8.5 million+ people to participate, and the turnover of 0TA (online travel agency) theme cooperation reached 14.6 million, effectively helping the local lantern industry chain to generate income.
It can be said that a more advanced sense of immersion itself needs to be supported by technological upgrades.
A combination of short-term flashpoint and long-term development
From a more subtle point of view, the immersion itself is built on the basis of the game IP to attract travelers. How to change from short-term traffic to long-term popularity is not a personality problem, but a common problem in the tourism industry, and the typical reference is the rise and fall of Internet celebrity IP tourism, and the tourism boom driven by popular IP often has the characteristics of short-term and concentrated.
In recent years, on the one hand, domestic Internet celebrity cities have shown a "baton-style" development, on the other hand, the IP life span of Internet celebrity cities is getting shorter and shorter, and they will encounter similar problems when put into games + cultural tourism.
Therefore, how to choose a more suitable and lasting game IP cooperation and how to work together to continue the vitality of the cooperation project have become the key issues in the next step.
According to the 2023 China Theme Park Competitiveness Evaluation Report, 50% of the 80 theme parks included in this year's evaluation have been closed for more than 60 days, and 23 of them have been closed for more than 100 days. In 2023, the number of visitors received by theme parks decreased by 0.33% compared to 2022, with a net increase of 10 theme parks.
In fact, this point has been answered in the above in-depth online and offline integration, "game + cultural tourism" cannot be one-way, and both parties must increase investment and efforts to last, which is manifested in the deeper cooperation between game enterprises and local tourism resources.
In the case of the report, at the 2022 "Tiandao IP 7th Anniversary Celebration" node, the project will link the local government and professional tripartite partners to jointly explore the new commercial format of revitalizing tulou. For the first time in the game, live connection + delivery was carried out, bringing more than hundreds of thousands of yuan (that week) to the local area. As China's first physical tourism product linked to the IP of the national style game, the "Tianya Mingyue Knife" Xiangxi Cultural Tourism Line connects the three core scenic spots of Furong Town, Zhangjiajie and Phoenix Ancient City in Hunan Province, and implants game scenes and interactive links in the tourism process through in-depth game theme element packaging, integrating the three elements of tourism, games and national style, integrating tourism resources such as scenic spots, hotels, restaurants and cultural and creative shops, and activating immersive new tourism scenes.
In addition, in the cooperation between "Seeking the Way" and Huangshan Scenic Area, the Anhui Digital Cultural Industry Innovation Research Institute led by Sanqi Mutual Entertainment focuses on the innovation and development needs of the digital cultural industry in Anhui Province, focusing on the development direction of animation, games, cultural tourism, education, music, film and television, covering multiple tracks such as software tool engines and digital cultural creativity.
It also plans to promote exchanges and cooperation with government departments at all levels in Greater Huangshan in the cultivation of digital talents and technological innovation, so as to jointly enhance the core competitiveness of both sides.
The most recent example is Lingxi Interactive Entertainment's immersive plot card mobile game "Like Kite", which was launched before the National Day, and directly announced that it had reached a long-term cultural industry project cooperation with Yangzhou Canal Cultural Investment Group and Yangzhou Scenic Area. In the coming year, the cultural and creative cooperation of the game will also link Yangzhou Intangible Cultural Heritage Treasure Museum, Yangzhou Lacquerware Factory, Yangzhou Canal Grand Theater and other projects, and preparations have been made in advance for the follow-up "online content drives offline entities, and offline culture feeds back to the online core".
In fact, it can be seen here that in the selection of IP for "game + cultural tourism", popular IP with long-term operation will become the backbone, or new products that are backed by large manufacturers and are willing to invest a lot of resources for long-term maintenance will become a new force to promote a new round of cooperation.
The reason is very simple, even if both parties invest a lot of resources to build immersive theme scenes at one time, cultural tourism projects must be pushed into new ones if they want to maintain the cycle of "offline and online" for a long time instead of a hammer deal, not only in the continuous innovation of online game content (offline cultural and creative resources can be updated and supported by online content), but also in offline projects (constantly adjusted in line with the progress of the game), which requires the cooperation of both parties and the continuous influence of the game itself, or the strength of the game and the enterprise itself to have support.
Of course, this does not mean that "game + cultural tourism" has only one long-term path in the future, and "Black Myth Wukong" is also a typical case.
The Shanxi Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism has launched 3 theme routes in the north of Shanxi, southern Jinnan and southeast of Shanxi and the route of "Re-walking the Westward Journey to the Ancient Buildings Self-driving Tour", inviting game passers to experience "Follow Wukong to Shanxi" for free. The scenic spots and cultural and museum venues directly under the Taiyuan Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics have extended their opening hours, and many scenic spots are free of charge and reservation-free.
From the 1st to the 4th, the number of visitors in the Yunzhong Dayu Scenic Area was 58,300, an increase of 138.7%; Two 4A-level tourist attractions in Jingning received 100,500 tourists, an increase of 68%, and achieved an operating income of 5.1035 million yuan, an increase of 69.1%. In the lobby of the visitor center of Huaguoshan Scenic Area, a game experience area of "Black Myth: Wukong" is set up, and visitors can choose two game methods: PS5 and PC, and defeat the NPC 'Guangzhi' in the first chapter within 15 minutes to enter the scenic spot for free.
Through the support of game quality and game technology, the scenic spot itself should not be transformed too much, and the cost of offline to offline diversion will be reduced a lot, and lower-cost investment will also become a way of cooperation between game + cultural tourism.
However, whether it is in the long term or short term, the underlying support of immersion is the value and influence of game IP, which is inseparable from the progress of product quality and technical capabilities.