Author: Mao Lina
There was a loud bang in the sky, and "Nuan Nuan" made a shining debut.
This is a mobile game full of buffs - produced by Paperstacking, the latest IP work of the Nuan Nuan series, escorted by many bigwigs in the game industry, and also rubbed on the express train of the open world, whether it is Papergames itself or the outside world, they all feel that this will be the most popular mobile game at the end of 2024.
This high expectation can be most intuitively reflected in the number of reservations. Before the public beta on December 5, the number of global pre-orders for "Infinite Warmth" reached 30 million, and after opening for pre-download, it topped the IOS free list in 34 countries.
"Infinite Warmth" was launched with great momentum, but the results were not as expected, not only failed to reach the top of the IOS best-selling list, but also overturned its reputation in the player circle.
"Is this big world a special for PC?" "Why is my Nuan Nuan a dead fish eye" "Folded paper floats, do you think it's "Black Myth"? Forcing players to change devices for the sake of experience. ”
Unexpectedly, the first open-world game to overturn after "Black Myth: Wukong" turned out to be the much-anticipated "Infinite Warmth". Although the internal letter of Papergames boss Yao Runhao said that the PC revenue of "Infinite Warmth" was excellent, and the first-day turnover improved the company's first-day turnover record of the game, some people pointed out that the qualifier of "first-day flow" was not clear, and Boss Yao's internal letter was more meaningful to appease.
Don't blow it, don't blow it, little daughter of paperfold, How about the grand debut of "Infinite Warmth"? It just so happens that today is Nuan Nuan's birthday, and Entertainment Capital wants to start from the content itself to send a "birthday wish" that may be a little harsh but must be sincere and true to "Nuan Nuan".
With 30 million reservations, I can't support the dream of "Infinite Warmth" to reach the top
""Nuan Nuan" will definitely reach the top, and when the time comes, it will be 20 draws, which is beautiful." On December 4th, the day before the open beta of "Infinite Warmth", friends and Xiaoyu happily imagined the grand occasion of "Infinite Warmth" rushing to the first place on the IOS best-selling list after the open beta, and were worried about which set of clothes they wanted to draw from the 20 free gifts.
It's not a daydream of friends, you must know that at the beginning of the year, the number of reservations for the public beta of "Love and Deep Space" was less than 15 million, only half of "Infinite Nuan Nuan", but the results of "Deep Space" are obvious to all, not only the mixed pool has successfully topped the IOS best-selling list, but Qin Che's single card pool has also successfully topped the overall list a few days ago, "Nuan Nuan will definitely reach the top", many people are so sure in their hearts.
On December 5th, "Infinite Warmth" was officially open beta, and the first day of water was not eye-catching. Entertainment Capital counted the ranking performance of "Infinite Warmth" on the IOS best-selling list in the three periods of 12:30, 15:30 and 22:00 respectively, 27, 24 and 23. For other companies, this may be a good result, but judging from the anticipation and momentum before the open beta of "Infinite Warmth", it is obviously a little disappointing.
Today, "Infinite Warmth" slowly climbed up the rankings, and at three o'clock in the afternoon, it rushed to the 21st place in the overall list.
"Nuan Nuan makes people have no desire for krypton", more than one player told Xiaoyu. And Xiaoyu, who has also experienced "Infinite Warmth", thinks that there are several things that "Infinite Warmth" may have done wrong.
First, they put too much emphasis on the experience and gameplay of the big world, and too much on the PC side.
The first group of players who chose to abandon "Infinite Warmth" was not because of the operation or gameplay, but because the equipment could not keep up. Since the start of the open beta yesterday, some players on various social platforms have reported that they can't enter the game, most of which are Huawei users (not compatible with the HarmonyOS system). Those who finally get into the game find that they are playing a different game from others.
In order to better present the details of the big world, "Infinite Warmth" uses the virtual 5 engine, which is very impressive on the PC side, but for most people on the mobile side, it is a disaster. Other people's warmth, beauty and cuteness, their own warm dead fish eyes with Down's face; Other people's big world is full of flowers, light and shadow flow, and their own big world is gray and often stuck pixels.
Screenshot of the mobile phone
For the sake of fairness, Xiaoyu used three devices before and after to log in to "Infinite Warmth". Among them, the mobile phone (Iphone14 pro) performs the worst, with freezes and occasional "dead fish eyes"; The tablet (Ipad mini7) is smooth to operate overall, and the picture quality has also been greatly improved; The PC (Lenovo gaming laptop) performs best, showing more detail than the mobile side, and it also feels better in terms of handling.
Soon, someone posted a model recommendation for adapting to "Infinite Warmth",If you want to have the best experience on the mobile side,It has to be a new model in the past 1-2 years,Even the PC side has put forward requirements for settings。 It is true that Papergames is doing this to create a beautiful and realistic world, but as the player said, "the first consideration of the manufacturer should be how to adapt the game to the mobile phone, rather than forcing the player to change the device".
The equipment problem made "Infinite Warmth" lose some of the IP loyalty that was not so high in the first wave of the service, just to see the lively "passerby players".
Second, the strong binding of skills to the main line weakens the sense of experience.
Maybe it's because I've put all my energy on the PC side, and the mobile terminal of "Infinite Warmth" doesn't feel silky, and an experienced veteran player like Xiaoyu actually died four or five times in the novice map jump. Including the key settings and skills on the PC side, which are also different from other games, such as the determination of the double jump; Another example is that the short press and release skill can't automatically lock the monster, which greatly prolongs the time to get started, and impatient people are easy to abandon the pit.
What's even more incomprehensible is that during the internal test, players can push the main line all the way to unlock skills such as climbing and swimming, improving the sense of experience in the big world, "every time you do a main line to unlock a new skill, it is particularly rewarding", on the first day of the open beta, it began to get stuck, and on the first day, you can only unlock the power suit, plus the judgment of the mystery of jumping in the game, it is an act that actively drives the player away.
Third, the separation of the big world gameplay and the krypton gold dress-up.
The core of Nuan Nuan, or krypton gold point, is the change of clothes. At present, the big world gameplay of "Infinite Warmth" does not effectively combine the two, and to put it bluntly, people have no desire to spend money.
Players attracted by "Infinite Nuan" can be divided into two parts, one is the loyal audience of "Nuan Nuan" IP and dress-up games, light players; The other part is for the "women to the open world", who love to explore and pursue the intensity of the middle and heavy players.
Let's start with light players. The dress-up gameplay itself is mild, and it can be solved with fragmented time, but the gameplay of "Infinite Warmth" that can rely on the big world is too heavy, and the way of focusing on PC and light mobile terminals is already unfriendly enough to light players with these fragmented time, and the way to tie the big world experience with the main line is to push this group of light players out.
"I just wanted to go online to draw clothes and find a beautiful place to take pictures, but I found that I couldn't even climb the mountain without pushing the main line, and I didn't need to fold paper."
AI Mapping by Entertainment Capital
The strength party krypton gold spends money to improve the strength and experience, but as mentioned above, Nuan Nuan bundles the ability set with the main line, as long as the main line is pushed, you can naturally unlock various skills, and the card pool set is currently more beautiful and refined, and there is no improvement effect on the experience of exploring the big world, so the strength party naturally has no urge to spend money.
This is also the reason why "Infinite Warmth", which has 30 million pre-orders, failed to enter the top 20 of the best-selling list on the first day of service.
Welcome to "Warm Disney"
In good conscience, although "Nuan Nuan" has many problems, it is definitely not a bad game. It's just that because it was born in Folded Paper, everyone's expectations and requirements for it are higher. From the perspective of "dreaming", Xiaoyu believes that "Nuan Nuan" is indeed a big step towards the two-dimensional Disney to some extent.
"The flavor of "Infinite Warmth" is too strong", this is the most intuitive feeling of Xiaoyu after entering the game.
The BGM on the landing page, the first foothold that accompanies the opening of the main line, the town of Wish Flower, and the stories and troubles of the town's residents all have the flavor of Disney fairy tales. Even in the cutscenes, Nuan Nuan's demeanor and movements make people have a strong sense of Disney princess déjà vu.
Yao Runhao, the founder of Papergames and the producer of the "Nuan Nuan" series, once said that he hoped that Nuan Nuan could grow into a classic IP like Barbie and Disney princesses, and it was probably for this reason that Papergames recruited Disney animation director Brent Homman to join, and judging from the first impression of "Infinite Nuan Nuan", they did it.
The story of "Infinite Nuan Nuan" began with an accident, Nuan Nuan and Big Meow were inadvertently pulled into another world and met the world god in order to find new clothes for the graduation prom, so Nuan Nuan and Big Meow, who had come and went, began to explore in another world.
Different from the previous games, "Infinite Warmth" adopts the gameplay of open world + dress-up, and the open world is the biggest selling point of this work. Similar to other open-world games, Infinite Warmth combines background explanations and novice guidance, and players will experience the rules of operation and survival in this world on the way to find the gods of the world.
Nuan Nuan herself is an ordinary human and does not have the superpower of going to the sky and entering the sea, so all her abilities in the Miracle Continent are obtained through dress-ups, this kind of clothes are called "ability suits" in the game, and different ability suits are used to obtain different skills. After the novice level, all of Nuan Nuan's superpowers disappear, and players have to follow the guide to make the suit and regain these skills to explore in the big world.
For example, on the first day of Xiaoyu, through the main line guidance, he unlocked jumping, purification, small animal series and power suits, and later skills such as climbing and swimming will be unlocked one after another with the progress of the main line. The ability set is not obtained directly, but you must first find a prop called "Fantasy Star", which can be understood as the divine pupil in "Genshin Impact", or the yahaha in "Breath of the Wild", through this prop to comprehend the design drawing, and then collect materials to make the ability set.
Because the ability set is associated with the sense of game experience, it can be obtained by "prostitution". Costume change is the cornerstone of the "Nuan Nuan" series, and it is also a krypton gold point, and there are also card pool settings in the game, they don't need to find materials to make, and they can be changed directly when they are drawn.
More intimate than other dress-up games, "Infinite Warmth" does not stuff makeup into the card pool, but as a gacha reward that can be claimed for free every 10 draws. This is also a small move to improve the player's gacha experience, and it is recommended that all dress-up manufacturers learn it.
As a female-oriented game, "Infinite Warmth" weakens the battles in the game, at least the monsters that Xiaoyu currently encounters belong to the type that can be solved with a skill. But compared to other open-world games that are barrier-free at the beginning, the open world where "Infinite Warmth" binds skills to the main story is a bit like dancing in shackles, and even weakens part of the experience.
Although "Infinite Warmth" hits the rocks, the ambition of folding paper should be encouraged
The headwind reversal that was not optimistic about it was less than expected. The two new games "Love and Deep Space" and "Infinite Warmth" launched by Papergames this year are very suitable to describe with this sentence.
During the internal beta test, there were a flood of bad reviews, and the male protagonists returned to the furnace and plastic surgery "Deep Space" has now developed into the absolute king of the national B track, and can even break hands with big DAU games such as "Glory of Kings" to make national B greatest again. During the internal test, there were almost zero negative reviews, and many authoritative figures did not hesitate to praise "Infinite Warmth", which made a grand debut and landed lightly.
Some practitioners revealed to Xiaoyu that compared with "Deep Space", the investment in "Infinite Warmth" is larger, and the inside of Paperfold is also more optimistic. Thousands of people team research and development, the industry's well-known bigwigs escort, both the project team and Yao Runhao himself feel that this is an absolutely explosive project, "so the results on the first day of the public beta, the internal shock will definitely be big, the follow-up optimization is certain, and the project team may also have to be adjusted." ”
It can also be seen from the open letter sent by Yao Runhao that Paperstack's investment in "Infinite Nuan" can be called a "big gamble", and even pledged equity to miHoYo in exchange for working capital. Some people may think that Paperfold's behavior is a bit crazy, but Xiaoyu feels that as a company with a relatively single product line and a strong binding with women's labels, Papergames' high investment in "Infinite Warmth" is understandable, which is their way to tear off the label.
You must know that the unprecedented antagonism between the sexes has begun to affect manufacturers, especially manufacturers like Papergames who "make their fortune on women".
From a business point of view, we all know that eggs can't be put in one basket, and manufacturers definitely want to go out and explore more categories, but in the eyes of players, the behavior of "starting a family with a woman and wanting to eat a man's bowl of rice" is a betrayal. Last year, Paperstack teased the action game "A Thousand Faces", although it was not explicitly stated, but it was likely to be average, and some people expressed dissatisfaction at that time, thinking that it was a backstabbing female player.
Therefore, Paperfold must hope to be able to tear off the firm label on its body a little bit through the female-oriented + open-world gameplay of "Infinite Warmth", so as to free up hands and feet to try other non-female-oriented categories in the future.
If you have been paying attention to the publicity of "Infinite Warmth", you will find that they do not focus on words such as female orientation and costume change in their promotional words, but talk about their own open world and rich exploration gameplay. This is to expand the circle and attract non-female players to the game.
It's like "Deep Space" successfully probed 3D users and pushed the boundaries of country B outward. "Infinite Warmth" is aimed at second-game players. To be more specific, it is the group of players who entered the pit in 2020 and were deeply affected by open-world games such as "The Legend of Zelda" and "Genshin Impact".
This is also why the "Zelda" of "Infinite Warmth" has a strong taste, Xiaoyu believes that the Papergames team has the ability to make a different open world, and the current mode and gameplay are deliberate, just to cater to the aesthetic preferences of this group of target players. "Nuan Nuan" is not like a mobile game, like a stand-alone game, the basic guidelines are very unclear", obviously Paperfold hopes that everyone will find their own fun in exploration, which is what Yao Runhao said, "Experience happiness from details".
But the explosion of "Zelda" in China and the rise of "Genshin Impact" are the products of the times creating heroes. In those three years, everyone had to work from home at every turn, and they had a lot of leisure time but couldn't go out freely, so the open world became a meal replacement for players to explore the world and get a spiritual massage. Now that the accelerator of life is turned on again, how many people can still stick to hoeing online when they go home at night after a long day of working in front of the computer in the company?
From the perspective of product reserves, there are only two games that have not yet been launched, "A Thousand Faces" and "The Contract of Everything", both of which are medium-to-heavy gameplay, and they are all in the cake drawing stage, and the launch time is unknown. "A Thousand Faces" has also experienced a big shock in the project team and is currently recruiting again. Of course, these two works also belong to the action of "tearing off the label" of paper.
The unexpected failure of "Infinite Warmth" may interrupt the follow-up product arrangement of Paperfold, and the process of "tearing off the label" will be further lengthened. And considering the initial investment of "Infinite Warmth", Papergames will definitely not give up, but will update while optimizing, which is also the traditional skill of Papergames.
Through the PV of "A Thousand Faces" and "The Contract of Everything", Xiaoyu has a bolder idea - "Infinite Warmth" is an accumulation of technical attempts, and it is likely to be applied to these two action games in the future.
Because "Infinite Warmth", "Hundred Faces" and "Contract of Everything" all use the virtual 5 game engine, it is known for its excellent graphics rendering technology, dynamic global illumination, physics simulation and other characteristics, but no manufacturer has used it in open world mobile games before, "Infinite Warmth" is the first, which is why the mobile terminal has requirements for equipment. The adaptability of virtual 5 and action games is extremely high, so it was originally possible to use virtual 4 to use virtual 5 in "Infinite Warmth", which has the possibility of exploring the way for later products.
Papergames is an ambitious company, in fact, they can live a nourishing life without expanding their scale, relying on eating old books + simple and threshold-free gameplay, but they are willing to tear off the label and do more actions to break through the comfort zone, and this kind of effort should be encouraged.
The failure in the early days of the open beta is not a final word, and when "Deep Space" was first launched, the limelight was also stolen by "Outside the World", and now it is not yet sitting on the throne of the TOP1 of National B. Xiaoyu will continue to pay attention to "Infinite Warmth" to see if it can be ashamed and brave to turn the tables against the wind after experiencing this basin of cold water.
What's more, at a time when the entire industry tends to be conservative, someone is willing to be an adventurer, which is a very romantic and courageous thing, which is also the meaning of the existence of games.