Wen Zhu Kai
Script kill, young people's social new favorite. /Star Detective
"The script writer has no sleep."
At 1 a.m. on March 19, Sasa had just finished her work in the store and returned home to lie down. Less than 5 hours of sleep remained for her. At this point, Jimmy and a few colleagues were still busy in the store— a pace that had been going on for nearly half a year.
Sasa and Jimmy are the managers of a script killing shop in Guangzhou.
In 2021, with the popularity of the variety show "Star Detective", the script kill has become the new social favorite of young people. More and more people are walking into the offline script killing shop to experience this new game.
The New Weekly APP reporter came to Sasa and Jimmy's store and talked to them about the past and present lives of script killing, and the unfamiliar industry stories behind the fiery script killing market.
Script killing has become a new trend in young people's consumption. /Star Detective
From pit to pit
Script killing is actually an imported product.
In 1935, the American Hasbro Toy Company released a board game called Jury Box. In this game, people gather around to read 6 different cases and play the role of jury members to determine whether the defendant is guilty or not through the existing evidence.
In 1949, Hasbro Toys launched Cluedo's board game, which later became known as the "Murder Mystery game", the prototype of "Script Killing".
In simple terms, this game will put people in specific situations and engage in immersive role-playing:
For example, there is a murder in a villa, and several players present are suspects. Each player will receive an exclusive character script, including but not limited to the identity of the player, the relationship with the deceased, and the trajectory of the action on the day of the crime.
One of them is the real murderer, while the other players have to collect evidence in each room, conduct round-table reasoning votes, and finally find the real murderer and restore the truth of the case.
The earliest script killed, originated abroad.
Sasa and Jimmy were among the first players in The Pit Script Kill in China.
In 2016, they were exposed to script killing for the first time. At that time, the script kill was still a relatively niche game, and the first script they played was "Death Wears White", which originated in the United Kingdom and was known as the "antique book":
A top surgeon was shot in the hospital, and 9 people, including doctors, nurses, and interns present, were suspected, and players needed to finally deduce the real murderer and restore the truth of the case by collecting evidence and interrogating each other.
A game often takes 3 to 6 hours.
Early script killings were not as large in scale, and most of them appeared in the form of board games.
In 2016, after the broadcast of the domestic large-scale reasoning reality show "Star Detective", it won a good reputation of 9.3 points on Douban, and the script entered the public eye.
In just a few years, online apps and offline stores with the theme of script killing have ushered in a spurt of growth:
The report of the 36Kr Research Institute shows that the "I am the mystery" APP, which focuses on online reasoning, completed tens of millions of yuan of Pre-A round of financing as early as 2018. During the Spring Festival in 2020, the number of users of the "I Am Mystery" APP soared to 8 million, and the server was on the verge of collapse.
According to CCTV Finance, in 2019 alone, the number of offline stores across the country soared from 2,400 to 12,000, and the industry scale exceeded 10 billion yuan.
More and more young people are entering offline stores in search of a better gaming experience.
On the "I Am a Mystery" APP, players can choose scripts with different themes, different numbers, and different difficulties, play one of the characters, and play a game of script killing online.
In Sasa and Jimmy's view, the popularity of the script is not accidental.
On the one hand, script killing satisfies the entertainment needs of young people.
Script killing is equivalent to a "role play + reasoning" game, people can play different roles, experience a variety of life, release long-term work pressure:
Reasoning enthusiasts can choose the "hardcore logic book", peel away the cocoon in the fog, enjoy the brain-burning reasoning process; cosplay enthusiasts can choose the script of different themes such as ancient style, republic of China, and modernity, and take good photos;
High-pressure office workers can choose the "emotional book" to vent their emotions by crying and laughing; friends can choose the "joy book" to create a famous scene of sand sculpture.
When many players play script killing, they will sincerely substitute for the character, or remember their own similar experiences, and empathize with the character.
Script killing, on the other hand, has both social attributes.
Every weekend, young people can meet a few good friends and play scripts together to promote feelings; if there are not enough people, they can also play with strangers through "carpooling" and meet new friends.
Many companies will also choose to play script killing when team building, "the boss plays an emperor, a group of eunuchs on the left, and a group of concubines on the right" to promote the feelings between colleagues.
Jimmy believes that script killing is a cost-effective entertainment.
Although a ticket may be as high as 200 yuan, players can play for a full 6 hours, not only can play the reasoning game, but also repeatedly change clothes to take pictures, the average cost of less than 40 yuan per hour, but also the price of a cup of milk tea, a movie ticket.
"Adults are stressed out in life, and you often can't do something as you please. But when playing script killing, if you draw the murderer, you can make up lies to deceive others, no one will talk to you, and you can get a sense of accomplishment from it. ”
Many players will also choose the reverse string of characters, leaving the classic sand sculpture famous scene.
Opening a script killing shop is not so simple
Around 2018, Sasa and Jimmy had the idea of opening a store:
"Online script killing APP has many hard injuries, such as inability to communicate face-to-face, easy to drop, poor experience and so on.
From the perspective of the market, we are more optimistic about the industry prospects of offline script killing. At that time, there were only a few stores in Guangzhou, and the competition was not fierce, so we decided to open an offline script killing store. ”
At the time, Sasa was working as an executive at a financial company, while Jimmy was running a Western restaurant. If there is any advantage, Jimmy has been a designer for 4 years, and he believes that he is more good at interior decoration and has certain operating experience.
The offline script killing stores on the market are mainly divided into two types:
A type of main board game script, in which players gather around a table and restore the truth of the event through the relevant information provided on the card;
Another type of live-action script, the store will change the script content from cards to real scenes, to create a better immersive experience for players - for example, if a script is set in the murder of the opera house, the store will turn an entire floor into an opera house, and each player can change into retro costumes and have their own exclusive room.
In the live-action script killing, the player does not look at the card in his hand to reason, but enters the real "crime site" to collect evidence, so that there is a more sense of substitution.
Sasa and Jimmy decided to open an offline script killing shop that focuses on live-action. Before opening the store, Jimmy worked at an offline script killing store in Guangzhou and studied for nearly 1 year before he really began to prepare for the opening of the store.
He found that it is not easy to open an offline script killing shop, far from "buying a few scripts and coming back, you can charge players".
In fact, from birth to landing, a script often has to go through the four stages of "creation→ production→ distribution→ execution", and a cycle takes about 3 to 6 months, or even longer:
First of all, the author of the script killing should first write a project book, roughly explaining the background of the case, the main characters, the method of the murder, and so on. After writing, the author submits the project letter to the supervising producer, who will ensure that the new script does not duplicate the existing content on the market and that there are no obvious loopholes in the plot logic before the author begins to write the script.
"The producer also has to study the laws of the market and speculate on what type of book will be popular in the market."
For example, last year, there was a period of popular hardcore books, players may have spent 6 hours without reasoning out anything, but he just likes this brain-burning feeling; after 3 months and then popular horror books, is to scare you dare not sleep; and then 3 months and popular emotional books, like a script called "Hello" out of the circle in 2020, so that many players are crying. ”
Some players focus on hardcore reasoning and don't like emotional elements. This type of player is also known as a "pineapple head" player.
When a script is completed, the distribution studio chooses the right time to bring it to market.
Shops from all over the country can log on to the online "Little Black Detective" and other apps, or go to the offline script killing exhibition to buy the script of your choice.
The scripts on the market are mainly divided into three types: one is called a boxed script, each store can be purchased, the price is generally within 1000 yuan; one is called the city limit script, each city only 3 to 4 stores can buy, the price is generally in the range of 1000 yuan ~ 2000 yuan; there is also a called exclusive script, a city only one store can buy, the price is generally in the range of 3000 yuan ~ 5000 yuan -
Mentioned above, is the regular board game script price. If it is a real-life script that contains a design plan and a procurement drawing, the price will be higher, and a copy can be sold for up to 300,000 yuan.
Jimmy said that when stores buy scripts on online platforms, they can generally only see the title and content of the script, and do not know the content of the script, most of the time they are "blindly buying" the script.
When the store runs the offline exhibition, it can play a round through the "internal test" method, and then decide whether to buy the script, but it often takes half a day to play a round, and they do not have the energy to evaluate the script one by one.
"Our store has purchased more than 300 sets of board game scripts before, but after buying them back and reviewing them one by one, we found that most of the scripts are title parties, and the introduction looks very attractive, but the actual content has a lot of logical hard wounds and cannot be directly put into use." We will go through 'secondary processing' before it is officially opened to players, and some of them cannot be repaired and can only be discarded directly. ”
Stores can purchase scripts on online platforms such as "Little Black Detective". Relevant data show that by the end of 2020, the "Little Black Detective" platform has listed nearly 3,000 scripts, with a transaction amount of up to 100 million yuan.
After the store buys the script back, it often needs to be processed twice before it can be officially landed.
Take the current most popular real-life script in the store, "A Dream of the Red Chamber", as an example: in 2019, Jimmy got the exclusive copyright of the script in Guangzhou, but after returning, he found that to create a real scene, it is not to copy the script, but also needs to adapt to local conditions, increase sound and light, BGM and other elements, basically 80% of the places have to be changed;
The upcoming script "RedStone Shrine", which will be opened soon, has also been adjusted for nearly a month, and has not yet reached its best condition.
"A lot of the things in the script are still relatively difficult to make. For example, if it writes a big bang, you may have to combine props such as VR to achieve it; or to create a fairyland scene, you need to buy an ice dryer or atomizer. ”
In order to enhance the competitiveness of the store, Sasa and Jimmy will also take the initiative to differentiate the original script:
For example, "Family Banquet" is about a murder case at the dinner table, the script has a family around the plot of eating hot pot, they really added hot pot in the real scene, so that players can eat while playing, "We also added several characters, so that 6 people can play, 8 people can also play."
After creating the script, they will also invite their peers to internally test, and make modifications and adjustments according to the suggestions, and finally achieve the desired effect before they can be officially put on the market.
The store will reprocess the script to achieve better results.
Just 1 live-action script, it costs hundreds of thousands of yuan to do it, plus rent, water and electricity, wages, and other script costs, Sasa and Jimmy opened a medium-sized script killing shop, a total of more than 1 million yuan in cost.
In this way, the JOKER real-life mystery script kill shop operated by Sasa and Jimmy officially opened in Guangzhou.
Players who come here to spend, mostly young people aged 20 to 35, play once it takes about 4 to 6 hours, and each person needs to pay a fee ranging from 98 yuan to 238 yuan. After the player gets a good experience, he will often spontaneously go back to his friends to promote it, attracting more passengers, and the return rate is as high as 30%.
In the case of good operating conditions, the script killing store can generally recover the cost within 1 to 2 years. In less than 2 years, Sasa and Jimmy's store was named the gold medal script killing shop in Guangzhou on the public review.
The store where the live-action script kills will generally be equipped with a special costume room to make the player more immersive.
The script kills the prospects and chaos
Meituan's research report shows that by the end of 2020, there are more than 30,000 offline script killing stores nationwide. Jimmy learned last time at the show that this number has now increased to 50,000.
Many friends came to consult Jimmy, saying that they also wanted to open a script killing shop. But Jimmy doesn't recommend that you open a store blindly:
"Now everyone thinks it's very profitable to open a store, and everyone wants a piece of the pie, but it's not like that." A well-run store may have tens of thousands of profits per month, but it only deducts fixed costs such as rent and ignores other hidden costs.
For example, our script has a depreciation cycle, it costs hundreds of thousands of yuan to create a live-action script, the player will only play the script once, and after almost 1 year, you will have to change to a new live-action script. Counting the expenses such as losses, taxes, and publicity, there is not much money that can be finally obtained. ”
Creating a live-action script often requires a cost of hundreds of thousands of yuan.
The offline script killing industry is becoming increasingly popular, and many industry chaos has also grown:
The most common is the problem of piracy.
Many small shops that have just started will buy pirated scripts in order to save costs. On many e-commerce platforms, merchants only need to spend 8.5 yuan to buy 1,000 pirated electronic scripts, which greatly damages the interests of original authors and regular stores, and there is currently no relevant industry norm to solve this problem.
There is also the problem of vicious competition.
In order to attract more customers, many stores deliberately lower prices and engage in vicious competition in the market. According to Jimmy's recollection, many people opened a store to buy a few scripts to play back, invested three or four hundred thousand into it, and soon went out of business due to poor management.
"Guiyang once had a place exaggerated to what extent, its area is less than 1/2 of Guangzhou's Haizhu District, actually opened more than 300 offline script killing stores, the result fell into the inner volume, now there are only a dozen left."
During the epidemic, many script killing shops could not be operated and closed down.
The quality of offline script killing stores is uneven, and the player's experience cannot be guaranteed. Many script killing enthusiasts said that the quality of the script, the professionalism of the DM (host), and the venue environment will greatly affect their play experience:
For example, I got an insignificant role and was playing soy sauce the whole time; the store site was simple, the sound insulation was very poor, and the sound of reasoning in the next room could be heard; the DM service attitude was not good, the whole process was not in the state; after filling the membership card, the store ran away and so on.
Jimmy said that in the matter of "carpooling", it is easy for stores to contradict players:
"We have 3 'carpooling' groups with nearly 1,500 people in the group. Some players come alone and can team up with strangers here. This is supposed to be a convenient thing for everyone, but often people will temporarily 'jump out of the car' and suddenly say that they can't come, which will lead to insufficient numbers and others can't play.
After the failure of 'carpooling', many players felt that they had not played it and hoped that the store could refund them. But we are essentially a shop that sells time, and once you book this time slot, whether you eventually come or not, no one else can book anymore, so there is no way to refund the money. Many players will not understand this matter, and then give the store a bad review.
'Carpooling' is a thankless task, so most stores do not provide this service, and directly let you gather people to come back. ”
The quality of offline script killing stores is uneven, and the player experience is difficult to guarantee.
Although the industry has yet to be regulated, Jimmy and Sasa still believe that this is a sunrise industry and plan to expand the size of stores in the future.
Jimmy believes that in the future, the core competitiveness of offline script killing stores is still the script, and the number of scripts on the market is still far from enough.
In 2021, Jimmy and his friends officially set up a Joker script distribution studio under the store, specializing in recruiting part-time authors to write scripts, and there are currently 2 professional screenwriters, 1 online writer and 1 college student who have joined his team; at the same time, Jimmy has also considered combining Guangzhou's Cantonese culture to create scripts with regional characteristics and attract more players.
Sasa, on the other hand, pays more attention to the macro development of the entire industry. Usually, she will read relevant research reports to understand the latest industry trends, such as some offline stores using the most cutting-edge VR technology to bring players a better sense of experience.
Sasa is also continuing to pay attention to the country's policies: in a few cities such as Yunnan, local governments have begun to cooperate with offline script killing stores to develop immersive cultural tourism projects, hand over low-cost vacant land to script killing stores for operation, promote the local tourism economy, and stimulate local consumption levels.
"The offline script killing stores across the country are actually interconnected, and we will have a variety of groups to communicate with our peers on a regular basis to make the industry develop benignly."
Laymen only see a good result, but do not know how many days and nights industry workers have paid for it, and how many problems have been dealt with. We don't even have time to be upset, we can only keep moving forward, constantly motivating ourselves to 'hold on a little longer, the light is in the future'. ”
In the future, the core competitiveness of offline script killing stores is still the script.