Author | Chen Bin
Edit | Yang Jing
"What kind of company is Eagle Point?"
"The answer excludes game companies in the first place." After the live broadcast of the "Ark of Tomorrow Thanksgiving Celebration" on the evening of October 25, a huge amount of new news made players start to laugh wildly on social media.
Of course, no matter what others think, Eagle Point always puts the game first.
Image source Weibo "Ark of Tomorrow Arknights"
During the live broadcast, the founder of Eagle Point Network and the producer of "Ark of Tomorrow", "Sea Cat Complex", announced the latest main story "Fury Bright". Players from the beginning of the public beta began to "chase more" the game plot, will usher in some answers in this stage of the "decisive battle chapter". Sea Cat revealed in the live broadcast that the dialogue content of the script text is still more, and the text volume of 1-2 film scripts has reached the same as the previous chapters.
The off-game content is also exciting: Eagle Point Network has launched a new clothing sub-brand "Yi Shi Shan" and will launch the first wave of themed costumes on Double Eleven; in 2021, the offline Ark of Tomorrow will be held and the game soundtrack will be launched; in Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places, Eagle Point Network will also launch game-themed coffee shops for a limited time.
Image source Weibo "One Pick Up Mountain"
In just one and a half years, "Ark of Tomorrow" has taken root in the game market, and gradually sprouted many "new shoots", gradually moving from a game product to an IP with great potential.
But the sea cat told the hedgehog commune (ID: ciweigongshe) that before the game was open beta, no one dared to imagine today's pomp and circumstance. "Ark of Tomorrow didn't fit the mainstream at the time. But I believe it is unique in that it appeals to a small group of people, including myself. The original intention of starting a business is just to make works that make us proud. ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > "hardcore" dark horse</h1>
In June 2019, the "Ark of Tomorrow", which was publicly tested for less than a month, was anxious to hang up a recruitment notice on the official blog, and the position involved almost all fields related to the game. The game's unexpected popularity caught the R&D team off guard.
At that time, Eagle Point Network was only 2 years old, and "Ark of Tomorrow" was the first product launched. The post-90s founder Haicat has been slightly famous in the fandom creation circle and has also produced some picture books. In 2017, he and a few friends set up a small research and development team and began to work on the "Ark of Tomorrow" project.
In Sea Cat's imagination, the impact of "Ark of Tomorrow" may not be as extensive as it is today, because "Ark of Tomorrow" is really too "hardcore".
Ark of Tomorrow chooses a rare, hardcore tower defense gameplay as the core of the game: as the game time progresses, players will gradually receive a certain "fee" for the "operator" who will block the enemy's advance. Simply destroy all enemies before they reach the finish line to win the game.
Image source TapTap
Before Ark of Tomorrow, most players understood tower defense games more in the era of Defending Turnips or Plants vs. Zombies. The previous successful two-dimensional mobile games, the gameplay level is often relatively simple and light, and more emphasis is placed on the latitude of art and so on.
The reason why "Ark of Tomorrow" is a tower defense game is not because of any advanced business insights, but simply because the sea cat and the R & D team "good mouth".
Compared with other two-dimensional games, the story setting of this mobile game is also more complex and serious.
The game's Terra world is filled with apocalyptic natural disasters and mysterious substances such as the "source stone", which provides energy to promote the progress of civilization, but also brings "ore disease" and a large number of infected people. As discrimination and eviction of infected people intensified, a large number of extremely infected people joined a resistance group called the "Integration Movement" and began to seize their own interests through violent means.
Integrated motion
The player's character "Doctor" is a member of the independent armed medical organization "Rhode Island", commanding the "operators" of the same camp. Players will gradually uncover the mystery behind the world in a confrontation with the "Integration Movement".
Under this worldview, eagle corner network has created a very distinctive character image, and given them completely different races, origins, relationship networks and other content. In addition to the two major organizations, there are also organizations such as "Penguin Logistics", a biotechnology company "Rhein Life", which escorts secret goods.
The complicated settings and character relationships also mean that players need to pay a certain cost of understanding.
Penguin Logistics
As for the art style of this game, it is not "kitsch" enough compared to other two-dimensional games. For the latter, sexy or cute female characters have always been the biggest selling point.
"At the beginning of the project, I wanted to make a work with a modern style, combining the two-dimensional fantasy elements with the modern trend elements." Sea Cat mentioned that the characters of Ark of Tomorrow still retain typical Japanese two-dimensional style characteristics, but they are also influenced by modern design styles and game worldviews.
This has led to the costumes of many game characters, and even the prototype can be found in reality, which is inevitably "not exposed" compared to the traditional two-dimensional mobile game.
Rhode island
In addition to the plot being hardcore enough, the public opinion crisis during the internal testing period also made this product once on the verge of danger.
The cause is that during the three-test period, some of the values in the game were unbalanced, and the intensity of individual characters with different rarity degrees varied too much, which led to a lot of "verbal criticism". On tapTap, the game community, the test suit's rating dropped to 6.3/10 at one point.
However, the "high threshold" brought by the hardcore and the word-of-mouth crisis in the three-test period have not been able to stop the popularity of this game.
After the public beta version was launched, the R&D team made significant adjustments based on the opinions of players during the three tests. The optimized Ark of Tomorrow has been recognized by the market and users. According to the statistics of Qimai data, "Ark of Tomorrow" has reached the top of the App Store game best-seller list five times in the year and a half since its launch. During the new version change, it usually remains in the top 10 of the best-seller list.
With the development of overseas markets, this mobile game has also gained a large number of fans in Japan and other countries. According to the report of data agency Sensor Tower, the overseas revenue of "Ark of Tomorrow" last month ranked 14th among all Chinese mobile game products that went to sea, surpassing the game products of many major manufacturers.
The source of the image is "SensorTower" public account
Defeat is also word of mouth, and success is also word of mouth. Behind the push of "Ark of Tomorrow" to break the circle, it is still those players who love the game. The public doesn't seem to hate "hardcore games" or "niche gameplay", but simply hates "uninteresting games".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > from "game" to "work"</h1>
In June 2019, UP's main "Shifeng" produced a video called "The Daily Sand Sculpture of tomorrow's Ark Cadres", which quickly became popular on station B, and also received 2.07 million views on the home page. In the video, Shi Feng borrowed the game's screen, dubbed it himself, and reinterpreted a funny short story with a program effect around the various "memes" in the game.
In 8 months, Shifeng produced a total of 10 episodes of "Sand Sculpture Daily", with an average of millions of views per session. To this day, Station B is still producing similar Ark of Tomorrow videos, and it has given birth to the "terriers" that were once widely circulated in countless ACG circles.
For example, the transliteration of "Doctor" is harmonious, so that players begin to call each other "Knife Tower". And because many players often draw "Cross", a low-star operator, and she will shout out the slightly magical Japanese line "ko~ko~da~yo (here oh)" when fighting, more and more players are beginning to call this line "the most terrifying sound of the 21st century".
The picture is taken from the wind at Station B " Tomorrow's Ark operators sand sculpture daily! #2”
Popular memes, secondary creations among players, and word-of-mouth communication in the community have made the influence of "Ark of Tomorrow" grow geometrically.
Industry media game Grapes has produced 2 lists, namely the 2019 game community TapTap top rated Top30 and the number of reviews top 30 mobile games. In both lists, the high-rated games are usually niche, while the games with the highest number of reviews often have a poor reputation, and some of the ratings do not even reach the "passing line". Among them, only "Ark of Tomorrow" was on the list at the same time, and the reputation and popularity were both harvested.
In TapTap's awards at the end of 2019, "Ark of Tomorrow" also won the best game of the year, the most influential domestic game and the most popular game among players. One of the "Most Loved By Players" was voted by 300,000 TapTap users.
Image from Weibo "TapTap"
Although SeaCat had thought Ark of Tomorrow would be a niche product, that didn't mean he was slacking off on the quality of the game. It is precisely because the R&D team has worked tirelessly on the content of the game that players will gradually fall in love with the "Terra World" and volunteer to act as the disseminator of the game.
For the sea cat who ran away to start a business, this game also pinned on his creative ideals to a certain extent.
"We don't want Ark of Tomorrow to be a four-dimensional product or just a game. I want everyone to feel that it is a work, a pluralistic content. Sea Cat said in past interviews with the media.
In terms of story plot and character setting, it took a lot of effort on the R&D team.
Seacat wants to make Ark of Tomorrow a "believable" world. "Believable does not mean realism, but it can make the player feel real and believable to a certain extent, and it needs to be self-consistent. Therefore, the worldview was first born in the process of developing the game. He explained.
When the three main characters of "Amia", "Kelsi" and "Chen" were finalized, there were no small differences within the R&D team. "These are three very important characters, which are equivalent to the basis of the whole story." Sea Cat told hedgehog Commune that the team members had made several versions of the most ideal draft in their minds, which made him difficult to choose.
Kelsey
After thinking about it, everyone decided to print out all the drafts that everyone had made and paste them on the blackboard in a small conference room. Members of the R&D team, such as programs, planners, and copywriters, go in and vote one by one, and let them give reasons for voting.
Today's character setting in the game is derived from the results of this internal vote.
After the game was officially launched, players unexpectedly found that Eagle Point Network's pursuit and polishing of detail exceeded many people's expectations. There are racial settings in the Terra world, and the image design of the race is derived from the fusion of human beings and some kind of animal element. Many of the animal archetypes selected are extinct. Like the big world view of "mining energy leads to ore disease", it implies the theme of "environmental protection".
Among them, the "Ruper" family is based on human beings and integrates elements such as "wolf ears". Some players have speculated that the race's game character "Lapland" is based on the extinct White Wolf of Newfoundland. Because the character's belt is engraved with the small words "1911", which is the year of the extinction of the White Wolf in Newfoundland.
Lapland
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the possibility of tower defense gameplay</h1>
In a more pure gameplay dimension, SeaCat and the R&D team have also been exploring more possibilities. As an expendable game content, the strong strategic attributes of tower defense gameplay make it more challenging to design skills than other categories of gameplay.
For example, in the role-playing game, only the attack mode and model of the monster need to be changed, which can often give the player a completely different combat experience.
But in tower defense games, it's just the map route and monster type that changes, and sometimes it doesn't necessarily lead to the same great gaming experience. Players need not only to play through the level, but also to experience "strategy" during the level, and the one-sided tower defense level often lacks too much fun.
The "Terrain Kill" design/diagram in the game is derived from TapTap
"The difficulty is here. In terms of game design, we naturally want to do innovation. Even if the individual elements may have appeared in some other works, combined with other content, it is likely to be something completely different, and it is likely to be very uninteresting or interesting, so the whole process is still relatively bumpy. The sea cat recalled.
In the process of trial and error, the R & D team gradually has a unique methodology for tower defense gameplay.
Some levels of Ark of Tomorrow introduce an obstacle mechanic: players can set obstacles to change the direction of the enemy's travel. Obstacles can't be placed at the end or block the road, but can be cleverly set so that enemies have to circle around half a circle, giving the player more time to attack.
As early as the original idea, the Seacat planned to apply this mechanism to all levels. After constant testing, he gradually realized that the full application would confuse and annoy the player. Therefore, in the final presentation, this feature is only opened in a few levels.
But when it comes to experiencing these levels, obstacles tend to play a very clever role and have a strong strategic nature.
Among them, 4-4 levels, but also because of the wonderful design, so far for players to talk about, there are countless kinds of playthrough mode, at that time even some players have developed a way to win without any cadre, "soldiers without blood blades".
Due to the presence of a special terrain in this level, the enemy will deduct the amount of health at any time. There are 2 more end points in the level, and when one road is blocked, the enemy will automatically turn to the other end point. Players can set up obstacles to make enemies turn towards another end point as they approach the end. Because of the detour for too long, the enemy will eventually fall into this negative effect.
4-4/ Screenshot from Station B
In the year and a half after the game was launched, the R&D team did not stand still, but did a lot of innovation. Among them, the "integration strategy" gameplay that combines the characteristics of roguelike that was launched this year alone took less than half a year of research and development time.
Roguelike is a more popular way of playing in China in recent years, originating from a game called "Rogue". In this type of game, the game roles, scenes, skills and other factors played by the player in each game are all randomly generated by the computer, and the subsequent acquisition of game resources and the game progress are also completely random. Each round usually has only one challenge opportunity, at which the player will restart the random adventure.
Sea Cat recalls that there were many difficulties encountered in integrating this gameplay into the Ark of Tomorrow system. "Some players want to play with brand new operators, and some players want to use their existing operators, and the two voice needs are almost completely opposite."
During the development and testing period of the new gameplay, from the demo to the final finished version, the Seacat and everyone on the R&D team need to play it repeatedly and find ways to improve it, and this process usually takes several months. But in the memory of the sea cat, the people on the research and development team are still happy.
"In a certain area of the office, there are often screams and laughter during that time, and after work, it will often cause onlookers, the entertainment effect is outstanding, and everyone is immersed in the fun of the game, and for a while they may forget that they are still in the office." Sea Cat said.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > game</h1>
Players say that the company behind Ark of Tomorrow has another name - "Sound Corner Network".
In the live broadcast of the "Ark of Tomorrow Thanksgiving Celebration", Eagle Point Network released a documentary about the production process of game music.
In the documentary, Eagle Point Networks and Abbey Road Studios have developed an in-depth collaboration and recorded the game music of "Ark of Tomorrow" here. The music studio is famous all over the world, whether it is the beatles, Lady Gaga and other albums, or the music soundtrack of legendary movies such as "The Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter".
Abbey Road Studios is recording gameplay music
Eagle Point Network's dedication to music is not just in the field of game soundtrack.
Last November, Ark of Tomorrow invited Japanese artist "DJ okawari" to create the independent single "Speed of Light" around the popular character of "Penguin Logistics" in the game. Since then, it has been unstoppable, producing at least one game-related independent music every month, even more prolific than many singers.
"In fact, we have always planned to launch independent music, because just like the plot, music can express a lot of things, and the Ark of Tomorrow has just attracted a lot of external professional creators." Sea Cat explains, "We tried to put a part of the content that is relatively shallow to the gameplay but is also popular with everyone, and chose to publish it outside the game, and found that there is also a very large creative space, which also allows everyone to have a new experience when watching." ”
After the release of the music project, the production team became more and more aware of the importance of music in the immersive experience of Ark of Tomorrow. They believe that the sense of rhythm and the emotions contained in the music can often more directly express what other carriers cannot express, so as to better convey the complexity and depth of the Terra world to players.
Today, original music has become one of the everyday contents of eagle point networks.
In fact, as early as a year ago, sea cats already had the idea of hosting a "Ark of Tomorrow Concert". But in the early days, he preferred to get the game itself right first.
"When you find that more and more players like us, you will want to add more interesting things, or through other forms, present some of the concepts, styles and even consciousness of the Ark." Sea Cat said. Nowadays, some music calls are relatively high, and they have reached a certain order of magnitude, so holding a music event is also naturally formed.
The clothing sub-brand "Yishishan", which was released at the same time, also has a similar birth background.
At first, this was just a "brain hole" for the team, and the focus of the work at that time was still trying to find ways to present more game content. Now, after gradually gaining more recognition, they are beginning to gradually realize the plans that were once impossible. "I hope that through such a more avant-garde clothing brand, some concepts, styles and even consciousness of the Ark will be presented from a different perspective."
In less than a week, the fans of the official blog of "One Pick Up Mountain" have exceeded 40,000. That promotional video, the Weibo platform alone has reached 1.86 million times. The first floating industrial series of clothing has not yet been released, and players have already begun to urge new series.
Some players played under the official blog and said, "Eagle Point even launched a tower defense game. ”
A year and a half ago, Eagle Point Network was still worried about insufficient manpower. Today, however, it has the ability to try and explore more possibilities of "Ark of Tomorrow". The starting point of all this is not a grand ideal, just because a certain gamer wants to do his own favorite game.
"I've seen countless players who like Ark of Tomorrow on social platforms discussing the operators, discussing the identity of the Doctor, discussing many of the details and Easter eggs we buried, and even developing gameplay that we didn't even think of. We found that as long as we insist on doing our own satisfactory and favorite works, we will actually be recognized by a wide range of groups. It made us very happy and very touched. Sea Cat said.