"Eternal Night Star God", which was released on December 30 last year, has been on fire in China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions for a long time. Especially in Taiwan, Qimai data shows that the game has been stable for two consecutive months to dominate the top 10 of the Taiwanese best-seller list, and from time to time there is a small outbreak and climb to the top 1.
According to Sensor tower's latest data, with its outstanding performance in China's Hong Kong and Taiwan regions, "Eternal Night Star God" successfully exceeded $10 million in January revenue, ranking 36th in the sea mobile game revenue list and 3rd in the growth list.
For products issued in China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions, IP is a hurdle that cannot be bypassed. As a product without IP blessing, it is indeed surprising that "Eternal Night Star God" can achieve such results in Taiwanese clothing. And behind it (Taiwanese clothing), there are even big IP products such as "Romance of the Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition", "Original God", and "Heaven W".
How did "Eternal Night Star God" successfully leave those big IPs behind without IP blessing? To get this straight, we need to focus on the publisher of the game, Dewdrop Games.
Founded in 2016, Chengdu Dewdrop Games is an Internet company focusing on overseas mobile game distribution, with distribution areas concentrated in Southeast Asia, China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, Vietnam and other places. From the perspective of equity structure, the majority shareholder of Dewdrop Games is Chengdu Tianxiang Interactive Entertainment, which holds 100% of the shares. And Tianxiang Interactive Entertainment has been acquired by iQIYI, in other words, Dewdrop Games actually belongs to iQIYI Games.
The success of "Eternal Night Star God", although on the one hand, is due to the product content. But on the other hand, Dewdrop Games' extensive experience in publishing and its deep integration of product content have also become important factors in success. The combination of the two eventually produced a market reaction that far exceeded expectations.
Don't seek big and complete, but aim at core users
In the face of China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions that have been occupied by big IP, latecomers obviously have to come up with more competitive content in order to break through in the market. The most successful point of "Eternal Night Star God" is that its game content is very good to hold the players with strong payment ability in the two generations after 70-80.
In terms of world view, "Eternal Night Star God" is based on fantasy themes, describing the story of the goddess of creation who gathers the power of the seven elements to awaken the seven planetary gods sleeping everywhere and save the world together. Although the game claims to be a fantasy world, the actual content is closely related to the themes of martial arts and immortals.
For example, in terms of professionalization, relying on the background of the world view, the game has derived a total of six major classes, namely Swordsman, Sword Ji, Gun Hao, Assassin Shadow, Jizo, and Tianxiang, corresponding to the Golden Water, Fire, Earth, Sun and Moon. Each class has different abilities, ranging from the spikes that are good at instantaneous bursts, the swordsman who emphasizes continuous combat, to the Tianxiang who bears the burden of carrying wounds and assisting. Each star god can be awakened after a certain level, and the awakening god power will allow for more exclusive skills, which are combined with the division of classes to enrich the playability.
In addition, the game also has a valkyrie system, players can transform into various familiar martial gods through the vulcan system, and the available vulcans are very rich, and the characters in martial arts novels such as the god eagle hero and the gang leader are among them. The positioning and skills of each valkyrie are different, and they maintain the division of the camps, which shows that in addition to the class positioning, the game also has considerable richness in the team's gameplay collocation.
There is also a marriage system that is quite familiar in the PC page game era, where players can meet, fall in love, marry, and have children with their virtual other half. As the most intimate part of the social system, the marriage system is undoubtedly the memory of the post-70s and post-80s era, and it can also produce a high social quality among players, thereby improving user stickiness and payment rate.
In order to enhance the playability of the game, the game also has built-in mini-games such as fishing and fighting gophers, as well as classic gameplay modes such as territory scrambling and cross-server multiplayer PK. Overall, classic gameplay and gameplay have become an important weight to attract and retain core players.
From the encirclement and suppression of big IP, achieve a breakthrough in adversity
From the perspective of distribution, the success of "Eternal Night Star God" is mainly due to two aspects: one is the huge marketing force that fits the purchase volume of game content; the other is to seize the time node of the cyclical market operation of China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
According to the vast number of data, the publisher Dewdrop Game made a large number of releases on the eve of the launch of "Eternal Night Star God", and as of the first week of launch, it had accumulated nearly 6,000 sets of materials at both ends, becoming the champion of the dual platform launch list in December.
Most of the content in the material is focused on Taiwanese actress Lin Xinru. As a product spokesperson, Lin Xinru accurately positioned the target group of the 70s and 80s, coupled with various benefits, the game received a good response among the player group after it was launched - 6 days before the official launch, the official announced that the number of reservations for the game had exceeded 500,000 times.
According to the "January China Mobile Game Publisher Global Revenue Ranking" released by Sensor Tower, "Eternal Night Star God" successfully ranked among the top three in the Taiwan mobile game best-seller list after its launch, and the revenue of publisher iQiyi Games surged by 792% month-on-month, jumping to 90th in the global publisher revenue list and 33rd in the Chinese mobile game publisher revenue list.
Specifically, the game actually has careful consideration at the time point of publicity and launch. The game went live on December 30, the day of the premiere of spokesperson Lin Xinru's new drama "The First Lights", which has just won the "2021 Pop Drama Award" from Yahoo.
In terms of script content, "Hua Lantern Chu Shang" is mainly about the love and hate of the 80s, the audience is mainly concentrated in the 70s and 80s generation, the air linkage between the two makes whether it is a game or a TV series, it has far exceeded the unilateral publicity of the spread of strength, the "Lin Xinru, "Eternal Night Star God", "Hua Lantern Chu Shang" has been bound to the impression, to achieve the effect of 1 + 1>2.
In addition, the game also launched the theme song at the same time, and invited Chen Ruifa Reva, a popular Internet celebrity singer from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, to arrange and sing the song, combined with the lyrics brought into the world view, deducing the story of the gods to protect the star world and fight against the eternal night. It is worth mentioning that the melody of the song has also strengthened its popularity, and the forward version alone has received more than 460,000 views on YouTube, which has greatly expanded the publicity of the game.
In the online publicity stage, the official also specially invited game internet celebrities with wide influence in China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions to participate in the promotion, such as e-sports player Benny President, the Asian barrel god known for live LOL hero "wine barrel", the sweet former e-sports female player Lele, etc., aiming to let players better understand the game characters and the worldview behind them by combining Internet celebrities and 6 professional roles.
In addition to buying volume marketing, dewdrop games have also achieved a breakthrough by accurately grasping the time node of the cyclical market operation of China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
As we all know, there is a strong cyclicality in the release of China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions, and after the game market is saturated at a certain stage, the cost of buying volume rises rapidly, and then the number of products will decline in a short period of time, and even the phenomenon of vacancies.
In response to this phenomenon, Sun Xiaoqing, CEO of Dewdrop Games, explained in an interview last year that the reason is that China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions are a market dominated by Chinese mainland products and affected by Japanese and Korean products. Due to the cyclical nature of the Chinese mainland product development cycle, the phenomenon of product piling up has become accustomed to it, which in turn has also affected China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions as the first stop at sea.
During the launch period of "Eternal Night Star God", China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan markets were in the downward stage of the cycle. At this stage, there are not many new games in China due to the suspension of the version number; new Korean games, such as "The Lost Ark", focus on the PC side, and have been launched as early as "Eternal Night Star God"; Japanese games are more conservative in overseas distribution, and new mobile games are rarely released in many regions, even if it is a successful product of "Horse Racing Lady", it has just been determined that the Publishers of China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan have just been determined.
When the new tours of Chinese mainland, Japan, and South Korea were silent, "Eternal Night Star God" captured this empty window period, combined with the method of playing before and after the launch, and effectively attracting the target users to buy materials, although there is no big IP blessing, it still completes a beautiful market breakthrough.
Not limited to Southeast Asia, he turned to China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan to dominate the list
In fact, looking at the distribution layout of iQIYI games, it did not focus on China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan at the beginning. Instead, at the beginning of its founding in 2016, the team focused more on the Southeast Asian market. Under the rich publishing experience in the past and the accurate judgment of the trend of "page change" in Southeast Asia at that time, iQiyi Games has achieved certain results.
But in 2017, the team began to shift its focus from Southeast Asia to China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. At the same time, its first product released in the market, the National War MMO "Junxing Tianxia", topped the iOS free list in Taiwan and ranked 30th in the highest best-seller list; in the same year, iQiyi Games also released the first S-grade MMO mobile game "Sword Rain Getaway" in Vietnam, accumulating rich experience in the MMO category.
Since 2019, iQIYI Games has continued to work hard, releasing a number of products such as "Burning Love Tips", "Until I Hit an Arrow", "Time traveler" and so on in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, all of which have entered the TOP10 in the App Store and Google Play best-seller lists in Taiwan. In April 2021, the team was also responsible for the release of "Song of the Clouds" in the region, and the Taiwanese service performed well, remaining in the top 10 of the iOS best-seller list for a long time.
The shift in strategic focus was undoubtedly successful, but the question was, why did the team choose to move to China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions when there were just achievements in Southeast Asia? Sun Xiaoqing grouped the choice into two aspects: market maturity and cost performance.
On the one hand, Southeast Asia has a large population and many countries and regions, but in view of the degree of economic development, the ARPU value of the product is not high, and the localization work is very cumbersome. This means that in the case of the same investment, the market's revenue is far less than that of China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan markets. For iQiyi Games, and even many publishers in the industry, the cost performance of the Southeast Asian market is unbalanced.
On the other hand, from the perspective of market size, China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan markets are far more mature than the Southeast Asian market, and users are more willing to pay. In addition, under the influence of the Chinese cultural circle, China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions are closer to the user preferences of Chinese mainland. In this case, it is easier to do localization or publicity. But at the same time, the competition facing the product in the market is more intense than in Southeast Asia. For experienced overseas distribution teams, this is a high-risk, high-reward option.
"A good quality product can achieve 30 million to 40 million monthly turnover in the local area, which is almost half of the Southeast Asian market at that time." Sun Xiaoqing said.
Although it is now focused on China' Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, iQIYI games are not limited to this, but have their own "upgrade route". Sun Xiaoqing's statement is that in the future, the team will still be based on Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and further radiate to the Asia-Pacific region, and even enter the T1-level market such as Japan and South Korea.
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