Hi everyone, I'm Dr. X.
In recent years, the degree of involution in the game market has been particularly serious, and the volume theme, roll technology, roll category... Popular trends such as open world, two-dimensional, and party games are changing with each passing day, and countless manufacturers are also attracting countless manufacturers to follow suit.
But blindly following the trend results in corpses everywhere. Especially this summer file, dozens of two-dimensional new tours rushed in like dumplings, and the result was like a bubble that collapsed; There are not a few who are not able to roll up with peers and have a life cycle of less than one year.
Instead, it is some unusual games that explore potential explosive opportunities. Xishanju, a veteran martial arts factory, is one of the typical examples of living itself as a "sober baby in the world", based on the deep understanding of users, unexpectedly excavated a 30 billion treasure market whose needs are far from being met.
Point 1: Please go back to China's first programmer founder who has retired for many years, Xishanju plans to do a big ticket this time?!
In the era of 3D rampant, looking back to do 2D martial arts, do you have many question marks above your head?
And looking at the picture of the game "Sword World : Origins" that Xishanju just opened for beta today, I am afraid that if you catch a player who tastes the current popular game art style, you will say "Wow, it's too retro".
But in fact, in the vast circle of players, there are many people who are not used to playing 3D and miss the era of martial arts first love when pixel style prevailed more than a decade ago.
The germination of the original project of "Sword Man World: Origins" may have come from a nostalgic post in Tieba and a real feedback from old players, which made the project team find that there was still such a group of swordsman users who were eager to return to the past.
(I didn't expect it to be true)
Later, after some in-depth research, the project team found that there were far more users with such needs than expected. These people may travel frequently and cannot sit in front of a computer; Maybe the children are about the same age as the game back then, but they want to recall the feeling when playing the game back then, and in the busy world, there is a virtual place to stay, reminiscing about the martial arts time of youth.
And from the market data, it can also be seen that the plate of the 2D market is far larger than expected, and the market size of the foreign 2D legendary IP alone is as high as 30 billion a year, not to mention the sword love series that is now the top domestic martial arts IP, and the audience will naturally not be less.
Remember that the single-player version of the sword warrior love was born in 1997, this sword warrior with sword and love rivers and lakes, attracting a large number of players who love martial arts and get together because of fate, which is also the origin of the name "sword warrior love".
At that time, "Popular Software" also issued an article saying that the excellent results of the first work of "Sword Warrior Love" and the unanimous praise of media players were enough to be called "domestic three swords" together with "Daewoo Double Sword". 26 years have passed, and the swordsman relationship has finally "boiled" itself into the most active domestic martial arts IP in contemporary times. It has witnessed the ups and downs of Chinese games, accompanied a generation through the beautiful youth years, and deeply rooted the "Xia" culture in the hearts of every player.
And Xishanju, the original body of the "Sword Man World: Origins" mobile game, the "Sword Man World" terminal game launched in 2008, is also a very special existence in the development of the sword warrior love IP. It was the key to the transformation of swordsman love IP online games at that time, and achieved a good result of 500,000 people online at the same time during the internal testing period, breaking through the new high number of domestic online games online at that time.
In the subsequent 15 years of operation, this game with a simple 2D art style not only did not drown in the dust of history, but also achieved five consecutive years of user growth in the new era of terminal travel. Up to now, the registered users of "Sword Man World" have exceeded 100 million. Such performance makes Xishanju full confidence and expectation to develop the 2D martial arts market on the mobile terminal.
"Sword Man World: Origins" mobile game was born in such a large background environment, specially born for old players, positioned as a 26-year inheritance of swordsman's love, and also invited back the "first programmer in China" who has retired for more than ten years.
Interestingly, this big guy who retired at the age of 46 once forged the IP of swordsman love, and inscribed poems to encourage the ill-fated "Sword Network 3" in the research and development process, and now his life after retirement is still "unpretentious", nothing to play games, write game plugins for his own use, but once any new Swordsman IP products are online, he is most concerned.
(The origin of the name "Xishan Residence" is derived from a place called "Xishan Village" in Qiu Bojun's hometown)
He once recalled in an interview, "We have such a deep foundation in martial arts, but it is currently a blank in terms of games, so we established Xishan Ju and produced the stand-alone version of "Sword Warrior Love" two years later. ”
Now facing the 2D martial arts world that is still very blank, the opportunity to belong to the mobile game "Sword World : Origins" has come.
Key point 2: 90% restore + 10% upgrade! The classic gameplay is fifteen years out of style
Of course, if there was no outdated gameplay framework, Xishanju would not have such a good idea.
In the era when martial arts turn-based games were popular, the sword warrior love series boldly tried real-time combat and created the countrymen's own "Diablo"; When the "Sword Man World" endgame was born, classic settings such as the five-element fight, the roasting fire hang-up, and the Songjin battlefield were also introduced, and the "bullet skill" setting in large-scale group battles is a very unique existence even now.
Coupled with the equipment system of single-sect and double-branch, random attributes, the playability and researchability of the "Sword Man World" end game have skyrocketed, and the social and group battle PK centered on the gang and the family as the core have built an indestructible relationship that belongs to the world of Swordsman. This is also the key to the classic 2D gameplay of "Sword World" terminal game can continue in today's fierce competition of 3D masterpieces.
And these are now restored one by one in the mobile game "Sword Man World: Origins". The swordsman love 2D martial arts art style, which once ruled an online game era, was also moved into this game. The expression techniques of traditional Chinese art, coupled with bright watercolor, delicate brushwork, and ink blending, present the purest martial arts rivers and lakes.
If you are an old swordsman player, you may also be able to glimpse a little change in detail, the image performance is more delicate, and the color performance is brighter. This is also part of the upgrade space retained by the "Sword Man World: Origins" mobile game while completely restoring the classic endgame characteristics of the Sword Warrior Love Series, after all, who doesn't love nostalgia and better art quality.
The tuning of mobile games is also reflected in the adaptation of various models and the time-consuming reduction of various gameplay content.
The "Sword World: Origins" mobile game is as close as possible to the needs of contemporary players for a fragmented experience, greatly reducing the consumption time of various gameplay content, such as the Songjin battlefield, which originally took half an hour on the end game, is now shortened to 12 minutes on the mobile game. The promotional slogan of Duanyou "The easiest 2D martial arts online game so far, born for office workers" can be applied to today's "Sword Warrior World: Origins" mobile game.
And players don't have to worry about the limitations of the device, even the ancient models such as Redmi 3 and iPhone 6 can play smoothly ten years ago, and the computer, Android, Apple iOS three-end interoperability, players can freely experience in any scene, greatly weakening the time that players are forced to be tied in front of the computer or in front of the screen.
Key point 3: The three magic weapons for winning "Swordsman World: Origins" have long been verified in Vietnam!
If you remove the emotional filter, some students who are not familiar with the swordsman love IP may still wonder, can such an ancient design really catch fire? However, Dr. X felt that Xishan Ju was not stable.
First of all, Xishanju is a good hand in building a player ecology, "Sword Man World: Origins" is not only a gang and family system inherited from the Sword Warrior love series, the former organizes large-scale group battles, the latter is a small world for players to relax and chat at leisure, using family and national love and social networking to build an indestructible relationship that is not weaker than real dating.
The mobile game itself also pursues the concept of "everyone is valuable", and large, medium and small R players can find a place in the game, avoiding the drawbacks of big R dominance and small and medium-sized R having no game experience that is common in traditional MMOs.
For example, big R needs small and medium-sized R players to produce resources to sell to themselves, large R with an advantage in large team battles, will not necessarily be crushed by big R, whether PVE or PVP, players of various paid levels can find their own contribution points, perform their own duties and achieve a dynamic balance.
Secondly, the free trading system that makes MMO players irresistible has contributed to the thriving brick-moving ecology of "Sword Warrior World: Origins". Players can earn money by setting up stalls and trading equipment, materials, and currency peer-to-peer.
In the era of "Sword Man World" end game, many people relied on moving bricks to earn tens of thousands a month, and creating equipment without binding and random attributes were all settings that could bring potential opportunities for rich money, and now the "Sword Man World: Origins" mobile game is also expected to become a new gold mining mecca for brick moving parties.
In recent years, Xishanju has also summarized a new set of spokesperson marketing methods to expand the fit between the pan-entertainment market and martial arts game IP. This set of playing methods was successfully piloted in the previously launched "Sword World 3" mobile game and achieved remarkable results.
It is worth mentioning that in the process of updating the version of the "Sword World 3" mobile game once every three months, this set of spokesperson gameplay has also been rapidly iteratively upgraded, from first just incarnating as a master sister/senior brother of the sect, to shooting a single martial arts situation blockbuster, and then to the three stars on the same stage to shoot multiple episodes of jianghu serials... Fast forward to I watched the game promo as a domestic martial arts drama.
Now this set of gameplay has been directly inherited by the "Sword Warrior World: Origin" mobile game, Chen Xiaochun and Xu Shaoqiang, two well-known martial arts movie stars, endorsed the public beta of the "Sword Warrior World: Origin" mobile game, and shot a promotional blockbuster with online acting skills without losing the martial arts style.
With the influence of these two former classic martial arts characters "Wei Xiaobao" and "Yun Feiyang", players will further refresh their new impression of classic martial arts games.
In fact, the key to the success of the "Sword Man World: Origins" mobile game is that it has already caught fire in the Vietnamese market, which is closest to our geoculture!
Since the "Sword Network 1" end game entered Vietnam in 2004, the Vietnamese market has given birth to a large number of die-hard fans of sword love IP like China. Local media often use "in Vietnam, there are two Sword Net 1 players for every three netizens" to describe its dominance.
In the following 19 years of in-depth cooperation with local localization operator VGN, Vietnamese players have supported the various generations of Sword Warrior IP works, frequently setting outstanding retention test data and good ranking records.
The "World of Swordsman: Origins" mobile game has landed in the Vietnamese market as early as March this year, and immediately topped the best-selling list as soon as it was launched, and it still maintains the top ten position, Vietnamese players often call each other "brother" with Chinese players playing in family channels, and the brotherhood and enthusiasm are undoubtedly revealed.
Today's Vietnamese market and domestic market have formed a close win-win cooperative relationship, and the operation experience of the swordsman love IP products launched earlier than the domestic market will feed back to China. So in the future, what we see in the "Sword World: Origins" mobile game national server may be a mature product that the good brothers in Vietnam explored and missed in the localization process.
Summary: Be a hero in the 2D martial arts market
Looking at the route of the opening of Sword Warrior Love IP, we can find that it is growing rapidly at the rate of one new product a year, including both the big world open design type products that follow the trend, and 2D new products such as "Sword Man World: Origin" mobile game that are close to the feelings of the times, and are developing in parallel in many market segments.
In the future, the mobile game "Sword World: Origins" will be updated at the rate of three large expansions a year to consolidate new gameplay and new classes, and will also optimize the player's game experience with a weekly frequency. Whether you can become a hero in the 2D martial arts market, let's look forward to the performance of the mobile game "Sword World: Origins" after the public beta.