Last week, Bandai Namco Online, a subsidiary of Bandai Namco, also known as the online game division, became insolvent and declared bankruptcy, with a loss of 3.98 billion yen for the entire fiscal year.
Profit and loss fluctuations in game companies are common, even if it is as big as Bandai, and 2022 with the release of "Elden Ring" is a lot higher than the 21 and 23 years before and after, especially in today's era, the development cycle of games is getting longer and longer, and it is not easy for established large game developers to maintain a passable flow curve, and it is even normal to be hungry for a year.
Developing online games is, of course, a good way to maintain cash flow, but the Bandai online game in 2023 is not a situation where there is no rice to cook, and it can almost be called "a good hand of cards to play poorly".
Blue Protocol
In 2014, Bandai Namco wanted to develop a two-dimensional multiplayer online game based on a new graphics machine, just like the most popular anime IP at the time, Sword Art Online.
In fact, as an entertainment giant in film and television animation games, games with a similar rendering style are not the only ones in the company, "God Eater", "Bloodthirsty Code", and then to the later "Legend of Dawn", the picture style of Sanshaji has changed from the "Three Years of Learning Animation" series to today's "visual performance like theatrical animation", and the "two-dimensional rendering" fused by Bandai and China combined with the Korean game style has a subtle difference, which is largely on the heart of the old house.
On the other hand, the long development cycle made "Blue Protocol" not release the PS4 version, and nine years after the project was established, the game announced that it would be logged into the next-generation console and PC platform, and the popularity of SAO became a nostalgic tribute to classic anime. In 2014, mobile game 3D games did not rise, Bandai conservatively chose the PC platform, during these nine years, the Japanese mobile game market from the blue ocean to the red ocean returned to stability, but after 2020, Japan's PC market has entered a period of development, and the scale of players has maintained rapid growth every year.
The development team revealed the technical details of AIA's surprise even before the game was launched
Luckily, the game's graphics are worthy of so many years of preparation and development. Landscape photos and video clips taken by players for the characters became the best commercials for Blue Protocol, and more than 200,000 people were online at launch, the best result in Bandai's gaming history.
Is this a paid character? This is a self-built pinched face! Using the built-in materials in the game, you can get a character shape with a sense of design, plus a large number of automatic interactive animation actions, in "Regnus", you really live out the scenery of another world, a MMO without pay to win, no roast chicken and incel ghosts, no card drawing and clocking in at work, which perfectly cuts into the pain points of the second dimension.
Lifting fish is a unique scenery in the game, and the size of the model will be displayed according to a random value, but as long as you put it in your backpack, you can't take it out again, so when you catch a particularly exaggerated big fish, you will keep hanging up and show off, and there are even celebrity anecdotes that can be held for a few days and nights.
Although it is very interesting, it also reflects the lack of game content and drive, and it is desirable to enjoy a leisurely game atmosphere, but only a few players can really immerse themselves in it, not to mention that for most of the half year after the game was released, the only "life play" was fishing.
"Blue Protocol" is often compared to "Genshin Impact", whether it is domestic or foreign, although the gameplay of the two is different, and the feedback loop of MMO and open-world adventure is very different, but a large part of the user group does overlap, because a considerable number of players themselves are not for the gameplay, which leads to the game's largest target user group is actually in China.
However, when Bandai announced the release, because of the invasion of Chinese games in Japan's two-dimensional market, it often emphasized its "domestic" label intentionally or unintentionally, and the temperament of the game was indeed quite different from that of "Genshin Impact" and "Tower of Fantasy", so it finally chose to lock the region to give Japanese players an "original" local experience.
It's not that there's no trace of taking this step, MMO games need to communicate and express, including the collective identity between players, if the Japanese server opens up global registration, Japanese players will inevitably become a minority, even if the waifu is later opened, the impact on the Japanese server ecology is not permanent.
Another account is the strategy of global agency, Bandai does not have its own plans to operate foreign services, as early as before the game Japanese server is launched, Amazon bought the European and American agency rights of the game, in order to give partners a higher offer, naturally can not put foreigners into the Japanese service. But what about China, which has the broadest potential market? Bandai's one-size-fits-all approach seems a bit lazy, but in September last year, it suddenly became clear that Tencent got the mobile game development right of the game.
Turning the player into a Matrix alive
The process of localization of the national service has always been very long, when the progress of both parties to the cooperation is not fast, the magical situation is staged in the "Blue Agreement" Japanese service, the operation is constantly detecting the domestic IP ban, but it is reluctant to completely block, players go online every day like playing Russian roulette, maybe the next second to say goodbye to their "wife, daughter", but at the same time, you can see that the teammates who play together are not banned. This kind of torture completely ruined the popularity of the game.,At this time,Even if you can launch the national server, it's in vain.,The abacus played too loudly and finally forgot that his own job was not intended to be a plate.。
Now, will there be a national service for "Blue Agreement"?,Maybe there will only be a domestic mobile game.,Bandai used skillful means to pick out the cutest users in the two-dimensional circle.,And then use the most skillful means to drive them out.。
Gundam Evolution
Gundam Evolution is another half-brother of Blue Protocol, and after Overwatch exploded in 2016, Bandai developed a genre game based on its own IP. This development was developed until 2022, until Blizzard fell off the altar and "Return" became "Return to the West", and "Gundam Evolution" was belated, but because it felt most like the original OW in 2016, it became a nostalgic mecca for many players.
Is the package combination of classic IP + popular gameplay tapping the IP audience or expanding the IP audience? If there is a choice, the perfect answer to these two points should be complementary to each other, but Bandai resolutely chose to "tap the audience of gameplay", and it lost the IP.
This is exactly the "trendy play" style that Gundam fans hate the most
The audience of Gundam IP is mainly in the East, that is, Japan and China, while FPS players are mainly in China and the West, since OW players hate OW2, then take the traffic as much as possible, the game does not need to expose the IP content, it is hard to imagine that there is no Japanese dubbing, no anime characters, and no original scenes in an anime adaptation. Bandai can write a perfect answer sheet that understands fans very well, and it can also write a zero score.
But in fact, everyone who understands understands that for such an online game where the nature of the topic is larger than the actual volume, more players just come to spit and leave, as for whether they come to scold OW or Bandai, it is not so important, because the competition in FPS is much fiercer, and it will be lost in the end.
So after a short period of popularity in the server, the game embarked on the old path of OW, slowing down the development progress, weakening the characters, and launching a new character in two months is much faster than the original Blizzard, but for an IP derivative, it is far from enough. Another huge issue was the pipeline and the speed of development, in the initial version of the division of labor, the game was equipped with a Japanese operation team, a European and American development team, Chinese art outsourcing, and Japanese console development based on the European and American teams. Although the communication cost of the multi-site development model is not small, at least each member can complete their own part of the work more efficiently.
This can also be seen in the game, the OW mode requires the game to not only have basic character gameplay design, but also a large number of gacha collectibles, skins, spray paint, and MVP performances. It constitutes an indispensable element for players to burst their livers online, even if they lose a game, but they harvest a box, and the box is out or not out of the decoration they want, they can't help but play again, and the player experience in PVP games is no longer a zero-sum game of simple wins and losses. However, Gundam Evolution does not upgrade the crates because the amount of content in the game is not enough for players to consume.
After entering the operation stage, the cooperative development model has changed, and the development work of each part is concentrated on the Bandai headquarters, although the speed of the launch of the characters has become faster, but the speed of other content has completely come to a standstill, and after the launch of a new version for three consecutive months in the spring, the number of people online in the game has been unable to maintain the daily server cost, and the game announced in July that it will be suspended at the end of 23, and the operation time is just over a year.
end
"Times have changed" doesn't seem like a bad thing for Bandai, as long as it moves slower than time, time will never catch up with me. At present, Bandai also has a multiplayer online game under development, "Song of Ida" integrates the above two street fights, two-dimensional, shooting games, and even added the movie game linkage and PvPvE escape and evacuation gameplay, just to see the title, a breath of tone on the pavement, how can there be a competitive game called such a crepe RPG name?
There are too many choices between wanting and can, and Wandai, who wants and wants, is still a big family after all, and can withstand this wave of big bets and raises.