"I can't sleep these days, and my mind is full of how to play this game map and what tactics the opponent will have...... After all, our goal is to become a world champion. ”
Yongzhen said this to Grape Jun on the first day of his trip to Saudi Arabia. Their upcoming tournament is the Saudi Esports World Cup (EWC), and the project is "Calabichu", a domestic two-dimensional shooter game that has been in beta for less than a year.
Speaking of magic, when it comes to the E-sports World Cup, the first thing that comes to everyone's mind should be those competitive games that are popular all over the world: "League of Legends", "Honor of Kings", "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds", ...... As for "Calabichu", although it was not low in popularity when it first opened the test, and the weekly activity once exceeded 700,000, there is still a lot of improvement compared with the above-mentioned behemoths - how can it also appear on the world stage in a blink of an eye?
And it doesn't seem to be in line with the production team's usual low-key strategy: when Grape Jun communicated with the game producers before, they said that they were conservative about the short-term expectations of the game, thinking that "it can be stable in 3-5 seasons, and it will not die." ”
And now that "Calabichu" has just advanced to Season 6, is it a strategic transformation for them to engage in international events with such fanfare, or is it a bit "unthinkable"?
01 The second dimension can also fight
"Calabichu" open beta,Grape Jun once introduced this domestic two-dimensional shooting terminal game,It focuses on blasting and team competition,Compared with other PVP shooting games,The biggest feature of "Calabichu" is stringization (the character will become a paper man)、TPS (third-person shooting) and two-dimensional (two-dimensional painting style、Characters、Plot)。
The competitive nature of the game also revolves around its three characteristics:
As an important tactical mechanism of game PVP, stringing is not just for the sake of a gimmick, and the character is filmed as a plane. The stringing mechanism not only allows the character to dodge bullets, reload and move around as a paper man, filling the experience vacuum period outside of the player's shooting, but also derives a large number of practical or funny practical cases through mechanisms such as flying and sticking to the wall...... It can be said that the tactical depth of the game has been increased quite a bit.
Switch to the Paper Man form to dodge bullets
By sticking to the wall and jumping out, "kicking the wall jump" is realized, and the source watermark is the picture
TPS is a design that the production team attaches more importance to, which not only allows players to feel that they are experiencing a character, not a gun, but also allows them to get a competitive experience that is different from FPS: for example, TPS has a large difference in the switching perspective of opening and firing, which requires more cost adaptation and more information visible to players, which is conducive to tactical planning.
Last year's Star String Cup, Captain RON wore five scenes in a thousand words
Image source watermark
The producer has said that the two designs of stringing and TPS make "Calabichu" different from other blasting FPS in the underlying logic, coupled with its large number of three-dimensional nested map design, which further amplifies the game coolness brought by players through tactical planning, early ambush, and sneak attack after the rear.
Image source watermark
Xiao Wu, a member of the Starlight Cup champion team "Meng Mengren", said that compared with other games, "Calabichu" has a longer TTK (time per kill), and the TPS chord design also makes the game more focused on teamwork, "You can't beat the opposite side alone." ”
As for the third point of the game, the "two-dimensional" feature, I think in addition to giving the characters more value in terms of image, content, and emotional interaction, in terms of competition, it can also allow players to understand the characteristics of the characters more straightforwardly and get started quickly...... This design re-emphasizes the teamwork and gaming aforementioned above.
Not only is the foundation solid, but "Calabichu" is also continuing to optimize the game's competitive content, including the balance adjustment of different characters, the adjustment of the matching mechanism, the announcement of the character selection rate/win rate information, etc., in the words of the producer at the time, it is to try to bring the information transparency between the official and the player, so that they know why you do it, what concerns you have, and what you think.
When the beta was first announced, there was a "sewer" character
Rite, a member of the "Cute Man" team, said that after several seasons of updates, the balance of the game has been very good. "The official will often release the win rate table, and the offensive/defensive win rate is basically stable at 50%, but it is true that because the game has just been launched, many strong characters are irreplaceable, which will lead to everyone using these characters."
After two months, the win rate of different characters
It has been relatively balanced and stable
It can also be seen from the outside that although the current popularity of "Calabichu" is difficult to compare with when the service was launched, its official station B video can still maintain hundreds of thousands of views, and the videos of players playing or showing off their skills can always get good views and discussions - interestingly, the emojis of "Calabichu" have also secretly become the capital of many group friends to blow water.
But having said that, I think that "Calabichu" as an end-game with an experience threshold, can run through the "two-dimensional + shooting competition", stable development has been very good so far, its future high point should be the global market and the launch of the mobile version, after all, the current "Calabichu" mobile game has not yet been released on a large scale, it has already received nearly 3 million pre-orders on the whole platform, and the market share of the terminal game is small, and there is an evergreen game in front of the jade, there is no need to make some big strides in the strategy.
Tap
The number of mobile game pre-orders has exceeded 2.5 million
However, thinking that "Calabichu" has passed the "stable period" of 3-5 seasons as the producer said, maybe the game's application for the E-sports World Cup this time also means that they are about to start the next stage of their goals: such as building an e-sports ecosystem with a certain reputation?
02 What's different about esports in Calabichu?
We can see that Calabichu has been planning esports events for a long time.
During the open beta, the producer told Grape Jun that as a competitive game, "Calabichu" must have a certain scale of events to carry the user ecology, so they have been preparing for the online events and college competitions of "Calabichu" for a long time.
It can also be seen from the game wiki that before this Starlight Cup, the official had organized two large-scale events, the Star String Cup and the University Cup, and the people had also held events such as the Mocha Cup and the Chef Cup.
So don't look at "Calabichu" has not been deleted and launched for nearly a year, but in fact, many players are already old friends of players. For example, Ang of the "Meng Meng Man" team has been paying attention to and experiencing the game since the second test of the game, and when the game was just tested in unlimited quantities, he also tried his best to hit the "Super String" rank with the highest ranking in the game as soon as possible.
When the streamer introduces the top eight teams of the Starlight Cup, you will also find that most of the teams and players have participated in past events in "Calabichu" and are also facing many complicated situations. For example, although the overall quality of the "Meng Mengren" team is high, it has been officially restricted due to the theft of the accounts of the main players; The main player Ang happened to have a serious hand injury, and he barely participated in the Xinghui Cup after taking a closed injection.
Other teams faced different challenges to a greater or lesser extent, but that didn't affect their performance in the Starlight Cup too much. For example, in the second round of the final against RON, the cute people predicted the opponent's position at the beginning, and threw two instantaneous thunderbolts from a long distance to directly knock down the opponent, the time and place were just right, and even predicted how the opponent would knock down if he took two more steps.
Meng Meng people will never really review the game
After that, Meng Meng also used ultra-long-distance cigarette sealing and releasing skills at the beginning to create a safe environment for teammates to install bombs:
On the other side, RON's captain Qianyan also created a lot of supernatural operations in the Xinghui Cup, leading the team to take the lead in winning the first big score in the finals, proving the value of Chanami and sniper rifles, but in the end, RON regretted the cuteness, and Qianyan even cried in the live broadcast room after the game.
The highlights of a thousand words in the final of the Starlight Cup, the watermark of the picture source
From here, it can be seen that "Calabichu" has its irreplaceable value in terms of e-sports viewing, operation ceiling, tactical game, and teamwork.
Rite also said that the game has a lot of room to dig in the tactical depth, and they usually run around every corner of the map, calculating some station positions and ambush points...... The instantaneous explosion of thunder and sealing smoke in this final was one of the tactics they figured out, and it disrupted the opponent's mentality when it was first taken out.
The victory of the "Meng Mengren" team also proved the value of teamwork, strategy and tactics to a certain extent, and proved that shooting competition requires more than just reflexes and marksmanship.
The G3 battle of the Xinghui Cup final, the picture source watermark
In addition to the feature of tactical depth, the e-sports of "Calabichu" is also full of more "two-dimensional flavor" than other competitive games.
For example, the team name in the "Moe Man" team is the name of everyone in "Calabichu" for two-dimensional players and players who don't know much about shooting games, Yongzhen said that they use this team name, firstly, because they are also two-dimensional players, such as Xiao Wu's ID is a certain anime character, he has a lot of figures at home, and he will also go to Japan to buy a lot of two-dimensional peripherals;
The second is that they want to prove that even "cute people" can like shooting games, and they can change other people's stereotypes through hard work, "We are all cute people, and everyone won't be able to beat us." ”
In addition, we can also find a lot of nicknames for the participating teams, such as "Flying on the Grass/Emperor of the East China Sea" in the "Meng Mengren" team who didn't have time to communicate with us, and his two nicknames come from the second tour "Horse Racing Girl"; In other team names or team names, there will also be magical combinations such as Minami Birdie, Kasuga Shadow, Honkai Impact 3 Low Hand, and Diruus (it is said that the personnel changes of the Kasuga Shadow clan match the team name...... ）。
Image source watermark
Although there are also cases where players use anime skins and nicknames in other competitive games, the two-dimensional nature of the product of "Calabichu" itself, coupled with the fact that there are many cute players in the game and a strong voice, also means that everyone discusses the two-dimensional in this game, not just to highlight personal hobbies, but also because they have found a new two-dimensional community that is different from the past, where they can shoot, compete, cooperate, and be honest with others.
"In "Calabichu", everyone can admit that they are all two-dimensional, which is already amazing."
03 Spark
Behind "Calabichu", we can also see the development of Chinese e-sports.
In 2022, Zhang Yijun, the first vice chairman of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, had concerns about e-sports: in the past, most e-sports activities relied on old games that were more than 5 years old, and the product supply and talent construction of the e-sports industry were in short supply.
Behind this sentence, in addition to saying that domestic e-sports is developing rapidly, it also points out the current oligopoly problem in China's e-sports industry: the popularity, users, ecology, and revenue of e-sports are almost all concentrated in a few popular competitive games - for example, the most popular domestic e-sports game "Honor of Kings" has been online for 9 years.
The emergence of more games like "Calabichu" and the holding of related international events mean that Chinese e-sports is slowly filling the fault line:
In terms of talent, many of the players in the Calabichu tournament have been active in popular shooter esports games such as Overwatch and Valorant, and many have also been great players and quasi-professional players - these players who used to be at the forefront of popular esports games but struggled to reach the top can get more attention and event resources in the smaller size of Calabichu.
For example, Rite said that he had played a high ranking in "Rainbow Six" and met Xiao Wu on the same team; Yongjin, Flying Grass, Ang and her boyfriend have also played in some shooting games...... The self-proclaimed "cute people" are perhaps the most senior "gun men" (skilled shooter gamers) in "Calabichu".
In terms of products, "Calabichu" is a new e-sports terminal game that was only tested in August last year, and it is also a rare "two-dimensional competitive shooting game", its newness and irreplaceability are proving its potential to rekindle Chinese e-sports, and even become a breakthrough in reversing the deadlock at a time when domestic shooting e-sports has not yet achieved a clear advantage - when communicating with many members of the "Meng Mengren" team, they all expressed their confidence in winning the Saudi E-sports World Cup. "The probability of winning the championship is 100%", "It is inevitable", "I feel that the pressure of the World Cup is not as great as the Xinghui Cup".
Saudi Arabia Esports World Cup "Calabichu" project
Championship trophy live photo
However, the "Meng Mengren" team did not take it lightly, they said that there are also many excellent players in other countries, such as the well-known YouTube game blogger and "Calabichu" player Kariyu will participate, "Including Saudi Arabia, there are also some cattle who have withstood more than 180 delays and played the strongest in the national server." ”
Kariyu also recently played Carabichu with Valorant World Champion Aspas
04 It's competition, but also romance
Whether Team Moe Man will be able to win and bring the title back home will have to wait until the EWC tournament to find out.
Prior to this, the successive advancements of the college competition, the anchor competition, the city competition, the Xinghui Cup, and the Saudi World Esports Cup may have given "Calabichu" a lot of product-level value, such as verifying the gameplay mechanism and balance of the game, and whether it is compatible with larger-scale international competitions - further, this may also lay the foundation for the game to go overseas and the popularity of IP.
For players, especially pan-ACG players, as well as "cute people" who like the art and characters of "Calabichu", a not grand e-sports event can also fill their emotional value, so that they can find like-minded fans who are worth sharing happiness and excellent players worth paying attention to, and then make ACG, a niche culture with some "home" attributes, become a pop culture that everyone can like and share without burden.
After all, it's 2024 now, and ACG may no longer be synonymous with niche, and "Calabichu" hopes to make traditional shooting games easier and have more opportunities to show value through the integration of shooting competition, e-sports, and ACG-
You think, in the past, in many second games, players expressed their favorite ways may be experience, payment, second creation, peripheral ...... But in "Calabichu", in addition to the above ways to express your love, you can also play matches with your favorite characters, communicate with other players, and use time and experience to prove your understanding of the characters and the bond with the characters again and again - this may also be a very romantic thing.