3 years after the launch of the foreign server, the national server of "Pokémon Gathering" was finally officially announced to be launched on November 7.
The official announcement of the game has been announced
How can you increase the probability of success in a competitive market? Big IP is undoubtedly a great boost. In particular, a top-tier IP like "Pokémon", which has a huge influence and is naturally suitable for video game adaptation, has always been the dream adaptation object of many developers.
Popular gameplay can also be a plus factor – such as Moba. Moba games have been developing for nearly 30 years since the beginning of Aeon Of Strife, and while accumulating rich experience, they are also facing a "mid-life crisis" to a certain extent. Whether to increase content or reduce the burden of gameplay is both a problem and an opportunity for developers.
The "world's No. 1 IP" Pokémon, coupled with Moba, a proven and mature gameplay, sounds like a sure success. Pokémon Assemble does just that.
Previously, it had achieved good results overseas. In July 2021, the game was launched on the overseas Switch platform, with more than 9 million downloads within 2 months of its launch, once becoming the most downloaded domestic game on the Switch platform; In September of the same year, the game was launched on overseas mobile platforms, and quickly topped the iOS download list in 62 regions, and also won the Google Play's Game of the Year Award on Android.
But from another point of view, this was 3 years ago after all.
After 3 years, can the "Pokémon Gathering" national server achieve greater success? Some time ago, Touch was invited to participate in a small-scale "Pokémon Gathering" trial and exchange meeting. In a conference room at Tencent in Shenzhen, we spoke with the game development team, Tencent TiMi, about this.
The scene of the offline trial meeting
Moba without lanes, equipment, and towers
In recent years, with the increasing number of big IP games on the market, the mentality of players has also become complicated: although most people are still willing to pay for their favorite IP elements, they have also seen too many IP skinning games, and some "PTSD".
Before playing "Pokémon Gathering", I also had similar worries, worried about whether this would be a game that was dressed as a "Pokémon" but lacked innovation in gameplay, and was just made to harvest IP fans. But after getting started and talking to the project team, I was able to dispel this concern.
During the exchange, I learned that the cooperation between TiMi's R&D team and The Pokémon Company (TPC) is not a simple IP license, but a joint research and development. During the cooperation process, the joint R&D team has a strict control over the overall tonality of the game: the skills and action design of the Pokémon in the game are highly restored, which will not make people feel discordant; In terms of hitting, the game needs to strike a delicate balance - when the skill hits a Pokémon, it can't make people feel very painful - because for many Pokémon fans, it can be sad to see their favorite Pokémon hurt.
Based on this cooperation model, "Pokémon Gathering" set some principles at the beginning of the project, one of which directly eliminated the possibility of the game being a skin-changing Moba - in order to ensure that Pokémon is relaxed, warm, healing, and companionship, it does not adopt the basic elements of traditional Moba, but establishes the "three nos" setting: no soldier line, no defense tower, and no equipment.
Judging from the results, the game has indeed made a significant differentiation in the gameplay category of Moba, which has been fully defined by the head product.
However, the reason why "Pokémon Gathering" did this was not because it was innovative, but because it followed the path of category development. Looking back on the history of Moba, from "DOTA", "League of Legends" to "Honor of Kings", the general direction of this category has always been to lighten the gameplay on the basis of retaining the core fun, so that more players can participate.
Throughout the history of the development of Moba games, it is indeed step by step towards lightweight "burden reduction"
In terms of overall positioning, compared with fierce confrontation, the "Pokémon Gathering" team hopes to present the warm cooperation between players and Pokémon, so the game is positioned as light competition, which greatly reduces the pressure of confrontation.
Because there is no economy and equipment system, players can choose more battle strategies, and will not fall into a vicious circle of poor economic development and equipment in the early stage, and finally a poor experience in the whole game. At the same time, the "three-no" setting can also encourage players not to be "locked" in the line, but to actively run the map, frequently support teammates, and play tacit cooperation.
However, as a 5v5 moba game, Pokémon Assemble still needs to have achievement fun and a certain depth of strategy. To this end, while canceling the lane, tower pushing, and economic systems, the game has made a design for matching, evolution, and ability bonuses. Player-controlled Pokémon can evolve within the game and have 8 moves – making each player's Pokémon unique in each round. Players are able to choose from different branches of moves to reflect combos and strategies.
Pokémon Assemble is different from other mobas
In terms of commercialization, Pokémon Gathering has also been relatively restrained, and under the tone of fair play, the game's payment points are mainly focused on appearance. In order to ensure the authenticity of the electronic servers (similar to the skins in other games) in the game, the project team and the partners ran in for 15 months, and many of the electronic clothes were designed by Japanese artists who are familiar with Pokémon.
The reason why "Pokémon" can become the world's largest IP is inseparable from TPC's insistence on values - they hope to build a century-old brand that truly integrates into people's lives and becomes a bond between multiple generations. TPC, as the operating company of Pokémon IP, is actually more like a group of Pokémon lovers, and does not pay so much attention to commercial benefits. Although they were able to make a profit early on, they hardly kept money in the early days, but used the vast majority of the funds for the "Pokémon" brand building by supporting public welfare and other means.
The project team mentioned at the exchange meeting that in recent years, they have often participated in some overseas "Pokémon" activities. I once met a 69-year-old Uber driver in United States and asked if they were also coming to a Pokémon event. "At that moment, I was really shocked by the influence of Pokémon, no matter what country you are in, what age, what gender, what race, everyone loves Pokémon."
"Why haven't many domestic IPs been able to achieve global influence? How to ensure that IP is not eroded by commercialization? The project team also learned a lot from the communication with the IP party. ”
The national service wants to make up for some regrets
Based on the global influence of the "Pokémon" IP, "Pokémon Gathering" has aimed at the global market since the establishment of the project.
Before the official announcement of the national server, the overseas version of the game had been online for 3 years and had achieved good results. However, in the eyes of the project team, there are still some regrets. Before the launch of the national server, the team made a lot of adjustments to the game based on their understanding of the Chinese market.
The acceptance of Moba mobile games in overseas markets is far less high than that in China, and the cultural characteristics of some regions naturally reject highly competitive mobile games. For example, the project team observed that Japan players do not like to cause trouble to others, and they are especially worried about dragging down their teammates because of their poor skills in team-based competitive games. Therefore, in order to take into account as many players as possible, the international server of "Pokémon Gathering" has adjusted the difficulty of the game and the intensity of the competition in the game to a low level, but this has sacrificed depth to a certain extent.
Back in China, the project team reorganized the needs of players, hoping to better undertake different types of players through demand stratification and targeted design. They divided the users of "Pokémon Gathering" into three categories: competitive achievement-oriented, leisure and entertainment-oriented, and "players who simply like Pokémon", and better met the needs of the three different subdivisions through the difficulty callback of the main gameplay, the entertainment mode and the addition of the main city.
First of all, the main gameplay of the national server maintains the characteristics of simple and easy-to-play and fast-paced - players with experience in Moba games can understand the rules of the game in a few minutes and get started easily, and the duration of a single game is usually less than 10 minutes. However, on the basis of the overseas version, the national server has appropriately increased the strategic complexity of the main gameplay, and added the setting of "Yios Technology". As the game progresses, different random buffs are provided for players to choose from, and different types of Pokémon are paired with different buff combinations, which greatly enriches the game's strategy choices. The more in-depth main gameplay reserves more room for players to improve, which is conducive to the long-term retention of players.
For those lighter players and more fragmented entertainment needs, the production team provides more than 10 kinds of entertainment gameplay, including snowball rolling music, coin collection and grabbing music, full horsepower cooperative battle, etc., and its gameplay covers PvP, PvE, asymmetric confrontation, survival and poison, etc., which are very rich.
Blastoise watering flowers
Compared to the main mode, these entertainment methods are more relaxed and cheerful, and a round is usually only a few minutes long, which is more suitable for playing in fragmented time, and the victory or defeat of the game will not cause a psychological burden on the player. What's more, these casual gameplay combined with the characteristics of Pokémon skills provide the team with the soil for gameplay cultivation and micro-innovation.
In addition, different from the flat login interface of the foreign server, the national server has also added a 3D main city, where players can not only interact with their own Pokémon in the main city, but also play with other players and their Pokémon, which better meets the imagination of players living with Pokémon.
Overseas players expressed their envy of the national uniform
All in all, although the national service was 3 years late, with the growth of time, the production team has accumulated a lot of operational experience overseas, and after 6 years of cooperation with TPC, the mutual trust between the two parties has also reached a new height, leaving more room for the continuous improvement of the national service in the future.
10 minutes of classic Moba mood
"Is there really a chance in the domestic Moba market?" When I heard that Pokémon Gathering chose Moba as the main gameplay, the first thing that came to my mind was this question.
In the game industry, many tracks are winner-takes-all, especially for categories such as Moba, which have social and large DAU characteristics, and a few leading products have long occupied a large share in the domestic mobile game market. This means that it will be difficult for new products to survive without sufficient differentiation.
After communicating with the production team of "Pokémon Gathering", I found that there are still a lot of opportunities for light mobas positioned in the domestic market for casual competition.
Nowadays, people can devote less time and energy to the game, but the existing Moba products have not gone to the extreme on the road of "lightweight", and the length of a single game is usually more than 10 minutes, and the victory or defeat is often accompanied by strong emotional fluctuations of players.
In contrast, Moba games, which are easier to play, have a shorter single game duration, and lower frustration on the negative side, currently do not have a head product in the domestic market, and the emergence of "Pokémon Gathering" can just fill this gap in the market.
The feedback received so far on Pokémon Gathering seems to confirm this, and players think that the biggest advantages of the game are: Pokémon are cute, ready to play, and easy to play. Of course, these alone are not enough to open up a new market, and to make a light competitive moba, you also need to reduce the difficulty of the game and the length of the game, while leaving enough room for players to improve. This is also an important reason why the national server of "Pokémon Gathering" decided to appropriately call back the difficulty of the main gameplay.
At the demo session, everyone can easily get started with the game
At the demo, I could feel the project team's expectations for the main gameplay of "Pokémon Gathering": I hope to provide players with an emotional curve similar to the classic Moba with its own unique design within 10 minutes of gameplay.
Just like many excellent short videos that can shorten the duration while still maintaining a complete theatrical structure and providing users with an emotional experience similar to that of a movie, the team incorporated their understanding of Moba into Pokémon Gathering, hoping to condense the key elements and experiences of a long single game Moba into a 10-minute game with a unique design that combines Pokémon characteristics.
Will they be able to achieve this goal? In terms of my short beta experience so far, Pokémon Gathering does give a good first impression to new players, and it can also be seen that the production team has worked hard to meet the needs of different types of players. But a successful moba product still needs to evolve with players and the market in the process of continuous operation, which also means that the game still has a long way to go after launch.
The high acceptance of Moba gameplay in the Chinese market and the perennial efforts of TiMi Studio Group in the Moba category have provided support for the team to continuously optimize the goal, leaving more design space for different gameplay modules after the national server redefines the level of user needs. With the blessing of top IP, "Pokémon Gathering" may be able to raise the ceiling of the light Moba category and break out of its own world.