The disliked ＂Qingyu Nian＂ mobile game

Flowing net text big IP, iron MMO game.

Text | Xinghui

Editor | Principal

On March 25, 2022, the mobile game "Qingyu Nian" developed by Shengqu Games was officially launched. The game is adapted from the novel of the same name by the online writer Cat, and the self-research team is the handed down studio under Shengqu.

As early as when it was serialized that year, the original work of "Qingyu Nian" was a popular player who could play on the male frequency of the starting point. With the popularity of the TV series version, the appeal of this story has further increased, and it can be called one of the most popular online IP in recent years.

After a few hours on the line, the mobile game "Qingyu Nian" unexpectedly topped the App Store free charts, and the limelight was strong.

Picture source @Qingyuannian mobile game

But at the same time, criticism also followed. When the first batch of early adopters flocked to the game, the sense of deja vu made many people feel like enemies, and disappointment began to surface. In TapTap and other player gathering places, the high ratings accumulated by the game during the closed beta period fell step by step.

The long-awaited mobile game of "Celebration of More Than Years" has to go down the old road of the male frequency seniors again?

Who is looking forward to the mobile game?

The launch of the mobile game "Qingyu Nian" means that the development array of the big IP of the network has added another member.

Time back to February 13, 2007, that day the cat’s "Vermilion Bird" was finally serialized, and the word count was frozen frame at 1581724. This often interrupted and freewheeling novel made the young cat win the 2007 Sina Original Literature Award for fantasy gold.

More than two months later, Maoxi opened a new book and decided to write a story about "illegitimate children". At that time, he became more and more aware of the preferences of online readers and planned to write a big red book seriously.

Later, as we all know, this story was named "Qingyu Nian" by the cat, and "Qingyu Nian" was really as popular as he had imagined.

"Qingyu Nian" Humanities Society Edition, Picture Source @People’s Literature Publishing House

From May 1, 2007, to February 28, 2009, Cat Grey turned "Celebrating More Than a Year" into a 3988,572-word novel. The novel was hailed as "a rare work" by the top management of the starting point at the time, and it ended in a grand finale with much attention.

After writing the big red book as he wished, the smug cat ran to Daqing, made an appointment with his girlfriend who had been in love for several years to "spend more years together", and got married in 2010 – only then did the special name "Qingyu Nian" reveal the final mystery.

In that era of buzz in the book review area, "Qingyu Nian" showed a rare fan loyalty, and high-quality long reviews were endless. This remarkable vitality derived from the work itself continues to this day, and extends and flows between media.

More than a decade after the paper edition of "Qing Yu Nian" was published by China Friendship Publishing Company, the story has been revived in the digital world in the form of games, TV series and more.

On July 10, 2019, the official Weibo of Qingyu Nian mobile game announced that it had been authorized, announced the production team, and opened the appointment. More than four months later, the first season of the TV series "Qingyu Nian" based on the novel was released, and it was released as a hit. Compared with other film and television dramas from male frequency IP, "Qingyu Nian" is the best in word-of-mouth and traffic, and its popularity is unprecedented.

Picture source @Qingyunian official Weibo

In March 2022, before the official launch of the mobile game "Qingyu Nian", the official data shows that the number of reservations has exceeded 8 million. It can be seen that under the blessing of the series, "Qingyu Nian" born in 2007 still has an enviable IP potential in 2022, and the audience is quite large.

On the one hand, as a 3D MMORPG mobile game with a big IP escort, "Qingyu Nian" will undoubtedly attract a considerable number of medium and heavy players in the MMO category itself.

On the other hand, as a part of mass entertainment products, the mobile game needs to attract fans of the original works, fans of the series, and a wider range of potential audiences, such as possible ancient fans, martial arts fans, etc.

The distinct IP attribute is the biggest killer for "Qingyu Nian" to attract users at the marketing level.

In terms of publicity and distribution, the mobile game of "Qingyu Nian" played the slogan "Qingyu Nian 1.5 Season", which attracted a lot of curious eyes. At the moment when the audience frequently urged the main creative team to update the second season of "Qingyu Nian", the so-called "1.5 Season" confirmed the legitimacy of mobile game licensing, and let the latter take advantage of this east wind to fly upward. On March 25 alone, the Weibo topic of "Qingyu Nian 1.5 Season" reached 520 million.

In order to achieve the consistency of the film tour linkage, the scene construction and character image in the mobile game of "Qingyu Nian" echo the drama version, especially those with recognition of the point person, the reference object when pinching the face is self-evident.

At the same time, the spokesperson of the mobile game chose Song Yi, the artist who played the talented woman Fan Ruoruo in the TV series "Qingyu Nian", hoping to activate the audience’s perception of the IP of "Qingyu Nian" and extradite the drama to the mobile game.

Picture source @Qingyuannian mobile game

With a multi-pronged approach, the popularity of the mobile game "Celebration of the Year" is soaring. The question is, after attracting traffic, can the game itself really withstand this huge expectation?

Another male-frequency big IP, another MMO?

The original story of "Qingyu Nian" has a strange charm of the intersection of history and modernity. During the exploration journey of the bright line Fan Xian and the dark line Ye Qingmei, a picture of the country and the world slowly unfolds, and the big and small figures fall into the plate like beads, and the strategic history and martial arts legends complement each other…

When you open the "Celebration of the Year" mobile game with such expectations, all the wonderful imagination will be brought to the peak by the exquisite CG you see when downloading resources, and then brewed to the extreme in the fancy and delicate face-pinching interface.

However, as the mobile joystick surfaced, the situation slowly changed subtly.

You stare at the model on the screen and convince yourself that this is actually not bad. During the teaching battle, the elegant feel finally makes you feel a little hesitant. The last straw that overwhelms the camel is probably from the caption rolling up at the top of the game screen: "Congratulations to so-and-so young hero and Fan Xian partner for getting to know each other and walking hand in hand!"

In-game scrolling announcements

Yes, the word "Fan Xian" was also stained with a striking orange color. Immediately after, announcements celebrating players’ "peerless companions" in the "buddy visit" appeared one by one, and familiar names such as "Fei Jie" and "Yan Bingyun" flashed across the screen – of course, they all carried the orange symbolizing good luck.

After that, the "Heaven Falls Good Ceremony" type of baptism came, "Your ingots are insufficient, do you want to recharge?" The soul torture came into view again and again, so the fallen camel had to wake up from the dream, and I seemed to hear the sound of something breaking.

To be honest, the positioning of "Qingyu Nian" mobile game is a familiar MMORPG game, which should be expected by every player. But the "familiarity" brought by the operation interface, gameplay mechanism and payment point still raises a lot of doubts.

In TapTap, the "Qing Yu Nian" mobile game once had a 9.0 rating high point, and it was stable at around 8.0 after the closed test. But after going online on March 25, its rating dropped all the way to 6.4 points, becoming the only game in the top 5 of the day to fall below 7 points.

Source TapTap

In the front row of comments, some players criticized the attack skills as "like the on-line game skills of the page game", and some people bluntly said that "it feels like the model change game of Tiandao" and "Tiandao skin change stone hammer". Negative comments on issues such as rough modeling, poor hit feeling, and high payment pressure almost filled the TapTap comment area.

As for Tieba, the mobile game of "Qingyu Nian", the wind direction is also not optimistic. The homepage is full of posts with the word "Tiandao" in the title, and some netizens posted to debate whether "Qingyu Nian" is more like "Tianya Mingyue Knife" or "Chu Liuxiang". In the reply, someone mentioned another seeded player, "New Xiaoao Jianghu", and the battle situation became more and more chaotic…

Tuyuan Qingyu mobile game

Objectively speaking, it is not fair to the developers to put on the "skin changing" or "stitching monster" hat at every turn, but the players’ emotions are not completely without reason.

Today, people have been trained by highly homogeneous MMOs with an unusually sensitive and even overcorrected sense of smell. What’s more, in the wave of male-frequency IP adaptations, players have witnessed too many unsatisfactory MMOs. Some of the early IP licensed games have disappeared, and some have started anew.

As far as male-frequency IPs are concerned, among the seniors who have collected elements such as professional production teams, MMO types, and platinum net text gods, there are "Snow Eagle Lord", which has dropped from the first place in the App Store free game list to 200 places after one month of launch, and "Douluo Continent 2 Peerless Tangmen", which has sank behind the thousand free lists from time to time…

Snow Eagle Lord December 15, 2019 – January 20, 2020 Ranking Trend Source Qimai Data

The two categories of MMO and cards have almost become the fate of male-frequency IP games in recent years. And mobile game players who are used to disappointment will no longer easily pay for their feelings.

"Qingyu Nian" is doing an MMO, is it wrong?

The first question is, why do IP adaptations prefer MMOs?

As far as the category itself is concerned, MMORPG is Multip Online Role-Playing Game, which is generally translated as "massively multiplayer online role-playing game" in Chinese. Its essence is role-playing, which naturally fits the interactive demands of IP fans.

For fans of "Qingyu Nian", the biggest selling point of mobile games is that you can immerse yourself in the world, experience the plot and even influence the whole situation by playing characters in a fictional world. The so-called "restoration of the original" and "respect for the character" and other requirements correspond to the operation logic of RPG games. Multiplayer online mechanisms can further simulate the real world, promote the establishment of connections between real people and real people, and generate non-stereotypical interactions that are different from NPCs.

In short, if game makers want to create a world for their players, MMORPGs are the most intuitive option in the existing category, with positive examples including game leaders such as World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV.

From the perspective of market performance, MMORPG is also a long-term active game category in the Chinese game market, with good revenue prospects.

The "2021 China Game Industry Report" released by the China Music and Digital Association Game Working Committee (GPC) and the China Game Industry Research Institute shows that among the top 100 mobile game revenue products in China in 2021, role-playing (ARPG/MMORPG) game revenue accounted for 19.56%, and the number accounted for 25%, ranking first in the market share. Overall, MMO games still have a large user base and a considerable revenue scale.

Revenue share of the top 100 mobile game product types, according to Gamma data

From the "Harry Potter: Magic Awakened" that swept the Internet last autumn to the "Celebration of the Year" that is now the center of the topic, the processing mode of the industry’s top projects also proves that the production idea of big IP with MMO is still the best solution for creating "immersion" in mobile games at this stage.

Looking at Shengqu Games, the production company of "Qingyu Nian", its predecessor was Shanda Games, which set a record for the operation of massively multiplayer online games in the world as early as 2001 by operating "Legend of Blood". Shengqu Games has successively launched and operated popular games such as "Legend of Blood", "World of Legends", "Bubble Hall", "Dragon Valley" and "Final Fantasy 14". The handed down studio that specifically developed "Qingyu Nian" has been established for 18 years, and the research and development experience of the MMO category is particularly rich.

"Legend of Blood" 14th Anniversary Promotional Map, Image Source "Legend of Blood" Official Website

For Shengqu Games, which was well versed in the art of MMO, the birth of "Qingyu Nian" was so safe and easy to predict. The category of its positioning could be verified, the idea of its advancement could be verified, and the team that developed it could be verified… It was an accident not to make an MMO.

The second question ****** it wrong for the mobile game to choose MMO?

Although new MMO games such as "Qingyu Nian" sometimes feel like "changing the soup without changing the medicine", it should be pointed out that domestic MMORPG mobile games are facing a complex competitive environment, and various propositions are difficult to summarize with crude words such as "changing the skin".

The norm in the gaming world is that the top players call the wind and call the rain. The other side of the strong social nature of MMO gameplay is that when existing users are lost, the negative feedback of the community will be particularly serious. Coupled with the era of social networking, the "fire" and "cool" of MMO games will be further amplified, and the cost of adventure will be too high.

Under the iteration of competition, the mainstream products in the MMO market are approaching the top form, and new games are often fine-tuned and innovated based on the templates of mature products, which is a continuation of the predictability of "Qingyu Nian".

In terms of the external environment, the game market’s attitude towards male-frequency IP has also cooled in recent years. Original IP games are the mainstream at the top of the track, and there are not many evergreen precedents for online IP-adapted games. Some unpleasant experiences in the past are bound to consume users’ confidence in such works.

Returning to the MMO mobile game itself, its category rules are also reaching a new juncture. Open world and two-dimensional themes are on the rise, and they are both the development directions of MMO mobile games that are expected to be inclusive and innovative. After seeing the players of Hailaru continent return to the air wall of the old MMO, the sense of restraint will inevitably evolve into loss and dissatisfaction.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

For "Qing Yu Nian", the IP foundation can bring user growth from the source, but this is just the beginning. In order to balance the balance between medium and light plot players and MMO core heavy players, "Qing Yu Nian"’s external communication strategy is to up the ante’s art and plot content, including the official promotion of "foreign stories" "unheard stories" "exclusive plot" and so on.

This is certainly a reasonable business choice, but its essence is nothing more than old wine in new bottles. It is undeniable that the old powerhouses still have the most stable old bottles, and can grab the biggest IP and the most attractive new wine in the competition. It’s just that with the passage of time, new wine alone can no longer conquer the majority of players so easily.

After all, now we know that the original bottle can also be new.