Rebirth of the big era of online games

Chapter 407: Apocalypse War Theme Mobile Game
A Huawei mobile phone with an international price of 1000 US dollars is indeed too expensive for Chinese people. It is a few months or even half a year’s salary, but for foreigners, it is actually not bad, that is, ten days and a half months’ salary. It can't be regarded as a luxury, at most it is a slightly more expensive civilian communication and entertainment tool.

Of course, relatively speaking, if you only consider the price, the current price of high-end Symbian-based mobile phones on the market is only half of that of Huawei smartphones, generally around US$5, so it seems more friendly to the people and easier for foreigners to accept.

After all, the cost of buying a Symbian mobile phone is only a week's part-time job income. You may buy it on a whim, and the pressure is not great. If you want to buy a Huawei mobile phone, you will still weigh it a little bit no matter what.

But generally speaking, at least it’s not too daunting, and you won’t even feel pain. If the product is really good, foreigners who pay more attention to enjoyment and experience will not mind buying a game that can make calls. machine back.

You must know that at this moment, Huaguo's economy is still in the initial stage of taking off, and it has not seriously affected the economic income of foreigners. Most foreign people are doing well.

For example, old Americans, now they live a wasteful life of throwing TVs, refrigerators, ovens, sofas, and directly into the trash can. The reason for throwing them away is not because they are broken, but because they don’t like them and want to change them. Yes, there is no place to put it at home, so I just threw it away.

This kind of thing is unimaginable in China. People in the country don't talk about furniture and electrical appliances. Even a pair of leather shoes, a few years ago, they were reluctant to throw away the soles of the shoes. Instead, they went to a shoemaker to repair them.

So going abroad at this moment can indeed "make a fortune" for Chinese people. Even if they go to pick up junk, they can pick up a whole set of household and daily necessities. This is why a "foreign garbage" industry was even formed between 2000 and 2015. Many people have made a fortune by reselling foreign garbage.

Perhaps, this is also one of the internal reasons for the creation of doomsday survival sandbox games in Western countries. It is not the game setting, but the reality. At present, it is really possible to collect on the roadside or when rummaging through the trash can in foreign countries. When it comes to various materials, there are often some surprises.

If things like zombie siege really happened in reality like in the game, it is not impossible to build your own shelter by collecting materials abroad, and then live a high-quality self-sufficient doomsday life , but if you are in China... it may not be easy to find a pair of shoes when you go out.

Speaking of zombie-themed games, Fang Jie plans to promote this type of game in 2005, and the development focus of boiling games will further shift from domestic to foreign, and both terminal games and mobile games will be developed.

But this is not to say that the domestic market is not taken seriously, it just means that Boiling Games has already handled the domestic market with ease and does not need to expend too much energy.

This year, the domestic focus is on the Xianxia universe, and the main domestic games include the 3D large-scale role-playing online game "Zhu Xian", which is no less than "World of Warcraft". Legend of Heroes, Meteor Butterfly Sword, the revised free-to-play version of Legend, the client game versions of Minecraft and My Origin...etc.

In addition to its own games, there are also "Journey to the West II" jointly operated with Zhuchang, "Cross Fire" jointly operated with Goose Factory, and "Feng Shen Bang" jointly operated with Jinshan Company...etc. These games all require Chinese players. Let's take a moment to digest.

Not to mention the big move made by Boiling Academy, the online game of the same name "Boiling Academy", and the second WPAG competition, the game live broadcast that continues to heat up, the TV series "Myth", "Legend of Sword and Fairy", "Super Girl" cast by Boiling Entertainment Variety shows such as "Super Boy" after the new term.

All in all, in order to enrich the entertainment life of the Chinese people, Fang Jie and his Boiling Group have done a lot of things, but after these things are done, it will take a period of fermentation and precipitation, that is, let the bullets fly for a while, take advantage of this The opportunity was right to turn attention abroad.

Since the release of "My World" and "My War" on the STEAM platform last year, after a period of word-of-mouth fermentation, Boiling Games has made its own name in the international game industry circle, although it has not been able to compete with Blizzard, Compared with well-known game companies such as Ubisoft, EA, Sony, and Nintendo, at least they are no longer considered small and unknown companies.

But this is obviously not Fang Jie's ultimate goal.

Moreover, "My World" and "War of Mine" are a bit flattering, that is, the game creativity and word-of-mouth are good, but it does not reflect the game production technology. Compared with those who can produce "Final Fantasy", "Need for Speed", " Companies with classic game masterpieces such as Splinter Cell, Radiation, and World of Warcraft have not yet been truly recognized by foreign players.

Not to mention foreign players, in the minds of Chinese players, Booming Games is awesome, but once you compare it with other well-known game companies, you will naturally lower the game rating of Boiling Games. After all, "StarCraft", "Warcraft" , "CS", "Red Alert" and a series of games are irreplaceable in everyone's mind.

Even if Fang Jie sniped "World of Warcraft", he didn't dare to say that he had the ability to block this game, but he could only seal it abroad by taking a curve to save the country and guide the Chinese to play on overseas servers. Knowing is unstoppable.

After Boiling Games has its own game engine, it is not impossible to make some masterpieces.

However, making these games is too time-consuming and energy-consuming. These 3A-level masterpieces cannot be produced in a few years. Even if it is a copycat, such as "Magic World", it will take 2 or 3 years for the boiling game. Jie didn't have the time to build his own super game empire step by step.

He wants to take a shortcut and overtake on a curve!

Relying on the end game itself is very difficult to overtake in a corner, because the sites have already been occupied by these big companies, and they have already established their own reputation and loyal player user base. It is definitely a matter of half the effort to replace them.

For example, Blizzard, if it wasn’t acquired in advance, it would remain silent and not make much progress. At least at the moment, Blizzard is definitely the number one game company in the world. Internationally, it has the reputation of “Blizzard’s product must be a boutique” , similar to the status of boiling games in the minds of Chinese players.

However, for all Blizzard’s game works, even if it often skips tickets, and every time the ticket skips for 1 or 2 years, there are still countless players waiting for it. The road is no longer possible.

Challenging Blizzard in the game industry is like challenging Microsoft in the field of computer operating systems, and challenging Symbian in the mobile phone system.

This is not impossible, but the difficulty is so abnormal that the gain outweighs the loss.

And there must be disruptive innovations. For example, the Apple system has always been a challenger to Microsoft, but it has been unsuccessful in the traditional computer industry. Apple computers with superior performance have always been used only in the design industry and have not been popularized. The Apple mobile phone has established its own territory.

So Fang Jie's corner overtaking is to learn from the experience of his previous life, get rid of the traditional computer industry, and deploy on the smartphone mobile terminal in advance.

The successful development of Huawei's mobile phone is only the first step in the layout of the mobile client. The next thing to do is to build its own game empire on this new client platform.

It’s hard for client games to catch up with big players like you, but mobile games are no match for me!

In the future, the PC market will come to an end, and the mobile terminal market will come to the fore. This market is still in a blue ocean that no one is digging, and the prospect is very broad.

As the first mobile game developer to eat crabs, not to mention how well the mobile game is doing, at least the qualifications and status are there. In the future, when smartphones become popular, when everyone comes to make mobile games, they should at least call us OG Bar?
What's more, we are professionals in making games, and we are not afraid of anyone!

As for mobile games, when the first generation of Huawei smartphones was launched, large-scale MMORPG online games were not suitable for the time being. With the current performance of smartphones and Internet conditions, such games could not be supported for the time being.

And the choice of subject matter is also very important.

The world outlook, values ​​and cultural background of foreign players are completely different from those of Chinese.

For example, games such as "Toilet Lock", although domestic players have been tricked, it is also because Chinese players understand how to play this game. If this game is played for foreigners, they will not understand the routines and humor in it. The game experience will be different. Big discount.

Another example is martial arts and xianxia games. Foreigners must not understand how to play them, and the world view is difficult to accept. Just like this type of movie, except for the nondescript martial arts movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", it is difficult for movies with similar themes to be released from the circle. .

The reverse is also true. "War of Mine", which has a great reputation overseas, has been played by Chinese players as a game of a different nature, and "Minecraft" has been dismissed by Chinese players.

Regardless of referring to the previous life or the current life, the favorite themes of foreign players are nothing more than three: science fiction, magic and war.

It can also be said to be a kind of theme: war theme.

Star Wars, Magic Wars and Modern Warfare.

Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that foreigners have been at war since ancient times.

This is also the reason why many foreign games cannot enter the country and fail to pass the review, because Chinese people are too simple and peaceful, and they are afraid of being taught badly. Many Chinese people have violent tendencies because they play too many violent games.

Among the war games, the No.1 or third-person shooter games are the most popular. "CS" is a typical example. Others include "Warhammer", "Battlefield", "Duke Nukem", and "Call of Duty". And various World War II-themed games, let alone "Battle Royale" and "Red Dead Redemption" in later generations.

But there is a problem with this type of game-it is difficult to adapt it into a mobile game.

It's not that it can't be adapted, but the hardware of the mobile phone terminal determines that it is not suitable for operating this type of game.

Although there were chicken-eating mobile games in the previous life, they were very unfriendly to the remnants of the opponents. Only those who have practiced three-finger, four-finger or even five-finger control skills can experience the fun of this type of mobile game, but even Fang Jie , he can only be proficient in three-finger manipulation in this type of game, let alone other people.

What's more, at the moment, many players are not used to 3D end games, such as "World of Warcraft".

Just a joke, when Boiling Overseas Game Studio first recruited people to play the North American server "World of Warcraft", the first thing in the newcomers' entry assessment was not to check their English proficiency, but to see how well they walked. One of the assessment links It is to require newcomers to control the characters to skillfully circle around a tree at a constant speed by manipulating the keyboard and mouse.

This is a true story, and Fang Jie, who came here, thought it was funny, but the person in charge of the game studio didn't think it was funny at all, and his attitude was quite serious.

Yes, it is such a simple circle movement. In the previous life, this should be the basic game operation, but when "Meteor Butterfly Sword" and "World of Warcraft" just came out, it was the first time I came into contact with this 3D game operation mode. Players, most of them have a hard time adapting.

Just like the first time I came into contact with a computer, I was stunned when typing on the keyboard. Now players are also stunned when they come into contact with this type of game.

So just look at how much time it takes to master this kind of operation, whether you can quickly get started and run a regular circle route, or whether you often bump into trees while staggering, you can easily judge whether this newcomer has game talent and whether he is suitable for entering the studio to play. money.

The end game is like this, one can imagine how many players will adapt to this kind of game in mobile games, which is obviously digging its own grave.

Moreover, the current Huawei smartphones cannot carry this kind of 3D masterpieces, and there is no need to spend too much time and energy on boiling games to produce such high-quality products.

After much deliberation, Fang Jie finally took a different approach when many conditions were not met, and chose a subdivided theme under the theme of sci-fi war: the theme of zombies in the end of the world.

This theme is also the favorite of foreigners. Games such as "Tomb Raider" and "Resident Evil", as well as movies such as "Dead Rising", have already created this universe IP. It is a popular theme, and even some foreign players only love it. Games with themes.

However, games with this theme generally cannot pass the review in China, and they are destined to only be loaded in the overseas version of Huawei mobile phones.

Of course, Fang Jie's game strategy was originally formulated specifically for overseas players this time, so he naturally didn't need to consider the issue of domestic review.

First of all, let’s take a simple, copycat past life 3D vertical version of the game "Temple Run".

This game can be said to be the most popular mobile game in the world at the beginning of the smartphone era, except for "Snake" in the previous life, and it is definitely a masterpiece.

The scene of the temple escape is that an adventurer came to the ancient temple to hunt for treasure, but was chased by monsters. All the players need to do is turn, jump and lie down backwards. They need to climb over the wall of the ancient temple, climb Go up the cliff, and in the process, you can shake your phone to collect game coins.

These collected gold coins can be used by the player to unlock some gaining skills. There are various types of skills, such as making the player temporarily invincible or allowing the player to gain magnetism to automatically attract the surrounding gold coins.

In addition, these buff skills can also be upgraded, which means that players will be motivated to continue to "do it again" and collect more gold coins to complete more challenges.

The core gameplay of the game is to overcome many obstacles and traps and challenge your limits. The characters in the game are automatically running forward, and the player needs to control the characters to avoid various dangers encountered on the way to escape. Three-person perspective.

However, in the previous life "Temple Run", the player controlled a character like Indiana Jones who escaped from an ancient temple in the tropical rainforest and was chased by a group of monkey-like demon guards in the temple. The magic changed to a scene of apocalyptic ruins, being chased and intercepted by a group of losers.

In essence, it is still the core of the game "Temple Run", nothing more than changing the scene skin, and the game name has also been changed to "Corpse Run".

Since it is a popular mobile game in the previous life, there must be a reason for its success. At least players do not need to perform complicated 3D game operations during the game, which avoids the problem of inconvenient FPS game operations. This game only requires Can be played with one hand.

Of course, the difficulty is not small, and any mistake needs to start all over again, but the skill level and inheritance mechanism have been added, and there are 7 game characters with different specialties that can be unlocked, which greatly improves the game motivation of players and strengthens the user experience. viscosity.

In short, this seemingly simple game, players can get started after only 2 minutes of playing, and then run, jump, and turn non-stop, but it is very magical, attracting countless players to play it every day.

This was the case in the past life of the game, and it is the same in this life.

At the end of 2005, when Huawei mobile phones conducted market data surveys, they found that 67% of overseas users bought Huawei mobile phones because of this game, which shows how important this game is!
Many of them didn't intend to buy a mobile phone at first, but borrowed someone else's mobile phone to play "Escape from Corpse City" for a few minutes, and then they fell into the pit completely.

Although at the end of the game, I felt very boring and bored, and even hated it because of love, but it was like an addiction, and I couldn’t stop at all. Whenever I had time, I would take out my Huawei mobile phone for a game, and then brought more People fall into the pit.

I really can't stop.

Some Gaowan even ran cool in the game for 18 hours in a row in order to obtain epic achievements in the game!
This so-called epic achievement is to run 100000000 meters without failure!
1 million meters!

Although there are various acceleration props and skills in the game, and even the ability to automatically hang up parkour, it can run 1 million meters instead of failing. Is it indescribable to use hell level? It can only be said that it is quite abnormal. Inhuman challenge.

Therefore, within one year of the game's release, although countless players have launched a sprint for this achievement, no one has achieved it, let alone cleared the game.

Many players have always had a question for this: Is there an end to this game?

After 1 million meters, is it cleared?
The official game has never given an explanation. Anyway, the game is set like this. Maybe there is an end, maybe there is no end, you will know if you try it!
This answer was not given by a player until the end of 2006 in the game: no!

Or not sure.

Anyway, after the player reached the 1 million meter achievement, he found that the game had to continue running. It seemed that the end of the end was still the end...

You know, this player didn't run out manually, but because he was so screwed by this game, he was forced to find someone to make an automatic parkour plug-in program specifically for this game , the highest record is running continuously for 36 hours!
But still haven't cleared the customs!

Now the players were in an uproar, feeling that their IQ had been greatly insulted. It turned out that I had been playing an endless parkour game, so I usually tortured myself in circles over and over again like a donkey. What was the plan?

Regarding this, Fang Jie wanted to say: Do you blame me for your IQ problems?A 19.5M mobile phone game, running for several hours without finishing, is enough to prove that the game has no end, and this is also tested with a special automatic hang-up plug-in?Still need to discuss?Have your heads of foreigners been caught by the door?
In fact, anyone who knows the production principles of the "My World" game can easily judge this fact. An infinite world can be automatically and randomly generated continuously. This is one of the wonderful things brought by the game engine. If it is The artificially designed map scene and the 1D scene of 3 million meters will take a long time, and it is impossible for the game to be only a dozen M.

In short, foreign players are sometimes so silly and cute. They can argue for a long time over an illusory and unrealistic issue, and take it seriously.

Although the game "Escape from Corpse City" has been very successful, it has not only greatly promoted the sales of Huawei mobile phones, but also achieved great repercussions in the global game industry circle and the smartphone market, but this mobile game alone cannot Build Huawei's mobile phone application ecosystem.

Moreover, only one fun game is installed in a mobile phone, and 10 games are installed, even if some of them are crotch, the meaning is completely different. This is a question of cost performance.

If you do some calculations, you will know that for PC games, a stand-alone game usually sells for 5-30 US dollars. If there are 10 mobile games in the mobile phone, then these games alone are worth hundreds of dollars. In terms of mentality, it is much easier to accept.

So Fang Jie didn't just play this game.

For example, "My World", "My War", and "My Origin" have all been adapted into mobile games.

Among them, "War of Mine" has the largest adaptation, and the background is no longer a modern warfare survival game, but changed to the zombie apocalypse.

The game screen is not a horizontal version of exquisite and realistic style, but a text survival game similar to "Live" and "Survival on a Deserted Island" in the previous life.

This is mainly due to the consideration of the game production cycle, followed by the adaptability of mobile phones.

A game with too delicate graphics cannot be carried on a mobile phone at present, and it is time-consuming and labor-intensive to make.

The quality of a game does not depend entirely on external things such as graphics, rendering, and special effects. These are just extra points, and its essence is gameplay. As long as the gameplay is fun enough, it can attract players into the pit.

In the previous life, the game industry developed to a certain extent, and many of them relied on gameplay and creativity to win. Instead, they returned to the essence of games, and those exquisite large-scale productions were often thankless. Apart from good-looking pictures, their gameplay did not increase, or even Regressive, this is one of the reasons why I felt that although there were many games in my previous life, there was no game worth playing.

"Corpse City Escape" is a fake 3D game. It looks like 3D, but it is actually a fixed scene modeling, which does not take up much memory. It is easier to change it to "War of Mine", a text survival game. , but does not affect its fun.

It is still a survival game, the game map still exists in the form of a copy, and the core gameplay is still to collect materials and survive as much as possible. The only thing is that it lacks a sense of picture, and when talking with NPCs, it lacks a sense of substitution. .

In addition to adapting these existing games into text survival games, it is not without other new works.

For example, the 2D horizontal version of the tower defense game "Plants vs. Zombies".

This is another classic magic weapon.

However, "Plants vs. Zombies" is a zombie-themed game for Huawei's domestic version of mobile phones.

In the overseas version, the name of the game is "Corpse Tide", and it is not Plants vs. Zombies, but a hot weapon tower defense game with business elements added!
That is to say, the player runs a shelter of his own, and needs to carry out various constructions and technology tree upgrades on the base, thereby obtaining various output materials and more advanced weapons, and then resisting the siege of massive corpses every once in a while, If the mobile phone is connected to the Internet, you can also enter the official server and attack other players' shelters.

In other words, this is still a business strategy + tower defense mobile online game with a considerable degree of social attributes.

Such a half-standalone and half-networked game can be regarded as the first of its kind in mobile games!
In the past, there were no mobile games of all kinds, but there were almost no online games, most of which were game communities, and "Corpse Tide" became the first mobile online game in the true sense.

Although the nature of its online games is only in its infancy, other mobile games seem to be very simple and have not caused any waves in the game industry. There was a big shock.

After the launch of many built-in mobile games in Huawei mobile phones, many international companies that are already engaged in research and development of smartphones have further confirmed that smartphones will soon be the next trend, and have increased their investment in related research and development.

For example, companies such as Samsung Group and Google have started research and development projects for Android mobile phone systems, and some international companies have launched technical cooperation with Huawei to develop their own smartphone products directly under the open source Hongmeng system.

And Boiling Games, which has successively released many excellent mobile game works, has become more and more famous. It is hard to say anything else, but in the three-acre land of mobile games, even companies like Blizzard have to recognize their status in the industry.

It’s okay not to admit it. Now only Huawei mobile phones and their Hongmeng operating system can carry these games that are absolutely impossible to appear in Symbian mobile phones. Now everyone doesn’t even know what the Hongmeng system is, let alone make games. , can only watch the boiling game dominate without any competitors.

In fact, it is not without competitors. On the open source platform of Hongmeng system, many game companies are developing or adapting existing games on STEAM, but they are not able to play them for the time being.

Boiling Games is also adapting the above games. For example, "Reign", a stand-alone strategy game with the theme of end-apocalyptic war, is the highlight of this year.

(End of this chapter)