Paper Stacking Game The self-developed hyper-realistic 3D immersive love interactive mobile game "Love and Deep Space" was launched globally simultaneously
An unprecedented melee occurred in the domestic Otome mobile game.
A number of star games were announced on the same day, allowing the National Secondary League to successfully break out of the industry. The source of this melee is the 3D love mobile game "Love and Deep Space" newly developed by Paper Folding Game.
is another masterpiece of the paper folding game after the popularity of "Love and the Producer". "Love and the Deep Space" was first exposed in October 2020. Initially, the game received poor reviews from users. But after two rounds of testing last year, its reputation was reversed. Finally, at the end of last year, the public beta date of "Love and Deep Space" was set as January 18 this year.
As the countdown to the public beta of "Love and Deep Space" begins, major national B star products begin to join in with "tacit understanding". On January 13, Tencent’s “Love of Light and Night”, known as “one of the four major domestic Otome mobile games”, officially announced that it would launch a new event on January 18. In the following days, "Undecided Event Book" and "Codename: Kite", both of which are among the "four major domestic Otome mobile games", also successively announced that they will launch new content and activities on January 18. The melee of
is not only a competition for users between the old and new generations of National B, but also a competition between two potential new games for the "Newcomer King of National B". Developed by NetEase and featuring "unlimited streaming", the romance mobile game "Beyond the World" was originally announced to be released on January 26. However, in the early morning of January 16, "Beyond the World" announced that it would be released on January 18. Limited testing without file deletion.
With the joint promotion of major game manufacturers, January 18th, an ordinary day, was transformed into "the peak showdown day for domestic Otome mobile games". A number of games dominate the search rankings throughout the day, and players are highly active on social media, making the long-dormant National Second Division circuit lively again.
is a sequel to Paper Love and IP, focusing on 3D interactive immersive experience
As a sequel to Love and IP, "Love and Deep Space" has high hopes for the paper game.
"Love and Deep Space" continues the world view of the "Love and Deep Space" series. It is a highly immersive 3D love game with near-future fantasy. It focuses on providing highly realistic love through immersive first-person perspective performances, rich love interactions, and multi-sensory gameplay settings. experience. Since
was first exposed, 3D modeling has been the main feature of "Love and Deep Space". Compared with the 2D modeling of traditional second-tier mobile games, the Paper Folding Game hopes to bring players a more realistic interactive experience through iterations in character modeling. The transformation of
from 2d to 3d means a significant increase in the difficulty of game production. When "Love and Deep Space" was first exposed, the character design was relatively low-level and lacked polishing of details. At that time, several male protagonists of "Love and Deep Space" were called "oil kings" by many players.
As "Love and Deep Space" started its second round of testing in November last year, several protagonists announced the success of "removing oil". After adjustments, "Love and Deep Space" has made significant optimizations in character modeling. The appearance, body posture, charm and clothing accuracy of the game characters have been improved. Many players praised this as "really awesome".
Picture source "Love and Deep Space" official blog
The repeated polishing of details has allowed "Love and Deep Space" to begin to show the advantages brought by 3D modeling. After the public beta of "Love and Deep Space" was launched, the 3D interactive cards in the game became the focus of heated discussions among players. Through this type of cards, players can have many private interactions with game characters, and the large-scale character and scene design enhances the ambiguous atmosphere during the player experience. After the
game was launched, displaying the 3D interactive cards they drew on social media has become the primary social method for players of "Love and Deep Space". According to
stronghold data, from January 15th to January 19th, "Love and Deep Space" has been at the top of the iOS free list in the country.
Confronted with "Love and Deep Space", Tencent and NetEase each came up with unique strategies
Faced with the arrival of "Love and Deep Space", Tencent and NetEase showed their respective coping ideas. After
occupied a place in the National Secondary Market through "Painted Traveler in Time and Space", NetEase chose to attack again with content.The "infinite flow" adopted by
"Beyond the World" has produced many successful cases in the field of online novels and film and television dramas, but it is rare in the field of games. This novel attempt has made "Beyond the World" self-announced It has attracted the attention of many players since then. In June 2023, "Outside the World" topped the reservation list on the first day it was launched on the taptap platform.
In "Beyond the World", the heroine played by the player unexpectedly comes to a different world. In order to survive, players need to follow the system's guidance, constantly enter various dungeons and complete mission objectives. In the dungeon, players will meet and have encounters with the male protagonists. As the dungeon switches, the identities of the players and the male protagonists will also be adjusted accordingly according to the world view of the dungeon.
Compared with NetEase launching new games, Tencent chose to play the emotional card in the operation of old games. The online operation activities of
"Love of Light and Night" include a large number of benefits, such as free clothing sets, increased monthly card benefits, and permanent reduction in the difficulty of some main lines. However, what attracts the most attention of players is the game character video call. On the day the event was launched, the topic "Qi Sili's phone call" became a hot search topic on Weibo, and a large number of players left messages on the official blog of "Love of Light and Night" urging them to make a call quickly. In addition to the
game, a large number of brand official blogs came to comment on the new event content of "Love of Light and Night", and the official blog of "Love of Light and Night" responded with highly personalized responses. In the comment area, the whole screen was full of words like "My dad is Tencent" and "Make it bigger and stronger", which is quite brainwashing.
's unconventional way of operating social media has led many users to ridicule "Love of Light and Night" as "the madness of the second country." And this kind of brand communication brought about by creating topics allows the news of welfare activities within the "Love of Light and Night" game to be spread to more players. According to data from
, "Love of Light and Night", which has been online for more than 3 years, has risen from 93 to 52 on the iOS free game list after an event on January 18, effectively achieving user retention.
The difficult bottlenecks and embarrassments of National B games
In fact, before the launch of "Love and Deep Space", the domestic B game circuit had not been so lively for a long time.
"Love and Producer" (Stacked Paper), "Love of Light and Night" (Tencent), "Painted Traveler in Time and Space" (NetEase), "Undecided Event Book" ( MiHoYo), the public beta times are December 2017, June 2021, October 2020, and July 2020.
In nearly two years, there has never been a truly breakthrough game in the domestic B-game circuit. Otome games are still a niche category in the domestic game industry and tend to be two-dimensional games.
Judging from user portraits, the main user group of otome mobile games has always been young female players. According to Jiguang Big Data statistics, among otome mobile game players, female players account for 94.2%, and players under the age of 24 account for 74%. As a game category that satisfies the romantic and emotional needs of female players, the high degree of segmentation of National League B on the track makes its audience group relatively single.
In terms of actual business performance, TMTpost found that otome games have large fluctuations in revenue performance. Data from
’s stronghold shows that since the public beta of “Love of Light and Night”, its revenue has been experiencing seasonal fluctuations. Every 2-4 months, "Love of Light and Night" will experience a revenue peak, which corresponds to the game's major version update. Moreover, similar curves also appeared in the income performance of "Love and the Producer" and "The Painted Traveler in Time and Space".
Monthly revenue curve chart of "Love of Light and Night", screenshot from Diandian Data
This means that the revenue of otome games is highly dependent on the promotion of event operations and major node updates, and on new plot trends and cards The design has high requirements, which will test the team's long-term operation ability of the game.
In terms of game updates, in 2019, when the smash hit "Love and Producer" announced the new character Ling Xiao, the character had a unique plot line and was positioned as a "special encounter", but it was still criticized by fans of the other four male protagonists. There was a collective boycott, even though Ling Xiao did not appear in many protagonist activity card pools.
players will easily get tired of simple skin changes and old-fashioned storylines.And every major update also faces the possibility of "overturning". After all, different people have different expectations for the direction of the game's plot, and the experience of love presented by different plot characters is different.
Under the situation of extreme involution, otome game operators always try to win the attention of players again by relying on soft porn and other factors. Some ambiguous plots often become the content that attracts the most attention from players during each game update, and they also become a simple and straightforward way to attract new players.
Titanium Media app has noticed that on Bilibili, the so-called 18+ 3D interactive gameplay of "Love and Deep Space" has become the selling point of most up owners in recommending this game; before the official public beta Two days ago, the official "Love and Deep Space" also released the "Love and Deep Space Bath Card" series of missing PVs for "Love and Deep Space Bath Card". #爱与深空 bathcard# once became a hot word on Weibo. In the case of
's lack of innovation, learning from the soft porn gameplay of Japanese otome games seems to have become a tacit understanding in this industry. There is even a view that the end of national second-tier mobile games is butter.
To a certain extent, with the emergence of the National Secondary Peak Showdown Day, manufacturers chose to get together on the same day, not only to grab existing users, but also a disguised form of "huddling together to keep warm." After all, when these games are collectively placed in front of players, it will no longer be a certain game that competes for players’ entertainment time, but an entire track.
(This article was first published on Titanium Media app, author｜Wu Yixiao, editor｜Li Chengcheng)
