Hello everyone, I am Dr.
"Original IP, 5 years of hard research, carrying Tencent's ambition to enter 3a, but it was not in operation for less than a year."
I wonder if you are familiar with such descriptions? It can only be said that history is really a circle. Tencent stumbled in "God of War" and then stumbled in "Edge of Rebirth"...
In the past two days, Tencent's first benchmark 2a The original IP shooting game announced that it would cease service after 10 months of operation, causing a lot of "ah" in the gaming circle.
So here comes the question. What went wrong with the team of "Edge of Rebirth" with a script similar to the original "God of War" of "start high and go low, and follow-up investment is insufficient"?
Point 1: The history is surprisingly similar! Two months after the game was launched, the producer ran
Before talking about "Edge of Rebirth", we might as well talk about the project team next that produced this game. This Tencent project team has been ridiculed as "the least Tencent-like". The predecessor of the
next studio came from the "Kepler Project" of Tencent Game Academy for college student teams. This program is dedicated to helping young practitioners incubate creative IP. To put it bluntly, this is a project that spends a small amount of money to do big things. By issuing internship certificates, awards and bonuses, it stimulates college students' independent initiative and attempts to do some "non-Tencent" projects.
In April 2017, after several rounds of screening by the "Kepler Project", Tencent Game Academy decided to invest in a small team for the college student team that won the gold medal to make a creative mobile game called "Sanzhuli".
As the "Kepler Project" progresses, there are more and more projects like "Sanzhuli". Tencent directly gathered these people and built a creative-focused studio, which is now next studio.
Then, after several years of hard work, next studio has also produced a lot of lightweight works that are both popular and popular, such as "Rainbow Falls", "The Mystery", "Only a Big Adventure", "Nothing" The Crown of Imagination" and these.
Although these games have a good reputation, they all have a common problem, that is - too short!
As you play, players will often have the illusion that the game is over before they even exert any effort, which is quite fascinating.
Although the short process is not next studio’s fault, the lack of profit caused by the short process is next’s problem. Especially since they are in a large company like Tencent that attaches great importance to commercial KPIs, this problem is huge. .
Although in the early years, people from next studio could proudly say that as a rare creative incubation department in Tencent, they could not memorize revenue KPIs, but in the end when the income from those small and beautiful products made it impossible for them to be responsible for their own profits and losses, they were suspended. The Sword of Damocles over their heads finally fell.
"Edge of Rebirth", a high-quality, high-development 2a masterpiece, is a commercial answer handed over by next studio.
However, during the answering process, next studio encountered a series of changes. Shen Li, general manager of
, resigned in 2022, Zhang Zhechuan, business leader of the creative workshop, resigned in early 2023. Clark Yang, the project leader, was transferred internally 2 months after the game was launched, and Gu Yu, deputy general manager of next, was transferred 4 months after the game was launched. Later, he resigned, and Next Operations Director Hu Yi also submitted his resignation a few months ago...
Needless to say, I believe everyone knows in their hearts that the commercial answer sheet handed over by "Edge of Rebirth" has been a complete failure.
focuses on the second point: Start with creativity, but lose to krypton gold? It's hard to describe the commercial design
First of all, "Edge of Rebirth"'s "core" gameplay creativity of Pokémon + gunfight + pvpve is relatively novel. Because within this gameplay framework, you can achieve different tactical play styles by cultivating different core-controlled robots.
If you think about it carefully, the prototype of its gameplay concept of "Pokémon + Gun" is somewhat similar to "Pokémon Parlu" at the beginning of this year. Both are trying to combine other creatures with hard-core shooting gameplay to create a brand new gaming experience.
However, the good times did not last long. With the in-depth development of the game, its product positioning and goals have been changed and adjusted several times. The final work presented to players is no longer a fun shootout focused on catching pets and developing Pokémon, but a fire unicorn to conquer the world. Numerical shootout.
In the game, firearm damage is linked to rarity. The value of weapons fished out from the resident/up pool by players with krypton gold is higher than other purple, blue, and green weapons that can be made through treasure farming. Several levels, this is almost obvious to tell players that only krypton gold can cause higher damage.
The most amazing thing is that the project team may think that some players will not understand the hints of the Krypton Gold Pool, and they also deliberately increased the monster's value by several levels in the difficulty design of level 8, so that you can understand what "no" means. Krypton gold = Gua Sha”.
Secondly, in terms of long-term operations, "Edge of Rebirth" does not understand the principle of long-term and steady flow. Most of the gameplay was exposed during the beta period. During the open beta period, there were almost no attractive new gameplays or benefits that people had to take. This led to the game's reputation among passers-by almost falling apart at the beginning.
Then, one month after the launch of the server, on the occasion of the National Day, "Edge of Rebirth" also strangely chose to launch their new version of "Golden Gun Liuying" after the National Day.
In the handling of the first major update of the game "Golden Gun Liuying", "Edge of Rebirth" also solved the magical bug of 198 gift packs mistakenly sending 1w4 home coins.
In the end, due to strong protests from players, the officials had to hold their noses and admit the bug, and gave a total of 1w8 home coins to each player who purchased the gift pack as compensation.
Although this operation appeased the hearts of new players who bought gift packs, it also turned those players who filled up the gift packs immediately after opening the server into "idiots" and directly discouraged a wave of core fans.
In the face of such serious operational errors, "Edge of Rebirth" miraculously remained in ruins for more than a month without new content. It was not until the end of 2023 that news of new bosses and new characters came...
How can I put it? Players on the edge of rebirth who can play from the launch of the server on September 8 to the end of the year should be considered rare creatures.
Therefore, the ending of this game being shut down so quickly is really not surprising.
Summary after class:
Going back to the question at the beginning, the "Edge of Rebirth" team with a script similar to "God of War", can they make the next Black Myth after running away? Dr.
x thinks this matter is quite suspenseful, because compared with "God of War", "Edge of Rebirth" lacks not only a good operation, a new version gift package without mistakes, but a complete set of commercial monetization designs. ideas. At least "God of War" did not directly choose to sell golden guns in the mall at the beginning. Instead, it tried to strike a balance between KPI and fun through implicit means such as washing equipment affixes and washing pet skills.
