Blue Whale News, July 14 (Reporter Tang Shiyun) The pouring rain cannot extinguish the soul of the second dimension.
html From July 12th to 14th, the offline carnival created by Bilibili - bilibiliworld2024 (bw for short) was staged at the Shanghai National Convention and Exhibition Center. On the first day of the event, many spectators stayed up late and lined up to wait for the carnival to start.According to official data from Station B, on the day of the first round of ticketing for BW this year, 27,000 tickets for VIP members were sold out in 30 seconds, and 100,000 tickets for ordinary users were sold out in 1 minute. During the three-day carnival, the total passenger flow is expected to reach 270,000.
In bw, face the virtual idols across the screen
The scale of this bw conference is the largest ever. The 170,000-square-meter venue includes nine themed exhibition areas such as anime, game world, and virtual paradise. Among them, the virtual idol theme area is one of the most popular exhibition areas.
What makes outsiders confused is how do fans and virtual anchors meet and interact?
is one of the most influential virtual anchor groups in China, and the virtual stage is the first stop to enter the virtual paradise. Hundreds of young fans were sitting on the floor in front of the huge screen, waiting for their idol to appear. The host in charge of the venue frequently reminded the crowd to move forward as much as possible to avoid crowding the aisles or affecting other exhibition areas. Two virtual idols,
hanser and Nanami, appeared on the big screen on time. The former is the virtual anchor with the highest number of fans at Bilibili. They could obviously see the audience at the scene. After saying hello, they asked about the current weather, "Because we are in a different dimension, we don't know if it is raining hard outside." During the
interaction, several lucky fans came on stage to talk to The virtual anchors chatted and played a photo game. One of the cosplayers dressed as Hanser came on stage and successfully took a photo with the anchor wearing a leather holster on the screen. The real and fake Hanser are exactly the same from the clothes to the stupid hair on their heads - nothing can highlight the magic of the intersection of reality and reality more than this scene.
Just like the aforementioned scene, hundreds of virtual anchors including Luo Tianyi, Ling Yuan, and Asa appeared at bw2024. In the
offline event space, fans can interact one-on-one with virtual artists through video or VR. Multiple booths were packed with queues waiting to interact or purchase peripherals. In a few minutes or even a minute of conversation, fans mostly talked about the reasons why they like it, the current situation of the virtual anchor, and the topics of last night's live broadcast. If they are lucky, fans can also meet the "in person" who is signing autographs at certain booths. In the
bw venue, physics no longer exists. Only the job advertisements next to the booths will briefly bring people back to the real world.
Blue Whale reporters noticed that a poster recruiting virtual anchors said in the largest font size: The next supernova is you. The bonus requirements for applying are having a high concentration of two-dimensional elements, having talent and a unique voice, and being able to accept overtime arrangements for the initial live broadcast. It may be difficult for people outside the
v circle (virtual tuber circle, that is, virtual anchor) to understand. Since they are all watching the screen, why do they have to come to the scene?
It was raining heavily outside, and the virtual anchor in the Vup small theater was playing "Jiangnan". Below, there were young audiences sitting together and listening quietly. If you were there, you'd probably be infected too.
Capital has entered the market, and the era of virtual idols is coming. The atmosphere of
virtual paradise is roughly consistent with its strategic positioning at station b. Chen Rui, chairman of
b station, said in the financial report conference call in March this year, "Many live broadcasts on the platform are about the characteristics and advantage categories of station b. For example, in the field of virtual anchors, we should be the strongest in the country and far ahead. "The
b website is indeed the platform with the largest concentration of virtual anchors, and it is also the Internet giant with the deepest involvement in the industry chain.
Twelve years ago, Luo Tianyi was born, and the concept of virtual idols attracted market attention. In 2019, virtualareal, a cooperation project between Bilibili and Japan’s Rainbow Society, was launched, and anycolor, the company owned by the latter, was the first virtual anchor company to go public. Since its development, virtualareal currently has more than 60 virtual anchors with different personalities.
At the end of 2020, a-soul, a virtual girl group backed by ByteDance and Lehua Entertainment, debuted.It used Station B as the main stage and attracted a large amount of traffic in a short period of time. In the same year, more than 32,000 virtual anchors started broadcasting on Station B, a year-on-year increase of 40%.
In 2021, a-soul rose to the top of the V circle, member Jiaran became a top 100 up owner, and member Jiale won the title of the strongest fleet in the live broadcast year. In that year, a-soul single-handedly helped Lehua's pan-entertainment business grow by nearly 80% year-on-year, with revenue increasing by more than 16 million yuan and gross profit margin as high as 77.7%.
's "2022 China Virtual Idol Pink Book" pointed out that nearly 70% of the respondents believe that the comforting emotions brought by virtual anchors are real and valuable. These values were eventually converted into real money, and a large amount of capital poured into the v circle.
iiMedia Consulting data shows that China’s virtual human driven industry market size and core market size will be 186.61 billion yuan and 12.08 billion yuan respectively in 2022, and are expected to reach 640.27 billion yuan and 48.06 billion yuan respectively in 2025, showing a strong growth trend.
The era of virtual idols is coming. At the same time, with the increasing maturity of AI technology, virtual idols may gradually eliminate human beings and develop in the direction of "digital people". According to "China Report", Liu Qian, an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of Beijing Normal University, said that purely technical digital humans have obvious limitations. When platforms apply digital humans to commercial marketing, there may be a certain degree of compatibility with the products. deviation. "It is essentially an algorithm, and it cannot actually feel human perception."
When that day comes, will the people in front of the screen still show their true feelings?
