The game "Arena of Valor" is amazing. Let me share some data with you so you can see how popular it is.
First of all, it is the number of users.
So far, "AoV" has more than 200 million registered Chinese users and more than 100 million daily active Chinese users at its peak. What is the concept?
There are a total of 1.4 billion people in China, and 1/14 of them have played "AoV" on the same day, which has exceeded our understanding of game data statistics in game industry.
The second is its revenue.
In 2018, its income exceeded 20 billion CNY, and a single skin sold for one day earned more than 150 million CNY!
According to the statistics of some financial institutions, the annual income of 80% of the listed companies in China is less than a "AoV".
In addition to the number of users and revenue, AoV also breaks through the gender circle-more than 50 per cent of all gamers are women.
In today's video game field dominated by male users, such a gender ratio is also a height that all e-sports games can not reach!
So, from any point of view, "AoV" is at its peak as soon as it is released, dominating the rankings of all the games in the world all the year round.
It can be said that "AoV" is currently the most popular game in the world.
If "AoV" is so popular?
In addition, what are the implications for other industries and other products from the popularity of "AoV"?
What are the future opportunities in this game category?
In the following article, I will analyze these questions one by one and explain the real secret behind the popularity of this game for you.
1. Why is "AoV" so popular?
The popularity of "AoV" seems to be taken for granted today, but in fact, it is not the highest among professional gamers.
There has always been an interesting chain of disdain in China's e-sports circle:
"StarCraft" players look down on "Warcraft" players.
"Warcraft" players look down on "DOTA" players.
"DOTA" players look down on "League of Legends" players.
Players of all the above games look down on "AoV" players.
According to this disdain chain, the most popular is "StarCraft", but from the game data, it is quite the opposite —“AoV" at the bottom is becoming more and more popular.
Why do you think that is?
I concluded that "We can't evaluate the success of a game from the perspective of professional players". We should look at "public evaluation and public behavior" to determine whether a game is really successful or not.
According to my analysis, the main reason for the success of "AoV" is that it made two subtractions correctly and found two weapons.
Let's talk about subtraction first.
How can a game become popular?
According to our general understanding, first of all, its research and development technology should be more advanced, the way of playing the game should become more complex, the plot design of the game should be more grand, and the animation alone should be worth a few more movie tickets.
In short, you have to keep adding. Only in this way can you make your games different from other games and be competitive.
For example, a few decades ago, we played a game, the client exe only dozens of M, now the game, just an installation package will cost dozens of gigabytes.
For example, "Battle Royale Games" is also doing addition, its earliest version does not have so many complex operations, not so many changeable rules of play, and now players want to be able to live in the game.
But what I want to tell you is that "AoV" is different. It is popular not because it adds, but because it subtracts the way it gameplays, which makes the game easier.
"AoV" mainly makes two subtractions —
The first subtraction, which is an indirect subtraction, is not directly related to "AoV" itself, but lays the foundation for its popularity.
Twenty years ago, a game was popular all over the world: RTS, Real-Time Strategy Game.
You've probably heard of Red Alert or "StarCraft"?
That was the most classic RTS game at that time.
But the RTS game is silent after it has been popular for a period of time. Do you see who else is playing RTS around you now?
Only a few players are playing with it.
Some people are even shouting "the RTS game is dead".
Why is that?
Why are RTS games declining?
Because RTS games are too difficult.
It's not that it's hard to develop, it's hard to play, especially hard to play well.
Let me take the familiar RTS game Red Alert as an example. Players who have played Red Alert should know that your role on the battlefield is a "general". What is a "general"?
That is, all the big and small things in the game need you to worry about. You have to command every unit on the battlefield to work for you and fight for you. In addition to these, if you want to play the RTS game well, you need to have fine mouse and keyboard operation, and even fine to "which farmer mining which mine", "which building to be built in what location", "which soldier needs to move position".
The purpose of this is to maximize the role of each combat unit.
In the game, whose hand speed is faster, for the unit operation is more refined, who is likely to win the final victory.
This also gives birth to a proper noun called APM, which means Actions Per Minute, which means the sum of all your actions on the game in a minute.
It is said that the most powerful professional player APM can reach more than 500 times.
Of course, the strategy of the RTS game is also important. When should I harass the enemy and what soldiers should I build to restrain the enemy? sometimes it is not possible to rely on the tactics of the crowd alone. "sneak attack" is also an important strategy that affects the final outcome of the game.
Players who have played RTS games should all have deep feelings. If you play a game, you will not only feel pain in your hands, but also feel pain in your brain.
In the course of the game, you need to keep your concentration at every moment, and usually a game of RTS at least 40 minutes, more than an hour, for people's physical and mental strength is a test.
This shows how difficult it is for ordinary players to play a RTS game well.
From the "exit cost management" point of view, the RTS game is not like "Battle Royale Games" (1V99 has only a 1% chance of winning).
But RTS games are usually 1V1, the probability of winning is fifty-fifty, players are confident that they can win.
At the same time, 1V1 also means that you can only win or lose on your own. If you are not as skilled as others, you are likely to lose all the time.
If you keep losing, you may choose to quit the game.
At that time, it seemed that everyone was talking about RTS games, mainly because there were no other games in which enable people played directly against others. At that time, the game market was not as rich as it is now.
This situation also leads to the current situation of RTS games. There are many people who watch others play, but few people really play by themselves, and few people play, which will lead to developers not making money, so they turn to develop other types of games that can make money, which objectively results in the death of RTS!
A. it inherits the direct advantages of MOBA.
At a time when there is a bottleneck in the development of RTS games because they are difficult to play, another category of games has seized this opportunity and was born out of nowhere. This category of games is MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena).
What is a MOBA game?
In a nutshell, it is a simplified version of RTS.
The most classic MOBA games are "DOTA", "League of Legends", "AoV" and so on.
How do they subtract gameplay into MOBA games?
I summed up these subtractions into four key words: leisure, automation, acceleration, and free.
Leisurize
The biggest change in MOBA games and RTS games is that it introduces the concept of "hero" from a multi-unit operation to a single-unit operation.
Throughout the MOBA game, you only need to take care of the hero of your choice, upgrade the hero's level and skills, buy equipment, and consider the hero's position and timing of launching skills, which is tantamount to turning the real-time strategic control into a "role-playing". You no longer have to be God like the RTS game (you need to worry about a small soldier yourself), and you don't have to abuse the mouse crazily.
This is the key change for MOBA to win over RTS, with this change, the rhythm of the game finds a better balance and will not be both mental and physical at the same time.
In addition, the MOBA game is usually 5V5, besides you, there are 4 teammates and 5 enemies opposite. It turns the single-player game of the RTS game into a team game. Of course, in addition to matching passers-by you don't know, you can also gather friends and relatives to premade.
Another benefit of teamwork is that even if you are less skillful than your opponent, you can win the game if your four teammates are good, or if you work better as a team.
Even if you lose, sometimes you can blame your teammates, thinking that you will lose because your teammates don't work hard, not because you can't. If I match a few more reliable teammates in the next hand, I may be able to win.
In addition, automation, MOBA, minions has become automatically controlled by computer AI, minions will automatically refresh according to fixed time intervals, the game map is clearly divided into three lines, each way is a fixed number of defense towers, you only need to fight one by one in order, the complexity and variability of tactics is greatly reduced, and it also facilitates the design of AI and the tactical communication and coordination between you and your teammates.
Acceleration: make the game faster.
Then there is acceleration. Compared with RTS games, MOBA games speed up the pace of the game, reducing the duration of each game to about 30 minutes.
In today's fast-paced society, especially adults' time is becoming more and more fragmented, it is too difficult to have a complete rest time of more than two hours, even when you are sleeping, you may be called to work by your boss. It is likely that something new will come to you after half an hour of leisure.
Too long game time, your body and mind will not only be tired, and many people do not have so much complete time, especially in MOBA teamwork games, you did not finish because of something offline, then your four teammates will be fucked by you, examples like this can often be heard in the mouth of MOBA players.
Free of charge
"Fortnite" is not the inventor of the Battle Royale category, but it has greatly outperformed its founder "PUBG" in quickly accumulating the number of users because it is free.
"League of Legends" has once again proved the charm of free. Although the category of MOBA starts from "DOTA", "League of Legends" uses the free model for the first time, coupled with the fact that it makes full use of the previous advantages of this category, giving play to several features such as leisure, automation and acceleration to a new height, causing its popularity to reach its peak quickly, and even the name of the category is invented by "League of Legends".
Before “AoV” came out, almost everyone was playing "LOL", and even the "DOTA2" developed by All in of Valve could not surpass its popularity.
After listening to mine, I believe you should have a clearer understanding of the relationship and difference between the two categories of games. MOBA games not only subvert the charging model but also increase the entertainment of the game while maintaining the core way of playing RTS.
The free model can bring they a steady stream of new users, and the increase in entertainment means that the barriers to entry for newcomers in the game have been lowered, and fewer people will be forced out accordingly.
Whether a game is done well or not, it must not only attract players, but also retain players, and those who stay will bring more colleagues and friends to play through his circle of acquaintances, so as to form a benign closed loop.
A few seemingly simple differences actually made a whole new category of games and almost ruined its previous games.
This is the magic of game design evolution, such a complete evolution of the case is rare in the history of games!
B, it transplants the game to the mobile platform.
Before the launch of "AoV", the MOBA game market was basically dominated by "League of Legends" and "DOTA2", both of which can only be played on computers.
At that time, MOBA games became more recreational than RTS games, but for most people, the barrier to entry was still high!
Every year, far more people watch the game between the two games, e-sports, than those who often play the game. Do you recall what happened in the RTS era?
Let me take "League of Legends" as an example. At the S8 World Championship held in "League of Legends" in 2018, 99.6 million independent spectators watched the final match alone.
And how many people play "League of Legends"?
The total number of online players in the world of "League of Legends" in 2018 is about 62 million, which is the total number of players for the whole year!
It can be said that the number of spectators watching the game is at least twice the number of players, and there are still more than half of the players in a state of only watching and not playing!
So, how did "AoV" achieve the peak of the MOBA game category?
The biggest push is the popularity of mobile phones!
"AoV" was launched in 2015, when the Internet began to move from the PC era to the mobile era as China's major operators reduced their mobile traffic charges.
As the focus of people's life and entertainment shifted from PC to mobile phones, the concept of mobile MOBA began to be put forward, but there were many doubts in the industry at that time, and the mobile game market at that time was dominated by chess and cards, light card games, Tile-matching video game, or automatic combat 2D games.
These games are mainly to pass the fragment time, and do not even need to be connected to the Internet. Basically, in the game, you can put down your phone at any time to do something else. Is it really suitable for MOBA games that require precise operation to be transplanted to mobile phones?
But as a result, as you can see, it can be said that "AoV" has done what all previous MOBA games have not done, bringing MOBA to almost all the general public!
How does it do it?
it still subtracts the play.
The first is the mode of operation. PC has a mouse and keyboard, while the phone only has a touch screen. The traditional solution is to make a virtual joystick on the phone's touch screen, plus a few virtual buttons.
Mobile game MOBA is, of course, the easiest thing to think of: the virtual joystick on the left is used to control the movement of heroes, and the virtual button on the right is used to cast hero skills.
But here's the problem: clicking with the mouse gives you more precise control over your character's target location and target.
While the virtual joystick is more like the controller of a game console, the feeling of this control is actually completely different. You can only control the direction of the hero in real time, and it is impossible to achieve precision and speed by scratching it on the screen with a thumb. Therefore, it is necessary to change the rhythm design of the game in detail, give full play to the advantage of direction control, avoid the need for precise positioning, and instead emphasize the sense of entry between the hero and the player.
Let the player no longer be the commander of the hero, but feel that the player is the hero, and let the player focus on the direction of the role-playing experience, which is why few mobile MOBA games use "precise operation" as a selling point to promote themselves.
And operational accuracy is precisely a high wall in front of many new players, "AoV" switch to virtual joystick to reduce operational accuracy is to improve the tolerance for low-level users, which is why most newcomers can quickly use the game after passing the novice teaching level of "AoV".
In terms of ease of operation, "AoV" has also added the function of "automatic spell casting", which allows you to automatically find enemies near you through this button.
To tell you the truth, because there is no mouse, you can not accurately and quickly select the target, they might as well simply make the gameplay automatic.
This simplification will not completely affect the strategy of the game, but it can greatly simplify the difficulty of the operation of the game.
Let's take the hero "Wang Zhaojun" in "AoV" as an example. Many of the skills in "Wang Zhaojun" are control skills that require you to put your skills among the enemy's people. If you have this function, you will be much less likely to miss your skills.
This design is very friendly for beginners, especially those who have not even played MOBA games, and can help them get started with the game as soon as possible, which plays an important role in reducing the game quit rate and expanding the game user base.
Second, the game rhythm, we can see that "AoV" compared with the previous MOBA games, the overall game tempo than the PC version of MOBA becomes faster, it shortens the duration of each game to 20 minutes, it also shortens the skill cooldown of all hero characters, shrinks the game map, the aim is to increase the intensity of the battle, shorten the time for hostile players to meet, so that you can break out many battles in a short time.
After all, for most ordinary players, wonderful confrontation and suppression come much faster than complex operations and exquisite positional fun.
In addition, "AoV" has also made small changes in many details, all of which have the effect of lowering the threshold and speeding up the pace of the game.
For example, in terms of the economic system, the knife replenishment mechanism has been improved. No matter the enemy minions is killed by the defense tower or your own minions, you can get economic income. It also removes the eye insertion mechanism, and the vision of "AoV" can only be obtained by probing the grass on your own face or relying on the skills of some heroes.
The defensive tower properties have been modified to make the defensive tower in "AoV" more vulnerable. If no one is in charge, even minions can push down your defensive tower for a short time.
Whether RTS evolves into a MOBA game, or "AoV" continues to evolve on the basis of MOBA to achieve greater success, it is constantly simplifying the difficulty of the operation of the game and accelerating the pace of happiness of the game.
The "AoV" approach actually makes us go back and reflect on the question, "what is the ultimate goal of the game?"
"is it for players to play complex and advanced games?
Or let players keep paying?
In fact, the ultimate goal of the game is simple, that is, "make players happy", and whether you are happy or not is not directly related to whether you have the technology or the complexity of the game operation.
In the 14th century, English logician Ockham William put forward a theory of Occam's Razor, Ockham's Razor, which is an important theory of business management. The core of this law is to grasp the key and simplify complexity.
This is true not only in the game industry, but also in countries, companies and individuals, in terms of managing investment, product design and personal life.
To make the complex things simple, and make the simple things to the extreme is a kind of success in itself!
The iPhone is a good example. We don't need the whole physical keyboard, and now we don't even want the Home key, which not only makes the phone screen so big that there is no boundary, but also makes the operation of the phone easier, thus opening a new era of big-screen phones in one fell swoop.
Jobs has been carrying out minimalism all his life, never over-designing if he can be simple, and must let people who do not understand at all get started in the shortest possible time.
That's why their products are designed in the first place, so Apple products never come with instructions.
But even now, how many games can be done without novice tutorials at all, and whether they are three-year-olds or 80-year-old men, they can have a good time with just a few clicks?
Of course, how to go further in the direction of simplifying, relaxing and accelerating happiness without losing the core fun and long-term playability of the game is by no means an easy problem to solve.
The success of "AoV" is by no means accidental, but the crystallization of the team's long-term accumulation and careful study.
One of the core factors for the popularity of "AoV" is to simplify complexity and do subtraction.
However, just doing the right subtraction, "AoV" still can not become a world-class game. At best, it is popular among people who often play games. If it is to become a world-class game loved by the broad masses of people, it must also find a weapon to break down the circle barrier. What is this weapon?
The first is "socializing".
AoV has created a snowball-like social network that not only takes the social interaction between acquaintances to the extreme, but also makes it easier for strangers to socialize.
Let's start with social acquaintances. I read a news report before in which a student said in an interview with the media: 80% of the students in the whole class play "AoV". If you don't play this game, you will be isolated by others.
The comparison between students is "who has a higher Rank in the game". Students with higher Rank are more likely to become "heroes" in the eyes of other students, while students who do not play well may also be ostracized by other students.
In fact, this is the same as whether the academic performance is good or not, but now the standard has been changed to "AoV".
This phenomenon also exists among adults. Because "AoV" is connected to Tencent's own social platform, you can log in to the game through Wechat. Your friends in Wechat must be your acquaintances. In addition to inviting them to play games with you, you can also see the record and Rank of each friend in real time. Those who play well and who don't play well can easily be labeled as "pupils".
The term "pupils" here does not refer to students who are in primary school, but to those with poor skills and often **** teammates.
In order to avoid being put on this hat, many people will spend money to find someone boost them. With the increasing demand, a new surrounding industry has gradually sprung up: professional game boost.
So, what about strangers socializing?
In real life, strangers do not socialize out of thin air because there is no credit endorsement, and sometimes they may be forced, such as work relationships, such as blind dates.
"look at the face" can be said to be the first step for strangers to socialize, that is, first impressions. People with good first impressions will make you more willing to communicate.
People who have had a blind date should feel that there will still be problems of "chatting" at the beginning of establishing a relationship, but these problems do not exist in the game. In "AoV", "Rank" takes the place of appearance, and skill is more important than appearance.
Ironically, the friendship in the game will be stronger than in real life, because in reality, most of your friends are colleagues or classmates, and there is a lot of overlap of interests between the friends you know in the game.
"AoV" creates a lot of conditions for strangers to socialize. For example, you can automatically match strangers to play games with you through the system. After the game is over, you can like each other or add friends to each other. After becoming friends, you can form a closer relationship with them, give them medals, and become lovers, best friends, friends, teachers and apprentices.
In addition, you can also see people nearby who are also playing "AoV" through the LBS function provided by "AoV", and you can also invite them to play games.
Especially for many female users, their focus is not on whether the numbers of heroes are balanced, but on whether the characters are good-looking; they don't care whether they play well or not, but whether they have new skin to show off.
In addition to playing games, they also give CP, to couple every hero, such as Lv Bu and Diao Chan, Li Bai and Han Xin, like fans on social media, and even set up a subReddit called "AoVCP" for this purpose.
Of course, at this time, officials will also catch up and launch some heroic CP skins for players to buy on major festivals.
"AoV" maintains the rhythm of launching new heroes or new skins every month, which not only ensures the freshness of users, but also increases the discussion points of users. Male users will discuss whether the heroic skills are powerful, and female users will discuss whether these heroes are handsome and beautiful.
So a game with such a heavy weight as "AoV" has become one of the games with the highest proportion of female users, thanks to the efforts of the production team to target the attractiveness of female users.
The most frequently quoted saying in the game industry is: those who win female players win the world, because with female users, there are naturally male users and social networking.
The second weapon: approachability.
"AoV" gives full play to the outstanding heroic characteristics of MOBA games, fully docks the traditional mass culture of each civilization, and is approachable.
In the Chinese version, you can find that the heroes in the game are some Chinese historical celebrities and mythological immortals. These Chinese "superheroes" have a more sense of substitution for the general public in China than those in the West. It can be said that "AoV" has played the largest free IP in China to the extreme.
This also helps it maximize the target user base of the game.
For friends outside the game, this is also the key point that we should learn from the success of "AoV": never be aloof and unapproachable; those who get women get the world; those who get rookies get the world.
Simple and quick happiness is what everyone wants, even experts and experts.
If you are tired at work during the day, who can stand a battle of wits in the game when you go home at night and be scolded if you are accidentally killed?
How will MOBA games develop in the future?
Looking forward to the future of the MOBA game, I think it still has an opportunity in two directions. One is the expansion of the mobile phone to the heavy e-sports direction. For example, many people are asking me, after the launch of the authentic "League of Legends" mobile game, whether it can be successful and whether it will have an impact on the "AoV".
My answer is that the positioning of "League of Legends" mobile games is very clear, that is, it focuses on the heavy e-sports route and takes a relatively minority high-end direction, which does not conflict with the current positioning of "AoV", but is expanding the market for heavy users of mobile games; the other is to continue to do subtraction. I personally think that the subtraction of this category has not been done yet, and it can be simpler, more casual and faster!
Can we use AI technology to assist more operations, imitate reliable teammates, imitate abused opponents, so that players have fun faster and easier?
Is a 20-minute round still too long?
Is it possible to finish in 10 minutes, or even a game in five minutes?
Is it possible to start quickly without matching five or ten people, or two on two lines?
Is it possible to have three roads, two roads or even one road?
I think it's possible!
So I think the players of MOBA games have the possibility of further expansion, and the market opportunity still exists!
From the point of view of the way the game is played, can there be such an epoch-making evolution as MOBA to RTS, and when will it happen?
It is really not easy to predict, no matter how powerful the R & D manufacturers are, it is also difficult to predict whether their own originality can be successful, so I see a relatively certain trend taking place: big companies are becoming more open, giving more power to players to participate in game design, that is, the so-called UGC (user-generated content).
Many people may not know that MOBA is actually a new game created by a college student player in the open editor of "Warcraft".
PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS's model, which first appeared in the game, is also an experimental product created by a player in the "ARMA" game.
The newly successful new method of "DOTA self-walking" is also an invention made spontaneously by players on the open platform of "DOTA2".
So players are the real God of video game industry, they are not only our Boss, but also often the creators of their favorite new games.