The last two or three years, the secondary yuan market is unusually hot, from the “ship mother” to “the return of the great sage” to the “million Arthur King” once in the domestic success, and even the rise of B station, secondary yuan has become a very popular topic, and secondary yuan hand travel also from the initial boom and prosperity to now the overall tends to be flat, in the current secondary yuan hand travel market to rise is not easy.
The game was first launched in the App Store on September 2, and although it didn’t top the free list and the top 10 best-seller list as soon as it came up, the ranking has been steadily rising. In September 4, the game into the iPad bestseller list top ten, and a group of well-known end game IP “sitting side by side”. Its best-selling list on the iPhone for 3 days, all with a daily increase of about 20. As of 18:00 on September 4, it is located at No. 4 on the iPhone game free list and No. 39 on the best-seller list.
To know this year, the competition in the field of hand travel has been very fierce, and “Yin Yang Shi” can achieve such results is not easy, not to mention that this is a national research and development of secondary yuan and wind card game, Chinese people do and wind game has been rare, not to mention the card game now in the iOS rankings are not high, occupying iOS major rankings are more instant MMO and The game is a real-life MMO and an end-game IP-supported game, so we can see that the achievements of the “Yin Yang Shi” are not easy.
The rarity of wabi-sabi
The yin and yang master” is a very attractive place is the use of wabi-sabi characteristics, which is quite rare in the field of domestic games, after all, the Chinese to do a Japanese wabi-sabi game, it is easy to be labeled as a class, attracting a lot of controversy, and domestic players have long been some prejudice against domestic games, so many people will be accustomed to think that the Chinese do not do well in this Japanese wabi-sabi game.
It originated from the clan society human observation of themselves and the natural world objects. During the Spring and Autumn Period of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the two qi of yin and yang with the nature of natural philosophy were formed. From the middle and late Warring States to the Han Dynasty, the doctrine of yin and yang developed along two clues: the yin and yang concept of simple dialectics and the yin and yang concept of patriarchal ethics, forming a dualistic doctrine of yin and yang.
The yin and yang master was once a popular profession in Japan for an era. The Emperor of Japan obtained spiritual peace and social security from the yin and yang master, while the Japanese people obtained comfort from the yin and yang master for a hard life. During the period of obscurity, the Yin-Yang masters were the spiritual pillars of the entire nation. The true origin of the Japanese science of yin and yang comes from the Chinese doctrine of the five elements of yin and yang. The doctrine of yin and yang is a branch of ancient Chinese philosophy, which represents a concept of division into two, two sides of everything, and a mutually suppressing and interlocking concept, and is also recognized as the law by which all things in the world are created.
So we can easily find that the yin and yang art and yin and yang master is originally from China, and now the Chinese to produce a “yin and yang master” of the hand game, which actually represents a cultural fusion, and then brought back to the Japanese area, and then in Japan to carry forward, and then the Chinese will not break to learn from some Japanese culture, such as the tea ceremony and flower ceremony. It is the cultural fusion that makes the world more and more prosperous now.
For example, the Japanese will also produce some European and American fantasy or magic theme of the game, such as Castlevania series, the Americans will also shoot some Chinese theme of the animation, such as “Mulan”, and the Chinese will also produce some European and American theme of the game, then the Chinese to produce a Japanese yin and yang theme of the hand game, it is not surprising.
In fact, over the years, domestic game producers to produce the Japanese style game is not a few, such as Tencent took the monster hunter IP production “monster hunter OL”, and then as recently as the emergence of the “spiral realm line” this typical Japanese RPG style game, not to mention those imitating the Japanese nymph hand game.
But the peculiar thing about the hand game “Yin Yang Shi” is that it uses the theme of Yin Yang Shi, so it is full of the flavor of Wabi-sabi, the Heian period of Japan, which is the classic representative period of Wabi-sabi aesthetics. The Undertaker” hand game refers to “The Tale of Genji” and exquisitely restores the characteristics of the time in the details of the characters and scenes. Many details of the character costumes restore the characteristics of the ancient Heian era, the scene using lanterns, cherry blossoms, flowing fireflies and other elaborate elements, elegant and classical tones, the rhythm is soothing and long, rendering a quiet sense of Kyoto beauty.
From the story content, the work is based on the Japanese household name “The Undertaker” story, restored in the Heian period of Japan, the symbiosis of human and ghosts, the Undertaker Abe Haruaki in the intertwining of human and ghosts, the story of the search for their own memories. Players will meet such as Zashiki child, big tengu, wine swallow child, Inuyasha and other original Japanese mythological ghosts. The development team has searched for a large number of monster stories and written either light-hearted and witty or tear-jerking stories for each god, which are not only reflected in the plot, but also have rich biographies in the material.
The innovative gameplay of cards
From the first half of the year has been issued by the weight of the new hand game, whether Tencent’s “sword warrior love edge” or Netease’s “qinnian ghost” “the world”, none of them belong to the RPG heavy hand game, which is in line with the current market law. In 2013, when hand travel started to rise in China, the cards represented by “My name is MT” opened the “first year of cards”. 2014, led by the “Legend of the Tower”, ushered in the most explosive period of cards, it is said that there are more than 500 card games online in a year. However, with the growing strength of the heavy hand game market, cards in 2015 that is, “Waterloo”, turn to the 2016 Q3 quarter, NetEase is known as “strategic self-research boutique” “Yin Yang Shi” but still choose the card category, but in line with the NetEase’s self-research products have always been not with the mainstream, the original approach.
The “decline” of cards has a lot to do with its weak innovation in gameplay. Now the card market has a large number of “skin game”, resulting in players become bored psychological. In addition, the balance of rare card probability and depth of conditions if not handled well, it is easy to lose the largest number of players than the number of small R players fans. The inherent impression of “cards = kryptonite” is not empty. However, on the contrary, the Japanese hand game “Dragon Quest” and “Monster Marbles”, which set a number of top records, are typical card games. In addition to the innate advantage of the Japanese market for card games, we can see that these two products are innovative in terms of gameplay, “Dragon Quest” is “card + elimination”, “monster elastic” is “card + shooting”. The first half of this year’s big hit “Clash of Clans: Royal War” is also an excellent example of “cards + strategy”.
The game is a semi-instant turn-based card game, which adds a time bar and a team-wide “ghost fire” to the traditional turn-based system to increase the strategy of the battle. In addition to the card battle, the collection of god fragments when the night of the hundred ghosts play, the collection of imperial soul equipment when the Yaki Orochi copy, to strengthen the social attributes of the LBS boundary play, the development team is also well versed in the “card + innovation” routine, focusing on the variation of gameplay.
Unlike the mainstream IP change mode, how to avoid players’ game fatigue and how to effectively control the consumption rate of game content is the key research link of NetEase for this game. From the actual performance of the game, NetEase is from such two aspects to solve these problems: 1.
1. enriching the underlying framework and structure of the game play, establishing a more potential for future game content filling potential, making it easier to expand access to game elements later.
2. Provide unique gameplay innovation and user experience with product impressions according to game themes and genres (e.g. Hundred Ghosts Night Journey, drama pop-ups and LBS geosocial gameplay).
For point 1, in fact, is the fatal flaw of most of the hand games now. Including many well-known masterpieces, even though the design of a good gameplay, but in the application level has considerable limitations. Players often can only harvest good game experience in the early stage.
With the deepening of players’ contact with the game, these innovative features often end up becoming embellishments, and the core idea of the whole game finally returns to the numerical model itself, and becomes the most common combat mode.
The high frequency repetition of monotonous gameplay can easily lead to player burnout, and there is only one way to play the whole game, which is a highly functional and focused experience and “squeeze”, making the life of innovative design is rapidly shortened in a short time.
Handheld games are weaker than PC online games in terms of networking interactivity due to platform characteristics, operation and presentation. Therefore, the practice of adding pop-ups to the plot of “The Master of Yin and Yang” is tantamount to establishing a spiritual conveyor belt for everyone in the game through jumping bytes, linking different players from all over the world together in the same moment with their happiness, anger, sadness and whimsical thoughts about the plot, so that the player can truly feel that he/she is not alone in this game.
Obviously this represents a new way of thinking for NetEase, as far as IP mining is concerned, NetEase already has famous IPs such as Fantasy Westward Journey and Dazhong Westward Journey as well as the world series, in terms of new IPs, NetEase has already created the new Sinister Ghosts and so on, but NetEase is obviously not satisfied with this, hence the emergence of these newer IPs of “Yin Yang Shi”, after all, in this era of endless IP pan-entertainment, good IP has become a goal that every game company strives to pursue.
In terms of culture, NetEase also tries to explore new cultural themes. But this attempt is undoubtedly healthy and beneficial, and this kind of cultural innovation can play some role in promoting the whole industry.
Jin Tao, the producer of “The Master of Yin and Yang”, said this in an interview with the media about overseas distribution and NetEase’s globalization strategy.
In fact, in the current game market, we can see that many excellent companies and teams in China are determined to make high-quality products. I think there will be more excellent teams in China to make more games in the future, and there will be more players to support in the future.
Yin Yang Shi” hand game not only carries my personal dream, but also carries NetEase’s determination to internationalize “Chinese production” and export overseas, and carries the recognition of rewriting the four words “domestic games”. At the same time, there are many game teams are also doing this thing, not only NetEase, Tencent, perfect these large companies have overseas layout, to create more high-quality products exported overseas. Many Chinese players will ask after trying to play: “Is this really domestic?” I was happy to see that we are changing the meaning of the word “domestic”.
Although we don’t know how far we can go in the future, maybe I will fall down in the long road of entering overseas, but we will share our experience to the people after us, and I believe more game production teams and Chinese game manufacturers will come forward to rewrite “Made in China” and “Made in Chinese”. ” and let national products rise in the world. I believe that in less than 5 years, there will be Chinese game companies that are as famous as Sega, Blizzard and UBI, which are the top manufacturers in the world, leading more fine products to appear and more games to be exported overseas.
