The Romance Of The Three Kingdoms·Strategy Edition Fift

Recently, "Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition" (hereinafter referred to as "Three Kingdoms") has returned to the top 5 bestsellers.

If you want to talk about the most profitable games in the domestic market in the past five years, the three games that have made tens of billions in total and single-handedly helped Lingxi Interactive Entertainment stand up will definitely be on the list. In the first three years since its launch, Sanzhan has been considered a dominant product on the SLG circuit. It is a regular among the top five best sellers and has never fallen out of the top ten several times.

And this fifth anniversary version event is the first stop to start the next five years of the game. San Zhan can be regarded as showing the energy of the new game public beta: the version has been developed for 14 months, the version has been preheated and accumulated for two weeks, massive benefits and top anchors such as Maotai and Xuxu Baobao took the lead in shouting out… All resources They all concentrated on bombing on 920.

Judging from the results, this bombing was quite effective, and the data increased significantly, especially for new entrants and returnees. In fact, compared to ranking 4th on the best-selling list, it is more surprising that the game can reach 4th on the free list – the last time it reached this point was when the game was in public beta.

Compared with the data, the more intuitive feeling is that the anniversary theme server is exploded. When the game first opened, you had to queue for more than an hour to enter. All 18 themed servers opened on the first day were all full in just a few hours.

How can I say this battle, it makes the third battle look like a new game that has just been released for public beta.

01 Attract new users, promote activation, and retain

Different from the previous high-profile brand recognition wars, this time the three wars can be said to have clear goals and clear paths, that is, to attract new customers, promote activation, and retain customers. Payment is not the most important.

From a product level, the newly added military skills and height difference terrain are to ensure the upper limit of the depth of the game's strategic gameplay, so as to meet the needs of the most hard-core and top-notch SLG players. This group of players is precisely the key to Sanzhan's long-term ability to stay at the top of the track, and it is also the absolute core group that is difficult for anyone to leverage.

In a previous interview meeting, Lao Ma, the producer of Three Wars, said that although the game will also make some optimizations to reduce the burden on the liver, this is just a lubricant, not the purpose itself. Improving the fun of GVG combat is the most important thing. “Even if we are all SLG users, our respective audiences will actually be different.”

The person in charge of publishing, Brother Zhu, also said that although this group of core players, composed of creators, researchers, and managers, only account for 20% of the game market, their actions will directly affect the gaming experience of the remaining 80% of players – —Whether it is land reclamation, general allocation, alliance GVG battles, or server social ecology.

If this part is done well, the activity and retention of the game will be the most basic guarantee.

The core design of this "three-dimensional war" is to highlight the value of individuals in collective warfare and improve individual combat capabilities.

After ensuring the upper limit of gameplay, the game uses themed servers to improve the lower limit of players' experience, in order to attract new players and return players. Players can run activities with various benefits, such as the "Five Years Wish Pavilion" to get core generals for free and get started quickly.

Coupled with the apprenticeship system of customizing the lord, players can get a free general who can freely choose the national camp and military suitability, inherit skills from powerful masters such as Lu Bu, Zhuge Liang, and Hua Tuo, and grow into a red general along the way. . This further reduces the difficulty for players to open up wasteland.

Old players can also rely on the "Inheritance of Fire" activity. Based on historical investment, they can get up to 50,000 gold baht (approximately equal to 250 draws) to return and win at the starting line. Brother Zhu said that in free recharge bigo live , the proportion of veteran players from World War 3 is indeed quite high, and the life cycle of players is generally longer. Therefore, they hope that users can feel that their historical investment is valuable, and the official will always remember their investment and contribution.

Specific to the game, the team has also redone the novice guidance, achieving a stronger sense of goal through ministers' proposals, tips and other means, and teaching new players step by step how to get started with SLG.

The peer system can further strengthen the acquaintance social structure of the game. Alliance players can form a team of 5 members. Members can farm each other's fields to obtain resources. They also have many advantages in terms of marching speed and maintaining morale. At the same time, this anniversary celebration also comes with operational activities for friends to defect to: three optional orange cards, which is a big deal.

This solves to a certain extent the problem of the old bringing in the new and too little return from both parties. The stickiness of small-scale social networking also ensures the activity of the server.

Brother Zhu also said that although the market environment and users have undergone new changes after the epidemic, and more SLG products have been released, the challenges faced by Sanzhan will definitely be greater, but at present, these competing products have no impact on the overall market of Sanzhan. Users are not greatly affected. "Because our group of players recognize not only the product, but also the group of people who play with it."

02 A war in the gaming industry triggered by Moutai

On the publishing side, the action of Three Wars is also worth talking about. Because this time, in addition to the basic marketing methods, they also came up with a unique trick. The official explosion of product popularity may seem sudden, but in fact, there are hidden clues behind it.

The bright line that most people noticed first was the new brand spokesperson chosen by San Zhan this time – Nicholas Tse, as well as the various welfare activities that come with the new version, such as receiving gold baht and smoking Moutai.

From Hu Ge, Guo Degang, to today's Nicholas Tse, you will find that the logic of selecting spokespersons for the three games is different from many products on the market. They have never forced traffic. Although the spokespersons they hired are well-known, they are not so-called traffic stars.

So what do they care about? Brother Zhu’s answer is: tonality. This tone means that the spokesperson must not only be close to the user attributes of Sanzhan, but also be enough to become a "like-minded" opinion leader for the players.

This kind of like-mindedness has different manifestations in different versions, such as yalla ludo top up in three-dimensional war. The "ambition" that San Zhan wants to convey is: regardless of winning or losing, the players of San Zhan "fight standing and die." Already"; "Tao" means "paying attention to the strength of the team and recognizing collective value", which is more than pure self-growth. If they have different aspirations and different paths, Brother Zhu feels that no matter how high the popularity of celebrities is, the spokespersons of San Zhan would "rather lack than overuse".

Looking at it this way, the reason why Sanzhan chose to cooperate with Nicholas Tse is obvious – first of all, Sanzhan wants to pursue changes and explore the upper limit in a hard-core way, and Nicholas Tse is a Sanzhan artist who is strong enough in all aspects, even many His side jobs and hobbies are also pursued to the extreme, which is very consistent with the tone of the Three Wars; more importantly, his tough guy image has been engraved in the hearts of a generation of viewers, and he is also the best for the theme of "standing and fighting" one of the interpreters.

This issuance idea is closely integrated with the R&D tonality, and the use of issuance to amplify R&D potential can be said to be a basic approach to the issuance of the Three Wars. However, some of the strange moves on the dark line may not be so easy to imitate.

At the beginning, the actions of the three battles seemed not difficult to understand – on September 7, they announced that you could draw Feitian Moutai every day by pre-registering for the new version; then, they released news about the alliance competition at the press conference on the 13th. It was announced that a bottle of Moutai would be given to the first-place alliance that aspires to achieve hegemony, and the regional servers would also be named. This kind of generosity coupled with special incentives is definitely a fatal temptation for players in the alliance. This made the success of the three battles arouse a lot of fighting spirit and value recognition in the core circle.

The importance of the core circle goes without saying, but if the circle is not broken, the three games may not create such a big momentum. Coincidentally, not long after the event started, Xuxu Baobao from another gaming circle had already noticed the dynamics of the three battles and promoted it in the live broadcast room.

Many three-game and DNF players originally had the mentality of having fun, and felt that this wave would be over just by mentioning it. Unexpectedly, the two parties later formed an alliance and launched a "Three Battles of Maotai War"…

First, on the DNF player side, someone learned about the event and tried it, and he actually won the lottery, so he took a screenshot and posted it to the forum as evidence. Some people also ridiculed that the players of the three games had poor hand speed. How could their Moutai be taken away by others?

The three-war players were not happy about this, and someone immediately cheered for everyone to fight back in unison.

There is a vague excitement in the player circle, and the anchors are not idle. Within two days, the top anchors of the two sides started shouting and dissing each other in various ways. Big Totoro on Xuxu Baby's side said that the anchor of the third battle had no operation and no hand speed, and Vegeta on the third battle's side It is said that this wave must be fought… The "conflict" between the two sides has also risen from fighting for Moutai to standing up for the game they love.

Of course, everyone understands that the two sides do not really want to fight or fight. But as soon as the alliance was established and the atmosphere was in place, coupled with this small theater with a sense of ceremony, the emotions of players and fans from both sides were gradually pushed to the highest point. Waiting to see the new server on the 20th, who will win Moutai? , who wants to be spanked by a bean-butt…

This is the magic trick of Sanzhan: outside the core circle, they boldly cooperated with Xuxu Baobao, a cross-circle top player, and entered the seemingly unrelated circle of DNF players/audiences. But in fact, with the unprecedented two-week warm-up of Moutai, they facilitated a real "GVG" full of fun and gunpowder outside of the game. Finally, during the live broadcast of the server launch on the 20th, the previous accumulated energy was concentrated and a counterattack was successfully completed. No matter how you look at it, this doesn't look like a tactic for opening a new server for an old game. Instead, it looks like a tactic for launching a new game.

Although this move is a bit eccentric, it can mobilize so many anchors to participate together and create multiple hot topics on Douyin, thereby driving more small and medium-sized creators to actively participate in creation. It is also inseparable from the ecological construction of Sanzhan Publishing. The thick foundation on.

And among the various players who stand for the third battle, this time you can also see some unexpected and reasonable familiar faces, such as the famous online writer Tiancan Tudou. As early as five years ago, many people knew that Tudou was playing World War III and had invested a lot of money. This time when the new version was launched, he took this opportunity to connect with the producer and tortured him severely.

This is also a special advantage of Sanzhan – there are many crossover celebrities playing it. It is also very important for the publishing side to constantly pay attention to this dynamic, combine the characteristics of research and development, and use various means to amplify its own potential. It is also very important for the three wars to remain among the best after many years of launch.

03 Conclusion

R&D and distribution are just two things. But there are very few cases where the two parties can really cooperate well, so that a product can continue to maintain momentum for five years after its launch, and even achieve the same peak results five years later as when it debuted.

This may also be a core reason why the three games can continue to achieve results. As Lao Ma said, "During the launch stage, the overall closeness of R&D and distribution of Sanzhan was the highest in the industry at that time. Some products on the market may face a situation where R&D requires revenue and distribution requires profit, but we do not have this at all. The idea is simply to do it well, and the goal is even set very low. In essence, we don’t want the release action to be deformed due to KPI, and ultimately affect the long-term operation.”

In the most competitive SLG market, it is particularly rare to be able to realize this when sailing against the current. If you do not advance, you will retreat. Lao Ma also said, "Pressures do exist, but they are more like a mirror, telling us that we really need to revolutionize ourselves, otherwise the market will kill us."

Therefore, the top 4 of the double list of the three games may be more valuable than just the ranking. The greater significance is that behind the game's best-selling list is the user's recognition of payment; behind the free list, it has a significant effect in attracting new users. For an old game, these are almost two lifelines.

In the first five years, three battles were considered a success; in the second five years, it will only be more difficult. But with this kind of self-revolutionary energy and the idea of ​​​​unexpected tricks, I think the three wars have made a good start this time.