This summer, the SLG track is rolling up again. The latest to join the battle is "World Qiyuan", which comes with its own "Civilization" IP and Tencent's self-developed double Buff. The game topped the free charts on the first day of its launch, and has since maintained its position in the top 15 best-selling iOS games, making a good start.

In many ways, this game reflects the new trend of the current SLG category. For example, reducing the burden on the liver, increasing the benefits of opening the server, converting the cost of buying into player benefits and distributing them to players, using IP influence and linkage to attract natural traffic, and so on.

The game's publisher, Ruyi Jingxiu, is also very interesting. It's a new name, but it's not newbie. After entering the game publishing business, it quickly proved itself with the release of multiple products. From the release strategy of "World Qiyuan", we can see that Ruyi Jingxiu pays more attention to the establishment of the game community, rather than using short-term explosion to increase popularity. The game did not hit the best-selling list for the first time, which also shows from the side that the service benefits are sufficient, and the players' krypton pain points are not so fast.

However, "World Qiyuan" still faces challenges. The pain points of krypton gold will always come, and IP is also a double-edged sword, and if you don't use it well, you will hurt yourself by mistake. How you tackle these challenges will determine the final outcome of the game.

IP is a double-edged sword

Getting the 2K genuine authorization and getting the "Civilization" IP is the biggest confidence of "World Qiyuan".

The "Civilization" series of single-player games has had a profound impact, and some of the underlying designs of SLG mobile games can be traced back to this classic series. From this point of view, isn't adapting this IP into an SLG mobile game just hitting the bullseye of target users? However, the truth is that because the single-player game is so classic, it is more difficult to adapt.

The classic single-player jewel is in front, and players will directly compare the mobile game with the single-player game. Some of the designs made in mobile games based on social (PVP, PVE) and commercial considerations can also make single-player players feel uncomfortable. These sporadic complaints, if not well controlled, can affect the overall reputation of the game.

How is World Qiyuan doing in this regard?

First of all, the game does a great job of art, music, and character modeling. In particular, on the basis of restoring the original work of "Civilization 6", the character modeling has been optimized with East Asian aesthetics, so that the appearance of both male and female leaders has been improved.

Secondly, compared with the previous closed beta when characters of various civilizations used pseudonyms, most of the characters in the open beta version were restored and used the names of historical figures, and a few characters were gradually replaced with historical figures (such as the dragon general Guan Yu) during the update process. For an SLG that needs a sense of historical substitution, the sense of substitution that can be brought by using the names of real historical figures is significantly stronger.

In addition, the game plays the slogan of "crossing the ages", combined with the historical process of the "Civilization" series, allowing players to evolve from ancient times all the way to modern times, controlling artillery and air force long-range combat, which is very fresh.

Freshness doesn't come without a price, though. Because of the IP, "World Qiyuan" is facing the dilemma of how to serve SLG players, "Civilization" players and new players at the same time. This pot of rice is not easy to cook.

In order to level the water, "World Qiyuan" has made a lot of designs to reduce the burden of the liver. For example, automatically paving roads to hit resource points, hitting a level level without consuming stamina, "road" slots not occupying the number of resource slots, automatically abandoning low-level lands to replace high-level lands, alliance assembly and automatic siege, etc. The game also has a built-in encyclopedia assistant and lineup recommendation, which is convenient for players to match troops and skills with one click, so that players can get started faster.

These designs conform to the trend of the era of SLG to reduce the burden on the liver, so they are praised by players.

The game also has a number of designs that incorporate IP. For example, "region" is an important concept in a single machine, and players need to do various layout planning around the area to maximize revenue. The concept of regions is retained, but the complex settings of regions are removed.

The game also retains a variety of designs such as logging, spectacle, barbarians, etc.

The changes to the scientific and technological research in the game are very good. The accumulation of technology value and the countdown to R&D can be carried out simultaneously, which is a very good combination. I haven't seen this design in any other SLG yet.

Overall, "World Qiyuan" is still relatively stable as an SLG product, which is differentiated enough among multi-civilization SLGs, and its IP also has enough appeal. The opening of the game server can attract a large number of players, and the packaging of the product plays an important role. Of course, there is another factor that cannot be ignored is that the game is in place in terms of price reduction and benefits.

Unpretentious business warfare

The launch of "World Qiyuan" focuses on a simple and unpretentious service, and scatters money to players.

In terms of card drawing, "World Qiyuan" not only lowered the price of a single draw to 8 yuan per draw, 20 draws guaranteed, but also increased the comprehensive probability of withdrawing gold cards. In addition, the most important thing is that the game has also made a promise not to lock the card, so that civilian players also have the opportunity to draw T0 core cards such as the Four Emperors.

On top of that, the game's server opening benefits are also sufficient. If you complete various tasks five days before the start of the server, you will receive 100 draws, 5,000 gold coins and 4 five-star cards. The accumulated resources given throughout the season are equivalent to 34 five-star cards according to the guaranteed amount. Such a gift, coupled with the promise of not locking the card, even 0 Krypton players can at least form a team full of skills, ensuring the game experience.

In addition, as a self-developed product of Tencent, "World Qiyuan" did not forget to maximize the resources of Tencent's platform when it was released. For example, the 1 yuan gift package on the QQ platform, recharge and return Q coins and other new activities can attract a large number of new players to enter the game. This is a traffic support that is difficult for non-Tencent games to enjoy.

My view has always been that the SLG server opening experience that relies on the Tencent platform is always the best. Because QQ and WeChat can always rely on "send you 1Q coins" and other ways to introduce enough new players. In such a server, you only need a few thousand krypton to get a good experience, and this money may not even be heard in other SLGs.

Of course, Tencent's platform can only help games solve the problem of "finding players", as for whether they can keep players, it depends on the ability of distribution and operation. In this regard, the idea of "World Qiyuan" is to find good players and play their own tonality. They didn't spend money on inviting celebrities, but instead brought players linkage with J-20, 055 and "Dongfeng Express".

It's hard to say how much these linkages will cost, but to bring these big powers into the game, the publisher's ability to mobilize resources is certainly not ordinary. From the perspective of effect, such a linkage is also more in line with the attributes of SLG players than celebrity endorsements. And the cross-era nature of the game itself also makes these endorsement weapons useful in the game. And the related memes are never late.

On the whole, the publicity strategy of Confucianism Jingxiu is indeed distinctive. Whether it is looking for linkage ideas or concessions to players, what it pursues is not short-term gains, but based on long-term operations. This kind of spare time for not clinging to short-term outbreaks is obviously not like the style of a novice publisher. After learning about the development process of Confucianism Jingxiu, I understood the origin of its confidence.

Confucianism Jingxiu is not a rookie

As a game publisher, Ruyi Jingxiu's name is relatively new. Compared with Jingxiu, Ruyi Pictures has a much higher reputation in the film and television industry, and has participated in the investment of many well-known film and television works such as "To Youth" and "Langya Bang".

Ruyi Pictures has been associated with games for a long time. As early as 2015, the game company Tianjin Entertainment wanted to acquire a 49% stake in Ruyi for 1.323 billion yuan, but finally gave up. In 2020, HengTen Network, a joint venture between Evergrande and Tencent, wholly acquired the entire equity of Ruyi Pictures and its Pumpkin Film for HK$7.2 billion, bringing Ruyi under the territory of Tencent.

At this time, Ruyi did not have a game business. However, with the liquidation of Evergrande Real Estate and the renaming of HengTen Network to China Ruyi, Tencent began to use its own game resources to create new business growth points for Ruyi. In 2022, China Ruyi established the "Jingxiu" brand to enter the game market, but whether it is its agent products such as "Troubled Times", or its main marketing income comes from Tencent.

According to the data, in the first half of 2022, the revenue of China's Ruyi game business was 41 million yuan, of which 39.5 million yuan came from Tencent's game promotion business. From June to the end of October 2023, China Ruyi has received 501 million yuan from Tencent.

At this stage, China Ruyi mainly relied on agency and marketing services to earn Tencent's advertising fees. But Tencent's expectations for it don't stop there. In 2023, China Ruyi initiated the acquisition of Wanda Films, and completed the wholly-owned acquisition in 2024. After the completion of the acquisition, China Ruyi not only obtained Wanda's cinema resources, but also acquired Wanda Film's Mutual Love Interaction, which focuses on game publishing.

Mutual Love Interactive has been operating in the field of game publishing for many years, and has vigorously developed overseas publishing business in recent years, and this year's release of "Saint Seiya: Legend of Justice" in Japan has achieved good results.

In May this year, China Ruyi announced that it would acquire 100% of the shares of Youai Entertainment, a subsidiary of the original ByteDance, at a price of at least 259 million yuan and no more than 350 million yuan, and lost another son in the game publishing business. Beijing-based Youai Interactive Entertainment had in-depth cooperation with Tencent on products such as "Red Alert OL" in the early years, but was acquired by ByteDance, which was a high-profile entry into the game business at that time, in 2021. This acquisition caused "Red Alert Online" to stop updating for a while.

Now going around and around, Tencent has regained the command of Youai Mutual Entertainment through Chinese Confucianism. Capital operations aside, there is love mutual entertainment still has a certain strength in game distribution, "Red Police OL" is a stable cash cow product, the company in Japan released "Placement Girl" and other products also have certain achievements.

After a series of capital operations, games have become one of the important businesses of Ruyi. According to the company's financial report, in 2023, China Ruyi's revenue from the game business will reach 446 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 703%, becoming a new growth point for the company. In 2024, with the formation of a new game lineup of Ruyi Jingxiu, Huai Interactive and Youai Entertainment, China Ruyi has 15 games in operation and 7 games to be launched. Its game revenue will further grow significantly.

Source: @ China Fortune Network

With the successive launch of products such as "Ragnarok: Love Like First Sighting" and "World Qiyuan" this year, its sense of existence has been significantly improved. In particular, "World Qiyuan", as a product produced by Tencent's Northern Lights Studio Group, was also distributed by Ruyi Jingxiu, which shows that Tencent hopes that Ruyi Jingxiu can develop as soon as possible and become the fulcrum of Tencent's business in Beijing.

As a company that started as a film and television investment, China Ruyi has natural advantages in IP operation. IP adaptation, film and game linkage, short drama games, etc. will all be the directions it may get involved in in the future. In addition, most of the companies it acquired have overseas distribution experience, and the future development of Ruyi Jingxiu overseas is also worth looking forward to.

Of course, in order to achieve these goals, Chinese Confucianism still has many hurdles to pass. On the one hand, it is a major challenge to restructure and optimize the business of the acquired companies. On the other hand, the distribution and overseas capabilities of Confucianism Jingxiu also have to withstand the test of the market. After all, in Tencent's evaluation system, the second echelon and short-term revenue are of little significance.

Whether Ruyi Jingxiu is satisfied with Tencent's assistance, or has greater ambitions, or seeks independent development, depends on the market performance of these game products in its hands.

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