2024/10/15 23:04
"The Legend of Shawarma" has been played more than 2.5 billion times, and AI has invaded the "mini-game" leisure track?
2024/10/15 23:04
When domestic hyper-casual mini-games have spread from short video viruses to overseas tactics have been tried and tested, "Middle Eastern Meat Sandwich Bun" has achieved "cultural invasion" through mini games.
Popular in the Middle East, shawarma is a thin slice of meat cut from a vertical grill, served with a vegetable sauce, and rolled up in a wrap. In the game, players are not only responsible for slicing meat, adding pickled cucumbers, cutting potatoes, french fries, pouring drinks, packing shawarma, but also dealing with two special characters: the beggar and the thief: the beggar will not pay, and the thief will steal the coins. Players need to deal with these situations until they become "Shawarma Legends".
"The Legend of Shawarma" is produced by Eyad Alshafei and published by Patates Games, allowing "Turkey Flatbread" and "Middle Eastern Meat Sandwich Bun" to bravely enter the country, and the game style of fighting speed and reaction is destined to its "time killer" attributes, and also makes a group of migrant workers jokingly claim to find a part-time job for themselves, and find a class for themselves after work.
Even due to the issue of the national version number, "The Legend of Shawarma" was removed from the shelves shortly after it was released on the mobile app store. Although the genuine game has returned to the App Store in China on the 12th, during the removal period, many "imitation games" have enjoyed the time difference bonus.
Interestingly, the mobile version of "The Legend of Shawarma" did not indicate the publisher, and there was no recharge entrance in the game, so with the popularity of the game, the sales of the "ad-free version" and "unlimited gold coin version" in the relevant live broadcast room and Taobao store increased exponentially. This also reflects the maturity of the IAA advertising monetization model of App Mini Game products, which may also boost the possibility of more Mini Games on the Mini Program side to the app side in a sense.
Since returning to the App Store on October 12, the genuine "The Legend of Shawarma" has quickly topped the best-selling list and has continued to this day, beating Tencent's blockbuster FPS new work "Operation Delta", as well as "Glory of Kings", "Peace Elite", "Golden Shovel Battle" and other best-selling lists all year round. Currently, #沙威玛传奇#抖音主话题播放超过25 500 million times.
Similar to many previous out-of-the-circle casual game categories, Shawarma's "Legend" has geographical limitations, which also makes its virality seem to be a "national limited edition"., Youtube and other social media, search for "shawarma", still show "real shawarma". And "The Legend of Shawarma" is obviously not as popular on PC as it is on mobile. After its release on Steam on July 19, it only entered the top 20 of the weekly best-selling list in the first week of October. As of today (October 15), "The Legend of Shawarma" ranks 32nd in China on the Steam best-selling list.
Casual games usher in the "window period" every festive season, in the past National Day holiday, but can be called an unexpected and effortless "corner overtaking", perhaps only this from the Chinese pronunciation, theme song to the main menu image with obvious AI debugging atmosphere of "The Legend of Shawarma", from the perspective of the entire mobile market, AI's improvement of production efficiency and the "rough edge" behind the not yet fully mature technology will bring new ideas to the mini game?
In the past few years, the hyper-casual mini-games, mini-program mini-games and other categories that have frequently achieved viral spread have made the game industry, which has just recovered from the standardization of version numbers, realize what is the contemporary "cost performance". Compared with the use of AI in masterpieces such as "Black Myth: Wukong" and "Cyberpunk 2077", AI seems to be more suitable for casual mini-games with low threshold, low cost, short cycle, and aiming at the "sinking market".
On the Steam store detail page for The Legend of Shawarma, the developers mentioned that advanced generative AI technology was used in the game to create some visual content, including a vibrant main menu image. By leveraging artificial intelligence, it is possible to ensure high-quality, creative designs that bring the legendary world of Shawarma to life.
It is precisely because of the use of AI painting, AI composition, and AI dubbing that "The Legend of Shawarma" is also nicknamed a "3a mini-game" by netizens. Thanks to the help of AI, the game supports as many as 14 languages such as Chinese, India, Japan, and Russian with a capacity of less than 100M, and the game's theme song includes Chinese, English, and Arabic. Especially the Chinese version of the theme song, quite a bit of private customization intimacy.
The reason why games can be distinguished from other business games and achieve online out-of-the-circle is due to the high degree of development of their content stalks, and the main position is in the short video platform, which can not only provide the game with the soil to ferment out of the circle and even become popular, but also make it easier to get out of the circle with topical and interesting gameplay around this kind of casual games and derivative content.
The opening article selects the Chinese mode, and the automatic pop-up "Let's speak Chinese" contains "lamb skewer flavor", which is quite a real sense of foreigners speaking Chinese. And in the Chinese version of the theme song of "Shawarma, oh Shawarma, with you, life is beautiful and no troubles", in the magical brainwashing melody, there are even more inexplicable lyrics, "If it doesn't matter, it's not right, there is no tomato tonight, otherwise I will roar". It is precisely because of these laugh-inducing roughness that the game's peripheral content has been boosted by various abstract bloggers and "female college students" and other main groups, making "The Legend of Shawarma" viral and meme-like on social media.
The gameplay of "The Legend of Shawarma" is not much different from other business casual games, and even makes people dream back to the "Daddy Series" in the 4399 period, including scenes such as Daddy Sushi Restaurant and Daddy Mocha Cafe; "Aircraft Chef", a high-frequency buyer in the past two years; The Legend of Shawarma, which opened a pancake shop, sold snail noodles, and "Breakfast Shop Downstairs" in a sugar gourd shop, is no different from traditional management games, through continuous operation and upgrading, expanding the scale of the restaurant, and increasing the popularity of the restaurant to gain more honors, but the latter has not achieved viral.
So far, Douyin has multiple live broadcasts, the shopping cart link is priced at 0.1 yuan, the price of the "Legend of Shawarma" Apple system is 7.8 yuan for the ad-free unlocked version of the Apple system, and the price of the permanent version is 13.8 yuan, and the sales volume has reached 500+.
There are also steam players commented, "Although this game has the element design of simulated management, it is essentially similar to "One Finger Death Punch", a game that competes in the instantaneous reaction ability of mouse click speed, and the probability of suffering from tenosynovitis in the game on mobile may be much smaller than that on PC. ”
The reason why "The Legend of Shawarma" was able to achieve virality is that, on the one hand, the viral spread of "The Legend of Shawarma" has to some extent filled the lack of popular mini-games this year. A few years ago, hyper-casual games such as "Yinyue Qiuqiu", "Jade Master", "My Kung Fu Special Cow" and "Synthetic Big Watermelon" were concentrated in the list of free games during the Spring Festival, and it was not a dream to exceed 10 million in 3 days. However, during this year's holiday, there were almost no popular casual games that were out of the circle on the whole network, resulting in a gap in business products.
On the other hand, the "main theme" of the game market in 2024 will be transferred to a 3A masterpiece and a medium-to-heavy style due to a "Black Myth". In this context, the leisure category, which also has a large potential audience, a low threshold for appreciation and access, a refreshing growth system, and is suitable for fragmented time, has finally ushered in an explosion after "silence".
Although it seems to be a win-win situation at the right time, place and people, it cannot be denied that the rapid growth of mini games has become a bright spot in the financial reports of related game companies in the past two years. Whether it was last year or this year, a number of companies involved in related businesses have mentioned in their financial reports that mini games have helped their revenue. For example, Century Huatong's subsidiaries Diandian Interactive Mini Program Game "Endless Winter" and Sanqi Mutual Entertainment pointed out in their financial reports that the company's revenue increased during the reporting period, mainly due to the good performance of small game products such as "Seeking the Way", "Hegemony" and "Soul Prologue".
But at the same time, it has also made the competition in this red sea market more and more fierce, especially in the buying action during the festive season. DataEye-ADX data shows that this year's National Day file has an average of 4,500 mini games participating in the buying volume, and an average of 260,000 materials are being invested every day, an increase of about 6% compared with the week before the National Day file. Including Sanqi Mutual Entertainment's "Seeking the Way", Big Dream Longtu "Shooting at Zombies", Diandian Interactive "Endless Winter", Yijie World "This City Has Good Fields", and greedy games "Super Yuan Stickman", etc. Among them, there are many products that have been at the forefront for a long time.
In the first half of this year, among the top 100 self-developed mobile games in overseas markets, strategy still accounted for the highest proportion, at 32.66%; The proportion of simulated business increased from 5.28% last year to 9.97% this year.
Although the "corner overtaking" tactic of casual mini-games has been tried and tested many times, its life cycle is also directly proportional to its development cycle.
Many "strong liver" players said that after they cleared the customs in two days to become the "Legend of Shawarma", it is difficult to have the desire to open it again, and after the game PC was launched on Steam in July this year, the popularity is not as "legendary" as the mobile terminal.
If the casual track mini-game wants to continue to innovate and continue to give players new stimulation, the continuous production capacity may be one of the solutions, and the addition of AI may be the beginning of imagination.
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