Author: Mao Lina

Editor|Li Chunhui

Who would have thought that one day, "Genshin Impact" would be associated with "suspension of service".

"Genshin Impact" Xiaomi channel server issued an announcement: On November 20, the recharge entrance and new user registration function will be closed, and on January 20 next year, the Mi server will be suspended, and players can migrate their data to the official server. The channel service was shut down, but the revenue could not meet the needs of both parties, which was also regarded by the outside world as a signal that "Genshin Impact is going to be cold".

To be fair, Mifu has always been known as an "orphan service", and it can neither log in to experience on the PC side, nor can it enjoy cloud services. Except for a few new players, there are not many living players, and it is unfair to use this as evidence that Genshin Impact is cold. But the two-dimensional true god of the past has indeed reached the second half of its life cycle.

Vika (not her real name), who has entered the pit, has entered her fifth year of adventure in Teyvat. Starting from mid-2023, she found that there were significantly more people around her who quit the pit. The topic of the game group has also changed from meeting to hoeing the earth and discussing the strength of the role, to cats and dogs and living complaints.

"My friend, from "Honkai III" to "Genshin Impact" to "Honken Iron", the ruthless people who are still generating electricity for love will always eat a big card draw. I found a girlfriend this year, and I didn't look back. ”

According to public information, this year, miHoYo has significantly reduced its purchase budget and significantly reduced the amount of cloud used, and overseas operations, community operations and other departments have also fallen into the suspicion of layoffs. At the Genshin Impact offline meeting in August, Liu Wei, one of the founders of miHoYo, burst into tears, saying that in the past year, he and the Genshin Impact project team have experienced anxiety, confusion and many difficult moments.

It's not just "Genshin Impact" or the miHoYo family that is confused and difficult. This year, the Mi family troika led by "Original", "Iron" and "Absolute" stalled, and the entire two-dimensional category was also in full swing. This is not recently, there has been a sad news, the goose factory's "White Night Aurora" shut down the national service, and the goose factory even stated in the middle of the year that it would give up the two-dimensional game and fully turn to the big DAU competitive game.

What to do, it seems that our second tour is really going to be finished.

From Douyin to iQiyi

Everyone in the mixed player community knows how deep the doorway behind the words "super Douyin" is.

The so-called "super Douyin" means that the turnover (revenue) of a game or app surpasses Douyin in a specific period of time on the IOS best-selling list. The longer the TikTok is over, the better the turnover performance of the game or app.

Short videos and games are two parallel lines, it was "Genshin Impact" that was born, and Shengsheng turned Douyin into a weight. Originally, Douyin could be suppressed on the market, and it was a national game like "Glory of Kings". "Genshin Impact" and "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" have exploded successively, and "Super Douyin" has begun to be regarded by players as a standard to measure whether a game is popular enough.

But now the metrics are changing.

It has been a long time since "Genshin Impact", which is "original", has not been able to pass Douyin. According to statistics, this year's "Genshin Impact" super Douyin card pool is only the little grass god + idle cloud pool during the Spring Festival, and the servant + Linni pool in April. I thought that the 5.0 major update traveler's adventure into the Fire Country Nata would stimulate a wave of flowing water, but the card pool was changed for six rounds, and the god pool that reshaped the glory of "Genshin Impact" still failed to appear.

According to game analyst Niko Partners, Genshin Impact player spending has fallen significantly recently compared to the previous three years. From the number of Xianyu and community discussions, it can also be found that the number of players who abandon the pit and run away is rising.

The times are pressing, and "Genshin Impact", which has been "arrogant" for four years, has finally begun to reduce the burden on players. For example, you can hoe the earth, consume physical strength to get points to offset daily tasks, and support customization of the main attributes of the holy relic to reduce the burden of players repeatedly brushing dungeons, etc., the optimization that should have been served a long time ago was not implemented until 5.0, which is a typical example of the child's death and milk, and the player still chooses to run away without hesitation.

The situation of "Crashing Iron" is better than that of "Genshin Impact", at least there are more cases of "super shaking" this year. Huang Quan, Liu Ying and other new character pools have successfully completed the super Douyin task, and the big victory general Feixiao Chi has been slightly more than 3 hours, ranking fourth on the best-selling list on the same day, considering the problems such as character design, it is also a good result. "Iron" has revolutionized the life of "Yuan", and the gold content of this sentence is still rising.

As for miHoYo's "next-generation action second game" "Jeopardy Zero" released this year, Xiaohongshu and Weibo opened the screen bombardment everywhere, but it only surpassed Douyin at 6 pm on the day of its launch, and it only lasted 33 hours.

As the difficulty of super-Douyin has become greater, some people have suggested that "the number of users and daily activity of Douyin are not what they used to be, and it is unfair to use Douyin as a measurement standard". Watching videos and playing games is all about having fun, so "Super Love Qiyi" has become a new standard of measurement.

It's a pity that even if the standard is lowered, except for the Mi family troika, there are very few second tours that can super love Qiyi. Before the start of the server, I secretly poked and poked to make the second open world second game of "Genshin Impact" "Ming Tide", and on the first day of launch, I couldn't even beat Q Yin and iQiyi.

Other two-dimensional new games, such as "Returning to the Dragon Tide" and "Wuhua Mixin", are even more confusing, and writing a small essay "confession" after the game planning is launched has almost become a routine operation. Affected by the predecessors, players are not so much looking forward to "Abnormal Ring" and "Blue Star Plain", which are still in the cake painting stage.

Sex wars, ruined the second tour?

Under the mood of autumn, the two-dimensional game, which was originally under the banner of general orientation and public orientation, invariably began to "choose sides". The defense of men and women in China's second tour is much stricter than that of American toilets.

The second game is dominated by otaku, so it is necessary to conform to the aesthetics and preferences of basic users. At present, the gender antagonism in the field of public opinion is becoming more and more serious, and the second tour is the hardest hit area. A large number of male players shouted the slogan "There are men who don't play" to force manufacturers, and in the face of the excitement of the player's father, manufacturers chose to compromise to varying degrees.

The most thorough "kneeling" is Xishanju's "Dust White Forbidden Zone", which directly hides all the male characters that can be extracted, and is determined to take the route of the all-female class. Not to mention that it really made it a successful renewal, and the "Dust White Forbidden Zone", which was opened with a violent death, turned the tables against the wind, and the monthly flow approached 100 million.

But it is only because of Xinyou that he dares to be so thorough. Second games like "Genshin Impact" and "Crashing Iron", which have been online for several years and have a fixed group of female players, can only secretly poke and poke to show loyalty to male players. Reduces the number of male characters that can be extracted, and reduces the strength of male characters that can be extracted.

Even "Return to 1999" and "Indefinite Lost", known as the "lesbian second tour", have been caught in the "charming house" controversy. The former is the design of the red earth series of skins, which makes female players dissatisfied and over-highlights the figure; The latter is accused of changing from a female superior in the sister line to a male soft pornography.

Hard Candy Jun has no intention of being a judge of gender issues, let's look at it from a business point of view: does infinitely catering to the demands of otaku improve the situation of the second tour?

"Dusty White Forbidden Zone" knelt thoroughly, but the new version still angered male players because of "insulting men", and liked to mention offline real people blocking the door and fighting; "Genshin Impact" has pushed several female characters with online strength and cool clothes since entering the land of fire, but the running water has not been able to rise strongly.

Objectively speaking, the collective decline of the second tour is really not directly related to a certain gender, which is the blessing of the "Second Tour Great Leap Forward" in recent years.

"Genshin Impact" was born, and all manufacturers are looking forward to becoming the next "Genshin Impact", and large, medium and small factories have followed suit, resulting in a flood of secondary games on the market. Those who like retro, cyberpunk, and Chinese two-dimensional can all find their own game, and the limited player base is further subdivided.

And these games are more or less based on miHoYo's set - holy relics, constellations, weapon refinement, heavy plot over social networking, and the plot cannot be skipped. Including after the outbreak of "Broken Iron" last year, it quickly became a reference object. Regardless of whether it is suitable or not, almost all the second tour is engaged in meat pigeon play. It is true that the meat pigeon was first created by roguelike in 1980, but more than 40 years have passed, and it was not until the emergence of the meat pigeon gameplay simulation universe system of "Crashing Iron" that domestic manufacturers began to love it deeply.

Generally speaking, the life cycle of a game is only about 4 years, and when dozens or even hundreds of games with similar gameplay logic appear on the market, what is consumed is the vitality of the category itself. In a sense, the second tour in 2024 and the ancient puppet share a set of fate.

The second tour breaks the circle, whose lies

In the final analysis, the so-called "second tour breaking circle" may only be a specific product of a specific period.

Let's take the timeline back to 2020. Due to the outbreak of the pandemic, people who are restricted from going out have begun to seek indoor entertainment on a large scale. Hard Candy Jun remembers very well that during the Spring Festival that year, because of the somatosensory fitness game "Fitness Ring Adventure", the Switch suddenly became a hot item, and the Switch game "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" also rose with the tide and was known to the public.

In September of the same year, the open beta of "Genshin Impact" was launched, and the first wave of traffic came from the suspicion of "stitching "Zelda". Predator Nintendo fans can't wait to download it, and they want to crusade against miHoYo with reason; Players who watch the excitement also want to see its color and geometry because of the fierce confrontation in the social field. It's a shame to say that Hard Candy Jun and several friends fell into the pit of "Genshin Impact" in this way.

In addition, there is no need to repeat the multi-end, cultural going to sea, etc., in short, under the multi-pronged approach, "Genshin Impact" is bigger and stronger, and even with it, it has broken through the ceiling of the second tour.

At that time, Genshin Impact was no longer just a game, but a popular symbol and a social conversation. In addition, in the context of working from home, the current chargers have no conditions to go out and have fun, so they also devote themselves to the virtual world. As the hottest social currency at the time, "Genshin Impact" was of course the first choice for current charges.

In the second half of 2022, the 3.0 Sumeru version of "Genshin Impact" will begin, which is also the "beginning of a downhill road" in the mouth of many players. In fact, in Hard Candy Jun's view, the loss of players in "Genshin Impact" did start at the end of the Sumeru version, but it was not so related to the complexity of Sumeru's own maps and tasks, but because with the end of the epidemic, the current players who ran to the game to pass the time have returned to the embrace of the third dimension.

The characteristics of "Genshin Impact" or the second game of the rice system, heavy gameplay, heavy plot, the amount of plot updated in the major version is as long as 4 hours, and it can't be skipped with one click. It's great to pass the time when working from home, but when everything returns to normal, it's a way to drive away customers.

People are not idle monkeys, which part-time worker can spend most of the day appreciating the plot and dialogue that smacked 985 copywriting and burying 800 stalks? Not to mention that you have to do the battle and exploration yourself, even if you are in the lead at Station B, it will take 5-6 hours to increase the map exploration to 100% every time.

At present, the card pool performance of "Crashing Iron" is temporarily ahead, which is also related to its sidegame positioning. Although the dialogue can't be skipped, at least the battle can be automatically hung up, although the treasure chest has to be found by itself, but the box garden mode does not need to climb up and down, and you can secretly do two tasks during fishing time.

Some people may say that the development of the offline millet economy is in full swing, and even the old shopping malls that are dying are being revitalized, isn't this the proof that the second tour has broken the circle in a big way? No, this is precisely the scheming social means of the present.

According to Hard Candy Jun's understanding, many customers who go to the millet shop to consume are not iron-blooded two-dimensional, and some people have not even played much in the second game, but "because of the fire, they don't buy and have no topic with others" and rush into the millet shop to consume. And now there are so many "cloud plot" videos on the Internet, people who don't play games can also know the characters in the game and talk about them eloquently.

Whenever a top class is lonely, we will always be busy analyzing what they have done wrong, or the times are re-choosing. But it's more likely that TA is back where he should be.

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