In today's Japanese anime field, otherworldly themes are hot. Especially in the Japanese publishing industry, the theme of another world has even become a savior-like existence, whether it is in light novels or comics, it is quite popular, occupying half of the Japanese two-dimensional market, and has become a traffic password. However, in a different world that exploded in Japan, its adaptation of the game weakened as soon as it returned to China. Is this because the other world has faded out of popularity in Chinese two-dimensional, or is the game itself too bad for players to eat?

It's called slow life, but it's actually liver and krypton

The latest case of the founding service of the mobile game in another world is probably "Slow Life in Another World", which was launched on November 19. This game actually has good results overseas, the international server has rushed to the second place on the North American iOS free list, creating a monthly turnover of 50 million, and in 2024, its daily service will also climb to the top 10 of the iOS best-selling list, and it also has good results in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

Compared with the good results overseas, the performance of the game national server is relatively average. From the fact that the game has been on the iOS free list and the TapTap popular list is the top 1 on the double list, it can be inferred that the investment in the promotion and distribution of the game is not small. But in the end, the game quickly fell out of the top 100 on the best-selling list after the server was launched.

Although such an achievement is related to the theme chosen for this work. But aside, the fact that the game that tops the free list can't make it into the top 100 of the best-selling list still makes people sweat for the future of games.

The investment cost of "Slow Life in Another World" alone is a lot. Although the game screen is 2D, the character art style is unified, and there is no trace of AI painting, but it maintains a relatively fresh style of a different Japanese world. The selling point of the character's beast girl is also highlighted, and all kinds of beast girl attributes are complete, not only dynamic live performances but also interactions, which are aimed at Furui control.

The plot that is often ignored by similar mobile games, this work also attaches great importance to it. The main line not only adds a large number of dialogues to restore the plot of the otherworld-crossing class, plays a lot of other-world memes, but also does dubbing (the national service only has Chinese dubbing, and the Japanese service has Japanese dubbing), reflecting enough respect for the target audience. Various casual gameplay such as cooking, fishing, pet raising, opening a store, etc., also follow the logic of the theme of another world and fit the theme of the game. The display of krypton-related content is very restrained and placed in the back.

The packaging on these products is very effective in attracting the target audience, and it is also the reason why the game can achieve good results overseas. With hours of story progression and village building at the beginning, players will have a good first impression of the game and it will be easier to keep it.

And the developer of this work, Yi World, is not a novice in simulation management, but has long been in the simulation business track for many years, and has launched a number of best-selling products such as "Business Master", "I am a big boss", "This city has good land" and so on. Among them, "Business Master" and "This City Has Good Land" have all launched mini program versions, and they are still active in the top of the mini game list, bringing a lot of benefits to the company.

As long as careful players have simply played "Slow Life in Another World", they will find that the numerical system of this game is born from the previous successful products of Yishi, but the art packaging and game theme have been replaced. At the end of the day, behind the different elements such as characters, shops, and good fields, they all point to the same ever-expanding numerical system.

When the character is still worried about 500 gold coins in the main story, players have accumulated tens of millions of gold coins on their accounts as long as they don't go online for a day, which is undoubtedly a merciless mockery of "simulated management".

And as the game unveils the content of multiplayer play (guilds, leaderboards, etc.), the slow life of the single-player plot is ruthlessly torn off, and the true face of the liver and krypton game will be revealed. Players either spend a lot of time doing tasks every day without wasting a second of earnings, or directly make up for the benefits they missed due to "lazy" not being online, otherwise they will soon be unable to catch up with the large army and be kicked out of the guild, and the game experience will be lost.

At this point, the so-called "slow life" does not exist at all. Players can't experience the scene of leisurely watching the bustling life of NPCs after building a city like a single-player game, so they can only choose between liver and krypton, or simply choose to quit the game.

This kind of numerical mobile game has been developed in China for more than ten years, and many players have long been tired of this kind of gameplay. In particular, the domestic two-dimensional player group, after experiencing content-oriented games such as "Genshin Impact", avoids these numerical games.

Of course, miHoYo's games also have their own numerical problems, and the values of "Honkai Impact 2" next door have swelled to positive (10^40 power).

But no matter how the value is inflated, the first second game will at least spend a lot of money to update the content to retain players. If casual players just follow the main line of the game and watch the plot and don't care about gacha and rewards, the numerical anxiety will be much lower. The social interaction between players is often carried out in the second creation community outside the game, rather than forcibly competing in the in-game leaderboard, and the overall atmosphere is much healthier.

In contrast, the architecture of a "numerical game" is much more straightforward. The essence of a numerical game is to do math problems, acquire players at a low cost, and then have players top up to compete for values until most of the players quit and complete a server loop. For second-game players who have played content-based games, they will be much more rational about the paid routines of numerical games, and most of them use this kind of game as a side game or even a stand-alone game to play, and there is a high probability that they will not recharge.

And this just explains why "Slow Life in Another World" is the first on the free list but outside the top 100 best-selling lists. Attract a group of players who don't recharge anyway to play this game as a stand-alone player, and the game's best-selling list results will naturally not go up.

In short, for the national server players who have been crawling around in numerical mobile games since childhood, they have more or less immune antibodies to numerical mobile games. Especially after playing content-based games, the taste of second-hand players has improved, and they are not so interested in paying. As game researcher Liu Mengfei said: Playing a good game is the best way to prevent addiction.

And this is also the reason why domestic numerical mobile games are gradually turning to the mini program side and avoiding young players more and more. While many analyses attribute the reason to young people's financial weakness and low ability to pay, in my opinion, the real reason is that it's becoming more and more difficult for numerical games to pry into the wallets of young players.

How did mushrooms become the password of the foreign server?

At this point in the analysis, there is a problem that has to be explained. That is, why do games like "Slow Life in Another World" achieve good results overseas? It stands to reason that there is a strong history of PC/console games overseas, and there should be more players who have eaten fine grains, so why do you play domestic numerical games so well?

The answer to this question is not difficult to answer. We don't need to think of overseas players as high-minded. The local tyrants in the Middle East still love to call their brothers to revive their homeland together, and Japanese players have been tortured by the values in the JRPG for half their lives, and suddenly encounter a domestic numerical game that understands the weaknesses of human nature and "can become stronger if you have money", and you will also feel a little "Chinese-style numerical shock".

Moreover, compared with overseas competing products, domestic numerical games also have more careful product packaging, more interesting material advertising, and more generous welfare delivery. Fighting production capacity, domestic games are not false at all.

The only difficulty is that this group of overseas players belongs to a small group of people and is difficult to be accurately targeted. The keyword "different world" can just divert this group of players from the second dimension and help Chinese manufacturers find the target group.

Looking at the materials released overseas by "Slow Life in Another World", it can be found that "mushrooms" are the focus of the game's memes. In fact, mushrooms have unwittingly become a traffic password. It has a stronger hint of suggestion.,It's very absorbing with various funny materials or beautiful girl COS.。

Japanese service advertisement: 2500 draws

Last year, 4399 (Joy Net Games)'s "Legend of the Mushroom Brave" was a huge success overseas, especially in the Japanese server. One of the game's major selling points is also mushrooms.

It is this batch of "mushrooms" that allows Chinese manufacturers to find the group of older players in Japan's second yuan and dig this small gold mine.

Today's Japanese-style light novels, especially the theme of another world, already have a considerable group of middle-aged readers. The characteristics of this group are that they don't have the energy to spend a lot of time on entertainment, and they only want to find "slow life" light novels that don't need to use their brains, and they only want to find mobile games to play with games. Compared to when they were younger, the only thing they have more is disposable income in their pockets.

In other words, there are also a number of "Legends" players overseas. But the memories of overseas players are not "Legend", but a different world in JRPG, and our overseas products are packaged in this direction, and finally earned the money of this group of overseas "Legend" players. "Slow Life in Another World" and "The Legend of the Mushroom Brave" are both relatively successful cases.

Such a strategy is indeed effective and makes money, but the cost is not without it, and the biggest price is not conducive to the formation of its own IP. For example, "Slow Life in Another World" itself is a "sequel", and its predecessor, isekai: Demon Waifu, has been promoted in North America for several years, but the results are not ideal. The launch of the new work is not only borrowing the momentum of the previous work, but also the hot spot of using linkage and launching well-known works with different world themes.

The advantage of this is that it greatly reduces the cost of user acquisition, but the disadvantage is that the product itself is not recognizable. Characters can't get out of the circle, and without player second creation, the game won't be able to eat valuable community traffic, and it's difficult to sell characters like content-based second games. Krypton players only look at whether the strength of the character is good or not, and problems such as numerical inflation will soon come.

If you search for "Slow Life in Another World" as a keyword, you will find a lot of works with different worlds that have nothing to do with the game, and in the search results related to the game, the most clicked content is also the content cooperated with COSER, and there are few player-created content.

This shows that it is difficult for the characters in this game to arouse the player's desire to create. Once such a game stops buying, the ranking will drop rapidly. This is also the reason why the "marketing expenses" of manufacturers such as Yishi, 4399, Haibi, and Boke have always been unable to be reduced.

It's all unpretentious business warfare

Whether it is a different world or another theme, domestic manufacturers often rely on such ingenuity to find opportunities overseas. For this kind of play of four or two thousand pounds and survival in the cracks, domestic manufacturers do have two brushes.

The reason why the successful "mushrooms" in the Japanese server have mediocre results in the national server is that in addition to the different player ecology, another important reason is that the country is too volatile.

Overseas, as long as manufacturers compete in a dislocation and find the target audience, they still have a certain chance of winning against local competitors. However, in China, any traffic depression will be immediately sniffed by the algorithm, and the cost of buying volume will not be pulled up at all, and it will not give manufacturers the opportunity to explore the "slow life" theme of another world like the overseas market. The domestic numerical game mall is like a battlefield, and it can iterate several hot spots several times a year, and whoever is slow will die.

Therefore, for Yi World, the poor performance of the national server of "Slow Life in Another World" may be expected by them. It already has "There is a Good Field in This City", a product that is more suitable for the taste of Chinese babies in terms of subject matter, and it is best to have a second hit, and there is no anxiety.

4399's "Legend of the Mushroom Brave" actually has the same trajectory. Although the foreign server performed well, the performance of its national server "Adventure Operations" has been mediocre until the launch of the mini program version. However, in the face of huge competition for buying volume, in the end, 4399 still chose to promote products with greater differentiation, rather than wasting the budget on "mushrooms".

Is this environment for the mini-game healthy? It's up to you to see it from which angle. Efficiency always comes at a price, and slow life doesn't fall from the sky. Each era will have its own rhythm, and the way to survive is to fit the rhythm of that era.

Just like China's ACG doesn't need to live slowly now, it doesn't mean that it will never need to. Maybe 20 years from now, when the group of players who grew up playing Genshin Impact will be 40 years old, they will probably need a "Slow Genshin Impact in Another World" to pass their spare time, and recall their passion for fighting the abyss when they were young in the inflated damage figures.

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