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GameLook report/At home and abroad, two breads with cheese.
On May 27, third-party data agency Sensor Tower pointed out that the total global revenue of “Tomorrow’s Ark” has exceeded 700 million U.S. dollars (excluding revenue from the domestic Android version) in the two years since its launch, which is equivalent to about 4.5 billion yuan and generates monthly revenue on average. 190 million yuan.
This also makes “Tomorrow’s Ark” the world’s highest paid tower defense game, nearly 6 times that of the second place “Random Dice” and 10 times that of “Plants vs. Zombies 2.”
Sensor Tower also mentioned that the globalization of “Tomorrow’s Ark” has achieved good results. Although the online time of the international service lags behind that of the national server, the overseas market revenue of “Tomorrow’s Ark” has exceeded half of the total revenue in the past two years, reaching 53.2%.
From May 2019 to 2021.5, it was the two years of “Tomorrow’s Ark” and the two years of highly “involved” in the game industry. On the one hand, “Tomorrow’s Ark” broke the domestic two-dimensional mobile game market with “FGO”, “Benghuai 3”, and “Onmyoji” as the leader of the “Royal Sanjia” pattern. At the same time, it became popular with the tower defense theme that was once regarded as a niche. , Drove the cross-latitude expansion and upgrade of the gameplay, and became a typical case of the evolution of the second dimension from category to track.
The second dimension has also grown in reverse, and the popularity has become more and more popular in the past two years.
Some time ago, “Tomorrow’s Ark” just ended its second anniversary celebration.
This celebration was extremely popular among players. On April 24, Eagle Corner Network opened its second anniversary live broadcast at Station B, and the popularity easily exceeded 10 million.
The new side story “under the tide” opens the prelude to the deep-sea plot, plus the first out-of-the-ordinary operator “Skati” with Live2D installed, the player has been thinking of the important operator “Kelsey” for 2 years Landing… The shock is no less than that of Shanghai Island, which once integrated the sports cadre “W”. For the players of “Tomorrow’s Ark”, the second anniversary live broadcast is no different from the “Ark Spring Festival Gala”.
For non-Ark players, such a description seems difficult to have real feelings. In fact, it can be summarized as new activities, new plots, new characters, and it is almost the same as most two-dimensional mobile games. So, why is the content of the second anniversary iteration of “Tomorrow’s Ark” special?
The second element emphasizes paying for love. Success or failure is not special. In the final analysis, it depends on the player’s real reaction.
On May 2, one day after the new event of “Tomorrow’s Ark” started, the main UP “A Salmon” uploaded a video “The 3000 RMB is gone!” You must take care of yourself, I’m really convinced! “, tells the story of buying air tickets to Beijing and Nanjing after drunk drawing cards.
Soon after the video was released, its popularity surpassed the official May Fourth Youth Day documentary planned by Station B. As of May 27, the video has been viewed at station B close to 20 million, which is the highest of all “Tomorrow’s Ark” videos. It has achieved the same out-of-circle achievement as the “Black Myth: Wukong” demo video with more than 34 million views. .
Many famous “Bible”-level quotes contributed by the video, such as “How is this plain water tasteless”, “We unite”, and “Two breads with cheese” have also succeeded in getting out of the circle. Some analysts believe that the comedy effect is only part of the video. The core of the video’s popularity is the author’s family and country feelings of “being humble and dare not forget the country”, which has aroused widespread resonance among young people.
The base of the Ark players themselves and their concern for the destiny of mankind together contributed to the release of “Tomorrow’s Ark”. Therefore, some players joked that the Ark’s popularity was “brought by strong winds”.
The biggest feeling of GameLook is that there are more and more new players in “Tomorrow’s Ark” after the second anniversary. From the perspective of friends and personal experience, there are new players who have just entered the pit to add friends almost every day in the game. It took two years for the friends to fill up in less than a month. This is an achievement that was not completed in the first anniversary of the game.
Finding and solving problems, maintaining growth is the key
In other words, after two years, “Tomorrow’s Ark” has become more and more popular.
There are many examples of two-dimensional long-term operations, and the reasons are various. What impressed GameLook most is the tenacious growth of “Tomorrow’s Ark”.
Once complained about the “long grass”, now it is possible to seamlessly connect activities; the plot of “riddler” per capita has become the characteristic of individual characters, and the acting and speaking styles of different characters have begun to diversify; Krypton, Gao Wanwan Having nothing to do after the illustrated book? Crisis Contract Level 31, please…
Facing and solving problems has always been a masterpiece of “Tomorrow’s Ark”. Before the game went live, the second test of “Tomorrow’s Ark” encountered a storm of excessive difficulty, and word-of-mouth was once precarious, but in the third test, the difficulty of the game was greatly adjusted to more in line with the tastes of mainstream players.
Talking about the difficulties encountered in the past, Eagle Horn Network vice president and producer Seacat Complex also revealed that due to the use of a combination of strategy, tower defense, and RPG gameplay, and the desire to present it in 3D, the initial stage of development was only The 6-person team encountered many challenges, including low funds, lack of experience, high quality requirements, and so on.
In order to achieve high quality with a small team at low cost, after weighing, “Tomorrow’s Ark” adopts a strategy of mature 2D animated characters and 3D scene maps to express the game’s deeper world view with a realistic tone.
2D characters + 3D scenes also brought some unexpected difficulties. For example, Huang Yifeng, CEO and technical leader of Eagle Corner Network, mentioned that due to the angle of view (the angle between the camera and the X and Y axes is 60°, and the role is at 30 degrees between the X and Y axes), the role and Dislocation of the spatial relationship of the scene.
Aiming at different heights, Eagle Horn Network finally solved the problem of dislocation of the mold through different solutions. Therefore, in the perspective of a certain oblique angle, the characters in “Tomorrow’s Ark” are not standing, but “recumbent” in the scene. .
IP from the niche, grow with the players
At the end of May 2019, when “Tomorrow’s Ark” topped the bestseller list for the first time, GameLook pointed out that it was a product that could not be copied.
What GameLook refers to is not its code, art and world view, but the love and success of the team behind it. If you have the same enthusiasm and strength of Eagle Corner Network, you can make a popular product of the same level without having to reproduce it. engraved. Of course, in fact, there are many products that imitate “Tomorrow’s Ark”, some are based on game UI and art design concepts, and some are completely copied.
For example, on the first anniversary, an overseas mobile game called “War of Embers” attracted the attention of players due to suspicion of plagiarism. After GameLook consulted with Eagle Corner, the other party also found that in addition to art, other content is very similar. High, including combat mechanism, character design, level design and key values.
This pure copy quickly proved to be futile, and after being exposed, the product was quickly removed from the shelves. Plagiarism is no longer effective. It is one of the most critical changes in the two-dimensional and even the entire mobile game market in recent years. In fact, since the outbreak of the domestic two-dimensional mobile game market in 2016, there have been no two-dimensional mobile games that have been plagiarized but are still commercially successful. The most cruel market reaction has forced game companies to move towards boutique and innovation.
At the same time, like most popular products, “Tomorrow’s Ark” soon turned to IP operations after the product’s success. The IP composition of “Tomorrow’s Ark” is no longer a mere game itself, but a complex that encompasses multiple forms of games, comics, and music, as well as a highly creative player ecosystem.
For example, with the improvement of player’s level of practice, the attribute of “copying homework” of player videos has gradually decreased, and the ecology of the second creation has undergone obvious changes. Among all Ark UP hosts at station B, “ZC magic” with “talking talk” as a selling point “Catalogue” came to the fore and became the first owner to attract more than one million fans by Ark.
At the same time, with the increase in the number of operators focusing on different functions and the intentional adjustment of the Eagle Horn network, the difficulty of the “crisis contract” activity, which is famous for the difficulty of the game, is also reducing the difficulty of the guarantee (to receive all the rewards) level, which is obviously intentionally taken care of. A more popular player community.
The growth of the player scale has also brought about the improvement of the creative community. The “Tomorrow’s Ark: New Year’s Eve 2021[Star Shows Years]” created entirely by the player community, even successfully ranked first in the comprehensive ranking of station B, thanks to its solid technology The power and the rich expansion of the worldview are universally loved by players.
In a sense, it’s not that the players are waiting for the official content of “Tomorrow’s Ark”, but the two sides go hand in hand, and even in many cases, the official has played a supporting role to provide players with opportunities and materials for the second creation. With such a group of loyal and talented players, “Tomorrow’s Ark” is undoubtedly lucky.
Of course, in the final analysis, if the worldview is not rich and interesting, and the characters are full of charm, how can players have the motivation to create two and contribute to the ecology of the Ark.
This Article is curated from Source and we only provide the English version of the Story.
