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Success in succession, No. 6 in the new best-selling list, what is the wealth code of Thunder Game?

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GameLook reported/On the second day of launch, “Dungeon Castle 3: Poem of Soul” reached the sixth best-selling list in iOS, which also verified the success formula of Thunder game again.

This is not the first time that the two have cooperated. The developer Gold Rush Interactive has joined hands with Thunder Games in the first two games. Based on the tacit understanding brought about by many cooperations, the new work “Underground Castle 3: Poem of Soul” (hereinafter referred to as “Underground Castle 3”) naturally also achieved good results: on the day of its debut, the game directly rushed to the second place on the free list, only the second time. In “League of Legends Mobile Games.” After that, the popularity has not diminished, and it soon ranks 8th on the iOS best-selling list, and continues to rise to No. 6 the next day.

It is worth mentioning that “Dungeon 3” currently does not have access to mainstream Android channels. According to GameLook’s investigation, there is no game-related information in all major application stores, but the Jiuyou platform shows that it is still in the reservation stage.

Different from the dazzling commercial results, the “Dungeon Castle 3” from the text dungeon adventure RPG mobile game is actually closer to the “independent game” under the usual concept, but it is a bit surprising. But thinking of the publisher Thunder Game, this doubt became relieved again. After all, this year alone, the performance of its self-developed mobile game “One Thought Happy” has been even more amazing, and it has allowed gigabit performance to achieve substantial growth.

While “Underground Castle 3” achieved the sixth best result on the best-selling list, today’s Thunder Game parent company Gigabit released its third-quarter financial report. The financial report showed that Gigabit achieved operating income of 3.485 billion yuan from January to September, a year-on-year increase of 70.05%. ; Achieved a net profit of 1.206 billion yuan attributable to shareholders of listed companies, a year-on-year increase of 51.70%.

Now using “Underground Castle 3” as an opportunity, through a solo appearance, but can win hundreds of millions of months of water “outstanding students”. GameLook seems to have discovered the wealth code of the Thunder game’s own school.

The appearance of independent games, the heart of heavy commercial payment

Let’s talk about the game itself first. Compared with the first generation, “Dungeon Castle 3” has a lot of subtraction on the gameplay, only retaining a certain degree of placement elements, but at the same time the experience is more relaxed.

Except for the text dungeon adventure part, all in-game battles are played in idle mode. Simply put, the player will lead a team of 6 characters for a turn-based battle. Among them, the characters are four major occupations: pioneer, alien, support, and guard. In addition, the front and rear mechanism also brings more space for free matching before the war.

This means that even if it is a stand-by battle, there is no shortage of strategic depth in game battles. What’s more, players can also change their position in real time during the battle to deal with different enemies. However, compared to the previous game, the overall gameplay is relatively mild.

In addition, the current game has 50 characters. In addition to drawing cards, players can also acquire new characters by exploring the dungeon. In the process of dungeon exploration, players will get heroes and a certain number of “souls”, which are used to upgrade and cultivate their characters.

From GameLook’s point of view, although it is a text adventure gameplay, compared to the previous game, “Dungeon Castle 3” has obviously upgraded the art quality.

It can be seen that the exquisiteness brought by the thick-painted style art naturally matches the dark magic theme. The character armor and weapons are full of texture, combined with the overall dark tone of the picture, full of epic. Not only that, each character’s vertical drawing adopts the dynamic LIVE2D format. Whether it’s slowly flying long hair and hem, or a rhythmic weapon, it has a full sense of three-dimensionality. From the perspective of art, even if the same heavy game is compared, it is not much better.

At the commercial level, the payment mechanism of the game is quite perfect. In addition to various gift packs and in-game resource sales, there are also two types of monthly cards of 30 and 98, which are almost equal to the current mainstream commercial game scale. Take “Yuan Shen” as an example, the monthly card price is also 30 yuan.

Seeing the big from the small, the breakout of “Underground Castle 3” is not accidental. GameLook took a closer look and found that, from the self-developed and self-published “One Thought Happy”, to the “Strongest Snail” and “Dungeon Lantern” that helped celadon release, creative gameplay + heavy commercialization + big publicity-has long become a Thunder game Unique formula for success.

Under creative themes, there are categories with tens of millions of usersAs standard

In martial arts novels, each school such as Wudang, Emei, and Shaolin has left a distinct impression, and each has its own merits, and the same is true in the game circle. Just as the second dimension is to Mihayou, strategy and placement is to Lilith, MMO is to perfection, and legend is to 37, different game companies often leave players and peers with their own unique temperament.

As for the Thunder game, the deepest impression of the outside world is naturally the “professional householder who travels alone.”

Faced with the most difficult creative game in the game circle, the Thunder game, which does not take the usual path, has found out the secrets of success early, and the routine has become more and more mature. Can not help but arouse the outside world more and more curious, what exactly is the mysterious wealth code of the Thunder game?

Last month, Lin Yuhong, the chief curator of “One Thought Happy”, shared the research and development design at the Beijing International Game Innovation Conference. Compared with agent products, we can get a glimpse of the unique thinking mode behind Thunder’s success from this self-developed product.

In Lin Yuhong’s view, the user retention of creative games cannot be improved, and only a certain degree of optimization can be done in the later stage. In contrast, the core gameplay and themes are the basis for determining the scope of retention. In other words, the topic selection process has become crucial.

Unlike the public perception, although rooted in the creative direction, Thunder games have not succumbed to niche categories that few people care about. On the contrary, the types they value are not lacking in racetracks with serious homogeneity, such as immortal games. Of course, the big market opportunity left by the gameplay level is certainly a major factor driving the Thunder into the game. But the real key part is whether to have a certain scale of user market. The specific explanation in official terms is the scale of users over tens of millions.

The fiery cultivation of immortals

For example, when talking about the project of “One Thought Happy”, Lin Yuhong revealed that there were two games on the market that triggered a wave of immortality, and both had close to 10 million downloads. “This gives us a boost, which shows that there are tens of millions of users of Xiuxian games, and the market has a lot to do with it.”

But it is worth mentioning that the Thunder is not a complete “speculator”. In addition to the already mature Xiuxian circuit, it has also experienced a not-short “tree-planting period”. Games such as the previous releases of “Greed Cave” and “Unbelievable Labyrinth” have continuously precipitated users for the dark dungeon theme.

Although not deliberately, it has indeed reached the “shadow stage” now. With the accumulation of a certain level of user base, the third generation of “Underground Castle 3” also has a little more breakthrough.

Similarly, thanks to popular games such as Lilith’s “Sword and Expedition” and other popular games such as Jewels and Jade, the placement track also had a large user base early, which indirectly contributed to the breakthrough of the next two “dark horses”, that is, last June. “The Strongest Snail” and “The Lantern and Dungeon”, which had millions of players in a single day in March this year. What’s more, the latter’s two major labels, Roguelike and Dungeon, are similar to those previously released by Thunder. Benefiting from the pioneering of the former, although it is still niche relative to mainstream categories such as RPG, the market scale has undoubtedly reached tens of millions of users.

With small gains and heavy commercialization into an authentic “Thunder Paradigm”

Compared to Gigabit’s 2019 financial report, “Unbelievable Labyrinth”, which has an annual turnover of 120 million yuan, the first month of revenue of nearly 200 million yuan in the first month of “The Lantern and Dungeon”, which assisted celadon, can be said to have been earth-shaking. Variety.

This is not an isolated case. The “Strongest Snail” with the same release model has also gained a lot of favor because it actively informed the players of the “heavy gold”; and “Yi Nian Xiaoyao” has been stable for several months after it was launched. iOS best-selling list TOP20, attracting gold is not weaker than heavy games.

Nowadays, the just-launched “Underground Castle 3” has also received complaints from some players due to the payment mechanism, calling out “Underground Castle 123’s krypton gold has jumped amazingly, which is comparable to the iteration of mainstream games.”

At the same time, from the perspective of the team size, the “Lantern and Dungeon” brought by the 7 people plus a cat game studio, its payment mechanism has allowed 70% of the new users to realize the icebreaking payment; while 5 people The team started “One Thought Happy” is also a heavily commercialized design. In other words, the era of judging whether a product is an independent game based on gameplay and art has passed.

But not all solo teams can try blindly. According to GameLook, having a certain brand influence is the prerequisite for manufacturers to attempt heavy commercialization. It is not difficult to find that both Thunder Game and Celadon have formed a high degree of trust in the players’ minds early due to their stable long-term operation capabilities. To explain it in a simpler way, players know that they will not run away, so players can rest assured.

There is also a more realistic problem that ensues, that is, heavy payments will also lead to a decline in word-of-mouth. Regarding this “chicken or egg” type of problem, the “One Thought Happy” team believes that it should not be too much affected by changes in user reputation. Compared with the score as a criterion for judging the quality of the game, the data judgment is obviously more objective.

In fact, the R&D team found that despite the decline in ratings due to commercial design, the actual number of stays, seven stays, and payment for “One Thought Happy” showed an upward trend. After all, the user experience has differentiated characteristics. Compared with some players with intense expression, the “silent majority” actually accounts for a higher proportion.

However, this also means that games can no longer rely solely on word-of-mouth communication like traditional creative products. Purchase marketing has become an important part of supporting heavily commercialized content. In this regard, Thunder Games also has its own unique views.

At the moment when the marketing cost is hundreds of millions of dollars, Thunder game publishing naturally also attaches great importance to the marketing link, but it is not a one-time ALL IN before and after the launch.

Also take the self-developed product “Yi Nian Xiaoyao” as an example. As early as before the launch, the game will conduct a purchase test every two months to obtain user feedback and adjust the subsequent development direction. At the same time, it can also warm up the game in advance, which greatly reduces the cost of buying volume and the risk of failure during the online period.

It is understandable that, including the newly launched “Underground Castle 3”, the first release of Thunder products basically does not access mainstream Android channels. It is important to know that the 52.5% of the app store’s commission will not only intensify the pressure to pay back; it may also lead to a large investment in purchases that will eventually be used as a wedding dress for the channel, which is not worth the loss. However, it is still possible to access the channel after the end of the marketing period and the completion of user precipitation. For example, “The Strongest Snail” was slowly released on the entire platform four months after its release.

Concluding remarks

In fact, it is not just Thunder, celadon games have also realized early that they will never be able to play Dachang in MMO and SLG tracks. Rather than hitting your head here, it’s better to find creative games to break through. Now, the forerunner Thunder has once again verified the feasibility of this path.

Nowadays, through changes in topic selection and re-commercialization, the industry awareness has been refreshed again with the small and broad Thunder game. It also provides another direction for those small and medium-sized manufacturers who are wandering beyond the siege of large factories. After all, the trial and error cost of creative games is much lower than that of mainstream games.

This Article is curated from Source and we only provide the English version of the Story.

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