Mirror Entertainment. Text丨Chestnut wine.
According to the current momentum, "Phantom Beast Palu" is undoubtedly the first hit game in 2024.
SteamDB data shows that within 24 hours of the launch of "Phantom Beast Palu", the peak number of ** people exceeded 2 million, ranking second in the Steam history list. As the popularity further fermented, the official tweet of "Phantom Beast Palu" said that the game has exceeded 8 million copies in less than 6 days after its release. According to TGA founder Geoff Keighley**, in just 5 days, the game earned 18.9 billion US dollars (about 13.3 billion yuan.)500 million yuan).
In the face of the explosion of "Phantom Beast Palu", Takuro Muskabe, the founder of game developer PocketPair, bluntly said: "This is a miracle". What surprised the market is that this small-cost game, which took nearly 4 years to create, "stitched" a variety of gameplay such as "Ark: Survival Evolved", "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", "Pokémon", and an investment of only 1 billion yen (about 4,800 yuan), can quickly detonate the market after it is launched. People are not only obsessed with the coolness of the game after "stitching", but also thinking about how "Phantom Beast Palu", which does not have too many innovations, hit the market?
Good at marketing
5 days to win 13500 million
Judging from the current market fermentation process, since the launch of "Phantom Beast Palu", the hot spots released have almost been wave after wave.
First of all, in the warm-up stage, in addition to conventional materials such as trailers, a few days before the official launch of "Phantom Beast Palu", some anchors have begun to do some warm-up live broadcasts, coupled with the related slicing short ** spread, the early popularity of "Phantom Beast Palu" is not low. According to SteamDB data, "Phantom Beast Palu" squeezed into the top 10 on the Steam wishlist a week before its official release.
Of course, in the current gaming market, such marketing methods are not new. But after the game was launched, more topics played differentiated gameplay.
After the launch of "Phantom Beast Palu", the first thing that caused discussion was the creation mode of the game's "stitching", among which, many people considered the multiple images of "Palu" to be suspected of "touching porcelain" Pokémon, and even a large number of netizens tried to find the evidence of "Phantom Beast Palu" "touching porcelain" through image comparison, and the controversy is still high until now. From the perspective of marketing, Pokémon can be said to be one of the largest IPs in the world, and similar "Palu" is easy to attract a lot of attention through related topics.
The controversy" has not yet dissipated, and Takuro Tsukibe has revealed the creative process of "Phantom Beast Palu", in his description, the birth of "Phantom Beast Palu" is a rather legendary story.
For example, the original creative team of the game was only 4 people. One of the main design engineers is only 20 years old, with only a junior high school education, and no previous relevant experience. The original artist who created a large number of "Palu" images is a fresh graduate, who has applied for nearly 100 companies, but was rejected, and finally joined PocketPair, and was only admitted after submitting his resume for ......the second timeAside from the research of the authenticity of these contents, this story alone is easy to empathize with the experience of ordinary people and trigger spontaneous transmission among players.
What's more, "Phantom Beast Palu" quickly found a point to connect with the public in terms of gameplay. In the game, the player captures all kinds of "Palu", and the "Palu" completes different jobs and tasks under the control of the player, just like a worker in reality.
If you don't do it, some of them are Palugan. ”
Play Palu on Sunday and become Palu on Monday. ”
There are a lot of similar player reviews with strong empathy, which makes "Phantom Beast Palu" appear as a dark horse faster, and according to the current fermentation situation, it is expected that the final sales of the game will reach around 2,500 copies.
"No one knows how to integrate better than we do".
Is focusing on demand more important than content innovation?
It is undeniable that since the explosion of "Phantom Beast Palu", the most controversial thing is that the game has a large number of "stitches" in gameplay and elements, but at the same time, "Phantom Beast Palu" can quickly open the market, in fact, the key lies in "stitching".
Prior to this, PocketPair had also released two games, "Overload Dungeon" and "Creation Ideal Town", both of which followed a similar path. Among them, "Creation Ideal Town" "stitched" many games such as "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", "Monster Hunter", "Alien Factory", and sold 500,000 copies on Steam. At the time, there was some debate in the market, and PocketPair was not shy about it.
In the game's introduction to the official website of Genesis Imaginary Village, the company refers to it as "a brand new game that takes all the elements of a creative game and fuses them together (stitched together, removed in parentheses)." The introduction even bluntly stated: "We feel that no one knows fusion better than us (stitching, brackets have been removed)!" ”
Today, Palu continues in a similar direction, and the company's philosophy hasn't changed much in the face of controversy. Previously, Takuro Takoro Takabe responded to the "stitching" controversy in a conversation with GI, and he admitted frankly: "Borrowing ideas from your favorite games is PocketPair's game development style. ”
The difference between the two is that PocketPair does "stitch" better. As far as the game experience of "Phantom Beast Palu" is concerned, the spirit capture of "Pokémon" is integrated into the gameplay of the survival game, and at the same time, it also brings the cute and cute painting style of "Palu", which not only weakens the general sense of depression in survival games, but also makes the process of capturing "Palu" more purposeful and fun. In a way, "Phantom Beast Palu" "stitches" the cool points of different gameplay clearly, which is also the key to its success.
Word-of-mouth is also verifying this, after the launch of "Phantom Beast Palu", the game's praise rate reached 93%, while the previous "Creation Ideal Town" was only 80%. "The game is fun" and even makes players more inclusive.
Behind this, it is more worth thinking about the fact that although the game "stitching" is not decent, in the game market, after a new category and new ideas run through, a large number of user needs will emerge, and "stitching" a variety of games is of course less mining of new ideas, but in essence, "stitching" is the user demand, and the joy of a variety of games is experienced in "Phantom Beast Palu", and the breadth and precision of user needs have been more satisfied. Now, the commercial performance of "Phantom Beast Palu" will also attract more game manufacturers to pay attention to this direction, and the impact on the industry is good or bad, which needs to be further observed.
It is difficult to do in large factories and difficult to learn in small factories
How does the success of Palu continue?
But one thing is for sure, it is not easy to replicate a "Phantom Beast Palu" in China.
On the one hand, there is a high probability that large manufacturers will not refer to PocketPair's creative ideas. If a large factory comes up with a work whose quality is not too good and the gameplay is "stitched" in a large area, I am afraid that it will soon be drowned by the saliva of players. For a small manufacturer like PocketPair, PocketPair can make "Phantom Beast Palu", whether it is in cost control and the way of "stitching" various elements, it has experienced a long period of exploration, and even if small domestic factories want to learn from it, it is difficult to learn the essence in a short period of time.
From this point of view, the enlightenment brought by the success of "Phantom Beast Palu" is mainly focused on two aspects.
One is marketing. In addition to the way of paving traffic, "Phantom Beast Palu" focuses on the topic of creative experience, the dividends brought by elements similar to "Pokémon", the discussion triggered by the concept of "stitching", and the empathy with migrant workers, etc., which lengthens the process of releasing the game's voice. Aside from some of these relatively risky topics, domestic manufacturers can also try to use the connection of content and gameplay to shorten the distance between games and players.
The second is creation. After the explosion of "Phantom Beast Palu", based on the "stitching" of a large number of gameplay and content, the almost legendary creation experience, and the production of high-completion works in a short period of time, it was widely speculated in the industry that there was a large number of AI involved in the creation process of "Phantom Beast Palu". Especially in Takuro Takibe's description, the original artist he recruited has an amazing work ability, and the work efficiency is 4-5 times that of ordinary people, which makes people even more inclined to this.
However, until now, speculation that AI was involved in the creation of "Phantom Beast Palu" has not been confirmed. The only clue is that Takuro Takoro is a relatively radical proponent of generative AI, and in some of his tweets, he has mentioned the use of AI technology for game production.
Based on this speculation, many people see the value of AI in game creation. However, at the same time, it should be noted that the gameplay of "stitching" and the intervention of AI make it easier for game creation to be on the verge of infringement. The industry is also taking it more seriously before game developers were massively using generative AI tools to assist in game creation. In the future, compared to copying a "Phantom Beast Palu", more manufacturers may have a bolder attempt in terms of meeting user needs or seeking content innovation, integrating multiple gameplay and AI participation.
Mirror Image Entertainment (ID: jingxiangyuler) original.
*Please indicate**, the author's signature, offenders will be prosecuted.