Text |Eye entertainment.Ask ten people, and nine people know "Glory of Kings"; But if you ask ten more people who know "Honor of Kings", what story this game tells and what kind of background each character has, maybe ten people don't know.
Throughout the New Year's stall, "Glory of Kings" was very busy.
In January, Zigong, Xi'an, and Datong jointly created the King's Canyon offline New Year Lantern Festival, and related entries Longyao Lantern Festival reproduced the grand scene of Chang'an Longyao Datong Lantern Festival occupied the top three on Weibo's local hot list;
In February, Shanghai, Chongqing, Xiamen, local subway light rail and the dragon car in the game were linked to create a "King Longyao Special Train", with "Get on the train, this is waiting for you" on the carriage;
Even the game's New Year short film, one other game has been released, but "Honor of Kings" has been filmed twice in a row in different styles. A "Road Keeper" focuses on ordinary people who stick to their posts during the Spring Festival, and a "Huh? "On the Dragon Car" connects time and space, using comedy and fantasy to celebrate the New Year.
Glory of Kings makes concerted efforts online and offline, and strives to create "cultural" attributes for itselfI want the public to have more extended cognition when they see the IP of "Glory of Kings", in addition to realizing that this is a national MOBA mobile game.
To make up for the shortcomings of the content, "Glory of Kings" was also doing it before, but the attitude was between doing a "long-term and correct thing", and it was not so urgent.
But this year, the matter has become imminent.
In July 2023, a team of more than 100 "Glory of Kings" "Yao" sisters appeared at the Guangzhou Firefly Comic Con.
Congee An is one of the "Yao" cosers who play.
Yao, one of the popular characters in "Honor of Kings", is especially popular among female gamers because of its simple operation and cute image.
Before deciding on cos Yao, I thought that there would be many appearances in this role, but I didn't expect that in the end I could form a team of hundreds of people. ”
After the initial excitement, Congee Soon felt bored. Most people pay attention to them, more because of the number of Yao sisters.
In the team of hundreds of Yao sisters, everyone pays attention to the boys' anti-Yao, the contrast Yao with a height of 1.88 meters at the venue that day, and various more topical products, but few people care about the interpretation of Yao's role itself, including Congee An himself.
Congee Ann feels that she belongs to the more noisy kind of comic con, and she doesn't quietly find a place for people to take pictures, she prefers to walk around, find someone to collect stamps, or find other characters related to her cos character to interact with.
But Yao really lacks a point for people to dig deeper. In addition to knowing that she and Yun Zhongjun (another hero in the game) seem to be CP, she doesn't know anything about Yao's relationship with other characters in "Honor of Kings", including Yao's own story.
Porridge is explained by "stalk". Many anime or game characters are able to dig out and summarize multiple interesting "character stalks" due to their stories or settings, such as Ann Congee coses with Herb in "Honkai: Star Dome Railway", and will be asked "Where is the tail?" ”。
The meme is the public's symbolic summary of the character, and it is also the charm of the character. Generally speaking, the more stalked a character is, the more popular it is.
Previously, the anchor of station b "Zaitaozi", as a professional acrobat, had been on CCTV and the local Spring Festival Gala, but the live broadcast room has remained tepid. Until a version update of "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" launched a new character "Gui Naifen", "Zai Xia Taozi", who is happy to work outside the game and is good at acrobatics, and "Gui Naifen", who is also born in the game and is also addicted to online live broadcasts, has formed a soul unity. For a while, there were countless stalks, and players helped "Zaitaozi" and "Gui Naifen" to go both ways, ushering in a big fire.
But Yao doesn't have such an in-game meme. Congee An explained that although Yao is one of the most popular characters in "Honor of Kings", behind her super popularity, more of her "stalks" come from outside the game. For example, players think that they can play Yao if they have a good meal, or female players like to play Yao more, and there are endless Yao emojis in WeChat chat.
This kindThe situation of constructing the player's "cognition" of the character by the "stalks" outside the game is universal in "Honor of Kings". For example, Sun Wukong's "Buckle 1 to send hellfire", Li Bai's "Will enter the wine, sell your teammates, draw a circle and I'll leave", Han Xin's "Ten Han Shin Nine Pits, and a Special Pit", Miyamoto Musashi's "Generation Version Generation of Gods, Generation Generation Version Cutting Miyamoto".
In 2021, "Honor of Kings" launched the concept of "Race Year", in which 4 story collections will be released in 4 seasons of the game, and the 4 story collections can finally be combined to form a complete annual story, so as to fill in the previously ignored worldview of the game.
However, judging from the feedback from the players, the carefully crafted story of the race year has not effectively sparked discussions among playersThe player's focus is always on how to quickly pass the story set and what kind of rewards they can get。This can also be seen in the intelligent search expansion obtained by typing "Glory of Kings Race Year" on it.
From the launch of the game in 2015 to the number of daily active users exceeding 100 million to become a well-deserved national mobile game, "Honor of Kings" has continuously tried to expand the IP horizontally, and in 8 years, variety shows, dramas, animation, e-sports, theme parks, and literary ......have left traces of their attempts, but they have never succeeded in outputting a complete "Glory of Kings" story.
In 2021, after the linkage between "Genshin Impact" and KFC, bringing fire to the unique game culture of "meeting in another world and enjoying deliciousness", some people counted the offline co-branding of "Honor of Kings", which occupies the largest number of game users, and found that the most of its linkage with offline brands are "Organize to open black" and "Show results, enjoy discounts", which are related to games, but have nothing to do with "Honor of Kings", because any MOBA game can apply this model.
More players who are eager to receive the rewards of the tournament do not understand why "Honor of Kings" launched such a mechanism, they only feel that it is delaying time and want to skip it quickly.
Admittedly, a MOBA game may not need to have a story. However, for a game that has exceeded 600 million users and hopes that the IP will be more influential, the construction of game content is imminent.
As early as 2017, "Honor of Kings" tried to present the heroic stories and world view of the world of kings to the public in the form of various animations.
With the update of the game version, "Honor of Kings" began to launch CG short films for the main plot line or new heroes.
Some players asked why the CG of "Honor of Kings" is getting longer and longer, and a group of players in the comment area echoed it. The official has explained this: the team is trying to challenge the use of movie ideas, and better shape the hero characters and the game world in terms of lens language, story, and atmosphere.
However, judging from the emotions reported by players, some players showed more emotion than surprise for CGs or animations that could not be skipped.
Under the fast pace of MOBA games, players often have the mentality of playing in a hurry, and it is difficult to sit still and read a complete story.
In addition to the inherently weak narrative attributes of the game genre, in order to win more traffic and reduce the cognitive cost of players under the early horse racing mechanism of "Honor of Kings", the chaotic game planning adopted also buried mines for storytelling in the later stages of the game.
Honor of Kings was not a project that Tencent was optimistic about in the early days. In the undeleted test of "Heroes of War" (the previous name of "Glory of Kings") and "All the Super Gods", which opened in August 2015, the data of "Heroes and Heroes" is far inferior to that of "All the Super Gods".
TiMi Studios, which was responsible for the development of Heroes, made a bold decision at the time, which was to overturn the previous premise and rebuild the game. In a hurry, most of the early hero skill designs of "Honor of Kings" hide the shadow of the heroes of "League of Legends", and the hero image design will naturally not be original, butWhichever role is more recognizable is used, and whichever role is more compatible with the skill design is applied.
Therefore, there is a strange scene of King Arthur, Li Bai, Bull Demon King, Na Ke Lulu in "Glory of Kings", Chinese and Western characters, gods and monsters, and even original anime characters, and it is difficult to create a unified world view.
The essence of IP is a cultural symbol, and a more penetrating content symbol is used to solve the communication problem in the era of information overflow.
Honor of Kings After opening up the market with the influence of these well-known characters, the problem also came out, heIt is no longer possible to separate the in-game hero character from the existing image of the IP.
In June 2022, Dong Yuhui introduced Li Bai's life in the live broadcast room, and was swiped by the barrage "Li Bai is an assassin", expressing his chill. The incident immediately appeared on the hot search, and the official media criticized "understanding history is not child's play".
There is no good storytelling, more accidents. And this is not the first time that "Honor of Kings" has been attacked because the game hero has the same name as a historical figure, but the problem has never been solved.
In January 2024, "Honor of Kings" played the biggest card in the field of IP expansion in recent times, and the animated series "Honor of Kings: Chapter of Glory Broken Moon" with the game's world view as the background was launched.
This time, the animation really tells the story of Li Bai, a young hero who can compose poetry and is also an assassin. ButThis kind of originality reveals a "lack of heart".: At the end of each episode, the production team typed a "statement" in black and white, to the effect that the animation "Li Bai" is Li Bai of "King Continent", and the plot belongs to artistic creation, not official history.
And intimately suggests to the audience: If you are interested in Li Bai in history because of the story of this film, it is recommended to consult more historical records.
This animation is not out of the circle, Douban 8With a high score of 3, there are only more than 10,000 evaluations. After reading it, more people still find it difficult to understand, what kind of image is Li Bai in the world of "Glory of Kings"?
In the animation, he seems to be still good at composing poetry, and he also lives in the same "Tang Dynasty time and space" as Wu Zetian and Di Renjie, and has the same "I am born to be useful" juvenile arrogance. It's just a few more skills of Li Bai in "Glory of Kings".
It seems that it is difficult for originals to get out of this strange circle :It is necessary to retain the beloved personality of popular historical characters, and at the same time to separate the cognitive distinction between heroes and historical figures.
It's a paradoxical knot.
It is worth mentioning that after "Honor of Kings" entered the overseas market, this problem was easily solved in the overseas market. Foreign players, who lack understanding of many historical figures in China, have more easily accepted the chaotic universe of "Honor of Kings", and have no burden cossing Liu Chan sitting in a mecha and the old master who loves to knock people with sticks.
Time is even more urgent for "Glory of Kings". The new game is the key product of the next stage of the incubation of the "King" IP, including the fighting game "Dawn of the Stars" and the open-world game "Glory of Kings World", which began testing on February 22.
Compared with MOBA games and fighting games that are weaker than the narrative, for the open-world game "Honor of Kings World", the plot is one of the core selling points, and it is likely that all regional stories such as Jixia, Chang'an City, and the desert in the clouds will be closed in this game, as well as character stories, such as Yao and Yunzhongjun.
But the question is, with the current content construction of the "king" IP, are they really ready?
The current content of "Honor of Kings", just like Congee An's final summary of the comic show: there will be many people who know this character, and there will be people who will come to cos, but then what?
And then there was none.