How long should a mobile game have a lifecycle?
After more than ten years of free development of the mobile game market and the barbaric growth period of the prevalence of skin-changing mobile games, this question has a new answer. On February 1, without any preview, the second part of "Honkai Impact 3" was suddenly launched, and this one has beenThe game, which has been in operation for 7 years, reached the top of the Taptap Hot List on the same day。Prior to this, the first part of "Honkai Impact 3" reached a peak with the launch of the 2022 version of "Elysian Past" when it was in its 6th year of operation, and the subsequent second trailer was just released, surpassing the first part in only 2 days on the pre-order list. The advantages of long-term operation under the high-quality route have gradually begun to become prominent. Taking Eagle Horn Network as an example, it only relied on a "Tomorrow's Ark" and operated for 5 years, ranking firmly in the "Shanghai Four Little Dragons". Last year's beta version of "Ark of Tomorrow: The End" received widespread attention once it was released, and if the final online version was also a great success, it would be equivalent to the success of the remake of miHoYo. According to Qimai data, in 2023, the domestic mobile game turnover revenue ranking (Android is calculated twice as much as iOS),"Honkai Impact 3", which has been in operation for more than 7 years, ranks 67th, and "Ark of Tomorrow", which has been in operation for nearly 5 years, ranks 27th. Under the wave of high-quality mobile games, how to make games achieve long-term operation has become a compulsory course for more and more manufacturers. 
The rhythm of long-term operations
Honkai Impact 3 has a lot to learn from. Regarding its second part, compared with the changes between the second part and the first part, and what are the points worth learning from the second part of the game, I think we should focus more on the overall operation strategy of the "Honkai" IP. It needs to be recognizedThe launch of the second part of "Honkai Impact 3" is just the result of long-term operation, rather than a transformation strategy under the sudden brake. Or think about it from another angle, if you change to another game that has been in operation for more than 7 years, and rashly say that you want to overturn the previous work to make a sequel, the more likely outcome is to accelerate the death of the game. Why can a player play a game for a long time? As a mobile game, in addition to numerical stimulation and social relationship binding, there must be new content that continues to provide players. Taking Honkai Impact 3 as an example, we can divide the "new content" into two parts: "story" and "event gameplay". In the documentary of the first finale of "Honkai Impact 3", the game suffered a data decline in the second year of its launch, and the project team began to seek a way to reform and crack it. One of the decisions was to do the content IP direction. This is a thankless task in the short term, because the content is not as good as the gameplay, it is a one-time consumable, and it requires a lot of manpower to invest in it. ButFor all games whose core content is "character development" and "role-playing", high-quality story production is the key to achieving long-term operation. Good plot content allows players to substitute for it, form an emotional connection with the characters in the game, have a sense of belonging to the entire game world, care about the direction of the plot, the fate of the characters, and feel like they are also the natives of the game world. The most typical case is the sentence of "World of Warcraft" players, "World of Warcraft, I have one more world than you." ”
The theoretical effect is that with the change of version, players will discuss the recent plot and carry out secondary creation like "chasing fans" (you can refer to the current community environment of Miyoushe). Until the final chapter, accompanied by the characters he was familiar with, he walked towards the end with his youth memories. "Honkai Impact 3" is undoubtedly one of the representatives, which can be seenBy the time the game was close to the finale of the plot after 6 years of operation, the game's reputation counterattacked and climbed. In more games, the player's only request for the plot in the second half of the game is "not too long" or "skippable". If the story plays more of a role in connecting emotions, then the gameplay and activities that occupy most of the player's game time are the key to ensuring that the player "has something to do at all times" and can continue to play. Here, we grab two key words, one is:Rhythm, the other isVariations。The former, in fact, has formed a set of activity rhythms that have been verified by the market and are extremely comfortable for players as early as the FGO period. In addition to the daily regular activities, there will be two to three large-scale themed activities in the middle of each version to enrich the content, and the frequency of activities on the eve of the theme activities will be reduced, or replaced with lightweight activities with a lower liver degree, so that players can maintain the rhythm of "always new and moderate" in the game. Because of this rhythm ordering, there is also a so-called "long grass" among players. In addition to the pacing, another big change is in the gameplay. "Honkai Impact 3" is known as miHoYo's experimental field, and a large part of it is reflected in its role as a pioneer, pioneering many mini-game gameplay on the basis of 3D games. Similar to Broken Beanman, Monopoly, etc., set on "Genshin Impact", it has become a mini-game "Divine Ingenuity" and "Mechanical Chess Tan". 
It is worth mentioning that "Fall Guys" is a popular casual game mode in recent years, including Tencent's "Dawn Awakening: Vitality", and most recent 3D games have made this gameplay the theme of regular activities. 
The basic law of the sequel
How to evaluate the second part of "Honkai Impact 3", after a day of playing, I think this is more like a new game made by imitating the core gameplay of "Honkai Impact 3". This is a very courageous decision, because if you don't do anything, with the current turnover of "Honkai Impact 3" and the daily activity of players, the product still has a long life cycle, but once something goes wrong, the sudden death is now. This is also why in many games, players obviously feel that the mode, picture, and operation method are all too old, but the production team still follows the old system"The law of the ancestors will remain unchanged forever".until it can no longer be sustained. Therefore, the success of Honkai Impact 3 provides a reference case for the renewal of old games. Needless to say, the biggest changes in the second part of "Honkai Impact 3" compared to the first part are mainly focused on the changes in the main body of the story (the protagonist group) and the gameplay. The plot of the second part of "Honkai Impact 3" is, simply put, to tell the story of the new protagonist in the old game world. In the new protagonist group, the player plays the role of "Captain" to the protagonist "Dream Seeker", according to the game setting, the Dream Seeker is an engineering student in Ouxia City, majoring in the sea of data, can salvage and explore resources from the sea of quantum. 
In addition to the main character, the protagonist group in the game is made up of characters with various personalities, backgrounds, and physical characteristics, including the red-haired beautiful girl Hinadya, and the black-and-white hairy beast-eared Lori Corali. 6626.Planck and Valkyrie Erdsh. Helia. The addition of new characters brings a new plot, and a new story will take place on Mars. But while the second part of "Honkai Impact 3" brings players a sense of freshness, it has not forgotten to add familiar faces to players in the old version. According to the official information of "Honkai Impact 3", the characters of the first part will reappear in the second part, retaining the emotional connection between players and the previous game. 
It is worth mentioning that players of the attribute miHoYo know that many of miHoYo's game characters actually have similarities, such as Himeko and Walter from "Honkai Impact 3" also appeared in "Honkai: Star Dome Railway". This is a content operation based on the IP of "miHoYo", and players can find their own familiarity no matter which game they are in. In terms of gameplay, the second part of "Honkai Impact 3" has optimized the core gameplay in the past, and in short, it has done three things: 1Lowered the threshold for operation; 2.The Y-axis was designed, and the upper limit of operation was developed; 3.The "Star Ring" system has been added to optimize the pace of battle. In a word, based on the production team's in-depth understanding of this game that has been in operation for more than seven years, the game operation is simpler and more refreshing, but at the same time, there are more changes. In fact, broken down, there are actually no major changes in the second part of "Honkai Impact 3", but each change carries an understanding of the game. There are two suggestions for the development of a sequel to the game:1The story should retain the emotional connection and relevance to the previous game, so that the player can see himself"Traces of adventure".；2.In terms of gameplay, the core gameplay should not be changed, but it needs to be deeply optimized according to player feedback. Reviewing the development of "Honkai Impact 3", in fact, this game ismiHoYo's game that has changed the most since its operation, so there is the saying of the Mi family's "test field", and the innovations that many players are satisfied with have been used in the follow-up to "Genshin Impact" and "Honkai: Star Dome Railway". Even, you can take it apart. Its operating ideas were given to "Genshin Impact", IP was given to "Honkai: Star Dome Railway", and action game development experience was given to "Jeopardy Zero". But this time, many of the designs of the second part of "Honkai Impact 3" feel like there are many counter-supplements from other game experiences, such as the design of the protagonist group is similar to that of "Honkai: Star Dome Railway". This pioneering spirit, based on the Honkai: Star Railway, seems to correspond to the basic requirements of the game's long-term operation. February** Dynamic Incentive Program