In the past June, under the general environment of normalization of version number distribution, various manufacturers have come up with housekeeping products to go shopping for the summer. Among them, the competition in the theme of Xianxia is particularly fierce. There are “Mortal Cultivating Immortals: The Human World” based on the IP adaptation of online novels, the IP sequel “Shenxiandao 3”, which was a smash hit during the page game period, and the collection of top-notch stand-alone Xianxia. IP’s “New Legend of Sword and Fairy: Swinging the Sword and Asking Love”.
Recently, “New Legend of Sword and Fairy: Swinging Sword and Asking Love” (hereinafter referred to as “New Sword”) jointly released by China Mobile Games and Celadon officially announced that the first month of all channels exceeded 200 million. According to Gamelook’s observation, in such a In the fiercely competitive summer season, “New Sword” did not adopt the brand exposure mode of hiring spokespersons and doing large-scale brand advertising in terms of brand marketing. In addition, according to the data from the third-party data organization DataEye, the game has released a total of 37,000 materials in the last 30 days, ranking 11th among the competing products in the summer file. style of play.
However, looking back at the performance of “New Sword” during its big launch period, the pre-orders for the product had exceeded 8 million before it was launched. After the pre-download was opened, “New Sword” quickly climbed to the top of the App Store’s free list and remained on the free list for three consecutive days. top three. On the occasion of the full moon of the product launch, the omni-channel sales exceeded 200 million in the first month. So how did “New Fairy Sword” make a bloody way out of the summer file where the fairy tale theme gathered together to compete with each other under the circumstance that the brand budget was not high and the purchase volume was relatively restrained. What are the innovation highlights? It is worthy of our discussion and research.
Strong social mechanism, breaking the impression of stand-alone card mobile games
In the era of “getting users, winning the world”, “New Sword” first aims at the social shortcomings of traditional card games. For a long time, card products have been limited by their own gameplay. If you want to stand out on the track, you have to fight for themes, IP and art style. Except for “pay for love” products, most card mobile games will have player ecological problems to some extent . The lack of sociability of traditional cards makes it easy to form a game experience that playing cards is like playing a stand-alone game in terms of user experience. As far as the product is concerned, this will easily lead to a trend of continued decline in user activity in the middle and late stages. If users cannot be effectively bonded, the vitality of the product will be reduced. It will also be gradually worn away.
Aiming at the pain points of cards with weak social interaction, “New Sword” puts forward the concept of “strong social card”, which provides the game of sworn brotherhood and double team dungeon to activate the emotional link between players. Around the friend system, “New Sword” also provides Peripheral gameplay such as space and watering flowers can be added to promote daily interaction with game friends. In order to open up a wider social circle for players and establish a group social gameplay, the game also opens Xianmeng and Xianmeng mission activities to provide players with multiplayer social scenes and goals. It also strengthens user stickiness and cultivates users’ social habits.
It can be said that “Xin Xianjian” has built a perfect social system for users with a progressive social model to meet the needs of users at different levels, from the worship game to the team dungeon, from the Xianmeng game to the GVG strong social guild game. Keep users in the game, and let users naturally invite friends around them to enter the game together, thus completing the cycle of user entry, retention, and fission.
In addition, the fairy art gameplay in the game “New Fairy Sword” is also established based on the user’s strong social system. The fairy art requires a two-person team to complete the dungeon activity to increase the social stickiness of game users. At the same time, compared with the “click button” method of upgrading skills in traditional card mobile games, the character skills in the Xianshu system need to be activated by Xianshu, and the skill bonuses of different qualities of Xianshu are different. This means that the higher the level of fairy art, the better the effect of the skills that can be unlocked, and the higher the level that can be improved, forming a difference from traditional card games in terms of the cultivation system.
Multi-experience gradually progressing, and the card category evolves again
In addition to the bold innovation in the social aspect, at the core gameplay level of the game, the new fairy sword adopts the integration strategy of card + RPG + SLG gameplay, and continuously advances from three levels to open up more diverse development space for the game. From the perspective of the IP layer, the game has the copyright of the entire series of Xian 1-Xian 6, and the card characters reproduce IP characters in high-definition in a youthful and national style, which directly mobilizes the desire of fans of Xianjian to collect IP characters.
In terms of character development, “New Sword” retains the classic 45° angle of view and map treasure hunting features of the single-player era of Sword, and adds RPG elements to the card game, allowing players to control characters to run maps, hunt for treasure, and explore hidden tasks and easter eggs in the world of Sword. Give fans of Xianjian a sense of familiarity.
From the perspective of long-term growth, the Kunlun Shenxu gameplay based on SLG elements has significantly enhanced the game’s composite experience and promoted the deepening of social relationships through large-scale user interaction. Compared with the traditional single card game, the player retention time of “New Sword” has at least doubled.
But in addition to the quality of the product itself and the excellent gameplay elements, Gamelook also observed that the secret of “New Sword” being able to “kill madness” from competing products in the same period-and the team’s emphasis on and service to the user layer.
Down-to-earth marketing style allows the project team to make friends with users
As we all know, today’s mobile game market is affected by players’ diversified game content needs, and it has become increasingly difficult to occupy users’ minds. But whether it is celebrity endorsement or buying volume, it is not as good as the official end to mingle with users to win people’s hearts. And judging from a series of marketing activities of the product, “New Sword” pays special attention to users in the sinking market. So how does “New Fairy Sword” integrate with users at the marketing level?
High-quality product reputation, active user behavior and healthy retained data are the prerequisites for a product to be able to develop in the long run. As early as the early stage of the game’s launch, “New Sword” attached great importance to community operations, and promoted the activity of seed users by continuously setting up community activities and maintaining high-intensity interactions with players. Observing users’ chat content can also play a role in feeding back game optimization and retention, laying the foundation for the subsequent spread of word-of-mouth and social fission.
- The official character is created by “Uncle Hua”
As early as 2022, “New Immortal Sword” was building the image of the main strategy. After the name of the main strategy Uncle Hua was announced this year, the R&D log began to be updated frequently. The log includes IP nostalgia, comparison and restoration, function introduction, detailed gameplay, etc., to help users Form product awareness. At the same time, the image of Uncle Hua has also been deeply embedded in the game. During holidays and key version updates, the image of Uncle Hua will send emails to users in the form of face pictures, and the content of the emails is very down-to-earth, such as “this class B I’ll stop here”, “I ate less dinner for weight loss, and I feel dizzy after working overtime”, etc., are loved by players through these entertaining language. Of course, whenever Uncle Hua appears, he will definitely bring benefits, so Uncle Hua, the main planner, has also become the “most considerate cash machine for gift packages” in the hearts of players.
- Social fission with welfare as the core
How to judge whether a card mobile game is “conscience”? The answer is, benefits. From the perspective of users, “New Sword” understands the ambivalence of players who “need both” and launched various “both and” welfare activities, such as: pre-drawing cards to get free orange cards, collecting story cards to get free draws Coupons, Yujian Xiaoyao Music Tour points exchange gift packs, etc. In these activities, new tasks such as “share activities to get lucky draw opportunities”, “invite friends to reserve games”, “share link collection cards and exchange cards” are everywhere. When benefits are combined with fission, in addition to achieving communication and coverage to a larger audience, it can also make people feel that the brand understands players.
- Thousand-mile voice transmission, have you received a call from Li Xiaoyao?
According to Gamelook’s understanding, “New Sword” made a separate call to more than 8 million reserved players on the day of its release. Through the voice of a classic character of Xianjian, the players’ feelings for Xianjian were instantly full. During the reservation period, all the players who had made reservations for “New Celestial Sword” received a call from the protagonist group of the first generation of Celestial Sword. When Li Xiaoyao, Zhao Linger and Lin Yueru appeared beside them, they quickly aroused the public’s collective nostalgia for the Celestial Sword IP. Leveraging the launch node of the first release, “New Sword” continues to attract the public’s emotions into the game, which has a good transformation effect.
- Xianmeng League, share high bonuses
From social fission to live streaming to Moutai, “New Sword” is getting smoother and smoother on the road of sinking marketing. On July 7th, “New Fairy Sword” Full Moon Celebration announced the launch of the Xianmeng activity of “dividing the bonus of the Ten Thousand God Market”, which will reward the Xianmeng with the highest points in the theater. Kunlun Shenxu serves as a gameplay to verify the strength of Xianmeng. The group social attributes under its gameplay system can stabilize user stickiness and promote online activity. At the same time, it can also satisfy strategic players’ desire for “enjoyment with others” preference. According to Gamelook’s understanding, the official is currently planning a new round of Shenxu Contest, and it is expected that there will be a million prize pool.
After reviewing the product design and marketing style of “New Fairy Sword”, we undoubtedly have a deeper understanding of its position in the industry. In the era of high-quality products, major game manufacturers are “crazy”, and users’ tastes are becoming more and more picky. “New Sword” dares to boldly integrate the card game genre, and at the same time integrates social, SLG and other elements into the card game, and has made a lot of interesting explorations in the card game category. At the user level, the team established user communication in a down-to-earth manner, winning positive word-of-mouth support and trust from players. As of the time of writing, Gamelook noticed that “Xin Xianjian” can still maintain a score of 7.2 on the TapTap platform, which is very rare for a commercial product, so it seems that without large marketing and aggressive purchases, “New Sword” “New Fairy Sword” can still achieve a good score of over 200 million in the fierce summer file. We can see that this product is different from the previous model of holding high and playing high. It is trying and exploring in a direction with more long-term value.
