On August 20, 2024, the Chinese game company "Game Science" will launch the masterpiece "Black Myth: Wukong". Its exquisite graphics and exciting action scenes have already made many players eager to get started, and international ratings have also given quite good results. Feng Ji (Yocar), co-founder of Game Science, which has been established for ten years, once thought about the reasons for the failure of China's domestic online games in 2007 and wrote the wonderful "Who Murdered Our Games?" —The article "Revealing the Truth Behind the Failure of Domestic Online Games".

From the current point of view, compared with those in the article that analyze the negative consequences of profit-oriented online games, excessive pursuit of profits, and neglect of gameplay, it is worthy of reference for blockchain games. Although blockchain game companies try to open up more "profit" opportunities to players, But it still does not change the solution of profit-oriented; it can even be extended to the cryptocurrency new ventures who are carefully designing the token economy, trying to make the money flow mechanism, but ignoring the practical application.

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Feng Ji (Yocar): Where will the golden age of domestic online games go?

Once upon a time, the game industry was known as a golden industry that "prints money while sleeping", but now, many R&D teams' works are stillborn before they go online. In 2006, more than 60 domestic online games flooded into the market, but only 15 were ultimately profitable. Faced with this bleak situation, we have to ask: Who is murdering our game? This article attempts to analyze this problem from the perspective of game planning and reveal the truth behind the failure.

Dead Babies: Games That Will Never See the World

In the field of domestic online games, game projects often go through months or even years of development, only to die silently during the testing phase. Many people believe that this is because capital is eager for quick success, management is chaotic, and the market is constantly changing. But what is the real root cause? Games succeed not because they invest more resources or time, but because their creators know how to avoid the pitfalls that lead to failure.

However, the industry generally promotes the myths of "elite teams", "countless polishings" and "constant delays", which obscures reflection on the root causes of failure.

The Cursed Team: Failure Begins with Planning

Many failed projects are doomed from the start. Especially at the planning level, when the planners themselves have no hope for the project, the entire team seems to be cursed and gradually loses enthusiasm for the project. If planners are not even willing to play the games they develop, how can they expect players to be enthusiastic about it? If the planners get tired of their work, then the game's prospects in the market are already very bleak.

The closer you are to planning, the further you are from players

In China's online game industry, planning responsibilities have gradually deviated from the original intention of "creating interesting games" and instead focused on how to make players addicted and how to guide consumption.

Planners are forced to find a balance between profit and gameplay, but driven by the strong capital, many plans have gone to the "dark side." The system they designed is no longer to enhance the fun of the game, but to maximize player payment and stickiness. This trend has led to an increasing disconnect between game planning and player needs, ultimately turning games into soulless profit tools.

Behind anti-addiction: the bottomless pursuit of capital

China’s unique “anti-addiction system for online games” is no accident. The huge "frustrated crowd" has become the most fertile hunting ground in the eyes of capital, and online games are the best way for them to find a sense of existence and accomplishment in the virtual world. Because of this, game operators go to great lengths to design various mechanisms to keep players addicted, regardless of the negative consequences in reality. The introduction of the anti-addiction system is essentially a helpless check and balance on capital's pursuit of profit.

The Dark Side of the Force: Planned Fall and Compromise

Driven by capital, game planning has gradually moved towards the "dark side", shifting from its original creative pursuit to how to build a successful business trap.

They no longer focus on improving the playability of the game, but on how to design stronger addictive mechanisms. Innovation is suppressed, plagiarism and tweaking become mainstream, and planners gradually lose emotional resonance with players. When games are no longer meant to bring players happiness, but to squeeze every penny out of them, the online game industry has completely lost its soul.

The embarrassment of operational planning: the conflict between service and creativity

Compared with creative planning in game development, operational planning is often regarded as a "second-class citizen." Their work focuses on how to keep players engaged and how to design activities to keep them active. However, the standardization and monotony of event planning have gradually made players lose their freshness and interest. Planners are busy dealing with various trivial tasks, but have neglected to improve the overall game experience. Over time, players' dissatisfaction accumulated, and the game gradually declined through repeated activities.

Curated Futures: Finding Hope in Dilemma

Although planning is not as important as programming and art in game development, they are still the creators of the soul of the game. However, the culture of excessive pursuit of profits and neglect of gameplay is eroding the healthy development of the entire industry. Future game planners can only regain the fun that games should have by maintaining their enthusiasm for creativity and empathy for players. Otherwise, domestic online games will continue to lose their way in impetuosity and utilitarianism.

Who murdered our game?

The failure of domestic online games is not simply a market problem or a management error, but the planners' compromise and degradation under the pressure of capital. When game development no longer focuses on creating fun, player disappointment and the demise of the game become inevitable.

Only by returning to the original intention and rediscovering the essence of games can domestic online games rise again in the fierce market competition.

Reflecting on blockchain game issues

Reflecting on the past game industry status can give us a clearer view of the current development trends and challenges of "blockchain games". Blockchain games face similar problems in many aspects, but introduce new variables. Let us analyze a few key points:

1. The conflict between speculation and gameplay

In the past, in order to pursue player stickiness, online game planners often focused on the "dark side" of making players addicted and guiding consumption, while ignoring the fun and innovation of the game itself. This is even more obvious in blockchain games. Blockchain games usually regard “making money” as their core selling point, and gameplay becomes secondary. Players participate in this type of game more for return on investment than for entertainment and enjoyment of the game process. This has turned games into vehicles for speculation. When the market craze subsides, the vitality of these games will be in jeopardy.

2. Short-sighted development model

In the past, in the development of online games, the mentality of eager for quick success has led to a large number of "stillborn" game projects. Similarly, blockchain game developers tend to focus on quickly launching new projects and seizing the hype in the market, without long-term product planning. This has led to the rapid rise and collapse of many blockchain games in a short period of time, which is exactly the same as the development model of early online games.

3. The player’s character is alienated

In traditional online games, players are gradually regarded as mathematical models and consumption objects. What planners focus on is not the gameplay, but how to maximize players' paying behavior. Blockchain games go one step further, treating players as pure investors and asset managers, and the "fun" in the game is replaced by economic motivations. This alienation weakens the emotional connection between players and the game, and ultimately only the cold capital operation remains.

4. Innovation is suppressed by commercial interests

In the past online game market, innovation was compressed and replaced by market-proven routines and plagiarism. Similarly, among blockchain games, there are few works with truly innovative gameplay. Most products simply combine blockchain technology with existing game modes, or even just package them as NFT trading platforms, lacking the ability to impress players. of creativity and content.

5. The sustainability of the economic model and the greed of capital

Blockchain games often rely on complex token economic models to keep running, but the sustainability of these models has been questioned. Designs that excessively pursue yields can easily form a Ponzi scheme-like structure. Early players earn the investment of later players. When new funds cannot enter the market, the entire economic system will collapse. This is exactly the same as the numerical design aimed at addiction in online games in the past, and it is the result of being driven by the greed of capital.

The future of blockchain games?

To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past game industry, blockchain games need to re-examine their core values ​​- is it to create entertainment or simply to pursue profit? A truly successful blockchain game should balance the relationship between "playing" and "earning", making economic incentives an auxiliary to the game experience, not the only purpose. In addition, game developers should focus on innovation and the real needs of players to avoid falling into rounds of market bubbles due to short-sightedness. Only in this way can blockchain games get rid of the label of speculation tools and become entertainment products with long-term vitality.

This article reviews the Black Wukong producer’s old article “Who murdered our game?” Are blockchain games making the same mistake again? First appeared in Chain News ABMedia.