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 made many players eager to try it out, and the international ratings have also given it quite good results. Feng Ji (Yocar), the co-founder of Game Science, which has been established for ten years, once pondered the reasons for the failure of Chinese online games in 2007 and wrote a wonderful article "Who murdered our games? - Revealing the truth behind the failure of domestic online games".
From now on, compared with those analyses in the article about the profit-oriented online games, the consequences of excessive pursuit of profits and neglect of gameplay, it is quite worthy of reference for blockchain games. Although blockchain game companies try to open up more "profit" opportunities for players, they still do not change the profit-oriented solution; it can even be extended to the token economy that cryptocurrency startups are carefully designing, trying to make money flow mechanism, but ignoring the actual application.
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Feng Ji (Yocar): Where is the golden age of domestic online games going?
Once upon a time, the gaming industry was known as a golden industry that “prints money while sleeping”, but nowadays, many R&D teams’ works are stillborn before they are launched. In 2006, more than 60 domestic online games flooded into the market, but only 15 of them were able to make a profit. Faced with this bleak situation, we have to ask: Who murdered our games? This article attempts to analyze this issue from the perspective of game planning and uncover the truth behind the failure.
Dead Babies: Games That Will Never Be Released
In the field of domestic online games, game projects often go through months or even years of development, but eventually die quietly during the testing phase. Many people believe that this is due to capital eagerness for quick success, chaotic management, and ever-changing markets. But what is the real root cause? Successful games are not because of more resources or time invested, but because their planners know how to avoid the traps that lead to failure.
However, the industry generally promotes the myths of "elite team", "countless polishing" and "constant delays", which obscures the reflection on the root causes of failure.
The Cursed Team: Failure from the Start
Many failed projects are doomed from the beginning. Especially at the planning level, when the planner himself has no hope for the project, the entire team seems to be cursed and gradually loses enthusiasm for the project. If the planner is not willing to play the game he developed, how can he expect players to be enthusiastic about it? If the planner is tired of his work, then the prospects of this game in the market are already very bleak.
The closer you are to the planner, the further away you are from the players
In China's online game industry, the responsibilities of planners 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 profitability and gameplay, but driven by the power of capital, many planners have turned to the "dark side". The systems they design are no longer designed to enhance the fun of the game, but to maximize player spending and stickiness. This trend has led to a growing disconnect between game planners and player needs, ultimately reducing games to soulless profit-making tools.
Behind the anti-addiction movement: the bottomless pursuit of capital
China's unique "online game anti-addiction system" is not accidental. The huge "frustrated population" 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 achievement in the virtual world. Because of this, game operators have gone to great lengths to design various mechanisms to make players addicted, regardless of the negative impact in reality. The introduction of the anti-addiction system is essentially a helpless check on the pursuit of capital.
The Dark Side of the Force: Curated Corruption and Compromise
Driven by capital, game planning has gradually moved towards the "dark side", transforming from the original pursuit of creativity to how to build a successful business trap.
They no longer focus on improving the playability of the game, but instead devote themselves to designing stronger addictive mechanisms. Innovation is suppressed, plagiarism and fine-tuning become the mainstream, and planners gradually lose emotional resonance with players. When games are no longer meant to bring happiness to players, 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 mainly focuses on how to keep players engaged and how to design activities to maintain activity. However, the standardization and monotony of activity planning have caused players to gradually lose their sense of freshness and interest. Planners are busy dealing with various trivial tasks, but ignore the improvement of the overall game experience. Over time, players' dissatisfaction has accumulated, and the game has gradually declined in repeated activities.
Curated Futures: Finding Hope in Adversity
Although planners play a less important role in game development than programmers and artists, they are still the creators of the game's soul. However, the trend of excessive pursuit of profits and neglect of playability is eroding the healthy development of the entire industry. Future game planners can only rediscover 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 impetuousness and utilitarianism.
Who murdered our game?
The failure of domestic online games is not simply a market problem or management error, but the compromise and degeneration of planners under capital pressure. When game development is no longer centered on creating fun, players' disappointment and the demise of the game become inevitable.
Only by returning to the original intention and rediscovering the essence of the game can domestic online games rise again in the fierce market competition.
Rethinking blockchain gaming issues
Reflecting on the past state of the gaming industry can help us see the current development trends and challenges of "blockchain games" more clearly. Blockchain games face similar problems in many aspects, but with new variables. Let's analyze a few key points:
1. The conflict between speculation and playfulness
In the past, in order to pursue player stickiness, online game planners often focused on the "dark side" of getting players addicted and guiding consumption, ignoring the fun and innovation of the game itself. This is even more obvious in blockchain games. Blockchain games usually use "making money" as the core selling point, and gameplay becomes secondary. Players participate in such games more for investment returns rather than entertainment and enjoyment of the game process. This has turned games into speculative tools. When the market boom subsides, the vitality of these games will be in jeopardy.
2. Short-sighted development model
In the past, the mentality of quick success and instant benefits in online game development led to a large number of "stillborn" game projects. Similarly, blockchain game developers often focus on launching new projects quickly and seize the hype in the market, but lack long-term product planning. This has led to many blockchain games rising rapidly in a short period of time and then collapsing quickly, which is exactly the same as the development model of early online games.
3. Players’ roles are alienated
In traditional online games, players are gradually treated as mathematical models and consumer objects. Planners focus not on gameplay but on how to maximize players' payment behavior. Blockchain games go a step further and treat players as pure investors and asset managers. The "fun" in the game is replaced by economic motivations. This alienation weakens the emotional connection between players and games, and ultimately only cold capital operations are left.
4. Innovation is suppressed by commercial interests
In the past online game market, innovation was suppressed, replaced by market-proven routines and plagiarism. Similarly, in blockchain games, truly innovative works are rare, and most products simply combine blockchain technology with existing game modes, or even just package them as NFT trading platforms, lacking creativity and content that will impress players.
5. Sustainability of economic models and greed of capital
Blockchain games often rely on complex token economic models to maintain operations, but the sustainability of these models is questionable. Designs that overly pursue yields can easily form a Ponzi scheme-like structure, where early players earn money from 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 of online games in the past that was aimed at addiction, and is the result of capital greed.
What is the future of blockchain games?
To avoid repeating the mistakes of the gaming industry in the past, blockchain games need to re-examine their core values - is it for the purpose of creating entertainment or simply for profit? Truly successful blockchain games should balance the relationship between "playing" and "earning", making economic incentives an auxiliary to the gaming experience, rather than the only purpose. In addition, game developers should focus on innovation and the real needs of players, and avoid falling into rounds of market bubbles due to short-sightedness. Only in this way can blockchain games get rid of the label of speculative tools and become entertainment products with long-term vitality.
