Faced with a Japanese market that has never been open, Tencent has finally found some way to do so this time.

On April 9th腾讯发 Yusa's 龙 Fantasies" 线 in Japan为 The Japanese name "Code: Dragon Blood." Tenri, "龙 Group Fantasy" Retained Everyday App Store Wa Google Play 费戏 并 Social 网络掀 话题 Amount.

So far, according to Japanese media reports, "Dragon Fantasy" daily clothing downloads have exceeded 1.5 million.

This achievement has a special meaning in every aspect.

For Tencent, it symbolizes the next stage of their journey to sea. Some friends may wonder, before PUBG Mobile and King GloryInternational version(AOV) These products are also doing well overseas, what's so special about Dragon Fantasy?

This starts with Tencent's background at sea and the particularities of the Japanese market.

If you have any knowledge of the performance of Chinese game makers in overseas markets, you will find that the most popular overseas in previous years, not Tencent NetEase these big factories, but some you may not have heard of the medium-sized manufacturers. Some manufacturers do not even have representative products at home, but overseas have a high income, and have a wealth of operational experience.

But that doesn't mean big domestic factories have been ignoring overseas markets. In fact, as early as early 2014, Tencent in Southeast Asia's international version of WeChat "Craz3 Match", "WeChat Dash PvP", "Day's Match" three games. Only the market performance is flat, far from reaching the same period in the domestic "overlord list" event.

Once the overseas edition of Sky Cool Run

A very realistic situation is that the domestic game market was still the Blue Sea, with a considerable number of demographic dividends. Tencent sits on a convenient user base and distribution channels, both domestic and foreign, an Easy model, a Hard model, which focuses on which piece to develop, in the circumstances of the time is naturally not difficult to choose.

So in the next two or three years, Tencent's game suspended the pace of the sea, all resources in the domestic market, only a small overseas layout. In the early years of Tencent's projects, in addition to individual leisure games, can count the top, there is a "legend of every day" Japanese version. In December 2014, Tencent acquired a minority stake in Aiming, which became Tencent's first investment in a Japanese gaming company. Tencent's subsequent projects with Aiming included the Japanese version of Legends of The Sky, but the game soon fell silent.

This "legend" is not the other "legend", in fact, is a turn-based game

It was not until the "Queen's Glory" era, the saturation of the domestic market, coupled with the number and other factors, Tencent poured more resources overseas, its products began to have a noticeable improvement overseas. From "Glory of the King."International versiontoQQ Flying Car《PUBG Mobile》Call of Duty Hand Tour, etc. Some of these products have also achieved commercial and word-of-mouth success. PUBG Mobile, for example, won Google Play's Most Popular Game of the Year award, while Call of Duty Hand Tour won the TGA's Mobile Game of the Year award, which is basically the highest award a hand-game has ever won.

Call of Duty has not yet been released in China, but has accumulated a good reputation overseas

According to Tencent's financial results, 10% of Q3 Tencent's revenue in 2019 will come from overseas, and 23% of Q4's revenue will come from overseas. But Ma Xiaoxuan, Tencent's senior vice-president, said in an interview with the media that he hoped one day "half of it at home and half overseas". Despite the current improvement, the 50 per cent target is still far away.

What's the problem? As you may have noticed, Tencent's successful products in overseas markets are basically fast-paced competitive hand-tours, and the most successful projects often have a globally popular IP halo. Because the competitive hand tour does not have to consider too much cultural inclusiveness, well-known IP is more in terms of absorption of more than half the effort.This is an Easy mode suitable for Tencent operation, but in turn it is easy to form a comfort zone, thus stopping.

It's easy to explain what the next stage is. In this context, if Tencent can make a non-competitive, no overseas well-known IP background of the "vegetarian products" to do, it is a sign that Tencent's overseas distribution business has been further verified, the follow-up can have more possibilities.

And the Japanese clothing of the "Dragon Fantasy", is such a product.

In any case, Dragon Fantasy doesn't have all the background to success in Japan, or even the opposite of previous successes.

First of all, from the Japanese hand tour market law, "Dragon Fantasy" is not a traditional sense can be welcomed by Japanese players products.

Dragon Fantasy is an MMORPG. For domestic players, playing MMORPG on the phone has been a very common thing, but in Japan, the mainstream category or card RPG, where MMO properties are relatively weak. According to the "Famitong Mobile Game White Paper 2020" released by The Japanese game integrated media Famitong, in Japan's top 10 games of the year, old products such as "Monster Marble", "FGO" and "Chilong City" remain firmly in the top position, and their players are extremely loyal. Most of the domestic games that have entered Japan's list are also competitive, SLG and other differentiated categories (such as "Dark Road" this very subdivided type), few Chinese manufacturers in the Japanese market to gnaw MMORPG this "hard bone."

Second, the Japanese market attaches great importance to IP and the recognition of the culture behind IP. Previously, many domestic manufacturers will be familiar with IP in Japan as a door-knocking brick in this market, such as domestic manufacturers to do the "dream simulation war" "Wonderland Legend RO" in Japan's success behind this factor.

Third, the Japanese market loves the secondary yuan. This should not be explained much. Many domestic products will choose this theme, such as "Blue Route" "Breaking Bad 3" and "Idol Fantasy Festival" and so on, in order to lower the threshold of player awareness, as soon as possible to let them accept the game set.

These have been summed up as success factors, "Dragon Fantasy" is basically no, it is an MMORPG, and before Tencent's success story is mainly concentrated in Southeast Asia and Europe and the United States, Japan also has no particularly good experience.

So how did Dragon Fantasy come about in Japan?

Nearly 20 days on the line, we can from the Japanese players to the game's response, and the official operation and marketing strategy, "Dragon Fantasy" success in Japan to do a simple remath.

Although "Dragon Fantasy" is an MMORPG, in theory, acceptance in Japan is not high. But what's special about it is that it's not a conventional fantasy subject, it's not a fantasy world or a medieval one, it's a rare "urban light science fiction" set in a modern city - the main stage of the Dragon novel is in Tokyo, Japan, and there's a lot of open-world play in the game.

This gives the player a special sense of generation - the "breath of life".

A few days ago, Social Game Info, a Japanese gaming industry media outlet, published an article analyzing the uniqueness of the game's success at home:

"In fact, in terms of performance alone, the game itself is not particularly prominent. Why does Dragon Fantasy still get so much support from players? One possible consideration is that the player's appeal to the game may not be "co-fighting" but "symbding (living together in the game)." The game meets the demands of domestic players to a certain extent by focusing on "creating a free living atmosphere through imagined space". 」

In the past, it was hard to have a hand tour that could give Japanese players that experience. Young Japanese, especially those who love to share their daily lives on SNS, are particularly attracted to this experience.

This can also be seen in the content shared by players of Dragon Fantasy on Twitter. There's a topic on Twitter#ドラブラ写真 #(Dragon Fantasy Photo Department), there are many players in this topic to share their screenshots, in the game Cos various real-life scenes, full of life:

Men's high school students study travel

Gemal sauce also held a photo session, and finally took a Gemon mirror photo, too cute!

"I don't like weddings very much, it's better to be alone in church."

And in the official photography competition, you can also see that this modern background of MMO, visual elements alone can be clearly distinguished from the products on the market in Japan, forming a unique attraction.

It has to be mentioned here, because the Japanese lack of PC gaming environment, the mainstream game equipment in the past is the host and handheld, in addition to "Final Fantasy 14" "Monster Hunter: Border" "Warrior Dragon X" this kind of local IP online game masterpiece, most of the Japanese players once popular in China's PC end game era, there is a cognitive fault, so that many young players, contact with the first MMORPG is on the phone. And the use of virtual 4 developed "Dragon Fantasy" in the visual has a fairly high specifications, which is a big impact on Japan's hand-game players - although in the fierce competition, Chinese players have been on this hand-travel production "no wonder."

Objectively speaking, such a game screenshot placed on the Japanese SNS, really will cause "this is actually a hand tour" such as sighs

Not only the picture, but also the size of the exploreable scenes in the game, makes Japanese players feel very rare. So under a video produced by a Japanese anchor, "The High Freedom Game made by Amazing Development Fees," there are players sighing:

"This high degree of freedom of the game let the host play, have been played bad..."

"No, I think the freedom is so high that I can occupy the streets by force and be mayor..."

But the game features alone is not good, Japan is a very important advertising and marketing country. Tencent has put a lot of effort into reaching a wider audience in Japan, doing everything from endorsements and TV ads to community and content campaigns on YouTube and Twitter - in other words, the pace of propaganda is finally on track.

After opening the appointment on February 10, Tencent set up a game media site, which regularly discloses the features of Dragon Fantasy every week. In the localization, they invited Matsuoka, Masaka, and other six Japanese first-line sound excellent as the core NPC voiceover, but also hired "Ninja Of Fire" composer Koike Kangzhi to produce BGM, passing on all aspects of high-spec production of the "big work" concept.

On the spokesman's side, they invited the traffic idol of mummy 46: white stone hemp clothing.

The popularity of baishi hemp clothing, but also let the game's endorsement PV has become Japan's rapid rise in TVCM list first, the broadcast volume of more than 7 million.

From a high-praise comment below the video, you can see the local appeal of this collaboration:

"I don't care about anything else, I know there's absolutely nothing wrong with a hemp sauce endorsement. Positive solution. "

另, 腾讯还 Japan's largest 戏 medium 4gamer co-搜, 搜-rope dragon's飞, meeting a huge 龙从网页 飞, the same 时 Japanese famous网红 Hajime co-production, direct 们 house tenka plate production Ichijo article break tenkaita-like 龙,这 trivial广 japan 网 civil 讨论.

In addition to the examples mentioned above, there are many other regular promotional operations, including focusing on the advantages of art materials, encouraging players to take photos and share, attracting artists to create works of the same people, etc. Limited to space, it will not be repeated here. All in all, the moves have had enough effect on Japanese netizens who didn't know about the game before. Dragon Fantasy came in second place in March's Top10 list, which was named the most popular game by Japanese gaming media app Media, and the number of pre-registered players in Japan exceeded 1 million in less than two months of warm-up.

At this particular time, Dragon Fantasy is a sample of a re-examination of Tencent's game-going business. The fact that a product that does not have an IP plus, and that is not a "pity", has been brought to the Japanese market and has been successful shows that Tencent has learned enough about the characteristics of the Japanese market and has mastered some methodoology. Based on resources and methodology, Tencent may be able to gain a foothold in Japan and launch more products. It's a small step for Dragon Fantasy, but a big step for Tencent's offshore business. This may allow Tencent to move out of the IP and competitive game circles and bring more types of games overseas.

This result will also make a difference to Tencent's ability to issue outside, as has been said roughly in the industry before:

If your product is to be released in China, then it may be nice to find Tencent and get a lot of user resources. But if your product is being released overseas, you'll have to see if you have a PUBG, Call of Duty IP of this magnitude...

The idea of this sentence is that Tencent's past experience in domestic distribution, can not be applied to overseas distribution, after all, not every family has this natural "sucking" IP. Tencent, accustomed to relying on QQ and WeChat, has no advantage in overseas distribution and may be constrained by its large size.

Now that Dragon Fantasy has broken that impression, Tencent has come out of its comfort zone. There is reason to believe that Tencent will then pour more resources into overseas markets, which will also lead to overseas distribution of competition, so that Chinese game manufacturers overseas war is close at hand, as to how will this bring about changes in the entire game circle? Let's wait and see.