This article explores the journey of developers who once created popular games on the 4399 platform and examines their attempts to recapture success in today's gaming landscape. It looks at their new projects, the challenges they face, and the strategies they are employing.
ROK World: A Tencent Open-World Adventure
The Legacy of Rock Kingdom
ROK World, developed by Tencent's MoFan studio, aims to revive the Rock Kingdom IP. The original Rock Kingdom game was a massive success, with online users quickly exceeding 1 million. Zhang Hanjing, the current head of MoFan studio, spearheaded the initial Rock King project. The game is significant to Tencent as it's their most used late-night game of the year.
Open World and Pet Battles
ROK World differentiates itself through an open-world pet battle system. Players can summon pets with unique abilities to explore the world, solve puzzles, and traverse terrain. The game features a living ecosystem with territorial disputes between creatures and detailed pet actions.
PVP Focus and Monetization Strategy
Unlike Pokemon, ROK World leans heavily into PVP. The developers aim to create accessible and balanced PVP experiences. The monetization strategy focuses on character and pet appearances rather than pay-to-win mechanics, a significant shift for Tencent. They sell the appearance of the fashion, the appearance of the pet, and the tools that accelerate the development.
Risks and Tencent's Strategy
Focusing heavily on PVP is a risky move, given the maturity of PVP in similar games. However, Tencent's overall strategy with ROK World reflects a long-term vision, learning from successful games and adapting them for a broader audience. They avoid suppressing the direction of content that they are not good at.
Mimu Mimu Ha: Life Simulation and Social Gaming
A New Journey for a Moer Expert Producer
Mimu Mimu Ha is the latest project from Zheng Zhouli, the producer of the Moer Expert mobile game. Mimu Mimu Ha aims to create a life simulation game with elements from popular titles like Animal Crossing and a flying house mechanic.
Core Challenges and Social Elements
The game faces challenges in creating a natural and engaging gameplay loop. The primary focus is on integrating life simulation elements with online social interaction. It needs to adapt to the new changes in the online game market.
Competition and Finding the Right Social Play Mode
The life simulation genre is crowded, with many companies trying to replicate the success of Animal Crossing. The key is to find the right balance between casual gameplay and meaningful social interaction, avoiding the pitfalls of overly demanding or isolating experiences.
The Evolution of Classic IPs: A Mixed Bag
Growing Up With the Players
Some classic 4399 IPs, like SAIL and Baotian, have attempted to evolve with their audience. They slowly became a card game. The pet slowly evolved into a second-dimensional girl. This often involves transforming pets into anime-style characters or adding trading card game elements.
The Pitfalls of Modernization
The success of these transformations is mixed. Many older games launched sequels, but they were not a hit like the previous ones. The core issue is that modernizing the IP can alienate the original audience. It might also fail to attract new players who may prefer established games in those genres. The lost IP is only left to play. Then why don't new players and old players go to play the more popular game on the market?
Producer Departures and Industry Pain Points
Many producers, including those from Moer, Seier, and Baidian, left to start their own ventures. The core pain point for this is that what the player likes when he was a child, he may not like it when he grows up. The children's business has no mobile game before Zhaoban, but there is not even a big fire.
Wuduan Technology and the Shooting Game Market
Death or Alive 2: Transformation and Challenges
Wuduan Technology, the developer of Dead or Alive, invested heavily in Dead or Alive 2. However, the game failed to meet expectations and underwent transformations, shifting from PVP to PVE and incorporating monetization strategies.
Lessons Learned and Tencent Partnership
The experience highlighted the challenges of competing in the crowded shooting game market dominated by Tencent. Consequently, Wuduan Technology decided to partner with Tencent, developing two new shooting games for them: 失控进化 (Rust's mobile version) and 肉哥射击游戏矩阵临日危机.
Rust Mobile and the Future of Survival Shooters
失控进化 aims to adapt the successful PC game Rust for mobile, focusing on PVP survival shooting. It seeks to address the pain points of the original game, such as overly harsh PVP, by introducing simplified modes and shorter matches. Rust now has a very big pain point, which is that the main PvP gameplay is too cruel.
肉哥射击游戏矩阵临日危机: A Different Approach
肉哥射击游戏矩阵临日危机 takes a different approach, exploring a cyberpunk theme and PVE gameplay. Wuduan aims to avoid directly competing with established PVE shooters.
Conclusion: A Complex Landscape
The journey of these 4399 game developers illustrates the complexities of adapting to the modern gaming market. While some have found success, others continue to face challenges. The passion that players still hold for these old IPs provides hope for future projects, even amidst the changing landscape of game development.