On May 13th, Shen Xinghui's "Silver Moon Flowing Night" version (hereinafter referred to as the Light Hunting Version) was officially opened, and "Love and Deep Space" rushed to the top of the game's best-selling list again, reaching the highest Top2 position.

Similar ranking screenshots circulated everywhere in Gyro's circle of friends, and the attitude of friends in the industry was also very consistent: "It's too fierce." ”

Yes, the record of "Love and Deep Space" is too fierce. It has been more than four months since it was launched, and theoretically the "opening bonus period" of the new game should have passed, but its performance is still strong, almost invincible all over the track, and it is blooming everywhere at home and abroad. Even the fact that something like this has rushed to the top of the best-selling list and wrestled with the top product is no longer surprising "news" - the title of track TOP is well deserved.

However, with the momentum shown in this light hunting version, Gyro still wants to talk about this year's big hit and the paper-stacking game behind it. For example, why has the so-called server bonus period passed, but the performance of "Love and Deep Space" is still so strong? Why does Paperfold always create a hit, and even make a name for itself in overseas markets?

And, in the long run, can we say that Paperfold has entered the "domination zone" of women?

Women welcome their own "hexagonal warriors" to the track

For a long time, the threshold for women to develop games has been underestimated.

Simple and easy-to-understand gameplay, add some good art, add some stereotypical characters, add some vulgar plot, it's done! ——Around 2021, following this seemingly simple production idea, a large number of women-oriented products emerged in the domestic market, and then pounced quietly.

"Love and the Producer" knocked on a new door for the industry, and also brought many people the illusion that "love and the model are very easy to learn" and "the target audience's money is very profitable". The painful experience makes people realize how deep the water is in this market, and the favor of users is almost a "metaphysics".

However, there are still many practitioners who have re-examined the key to the success of "Love and the Producer": from the player's point of view, delicate and deep emotions, warm daily companionship, and equal and healthy relationships...... At the content level, the general direction and small details reflect professionalism everywhere.

At this stage, women have made great strides towards the level of game creation. The basic framework and gameplay modules have gradually become clear definitions and standards in the minds of developers and players, and the market has entered a boom period. However, creators at the time were generally focused on telling good stories and doing good art, and few people focused on (for now) more critical technological breakthroughs.

It wasn't until Paperfold published "Love and Deep Space" that it once again pushed women to the "gears of fate".

As one of the earliest players in the game, Papergames has accumulated rich creative experience and built a mature and stable content production pipeline. The quality of the content of "Love and Deep Space" is almost the embodiment of the culmination:

The character lines that can withstand the aftertaste, the emotional progress that comes naturally, and the grand narrative that spreads out layer by layer, all kinds of elements interact with each other to bring players a real and idealized emotional experience; Not to mention the surging emotions of hormones, the stimulation is just right, creating one famous scene after another for the male protagonists.

Li Shen "Second Impact"

The most important thing is that while "Love and Deep Space" inherits the experience of content creation, it also opens up another way forward for this category - the technological leap not only brings 3D shocking audio-visual effects, but also represents that women have turned to the next stage, content and technology, and both soft and hard power can go further.

Take this light hunting version as an example. Shen Xinghui's plot performance once again hit the hearts of players at home and abroad, and slices and second creation videos emerged in an endless stream, which is enough to see the satisfaction of the hunter ladies.

How high is the quality of this paragraph? Gyro saw a passionate comment from a player: "Shen Xinghui is more like a human than me."

No matter how close the close-up is not distorted, but can appreciate the clear texture and texture (light hair, ruddy face, eye light from different angles); Unmolded movements and subtle changes (dust that disappears with wiping, facial muscles that are touched), one-to-one matching of mouth shapes and sounds (multilingual mouth shape adaptation......

To achieve such a realistic audio-visual effect, a full range of technical support is required.

According to the interview with the development team, on the basis of traditional motion capture data, they used their self-developed plot animation system to polish and produce the character animation performance accurate to each frame, ensuring that the accuracy of the animation performance at the film and television level can be expressed very smoothly in the real-time rendering environment of the mobile phone; A multilingual lip shape generation system (which scans millions of frames of data from a total of more than 30 actors from different native speaking countries and uses a neural network to train a lip animation algorithm) was additionally developed to calculate contextual lip animations.

In other words, every look and every breath of the male protagonist of "Love and Deep Space" is the result of the development team's customized adjustment and polishing - different personality traits and rich and full souls are presented from this.

It should be noted that the above-mentioned multi-lingual precise lip-matching technology is almost only considered for console titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 at this stage. The technical team of "Love and Deep Space" found the optimal solution on the mobile terminal to achieve a detailed expression comparable to the animation of the console game. This is not only a unique record in the history of mobile game development, but also a reflection of today's cutting-edge technology in the mobile game industry.

Details aren't all there is to a perfect show. In addition, camera scheduling and narrative rhythm are also powerful weapons for "Love and Deep Space" to "grasp" the player's heartbeat.

Whether at home or abroad, Shen Xinghui's "step-by-step" interaction close to players has won explosive popularity and praise.

A few simple actions, but "Love and Deep Space" is extremely ambiguous - from the first point of view, the camera movement perfectly restores the player's reaction, as if it is the player's gaze (even a slight shaking sensation is made). The language of the camera is almost the embodiment of the player's flow, which in turn brings an unparalleled sense of presence.

Overseas players describe this heart-pounding ambiguous atmosphere

Cinematic-level expressiveness, behind the scenes, of course, is the support of a professional team. According to interviews, "Love and Deep Space" invested heavily in experienced first-line game makers and animation film team to create the story and characters for the core script storyboard to ensure an immersive experience for players.

In addition, in the plot dimension, the stalk of Shen Xinghui's "eating your own jealousy" in the light hunting version is also widely circulated.

Generally speaking, jealousy is a good story, but if it is not used well, it will become industrial saccharin. The copywriting team for Love and Deep Space provides textbook-quality examples:

"Light Hunting" is Shen Xinghui's hidden identity. He is powerful and elegant, saves people from fire and water, and is a legendary figure. The citizens love him, and the players admire him, but that is not the complete Shen Xinghui, in private he is not so "perfect", he loves to sleep, loves to play games, loves to accompany players, and yearns for an ordinary life.

Perhaps it is based on this cognition that Shen Xinghui will be sensitive to the player's attitude towards "Light Hunting", and will ask the sentence "Between me and Light Hunting, which one do you prefer?" Just as the kitten only turns out his belly in front of the people he trusts most, his questioning of the player is only a constant confirmation of his own existence in an intimate relationship.

Of course, the above interpretation only represents the personal opinion of Gyro. There are many parts worth discussing in the male protagonist of "Love and Deep Space", and a large number of players are attracted by these details, actively exploring the deep meaning and touching their inner soul.

I'd like to call it a scholar

As mentioned above, "Love and Deep Space" inherits the fruits of Paperfold's content creation experience. The male protagonists have the thickness that life should have, and they can withstand analysis and experience - only after a full understanding can true love happen.

In other words, although "Love and Deep Space" is often popular because of "large-scale scenes", the actual players and the male protagonists have established a solid love relationship, and under the combined action of dopamine and endorphins, the player's enthusiasm for this game will continue unabated.

And all this effect is still due to the most fundamental anchor:

"Love and Deep Space" is the first and only "hexagonal warrior" with both soft and hard power for women.

From the first person to eat crabs, to the "maker of the rules of the game"

Perhaps in line with the principle of "no first", our evaluation of Papergames in the past was always conservative, and the industry considered Papergames to be one of the experts in the field of women. It is true that after the success of "Love and the Producer", the strong situation of several major countries maintained for a long time, and even a delicate balance was even produced for a time.

However, the fact is that at the company level, women who have been busy for many years have not given birth to a "second paper-stack" to the market.

From another point of view, after several years of exploration and practice, with "Love and Deep Space" as the banner ("Infinite Warmth" may have to be added in the future), Papergames has lifted itself to a special ecological niche: women are the most technologically advanced in the track; The most female-oriented technology companies are the ones who understand women. Under such brand influence, the core audience of "Paperfold Family Bucket" has naturally formed in the player group.

Differentiation doesn't seem to be intentional. In 2020, Yao Runhao said at the developer salon that Papergames is a creation-driven company, and technology is a vital part of raising the ceiling of creation.

TapTap 2020 Developer Salon

Now, four years later, we find that the achievements of Papergames in all directions are a response to this concept. This company has been walking at its own pace, as if it is not swayed by the market wind, nor is it tormented by involution anxiety.

The reason for this is none other than "creative impulse takes precedence over market research". Because of this, Papergames has always become the first person to eat crabs - standing in the past point in time, how many people dare to spend money to do 3D B games? How many companies can pass the project of "Love and Deep Space"?

Paperstack's creative impulse is not only reflected in macro strategy, but also in micro design, as if they are never afraid to "create something that does not exist".

So you can see that the companion system and SMS system pioneered by "Love and the Producer" (of course, it can be traced back to the earlier Nuan Nuan, but this article focuses on the products of Otome Xiang) have become the basic framework and gameplay module of Guoyi; The audio-visual effects achieved by "Love and Deep Space" are bound to affect the technical standards of 3D B games in the future.

Whether it is due to subjective will or objective factors, Paperstack has inevitably moved from being the first person to eat crabs to becoming the "maker of the rules of the game". Even because the impulse to create is always surging, they are constantly deepening the "rules" that have been formulated, and going to the imagination space that has never been reached.

A good example is that in "Love and Deep Space", the connotation of "companionship" is richer. For example, the sports system launched some time ago is an extension of the gameplay design based on technical upgrades.

High-precision modeling and motion capture, outlining the perfect muscle lines and postures of the male protagonists; The natural and smooth animation during the exercise and the sweat beads dripping after the exercise not only bring players a pleasing audio-visual experience, but also educate the market how to define the "realism" of 3D.

Papergames has "modified the rules of the game" again and again through technological innovation, throwing more serious problems to latecomers:

Do not do it? How long will it take to keep up?

Objectively speaking, the current technical level of Paperfold is undoubtedly the pioneer of women on the track. If the latter wants to catch up, I am afraid that the huge cost and energy invested will be difficult to match. In other words, with Love and Deep Space as a barrier, they have bought themselves at least 3-5 years (and maybe longer) - a highlight moment for the "adventurers".

There is no doubt that we will definitely see products that benchmark "Love and Deep Space" in the future. But at that time, the paper-stacking that has been traveling lightly for a long time may not know how far it has gone. Some time ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook's trip to Paperfold and the establishment of the Vision Pro version of "Love and Deep Space" are all clear to the outside world:

Paperfold is doing something new again.

Another business card of domestic games

When we discuss "Love and Deep Space", its overseas achievements are destined to be impossible to ignore. Thanks to the groundbreaking 3D realistic otome gameplay, the game topped the international free charts in many regions since its launch, and the cumulative number of downloads worldwide exceeded 10 million in just a few days (looking at it now, this number will only be more terrifying).

Commercial success will undoubtedly enhance the brand value and influence of manufacturers. After "Love and Deep Space", more and more players and consumers in various regions have remembered this unique company, and at the same time accepted the cultural influence of domestic games - because they love the male protagonists, they are willing to understand the stalks of "Chinese characteristics", such as Dr. Li's pennant; For example, traditional Chinese cuisine......

From product output to cultural output, it can be said that Paperstack has truly gone global, and even let Guoyi reverse export to the birthplace of otome games.

It is understood that "Love and Deep Space" is all the rage in the Japanese market, not only frequently on the Japanese Twitter hot search, but also profoundly affected many practitioners, Japan is also the highest overseas income region of "Love and Deep Space" (thanks to the update of the Moonlight Hunt version in May, "Love and Deep Space" has also successfully reached the top 6 best-selling positions in the Japanese market).

Well-known voice actors talk about live broadcast: many people are addicted to "Love and Deep Space"

Japan's best-selling list results

Regardless of the "bonus period", "miracle", "accident", "Love and Deep Space" has indeed secured the throne of the female track, and in the foreseeable future, we will see more of its commercial proud record, and then it seems exaggerated and pertinent to say:

Paperfold has entered the female-oriented "domination zone".

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