Written by丨Hoshino

Editor丨Meiqi

Entertainment Value Officer Interpretation:

ID:wenyujiazhiguan

"Uncle is not at fault for cutting the second dimension, but also at cutting late."

Since the launch of SLG (strategy game) "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World" (hereinafter referred to as "Three Strategies") on June 13, the Hong Kong stock price of the issuer B Station has risen by nearly 18% in a week, and investment banks such as JPMorgan Chase have also raised their expectations for its profitability and upgraded the stock rating from "neutral" to "overweight".

In recent years, Station B, which has been stumbling on the two-dimensional game track, has fallen into the dilemma of "green and yellow", and the revenue of the game business has declined for many consecutive quarters, and the proportion of revenue in the first quarter has fallen to 17%, and its position within the company has become increasingly marginalized. And the title of "two-dimensional mobile game graveyard" given by the player has become a spell that presses on the game of station B and makes it difficult to turn over.

Nowadays, Station B is trying to use a "very bad Station B" "Three Schemes" to subvert the existing impression of the game business in the minds of players and the industry. Under the marketing offensive of "gathering the power of the whole site" and the differentiated strategy of "reducing liver and krypton", "Three Schemes" achieved the second place in the iOS China game download list and the fourth best-selling list as soon as it was launched. A week has passed, and "Three Schemes" is still ranked 5th on the "strategy game" list, much higher than "Three Kingdoms".Strategic Edition", "The Shore of the Land" and other competing products, the huge "turnaround battle" of Station B games can be described as a victory in the first battle.

However, for the game of Station B that has stepped out of the two-dimensional "comfort zone", after successfully attracting players from all over the network, there is still a big question mark over whether "Three Schemes" can continue to retain them.

Why did Bilibili choose SLG?

As a breakthrough in the game business?

In the eyes of many players, the product "Sanmou" "doesn't look like it comes from Station B from the inside out", not only does the game itself have no two-dimensional attributes at all, but the target player is not the standard user portrait of Station B in the eyes of the outside world. In the case that there are already two top masterpieces firmly entrenched, why did Station B choose the SLG track as a breakthrough to revitalize the game business?

Since last year, the popularity of SLG games has been heating up rapidly, ranking among the top three in the domestic market. Not only that, SLG games generally have a long life cycle, "The Shore of the Land" is a veteran game launched in 2015, "Three Kingdoms: Strategic Edition" has also been online for five years, although the core player base is loyal and stable enough, but there are always players who want to try more fresh gameplay, which gives the new product a chance to emerge, once it can catch the core players, there is a chance to become the next long-term game.

More importantly, Bilibili's choice of the national-level IP of "Three Kingdoms" can be described as deliberate, because it can maximize its advantages of "two-in-one content platform and distribution channel". Compared with the strong circle attribute of the two-dimensional IP, the "Three Kingdoms" IP can mobilize content experts in various fields of Station B, history, life, travel, food and even "Alchemy UP" can be cut from their own perspectives, so as to promote the all-round breakthrough of "Three Schemes" in the station and attract the first wave of players for the game.

For the SLG track, the core users have already been "washed" countless times by major games, and Station B chooses to find another way and take the popular and pan-user route. After opening the public beta warm-up, the "Three Schemes" team selected 6 million-fan UP masters on the site as professional spokespersons for the core selling points of the game's six major professions, with a maximum of nearly 4 million views of a single video.

The reason why "Three Schemes" has attracted wide attention from SLG gamers is also because it fully considers their core "pain points" and starts from the real needs of players, rather than from their own perspective. In fact, "Three Schemes" is not the first SLG product of Station B. As early as 2018, Station B launched a "two-dimensional + SLG strategy national war" "Song of Time", but the two-dimensional and female two points screened out a large number of SLG core players, and the game was closed after one year of service.

Now, Bilibili has finally decided to make a pure SLG game, and is trying to attract more passers-by and players by "reducing the liver and reducing krypton" and lowering the threshold. While it's unknown how well it will survive in the long run, it's a strategy that does attract a lot of early adopters.

When the B station game

Start getting out of your comfort zone

Of course, the reason why the capital market is optimistic about Station B is not only because of the future performance of the game "Three Schemes", but also because of the "revaluation" of its game distribution and operation capabilities.

In the second half of 2023, the 7 games released by Station B will basically be wiped out, and "Shine! "Youjun Girl" was removed from the shelves after only 9 days of public beta. The reason why the game business of station B has entered a "dead end" is mainly because it is unwilling to let go of the two-dimensional IP, and as a result, it is not only difficult to get out of the circle of niche groups, but also to bear their scrutiny and controversy. When the content ecology of station B has long been fully "de-two-dimensional", the game business has not been able to turn around, which may be the deep reason why it is in a predicament.

In the second half of last year, Bilibili further reduced the self-development team of the game, re-migrated its focus to agency and intermodal transportation, and won the opportunity of independent generation from high-quality small and medium-sized developers, which was regarded by the outside world as a move to "survive with a broken arm". With the "reconciliation of the century" between Tencent Games and Douyin, Bilibili has been further "marginalized" as a distribution channel for large manufacturers, which means that it will further form an alliance of interests with small and medium-sized manufacturers.

According to media reports, in 2022, when the "Sanmou" team only has more than 10 people, and the project is still a PPT, Station B signed an investment contract, and has been exclusively bound to the developer from the beginning, and the entire content ecology of the station has been mobilized during the distribution process, and the combination of "small and medium-sized developers + popular tracks + national IP + content distribution" seems to let us see a breakthrough road for the game business of Station B.

"SLG games, even the oldest COK-likes, are still alive now, not to mention the similar rate and 'three wars', do a good job of operation, increase the choice of existing track users, and users will give them a chance. They are all strategic players, very smart, and the last thing they want to choose is to be monopolized, and it is not a problem to be able to do it well for several years, at least much longer than common two-dimensional games. A veteran SLG player told the entertainment value officer.

"Three Schemes" not only shows the determination of Bilibili Games to get out of the "comfort zone" and enter the broader game market, but also preliminarily proves its ability to activate non-ACG gamers on the site. Under the guidance of the UP masters, a large number of spontaneous creations of "Three Schemes" players have begun to appear at Station B, with serious strategy teaching, and various events in the "Historian" record area server, and a community that can feed back the popularity of the game is forming.

After "Success in the Ranking",

Can "Three Schemes" avoid the "death trend"?

However, in the increasingly crowded track of SLG, although new products have the opportunity to emerge, there is rarely a chance to change the stable market pattern for many years. Launched in March 2023, "Three Kingdoms: War Chess Edition" rushed to the fifth place on the iOS best-selling list on the first day, but has fallen out of the top 100 a year later. Can "Three Schemes" avoid such a "death trend"?

Although SLG is a game track that is heating up day by day, the core players who are the main force of Krypton are very limited, and these heavy players are often very expensive to migrate games because of their long-term investment of time and money, and they will not easily switch positions. A player told the entertainment value officer: "The three schemes in our circle are basically uninstalled in two or three days, which is far less fun than the 'three wars', many of them are high imitations of the 'three wars', why do you want to give up a krypton gold so much and go back to the krypton 'three schemes'?" ”

The reason why "Three Schemes" was able to "hit the list" is not because of the "career segmentation" and "game burden reduction" advocated by the propaganda (on the contrary, some "liver reduction" settings have weakened the user's sense of operation and playability), but because the degree of krypton has been really reduced, and civilians can also get a good experience during the wasteland period. Relying on the high explosive rate and automatic operation in the early stage, there will be a large number of job-hopping players and budding novices to stay and open up the wasteland.

However, with the decline of the novelty of teaming up to open up wasteland, after entering the PVP link. The innate liver and krypton attributes of SLG games are gradually revealed, and new players will find that they are still playing human flesh sandbags, and the negative feedback of "early adopters" will gradually accumulate, and they may leave the game one after another. Therefore, the question is ultimately which product the "core Kryptonians" and their alliance will choose, and the other players will follow the alliance leader and move away, will "Three Schemes" be attractive enough to make them give up the sunk cost?

Judging from the current gameplay of "Three Schemes", it does not make fundamental innovations for the core mechanism of SLG, but more on the basis of "three wars" to do subtraction, but for many heavy players, "fighting night battles to pave the way and assembling card seconds" itself is the fun of this type of game, "What SLG does not play without liver and krypton?"

Therefore, the volume of "Three Schemes" in the past week only proves the potential of Bilibili in the release of non-two-dimensional games, but whether it has the ability to operate in the long term remains to be tested. After all, SLG is still a strange continent for station B games, although users can be summoned in through the UP master, but whether they can be retained depends on whether it really eats through this track.

The transformation of the game of station B has just begun.

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