It's another year of ChinaJoy, and it's an important moment for major manufacturers to show a new round of planning.

"Douluo Continent: Legend of the Evil Spirit" (hereinafter referred to as the Legend of the Evil Spirit) released by Gluttony Games has continued to be expected by IP fans since it was officially announced last year to get the version number, and at the same time, the open world as the framework has also stimulated the interest of many hardcore players. Now, more than half a year has passed, and we have finally ushered in the first wave of content exposure, and we have been able to see some more intuitive information.

After the first exposure of the pre-order, "The Legend of the Evil One" immediately received a lot of attention, and once rushed to the first place on the TapTap pre-order list, and the expectation value of 8.8 also shows the high expectations of players for this work. As another product of the cooperation between Gluttony Games and Shenghe Network, the two sides may have more tacit understanding and guarantee in the final quality polishing and presentation.

You must know that in recent years, IP-adapted games are falling into a state of extremely popular/harder to do well.

On the one hand, the appeal of IP can bring natural traffic to the game, quickly gather a group of die-hard fans, and support the number of online users of the product; However, on the other hand, due to the increasingly stringent standards for fans' scrutiny of IP content expression, and the need for products to cover a wider range of user groups, the current difficulty in the development of IP games is no longer the same.

At this juncture, what kind of confidence does "Douluo Continent: Legend of the Evil Spirit" have to challenge the new upper limit of the experience of the IP adapted game?

High-potential IPs deserve higher-spec productions

If you are not a fan of "Douluo Continent", or have never read any online articles, you may have some doubts. From the beginning of the serialization in 2008 to the end of 2010, the novel has been out for more than ten years. Although its sales are as high as 10 million, it is not a literary masterpiece that has been verified by the times such as Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West, and the popular online literature of the year will still have the value of adaptation in 2024?

Not to mention, there really is, not to talk about feelings or analyze from the online novel industry, just from the brilliant market performance of the adaptation products of "Douluo Continent" across various fields in recent years, this IP has demonstrated an unusually considerable popularity and commercial value.

For example, in the field of animation, the animation of the same name "Douluo Continent" produced by Xuanji Technology in 2018 just ended last year.

The number of episodes has continued to mobilize the enthusiasm of fans, and in 2020, the number of views of the anime reached 20 billion when it reached 117 episodes, and in 2022, the number of views soared to 40 billion. At the end of the animation in 2023, related topics have rushed to the hot search, and a large number of viewers said that they have been chasing it for five years, and they are already part of the good memories of their youth.

In addition to animation, the commercial performance of comics related to "Douluo Continent" is also amazing, not only the cumulative sales of a single book have already reached 10 million after its release, but it is also a popular work of more than 10 billion on Tencent Comics.

It can be said that "Douluo Continent" has already successfully supported the sky of domestic animation and comics, and has become a classic IP of domestic animation. Many of the most trendy Gen Z grew up watching these animated comics.

Needless to say, at the game level, in recent years, various manufacturers have launched a number of IP authorized products, and in 2021, a number of Douluo IP games were crowded at the top of the IOS best-selling list, which is still fresh in my memory. These adapted games cover card, turn-based, MMO and other categories, and they can be regarded as having done a lot of excavation of IP characteristics from various tracks.

It is worth noting that after the launch of "Douluo Continent: Shrek Academy", which was jointly published by Gluttony Games and CMGE, it immediately topped the multi-platform list and achieved excellent results, which shows the value of this IP in the game market.

"Shrek Academy" is celebrating its half-anniversary

In the film and TV series market, "Douluo Continent" also has good recreation potential. After the first TV series of the same name in 2021 detonated across the country, the second sequel is reported to have been completed and is waiting to be finalized. As for the legendary movie version, even if there has been no new news for a long time, it is still expected by fans. It is not difficult to see from the user feedback of these adaptations that the enthusiasm of users in various fields for "Douluo Dalu" is still high, and they are calling for more distinctive and higher-specification products to further explore IP characteristics.

Why is "Douluo Continent" so enduring ?

I think on the one hand, IP has continued to open up effective users in the past ten years, and all age groups and preferences of user groups have been covered, and there is no sign of "obsolescence" at all; On the other hand, "Douluo Continent", as an online classic, with its charming characters and worldview settings, is still very suitable for further creation from various fields of ACGN.

The key is that after so many years, we need a key product that can take Douluo's IP adaptation to a higher level - "The Legend of the Evil Spirit" may be for this.

Perhaps the "freest" Douluo Continent

There are indeed a lot of adapted games in "Douluo Continent", but if you are more serious, there are not many products that can make a high-standard and immersive restoration of the original martial soul world and all kinds of magical martial spirits. Therefore, in order to meet the rising gameplay needs of current players, "Legend of the Evil Spirit" chose to take the popular open world as the framework, and combined with the content of the original work, it has been filled in quite detailed.

First of all, in terms of map scale, "Legend of the Evil Spirit" has created a vast map of 64 million square meters for players to explore freely. In order to prevent the open world from being big and empty, the production team also made enough diverse designs in dimensions such as weather and player movement forms.

For example, the game has added a real-time weather system. From the snow-covered peaks of Haotian Sect, to the deep forest sea filled with poisonous fog in the forest at sunset, to the quiet water surface of the Mengxing Lake, each place presents completely different natural scenery, creating an incomparably vivid Douluo world.

At the same time, in order to allow players to explore freely enough, the production team reproduced the ancient chariot and horse station in the original book, and built a flying anchor point and space secret array across the entire Douluo Continent, allowing players to choose their own flying, hook lock and other running methods, and implement the interaction of the big world.

In addition to natural landscapes, a sufficiently vivid world should also have more high-intensity interactive content. Therefore, "Legend of the Evil Spirit" also created more than 1,000 non-player characters (NPCs) in the game to form a vivid skeleton of society. These NPCs have their own jobs, from cooks and tailors to medicine and grocery merchants, from patrolling guards to laughing children, all of whom have their own jobs and lives, thus forming a social ecology full of life and detail.

When there is a large enough and detailed world depiction, it is natural to have enough "playable content".

"Legend of the Evil Spirit" does not engage in the old-fashioned MMO mode of automatic combat and automatic pathfinding, but really puts the power to explore the world in the hands of players. The large map is filled with basic gameplay methods such as treasure exploration, puzzle solving, craft alchemy, fishing and cooking, medicine and alchemy, underground palace exploration, and miracle pursuit, highlighting the charm of Douluo Continent with multiple experiences.

It is reported that when the team designed the gameplay of "Legend of the Evil Spirit", it was hoped that players with different positions and preferences could immerse themselves in this vast enough continent. Therefore, while ensuring the freedom of players, the team also actively built a relaxed enough playing atmosphere. The game does not set a strict numerical threshold, so that casual players can enjoy it as much as possible and experience the joy of fighting side by side with their partners.

In the end, what everyone is most concerned about is naturally the degree of restoration of "Legend of the Evil Spirit" in terms of plot, characters, settings and other dimensions.

This work has won the dual IP authorization of the original novel and Tencent Animation, ensuring the purity of the bloodline. At the same time, compared with previous adaptations, "Legend of the Evil Spirit" seems to pay great attention to allowing players to experience the classic story from their own perspective, so that they can truly transform from an external appreciator to a participant in the story - this is undoubtedly the unique charm of the game carrier.

For example, there will be two narrative threads of light and dark throughout the game. The bright line follows the heroic steps of the righteous soul master in the original book and revisits the stirring legend, while the dark line focuses on the player's perspective, guiding the player to write his own chapter of evil and becoming a new legend of protecting the continent and his partners in the choice after choice.

The same is true for character building, rather than reading the story, this game chooses to let players feel the charm of the characters in the interaction with the original characters. For example, the production team has designed detailed biographical tasks and intimate invitations for important soul masters such as the Shrek Seven Monsters. Players can invite their favorite characters to the shores of Dream Star Lake to deepen their understanding of the original characters in delicate interactions.

These well-choreographed storylines not only enrich the content of the game, but also allow players to resonate with the characters and perceive the three-dimensionality of the characters. Compared with the pure restoration of the plot, this new perspective undoubtedly shows the production team's understanding of the IP, and it is also very fresh for old fans.

It is not difficult to see that "The Legend of the Evil Spirit" is the most ambitious one in the previous games adapted from "Douluo Continent". It really wants to portray the world in the original game in every detail, and truly satisfy the player's desire to travel to the book and participate in the adventure. This form is naturally the one that most suits the fantasies of IP fans, but it is also the one with the highest R&D cost and difficulty.

And what we're seeing now is still only part of it, and it's reported that the core experience content of the game has not been fully disclosed this time. The big one is still to come - it's hard to imagine what kind of new standard this new Douluo IP work wants to establish.

The gradually formed "Greedy Play Douluo Matrix"

In addition to the high production specifications of the game itself, the remarkable results achieved by the game in recent years around the layout of product lines such as "Douluo Continent" and other big IPs are also quite reassuring.

After the first Douluo MMO mobile game "Douluo Continent: Shrek Academy" achieved outstanding commercial results and was steadily operated for half a year, I believe that Gluttony Games has gained richer experience and deeper understanding of how to explore the characteristics of Douluo IP and effectively promote it in the market.

The larger product scale and more content features of "Legend of the Evil Spirit" will obviously also help Gluttony to further exert its efforts in the dimensions of theme control, product marketing, industry reputation, and user development, and redefine the upper limit of the quality of Douluo's IP products in the market.

In order to maintain an active position in the market for a long time, in addition to relying on the appeal of IP and the competitiveness of the gameplay itself, a strong enough publisher is needed to escort it.

Not to mention the publishing experience and overseas distribution strength accumulated over the years, just the distribution matrix gradually built around the Douluo IP and the distribution resources it can mobilize have made us have some expectations for the future market performance of "Legend of the Evil Spirit".

If the Douluo IP adaptation products under Gluttony can form some linkage cooperation with each other to further expand the user plate of this IP, then the entire "Douluo Continent" adaptation product series will have more imagination in the future. Of course, this CJ first exposure is just the beginning, and where will "Douluo Dalu: Legend of the Evil Spirit" lead this classic IP in the game field, let's keep an eye on it.

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