Text/Isaac

Yesterday (August 4) at 2 pm, Tencent first exposed a self-developed two-dimensional game "Void Ring". Looking at the entire history of the second game, this is definitely a very special product, because the main characters in the game are not designed out of thin air, nor are they all kinds of anthropomorphism, but virtual anchors who can live and excel in reality. This means that you can open the game to play this character, and you can seamlessly connect when you close the game, and go to station B to watch her live broadcast.

This feeling, like the NBA, FIFA, and "League of Legends Esports Manager", has made the real-life "all-star lineup" into a game. But before "Void Ring", no one might dare to think that the V circle could still take advantage of the momentum of the second dimension to have such high-end treatment......

In the past, it was said that two-dimensional players seek value in the virtual, but now it's good, as soon as "Void Ring" comes out, I really can't tell the difference between virtual and reality. So since the release of the PV yesterday, the entire V circle has echoed with a sentence: What a god who can come up with this plan.

As you can see from the name, this is a game with virtual anchors as the core - Virtual Circle, Virtual Circle, that is, V Circle. To this end, Tencent has teamed up with several companies with virtual anchor businesses, and has also contacted many individuals to cooperate. The list of acknowledgements at the end has included most of the producers and head anchors who have heads and faces in the V circle.

The official also mentioned that the game will start a small-scale internal test this year, and if the recruitment goes well, they will start the first test at the beginning of next year, and officially launch it at the end of next year and the beginning of the next year.

Such a bold idea and a luxurious lineup are enough to make "Void Ring" a top hot topic. So you can see that the current official Bilibili account has quickly risen to 100,000 fans, with more than 3 million PV playbacks, and TapTap and Haoyou Kuaibang have released reservation interfaces. A variety of evaluations, complaints, and frame-by-frame analysis videos have also been flying all over the sky.

It has to be said that the quality of this PV itself is good. With the blessing of the art style of three shades and two shades, the personality of each character is reflected very clearly, and the classic stalks of many anchors are well interspersed in the video. For example, Fan Bao's personality is more "thrifty", and he once carried a bag of free mineral water that others didn't want to go home, and later he was ridiculed in the live broadcast that he would pick up bottles everywhere and beg for a living. So in the PV, she also showed her true nature and went straight to the mineral water bottle on the table.

PV screen and live slice screen

There are countless other famous scenes and easter eggs, such as Xingtong's "Okay, little stars", and Sister Haizi's "Sick!" ", Shizuku's "Heavenly Chosen Country V"...... When fans see it, they will definitely smile. However, I believe that these features are distinctive enough in most of the second games, even for players who have not seen V, they are also quite attractive.

And you, as a head coach in the game, lead these "battle idols" to victory.

According to the information revealed in last night's official live broadcast, "Void Ring" has taken on a relatively clear form. It's a bit complicated to say, if this game is to be compared, it can be regarded as Mugen's battle + the strategic construction of "King of the Holy Beast" + the cultivation and system framework of "Horse Racing Girl".

First of all, Mugen is an open platform for fighting games, where players can make their own favorite characters and let them play against each other freely in the game. Mugen's combat means that in Void Ring, your character will duel on the battlefield just like in a fighting game. However, the usual characters of these virtual anchors are usually not very involved in combat, so "Void Ring" needs to fill in a lot of relevant content in this part, such as weapons, skills, characteristics, etc.

Mugen

If it is completely a fighting game-like battle, the threshold for operation of "Void Ring" will be a bit high. Considering that it is a dual platform of PC+ mobile games, and that streamers will definitely play it in the future, the production team turned the combat part into an automatic battle + performance of the characters.

On this basis, players do not need complicated operations, they only need to do a strategy similar to "King of the Holy Beasts" in advance: develop a character before the battle, configure a four-person squad to form a Build, and formulate a battle strategy based on the characteristics of the enemy. However, the strategic configuration of "King of the Holy Beasts" is detailed to the level of "programming", and "Void Ring" must be simplified according to its own situation.

The pre-battle configuration of King of the Holy Beasts

During the battle, players can also switch battle strategies through limited operations, which can affect the development of the game in real time. As can be seen from the PV, the design of these features and strategies also combines the memes or characteristic elements of the V-circle and the anchor.

As for the cultivation and system framework of "Horse Racing Girl", the official has not released a detailed explanation. The following is the guess of Grape Jun combined with the content of PV:

On the one hand, the overall gameplay of "Void Ring" may be similar to "Horse Racing Girl", with the season cycle as the core - there are also elements of time loops in PV, which may become one of the packaging of "Void Ring". On this basis, players choose their characters, enter the daily training session, and after a certain period of time, they begin to participate in various competitions of different levels until the VFC tournament to verify the results of team building and development. If you win, you will be able to watch the "championship ceremony and special performance" of the team members at the end.

If you lose...... Reopen?

On the other hand, "Imaginary Ring" must not copy "Horse Racing Niang", and must make some new designs based on its own situation. During the live broadcast, the production team also mentioned that they would do some optimizations related to burden reduction.

In fact, in the context of the V-circle as the core theme, "Void Ring" is destined to do a lot of different things. For example, it was mentioned in the live broadcast that players can get all the characters in the game for free, and these characters have no SR/SSR grades, and the strength depends more on the player's investment in the development process. Coupled with the official adjustment in each season, although there will inevitably be some differences between the strengths and weaknesses of the characters, a dynamic balance will also be formed.

At the same time, these characters have different levels of skins, which are not only beautiful in appearance, but also can be used as independent forms. If you're a solo pusher, you can collect a few more forms and have the same character form a squad.

According to the streamer, there is also a favorability system between these characters. There will be a buff bonus under high favorability, similar to the bond effect of "King of the Holy Beast". As for those streamers who are familiar with each other in reality and have small stories, it is unknown whether they will have special interactions in the game.

After reading the basic framework of the game, I don't know how you feel. But I believe that most people who know about Dianer or V-circle will sigh: this TM is crazy, and the person who came up with this game is really a god.

There are many flattering things about this idea and framework. For example, the most typical is that in terms of roles, these virtual anchors all have their own personalities and fan groups, most of which have been in business for a long time and have even been out of the circle. In the second game circle, it may be the first time that a second game can completely put the interpretation power of the characters outside the field like "Void Ring", and the game is just combined with some adaptation and design outside the field, which is too avant-garde.

The above TapTap player's evaluation is very subtle and classic: "The character really has a life of his own" - they killed the game from the topic selection, and successfully created a general second game that is neither ML nor male/female/hundred/rotten/under the premise that the overall ecology is still a flattering house; This is the only one that doesn't sell ML/100/rot at all, but it's also not "hardcore and not flattering" at all.

Ideally, Void Ring will have a large audience with a high paying power from the start, which will save a considerable amount of publicity and distribution fees for the early stage of the game; After the second game players and pan-players are attracted, there will be unlimited consumption content - live broadcast, video, and second creation, and the quality of these contents is not inferior to the content quality of the first second game. If the positive cycle continues in this way, whether it is the product or the V-ring, it will get a lot of benefits.

Part of the second creation made by a Sixi Maruko fan

But from another point of view, "Void Ring" also has a lot of natural thunder points.

For example, the profession of virtual anchor itself has many uncertainties, and there are often some conflicts or rhythms in the fan base. Not to mention that after combining the two games, the two-dimensional players also have a lot of thunder points. If one is not handled well, maybe "Void Ring" will offend both the management idiot and the second-game player.

In terms of framework, gameplay, payment, and so on, it has to spend a lot of effort, because in such a new model, there is basically no product that can be directly referenced. In addition, even if the mode runs through, how to get enough anchors - at least a large enough initial lineup - is also a problem.

Such a project, not to mention Tencent, looking at the country's second-game manufacturers, I don't think anyone will try.

But this is really a project that only Tencent can do.

It was not developed by Tencent's four major studio groups, but independently developed by IEG's CDD (Content Development Department). This department is actually the team behind Star Pupil. In China, it is no exaggeration to say that they have the strongest technical strength and production pipeline in the virtual anchor business.

Star Pupil

"Void Ring" was established last year, and at the beginning of the project, they had already thought of the overall framework, and since then they have quietly prepared for a whole year. According to the live broadcast, Xingtong signed a confidentiality agreement of several million yuan for this project, and Guangguang, the general manager of Tencent Interactive Entertainment's content ecology department, has an unlimited amount of agreement.

He also mentioned in the live broadcast that the process of convincing their superiors is difficult, because the product is already very laborious just to explain.

Lao Jiu, a colleague of the "Void Ring" game project team, is a senior viewer in the V circle, and he also felt outrageous when he first heard the idea of light, and even sprayed directly with passion, saying that you are engaged in wool, how can this be done? By the way, a large number of doubts were raised.

But the glow asks a question: if you do, do you want to play? After hearing this, Lao Jiu was convinced. Guangguang also said, you will treat us as learning from the west, and the ninety-nine-eighty-one difficulties on the road will be solved anyway.

Of course, they don't just talk about it. As a group of people who have been working in the V circle for many years, CDD has also considered a lot about those practical issues.

For example, someone asked, is there a male V in "Void Ring"? Radiance replied: There is only a female V, because the mixed scene will be too chaotic; Some people also asked, is there a chance for personal potential to join "Void Ring"? Radiance said: They don't want to make a carnival of corporate potential, so they contacted a lot of personal potential in the early days, and the official website can also sign up to join.

In terms of roles, Xingtong also replied in the live broadcast: Graduated anchors, depending on their own wishes and copyright ownership, can also join the game; If the streamer makes a mistake in reality, but the crime is not to death, some image elements will be modified in the game to form a distinction; But if the red line is touched, such as if the person in the middle breaks the law and commits a crime, "Void Ring" will remove the character from the shelves and pay compensation to the player.

In terms of commercialization, Ray said that "Void Ring" has not yet fully finalized the entire payment model. But what is certain is that it will not be consistent with the current commercial template of the traditional second game/traditional card RPG, but will be combined with the actual situation of the V circle to make a unique design. At the same time, the money earned from the game will also be divided into various forms to the cooperating V-circle anchors.

As for why he took such a big risk to do such a crazy project, it involves the ecology of the V circle and the ambition of CDD.

In the live broadcast, Guangguang and the project team mentioned that the consumption content of the V circle is currently focused on live broadcast and video, and they found that after investing for many years, even if the stage performance is beautiful, it is difficult to get out of the circle again and attract more people. They have been thinking about this problem for a long time, but they don't have a particularly good answer, and the strength of Tencent is not enough to break through the bottleneck of the V circle.

That's when they thought of games—a new form that doesn't conflict with live streaming and video, and one of the most lucrative forms in the two-dimensional field. Since Tencent has such technical strength and pipeline, and CDD has the unique appeal and connections of the V circle, they might as well become bigger and stronger together with their partners in the circle.

The famous scene of the chorus at the birthday party of the star pupil,

It was compared by fans to Ultraman assembly

During the live broadcast, they mentioned that the game can be the third stage of the V-circle. What "Void Ring" wants to do is to unite active virtual anchors and operate as a big IP.

And the game is only the first step in this idea. If "Void Ring" can make money and feed everyone, they also plan to improve the overall quality and production form of the V circle together, and do animation, dramas, concerts and so on.

When I heard about such a huge project, I had nothing to say but crazy. But if there is anyone else in China who will really do it, and it is possible to do it, it is probably only Tencent.

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