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The national server of "Marvel Snap", that is, "Marvel's Ultimate Reversal", is finally coming.

In terms of game design, Grape Jun has already shared some things when the game was first launched two years ago: simplifying the build, compressing the process, and raising and retreating...... Game producer Ben Brode, as the core member of the original prototype of Hearthstone, has not only surpassed itself in competitive gaming and entertainment, but also subverted the CCG development and payment model established by Hearthstone.

It has achieved a new breakthrough in all aspects, so I was not surprised when it won the 2022 TGA Mobile Game of the Year award.

The game can also be called the biggest CCG dark horse in recent years. According to Appmagic's data, the game has been online for nearly two years and has a revenue of nearly $200 million. After confirming with NetEase, Grape Jun learned that the actual full-platform turnover of the product was close to 300 million US dollars (about 2.2 billion yuan). SNAP has become the highest-grossing new CCG product since Hearthstone.

Perhaps because of this, game developer Second Dinner was able to get a $100 million Series B funding round led by Griffin Gaming Partner in January this year in the face of a poor investment environment, and plans to continue developing card mobile games. According to the studio's COO, the investment is aimed at developing new games and incubating original IP.

Of course, when it comes to the layout of the CCG category, it has to be NetEase. At the beginning of Second Dinner's establishment, NetEase invested $30 million and also obtained the agency distribution rights of the national server, that is, "Marvel's Ultimate Reversal". The game was officially set for public beta on August 29 a while ago.

However, everyone still has a lot of questions about the performance of this game in the national server: Marvel's original comic IP is still in a state of "I have heard a lot and know very little" in China, and at the same time, Marvel IP movies have just begun to pick up, and it is still unknown whether it can return to the peak of the Avengers 4 period in the future.

A further doubt lies in the fact that although NetEase has been deeply involved in the CCG category for ten years, it has self-developed "Onmyoji: Baiwen Cards" and "Secret Realm Duel", as well as "Shadow Poem" and "Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Link...... But the ceiling of this category still seems to be stuck in Hearthstone ten years ago.

Can Marvel's Ultimate Turnaround change the status quo? Why is NetEase so obsessed with this category? Does the category have a chance to grow big in the future? To this end, Grape Jun made an appointment with Ben Brode, the game's producer, and Xiang Lang, vice president of publishing and head of the battle division of NetEase, hoping to get an answer.

Here's a summary of the conversation:

01

"One of the fun things about card games

It's to make you feel like you're a genius."

Grape: You mentioned that different chefs (game designers) can create completely different dishes using the same ingredients, so what is the recipe for SNAP?

BB: I've been playing board games and card games since I was a kid, and I took inspiration from some of my favorite board games, like Lord of the Rings: Confrontation and Game of Thrones, which both have a simultaneous flop mechanic. Players on both sides consider what their opponents might do when making decisions and secretly plan their own actions.

And when I was working on the blind reveal mechanic, I found that I needed some scenarios to predict what your opponent might do. I played a game called Smash Up a long time ago, and it had some areas with special abilities. I was like, "Oh, you know what? The perfect way to add context to SNAP is to use this mechanism. ”

When I design a game, it's all about collecting all kinds of "ingredients", and as a game designer, the more "ingredients" you can get your hands on, the more options you have and the more opportunities you have to experiment.

One of our favorite tips as game designers is to play a lot of games, and game fairs are a great place to have a lot of games. I would go to game fairs and play all the games I could find. Watching people demo these games is a great way to quickly learn a variety of different mechanics that can then be translated into new game designs.

Grape Jun: Does SNAP start from 0 up, or do you cut it down from an existing mature product?

BB: Actually, it's both. We know that the "Snap" mechanism and the doubling cube are very deep, so we don't need a very complex ruleset. We started by asking players to build two decks: one for heroes and one for region, and then the player randomly selected from the region cards. Later we found out that it was complicated and didn't add much fun, so we cut it off.

Grape King: How many detours did Hearthstone help SNAP take in terms of design?

BB: I learned a lot while developing Hearthstone. For novice designers, when you have a design problem, is it better to solve it through a system change or a content change? Choosing the right solution is very difficult.

For example, during the first test of SNAP, many testers asked for a "mulligan" phase, where players could choose some of the cards to shuffle back into their library and draw new cards. But this doesn't work for SNAP, as you only have 12 cards in your library and only three minutes into the game. It's such a waste of the player's time.

So instead of adding a "scheduling phase" system to solve this problem, we let the card content "Quicksilver" (a 1-fee card that always appears in the starting hand) solve it.

This way players don't feel the need for a "dispatch phase" because they always have a card to play on the first turn. And when you remove "Quicksilver" from your library for some reason, you're making the decision that you don't always have cards to play. This approach eliminates all the feedback we received about not having a "scheduling phase".

Grape: How long did it take you to appear in this commercial model? It's completely different from the previous CCG logic.

BB: "How to make collecting cards fun for players" has always been the biggest challenge we faced. No one has ever done anything like it, and most games either have huge card libraries that push players to collect cards, or improve card abilities that cost players money to make cards stronger than others. We can't simply copy, we have to really invent a new way from scratch, which is really hard.

We wanted to build a very easy-to-understand cycle of collecting cards – play the game more, level up the cards, and get new cards. We want this way to feel fair, you can get every card in the game without spending money, and if you spend money it can speed up the process. It took us four years of experimentation to find the format that we find really interesting.

Grape Jun: Is it difficult for CCG games to succeed without IP?

BB: It does have an impact. For example, see Quicksilver being able to quickly move into your hand, or Nightkin being able to teleport to another location. It's very interesting to see how the game developers translate these iconic abilities into cards.

But if you don't have an iconic thing as a starting point, then you're losing that fun. It's not fun to see an ordinary "swordsman" being made into a card, but seeing a Wolverine card and learning about his healing abilities is exciting. So IP can make things simpler.

But I don't think IP equals success, and no IP equals failure. I think it's more of a first step to becoming a good card game. In fact, I think any game will gain an advantage by having a good idea.

Grape King: What's the real fun of card games?

BB: I'm a student of card game design, and I've thought a lot about it, and I think there are four points.

First, collections. One of the primordial pleasures of humanity, we all love to collect things, whether it's cards, bottle caps, or stamps.

Second, creation. Card building has the opportunity to create, build a deck that has never been seen before, and defeat others with a card that everyone doesn't like.

Third, the story. Every time you play a card game, something exciting happens that you've never seen before. You'll want to call your friends and tell them that you've just played a crazy game, and card games make for great story material.

Fourth, strategy. CCG is very good at showcasing your strengths in strategy games. Sometimes it's very satisfying to beat your opponent with your brain, to read their every move, to make accurate choices at critical moments, and to let your opponent rout. You feel like a genius.

02

"There is a lot of risk in the flow of issuance ideas

We will focus more on long-term operations."

Grape King: How special is "Marvel's Ultimate Reversal" to NetEase?

Xiang Lang: This is a very special product in terms of gameplay mechanics and battle flow design, especially in the strategy and final victory staged in just six rounds, courage and luck coexist. Therefore, we also named SNAP Chinese "Marvel's Ultimate Reversal"

The vertical version of the battle, one-handed operation, let us see the possibility of the future market. At present, more and more games are more and more than picture quality and operation, making such a strategy card that can be played anytime and anywhere seem more "rare".

Grape Jun: How does NetEase plan to release this vertical version of the project?

Xiang Lang: First of all, CCG is a relatively vertical category, and new users need to learn from addition to retention, so we added a week of non-standard seasons before the open beta to familiarize players with the rules and gameplay. The second is to emphasize vertical one-handed operation and 3 minutes of fast-paced anytime, anywhere. The third is to work with Marvel and R&D to create Chinese-style content, so that IP fans can feel the original Marvel and at the same time full of surprises, such as the upcoming active event of the S1 season to send Thanos and so on.

Grape Jun: How different is its audience from other CCG products?

Xiang Lang: Based on the bottom layer of the product, as a new generation of Hearthstone's father, the game retains and evolves the CCG core, so we believe that the core users of Marvel's Ultimate Reversal are still CCG players. However, unlike previous works, "Marvel's Ultimate Reversal" abandons many experience problems that traditional CCGs have been criticized by players, such as the length of a single game, the threshold of rules, etc. We believe that this gives Marvel Ultimate Reversal a chance to attract more users of pan-competitive battles such as auto-chess, MOBA, etc.

Sideline is our definition of this game. Nowadays, young people often need some fragmented time, relax or find a little bit of fun, which is consistent with the fast-paced and easy-to-play gameplay characteristics of "Marvel's Ultimate Reversal". You can take it out during subway time, queue breaks, or breaks, and experience super double the excitement anytime, anywhere.

Although "Marvel's Ultimate Reversal" is only three minutes in a game, the experience is far more than three minutes, it contains a lot of strategy and game fun, and it is a masterpiece worth playing for a long time. Its charm is exactly like the Slogan we set for him: every three minutes, the more you play, the better you play.

Grape Jun: But NetEase already has so many CCG games, will users be left-handed and right-handed?

Xiang Lang: We have great expectations for the game and content ecology of Marvel's Ultimate Reversal, and there is no upper limit to the potential of the pan-user market. "The Battle of the Golden Shovel" proves that strategy games can be made into large-scale users.

Maybe there is a certain learning cost to the strategy rules, but when players begin to understand the rules and truly experience the positive feedback brought by the strategy game, they can continue to play, and even share the victory experience of this game with their friends, so that more people can join this "card game".

The important thing about this type of game is fun and replayability, as long as it does both, it can be operated for a long time, and it means that we have more time and cost to acquire new users and expand the circle.

Grape Jun: So you think "Marvel's Ultimate Reversal" also has a chance to become a big DAU product.

Xiang Lang: We are very confident. NetEase is a company with long-term operation genes, UGC party games, season-based SLG, and asymmetrical competition are all new categories that are operating step by step. We don't do a wave, and our attitude towards game operations is long-term.

The data of overseas SNAP is very good, but the distribution strategy of the national server and overseas can be said to be completely different. Overseas companies rely more on buying volume, but we don't use buying volume as an important means of domestic distribution, and we still use content marketing to reach target users. We're going to design a lot of fun events and drive them around.

Grape Jun: But the influence of Marvel's IP seems to be average in China.

Xiang Lang: Each IP has its own soil, just like the Chinese IP "Three Kingdoms" is very popular in Japan. Marvel is the same, it has its own animation, comics, and fan culture circles, and its gold content is undoubted, but the country may be affected by the movie schedule, and the IP popularity of Avengers 4 is very high, and it has been relatively calm in the past two years.

But we firmly believe that a good IP, a good story, and a good character can continuously attract and give back to its fans. Marvel is a growing IP, with new content every year, which can be said to be an IP that is "in the year of fighting". On the contrary, those IPs that have never been sequels are suspected of consuming the feelings of fans.

Grape King: What big moves will there be in the national uniform? Will you give a one-year card pack like the Hearthstone next door?

Xiang Lang: There will be a conceptual difference here: unlike the commercialization model of traditional CCG games, "Marvel Ultimate Reversal" does not sell card packs or draw cards, and the acquisition of cards in the game is mostly unlocked by players' active behaviors.

In the operation of the national server, there will be a national server catch-up plan, which will slowly start with the open beta. The main season of the game follows the overseas version, and there will also be a concept of sub-season, which we will customize a new version operation system according to the habits of Chinese players according to the season version of the international server. I hope to quickly shorten the gap between the national server and the overseas version.

Grape: So the challenge for Marvel's Ultimate Turnaround is mainly on the publishing side? The product itself is already very good?

Xiang Lang: In our opinion, the essence of product and distribution is actually one. As far as the product is concerned, the data of the international server proves that its fundamentals are very good, but when it comes to the national server, the first thing we need to consider as an agent is to match the game and operation content of the national server players.

Because this game is 1v1, team-up socialization may be a potential shortcoming, and we will design a unique event system for this purpose, such as e-sports events for the whole people, so that everyone can have certain social attributes and obtain social currency when playing this game.

Of course, the operation of the game is all about seeing the tricks and dismantling the tricks, and we will actively improve the game based on user feedback after the game is launched, rather than working behind closed doors. I think in the current market environment, it is very dangerous to be too subjective in the way of issuance.

03

"Inherently in line with current market trends"

Grape King: Has "Marvel's Ultimate Reversal" been plagiarized now?

Xiang Lang: There are some, but they are more like UGC, which are non-profit works of power generation with love. This also has something to do with the fact that the game has not been officially launched. From a commercial point of view, it must be that the gameplay has been verified and money has been made, so there is a possibility of plagiarism.

When it comes to plagiarism, it is actually a two-sided thing, if there are many plagiarized people and it is successful, it becomes a category, and the plagiarized product becomes the category creator, and then it collects something called concept tax.

Just like many years ago, when everyone was still playing the era of standing on piles and fighting monsters, when it comes to ACT online games, the first thing that comes to everyone's mind is "Dragon Nest", and when it comes to MOBA, "DOTA" and "League of Legends" come to mind. The difference between Marvel's Ultimate Turnaround and traditional CCGs is really visible. And the gameplay has no originality, more like others, then it will be said that so-and-so likes, then the game has lost the opportunity to create a category.

Grape King: The gameplay of Marvel's Ultimate Reversal is indeed unique.

Xiang Lang: Yes. A lot of people think it's easy to do "1 handful in 3 minutes", but it's actually hard because you have to design a lot of things into this short 3 minutes. It's like making a good movie in 3 minutes, not a short drama.

"Marvel's Ultimate Reversal" feels like a three-minute blockbuster, and the director is actually yourself. It's not often that you get to experience the ups and downs of the flow in one game, but Marvel's Ultimate Twist can give it to you.

Grape Jun: It seems that only NetEase is still doing CCG in large factories.

Xiang Lang: This may have something to do with everyone's patience with a category and a product. NetEase adheres to long-termism, whether it is MMO or SLG, it has very long-lasting achievements, and NetEase's genes are not traffic-oriented companies. Traffic companies are looking for fast and maximum traffic monetization, and we want long-term operations and big DAU.

We just quoted a line from a Marvel movie in the announcement of the undeleted test, "I love you three thousand times", which I think is very long-term and romantic; If, ten years from now, when you look back at Marvel's Ultimate Reversal, you will feel that it is still a very unique product, then this is its real success.

Grape Jun: How do you feel about the market this year?

Xiang Lang: It's very intense, because there are a lot of products with version numbers to be launched, but there are cyclical changes in any industry. In terms of the overall environment, Douyin is a competitor to all games, including the current mini games. Users have limited time, and in addition to competing for how much time they have, we also have to increase the happiness we get per unit of time.

If a game keeps you busier than work, I think it's a waste of player time. It is possible that at some point the player will wake up and say, "Why am I playing this game?" Self-doubt.

And "Marvel's Ultimate Reversal" is born with the so-called liver reduction, burden reduction, and fun concentration, which is in line with this market demand trend. Three minutes isn't necessarily the most important, but it's important to have a good feeling in a single game, and it's important to have a reminiscing aftermath and think about how to match cards to win a game.

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