Not long ago, "Three Kingdoms · Strategic Edition" (hereinafter referred to as "Three Wars") just ushered in its fifth birthday.

After the launch of the anniversary version, the game performed strongly, and both in the free list and the best-selling list, it rushed to the fourth place. Even if this is put into a new product, it is enough to be called amazing. What's more, "Three Wars" is also a product that has been online for five years.

Corresponding to the excellent market performance is the explosion of the game on the player side.

When I visited Bilibili, Douyin and other communities, I found that a large number of new players "complained" that there were too many players pouring into the 18 theme servers opened on the day of the new version of the game, and I squatted on time at 10 o'clock in the morning but waited for more than an hour to squeeze in. Some of the theme clothes that were opened earlier even had nearly 10,000 people waiting in line.

There are also some old players, because they really can't squeeze into the new server, so they want to just go back to the ordinary server to play. But unexpectedly, not only the theme clothes were crowded, but even the ordinary clothes were not spared, so angry that a group of people went to the official account to "threaten" to compensate.

This kind of grand occasion surrounded by new and old players has not happened in the SLG category for a long time. The reason is that for the current SLG track, it is already extremely difficult to tap new users.

A person in charge of publishing once told me that the reason why mining increments is the biggest problem for SLGs at present is not only because of the high scarcity of SLG users, but also because after so many years of development, the SLG players that can be mined in the market have basically been mined. Therefore, at present, the new products on the market can only break through and only grab users from the old products.

But for "Three Wars", which has been online for five years, its previous user volume has exceeded the 100 million mark, which basically represents the ceiling of the current SLG user market. As the big brother of SLG, the difficulty of digging new in "Three Wars" can be imagined.

So, I'm actually more surprised by its results on the free list than on the best-selling list. The fourth place in the free list probably means that it is provided by many new users and returning players, which is a rare expansion for the entire SLG. And "Three Wars" seems to be also finding a new direction for the category in the matter of "digging new".

Taking this opportunity, I think it is necessary to review how "Three Wars" did it.

The blade is inward, raising the potential energy of the product

Let's take a look at the latitude of the product first.

For a long time, the industry's focus on SLG has mainly focused on liver and krypton, as if as long as the liver and krypton are reduced, SLG can break the circle and increase. So over the years, reducing liver and krypton has been a gimmick in the marketing of SLG products. As a result, after so many years, the number of users has not increased much, and the revenue has dropped a lot.

In addition, in fact, few people pay attention to the lack of SLG in terms of gameplay strategy. In my opinion, this is precisely the important reason why SLG cannot break the circle.

In the final analysis, the lack of strategy stems from the excessive catering of the product to the game of the hand, which leads to the serious emasculation of the entire battle process, and the original multi-dimensional battle has become "just looking at the battle report", and the strategy and playability are greatly reduced. What's worse is that few products in the entire SLG market dare to move the knife on the underlying gameplay mechanism, which makes the products on the market more and more homogeneous.

Therefore, the anniversary version of "Three World Wars" focuses on gameplay innovation, and it is not difficult to understand that through the transformation of the underlying gameplay of the game, it has achieved a wave of outbreaks first.

To put it simply, there are two main changes made in "Three Wars" this time: one is to add military skills to generals, and the other is to add height differences to the map.

The so-called military skills refer to the new skills added to the generals in this version, and players will be able to choose an additional military general as a military advisor to give full play to their military skills and bring more changes to the battle. In this version, the game is equipped with a total of 39 generals' military skills, such as Zhuge Liang's military skills "Stone Soldier Eight Formations", which can slow down the enemy's marching speed, and if certain conditions are met, the opponent can be forced to trap in place.

As for the height difference map, as the name suggests, the different positions of the map have a difference between high and low, rather than the indiscriminate flat map of the past. Players who stand tall can take advantage of the high terrain to gain a wider field of view, as well as perform tactics such as diving, rolling stones, etc.; Players with low terrain can also use the trail to sneak up and smash Huanglong.

The introduction of the height difference map allows players to achieve more dimensional strategic battles, getting rid of the past experience of two armies only colliding in a grid and then reading the battle report, so that players' strategies can be more displayed through the sand table map, which is why this anniversary version is called a three-dimensional war. As for the military skills, they can further cooperate with the three-dimensional war gameplay to achieve further interaction with the terrain and strengthen the strategic experience.

Of course, it should be pointed out that the height difference map has not yet been implemented in the game, and judging from the official information, this major innovation will be launched at the end of the year. However, considering that the military skills will be richer at that time, combined with the three-dimensional sand table of height difference, the strategic nature of the new gameplay may be more obvious, and the imagination space will be larger.

On the whole, the gameplay changes of "Three Wars" are very bold, and many designs have not been verified by the market before. But it is precisely because of the courage to innovate that when the market competitors are still spinning on the flat map, "Three Wars" took the lead in opening up a new direction, raising the potential energy of the product, and laying the foundation for subsequent marketing and distribution.

Players are not passively screened, but actively recognized

In the past, in order to acquire users, most SLG games usually adopted a large-scale buying strategy on the distribution side, that is, by inviting celebrities with large traffic but who may not match the brand tonality as spokespersons, or introducing some small games that have nothing to do with the ontology, attracting a large number of pan-users in the early stage, and using the core content of SLG to conduct a round of rough screening on this basis.

This kind of "induced" style of play is very popular nowadays, although it performs well in the initial acquisition, but the players who are attracted to it are actually in a state of passive screening - especially after being consumed by the initial purchase of materials and mini-games, most players will choose to quit because they do not agree with the gameplay and concept, and the retention conversion rate is very low. After one operation, the core group of the game is still the same as before.

I can understand that most products have to take this approach because SLG is difficult to dig new. But this problem is not without other solutions, for example, "Three Wars" jumped out of the inherent routine: it does not pursue traffic first, but emphasizes the fit between players and the brand concept.

In the words of Brother Zhu, the publisher and producer of "Three Wars", the so-called fit means that both parties should be like-minded - ambition is to pursue progress, like challenges, and Tao is to recognize the value of the team and the collective. This point is the core of the release side of "Three World Wars".

But the problem is, it's already difficult to attract users to play SLG, how dare you expect the other party to be like-minded with you? Judging from the actions of "Three Wars" on the release, it can be split into two steps:

1) The first is the choice of spokesperson.

"Three Wars" has always adhered to the principle of preferring shortage to abundance in the selection of spokespersons, and has rarely officially announced new spokespersons in the past few years. At a recent media conference, Brother Pig told Gyro that the reason why he is so cautious is because the game has always insisted on the combination of distribution and research and development. As an important part of publicity, the spokesperson must naturally be a like-minded player with the game brand. Otherwise, no matter how high the traffic is, it will not cooperate.

Although the selection criteria are very strict, this approach helps non-core gamers build a first impression of the game's brand. Judging from Nicholas Tse's past deeds, he is a veteran player, and as a three-way actor, he continues to break through himself in his acting career, which coincides with the brand tone that "Three Wars" likes to challenge. In addition, Nicholas Tse's fans cover a wide range, from middle-aged people to young people, all of whom are aware of it, which is in line with the popularity required for publicity, and most of the players who are attracted to it have the same label and will also agree with the brand concept of "Three Wars".

2) Secondly, in terms of further publicity and distribution strategies, for core users and pan-users who have differences in brand awareness, "Three Wars" uses a new set of playing methods that take into account two groups of users, seeking players' perception of brand tonality.

On the one hand, for those pan-users who have not yet completed their awareness of the brand concept, "Three Wars" first attracted their attention through cooperation with cross-circle KOLs.

For example, before and after the launch of the version, the official cooperated with DNF's top anchor Xu Xu Baobao. The former announced that it would launch alliance competitions in each fifth anniversary theme server and released 10,000 bottles of Moutai as a reward, while the latter also threatened to form a "Malaysian Monkey Group" and participate in the "Moutai Competition" as soon as the 920 server was launched. The two sides even filmed a short PV for this, and incorporated the famous scene of "Hurricane".

The ingenious part of this wave of operation is that whether it is the unprecedented 10,000-bottle Moutai or the baby Xuxu itself, or the spoof PV, it can cause a high enough degree of topic in the non-slg circle. When the two hot spots appeared on the day of 920, it was actually a concentrated outbreak of the expectations of pan-users who had accumulated before. Many players said that they were going to beat the big horse monkey on the same day, which was quite a trick with the taste of opening a new game, and finally generated a number of hot list topics, and the effect of attracting new users was remarkable.

At the same time, the official also released information that more celebrities are playing "Three Wars", including well-known online writer Tian Silkworm Tudou, well-known actor Li Naiwen, etc., conveying the attractiveness and inclusiveness of the content of "Three Wars", and further amplifying the potential energy of attracting new users on the distribution side.

After completing the acquisition of new users, the official also completes the undertaking of new users at the game level to improve their awareness of the brand tonality.

This includes the introduction of acquaintance socialization, the addition of the Dragon Tiger Race Rising Star Track, and the rework of the guidance tutorial to clarify the sense of purpose of collective cooperation, so that players can more quickly realize the playability of the game and the collective value advocated by the brand. At the same time, the game also lowers the entry threshold and difficulty of opening up the wasteland for the theme server, so as to reduce the frustration in the early stage, so that new players can smoothly transition to the middle and late stages, so as to get in touch with the core gameplay of the "Three Wars" PvP plus generals.

On the other hand, for core players or returning users who have understood the brand concept, "Three Wars" uses the "regional server naming right" and generous return rewards to show the official gratitude to old players for their past efforts and further strengthen the sense of belonging of core users.

In this style of play, you will find that after attracting new players, the game does not give them complex content, but guides them to discover the joy of collective cooperation in the game step by step, and it is up to the player to stay in the end. On the whole, although most of the new users found by the game are pan-users, they actively identify with the brand concept through a step-by-step approach, so as to achieve conversion, and the market performance is the best footnote.

This kind of style of playing to find like-minded people based on the tonality of the brand, "Three Wars" has always tried in the past, but it is not as vigorous and systematic as this time. Judging from the data shared by Brother Pig, the long-term conversion effect can be described as remarkable, and so far half of the game's young users aged 18-25 have been used.

epilogue

It is not difficult to see that in addition to the game content, "Three Wars" is also very different from other SLG products in terms of release strategy, and the results of the double list also confirm the feasibility of its playing style based on brand tonality. Especially in today's market, which is gradually becoming more diversified and mature, the achievements of "Three Wars" can be said to have given some inspiration to the SLG category.

Not long ago, the producer talked about the future development of "Three Wars", and believed that five years is a node for "Three Wars". If you zoom in on the entire SLG category, why not? At a time when the increment is getting smaller and smaller, "finding people" has become the biggest obstacle restricting the long-term development of SLG. From this point of view, "Three Wars" can achieve such results, not only for itself, but also for the entire SLG category to make a good start.

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