The value and passion that League of Legends has leveraged through "Battle of Two Cities" will be a milestone event in the game IP development industry.

Reading Entertainment | yiqiduyu

Text | Zero One

After the finale of "League of Legends: Battle of Two Cities Season 2", the Douban score dropped from 9.4 points at the beginning to 8.7 points, and many viewers were not satisfied with the slightly hasty finale, feeling that the story was still unfinished, and it would take another season to tell the story.

From a plot point of view, this makes sense. The story progress of the second season has become extremely fast from the fourth episode, and the plot has been super unusual, and by the last episode, it ends with an all-encompassing battle, the battle itself is not hearty enough, and the endings of Jinx, Jace, Victor, Vander, Mel and other characters are mostly unresolved, and it is reasonable for the audience to be dissatisfied. The main creator set the tone for the end of the two seasons of "Battle of Two Cities" early, but it is obvious that the film and television development of the League of Legends IP has just begun.

When the first season aired in 2021, it was nominated for nine awards at the Annie Awards, known as the "Oscars of the animation industry", including Best TV Animation, Best Director, Screenwriter and other heavyweight awards, which can be called a historic reputation. Although the ending is hasty, from the perspective of animation art creation, "Battle of Two Cities Season 2" still continues the super high level of the first season - outstanding visual design, diversified animation forms, and brilliant music are blended into the plot, which greatly strengthens the emotional shock of the plot, leaving Victor "becoming a god", Ike dancing with Explosion, Werewolf Vander and Wei, Jinx's family reunion, and "Stress King" Jace "smashing the cult"...... and a large number of impressive "famous scenes".

From the perspective of film and television development of game IP, the pioneering impact of "Battle of Two Cities Season 2" is even more significant - for this kind of long-term game IP that has been born for more than 10 years, the value and passion that League of Legends has leveraged through "Battle of Two Cities" will be a milestone event in the game IP development industry.

1

More complete IP linkage and derivative business layout

Compared with the first season, "Battle of Two Cities Season 2" has a more complete IP commercial development layout.

The opening brand lineup on the playback page is extremely luxurious, including mobile phones, chewing gum, mobile games, Meituan takeaways, clothing and a large number of other categories.

During the broadcast of the animation, the "League of Legends" mobile game and mobile game were fully linked. Including the new hero "Iron Wolf Mother" Abesa, "Survivor Jace", "Shatterer - Jinx" and other heroes who appeared in the Battle of the Two Cities new skins are online, as well as the rework of the old hero Victor in combination with animation design, and the new hero "Mel" that will appear in the future.

In the Battle of Genting and Golden Shovel, not only are there the linkage of the bonding characters, but the new setting of Wild Runes in the animation has also become a new seasonal mechanic.

In the "League of Legends Mobile Game" client, it is directly linked to Tencent Video feature film playback, and the activity experience points in the game are obtained by watching; At the bottom of the Tencent video playback page, Riot games such as "League of Legends Mobile Game", "Battle of the Golden Shovel", and "Valorant Contract" have linkage with the registration ceremony and return ceremony of the whole family, so as to use the popularity of animation to drive the popularity of the game to attract new users and return to the heat.

The League of Legends merchandise mall has launched a variety of "official millets", including acrylic cards, Weihe policewoman ID peripherals, keychains, commemorative coins, setting sets, badges, etc.

It was previously rumored that "Two Cities" would cost as much as $250 million, but Riot has since clarified that a large part of the online figure is marketing expenses, and the cost of animation production is "about one-third of that of animated films from companies such as lighting and Pixar." Previously, the cost of films such as the lighting animation "Despicable Me 2" was rumored to be $70 million, so if you estimate it higher, the production cost of "Battle of Two Cities" should not exceed $30 million.

From game linkage to IP derivation, and the deep integration with the "valley-eating culture" of young people, the IP value of "Battle of Two Cities Season 2" is fully developed, and it is believed that it will also achieve considerable additional benefits for Riot. Compared to the huge impact achieved by animation, this investment must have far exceeded expectations.

The film and television development of game IP is not new at home and abroad. But I have to say that film and television adaptation and IP development are not completely equivalent, and a large number of game adaptation film and television dramas basically just stay at the level of "conversion", borrowing the game's brilliant stories and characters to complete an independent film and television narrative, forming a fan-oriented or mainstream adaptation route.

For example, the domestic film and television adaptation of the IP of "Fairy Sword", and the series of American dramas such as "The Witcher" and "Fallout" in foreign streaming media in recent years, are basically in this clear mode from the original.

Also in the field of stand-alone games, a more "new" relationship has been formed between the game "Cyberpunk 2077" and the animation "Cyberpunk: Edge Walker" produced by Trigger Club, and the 2.0 version of the game has been updated with a number of easter eggs from animation, and the icons of the animated characters David, Lucy and Rebecca can also be seen in the new skill tree - after the animation expands its influence, the relevant elements will be integrated into the game itself, which is at least beyond the "conversion" level, and there is the possibility of "three-dimensional" IP development.

2

The "okay" film and television is a great harm to the IP

For long-lived online games that have been born for many years, "three-dimensional" IP development is particularly important, and it also has more artistic and commercial potential. Fundamentally, long-term games face a limited game lifecycle, and there is almost always a contradiction between the nostalgia of loyal players and the pace of updates. On the other hand, the time spent by players and game characters is an extremely precious resource, and in the long life cycle of these games, the world view of the IP has been polished to a very complete extent, but at the same time, there is a lot of room for imagination.

In the official behind-the-scenes documentary "Battle of Two Cities: The Trench", the creator said: "It's always this map, exactly the same scene, you can't help but wonder, where do they sleep?" What do they eat? What is their daily life like? What kind of family do you have? ”

The same thinking will definitely happen in the hearts of film and television creators of game IPs such as "Dota 2" and "World of Warcraft". For MOBA games such as "Dota 2", players are extremely familiar with the characters, but they often don't know much about the story and world view; For MMO games such as World of Warcraft, players are almost certainly aware of the worldview, because players are also one of the builders of the game world in a sense, comrades and enemies of well-known characters in the game.

But why didn't the Warcraft movies and Dota: Dragon's Blood work as well as Two Cities?

I have to say that the appearance of "Battle of Two Cities" was largely accidental.

In a plethora of spin-off development attempts outside of Two Cities, Riot hasn't outperformed its peers — LOR card games are half-dead, and novels, comics, etc. are hard to justify. On Steam, Riot has also released 6 "League of Legends Gaiden" games, including turn-based, action, music games and other genres, but the hottest "Ruined King" has less than 10,000 reviews, which is nothing compared to the popularity of the IP of League of Legends.

If it weren't for the talents and dedication of creators like Linke and Yee, as well as their experience within the game company, Two Cities would never have been what it is now.

Linke and Alex are veteran Riot employees who have been with Riot for more than 10 years, and the official behind-the-scenes documentary mentions that around 2015, Linke approached Riot co-founder Brandon to propose an animation adaptation on a very high budget, while Fortiche Studio, which was in charge, had only produced some short films and music videos for League of Legends.

Brandon, of course, would not easily agree to such a risky proposal. But Linke insisted on working on the animation concept art with the first $2,000 budget, and received another small grant to build a 3D model and another money to make an animated short film. In this short film, we can already see the unique art design style of the Battle of the Two Cities that followed. Brandon and other Riot executives gradually realized the seriousness and talent of linke and others, and Fortiche Studios began to expand on a large scale.

From the very beginning, this project was driven by the "extraordinary", and with the full support of Riot, it finally reached the extraordinary. At the story level, the creator is also so ambitious: "Being in a world dominated by unknown technology, feeling like we are about to lose control of technology, I think this is something that we are born to think about naturally, and we want to ask some serious questions, although we don't have standard answers, but, at least, ask them." ”

In the documentary, the creator even said: "If what we make is ultimately "okay", it will also be a great harm to the IP of "League of Legends". ”

Reading Entertainment believes that this sentence should be regarded as the fundamental reason why "Battle of Two Cities" is so beyond expectations. For an online game with an extremely large audience base, the value of film and television must not seek direct monetization by consuming the popularity of the game IP, but to make the film and television link become an amplifier and spotlight, so that the IP itself will shine a more lasting and strong light.

In contrast, the "Warcraft" movie made the mistake of planning "out of focus", and "Dota: Dragon's Blood" was too "conservative". "Warcraft" did not come up with the characters and plots of "Warcraft 3" and "World of Warcraft", which the public is most familiar with, but it also failed to achieve a breakthrough in artistic expression in this story derived from "Warcraft 1"; "Dota: Dragon's Blood" is innovative in terms of plot, but the animation form belongs to the traditional conservative category, with limited investment, and there is no "don't do it or be the best" courage, which is not enough to make the content reach the amazing level.

Epilogue:

As mentioned above, the emergence of Two Cities is largely due to the subjective push of the likes of Linke and Yee, and it is a fortuitous success. But now that "Two Cities 2" is over, Riot must continue to launch other film and television animation works in the League of Legends universe, hoping to follow this ideal and polish to turn the accidental into the norm.

But now Pascal Charrue of Fortiche Studio said in an interview that the next film will create an original IP, rather than stop at taking on Riot's commission, and he said that the visual requirements for the new work will be higher than that of "Battle of Two Cities". So does Fortiche still have that much energy to keep making other League of Legends animations? Will there be a new production team joining?

At present, some gamers are quite dissatisfied with Victor's rework plan to abandon the game image and turn to the thin god stick image in the "Two Cities" animation. This dissatisfaction may stem from the player's deep affection for the original character and the expectation of consistency between the game and the series. Many players believe that the character setting within the game should remain independent and not be shaken by changes in external media. This feedback suggests that Riot will need to take into account players' emotions and expectations more carefully in future IP expansions and character reworks to maintain harmony between the game and the spin-off.

The success of League of Legends Two Cities has indeed laid a solid foundation for the expansion of the League of Legends universe, but the creation and IP linkage development behind it still faces many challenges and uncertainties.

▼

This article is from Xinzhi self-media and does not represent the views and positions of Business Xinzhi.If there is any suspicion of infringement, please contact the administrator of the Business News Platform.Contact: system@shangyexinzhi.com