6 female protagonists in "Finished". Picture/Steam platform screenshot
"When she looked at the male protagonist, her eyes were too bright, and then I realized that the big eyes were really beautiful." The male player Wood described his favorite character "Shen Comet". Shen Comet is one of the six female protagonists in "Finished! I’m Surrounded by Beautiful Women!" (hereinafter referred to as "Finished").
After "Invisible Guardian" opened up the first year of live-action interactive film games, "Finished" has become another "out of the circle" new work on this track.
From October 30th to November 9th, the WeChat official account of Hippo Games has released 3 interactive film tour project news in cooperation with the "Finished" team, including the production of the female version of "Finished". On November 22nd, the shell financial reporter verified with the relevant staff of Guangzhou Xiaoyou Content Interactive Entertainment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as: Xiaoyou Interactive Entertainment), the producer of "Finished". He said that the female version of the interactive love game project reached with Hippo Games is fake news, "This project is actually an IP (intellectual property rights) of the INTINY studio of Xiaoyou Interactive Entertainment announced on November 9th, and an interactive imaging product jointly created with Hippo Games and Qishu Youyu." He also revealed that the "Finished" DLC (game downloadable content) is currently ready for launch.
"Finished" was launched on the Steam platform on October 18, and once hit the hot-selling list. However, the Steam platform did not directly disclose the sales data of game products. As of November 23, when the shell financial reporter entered the "Finished" Steam mall, the page showed the number of reviews was 25,185. According to industry habits, the reporter took the median value of 37.5 times 20 to 55, and estimated that the total sales of "Finished" was about 944,000 copies. (Regression analysis based on 100 game data in 2021 by Video Game Insights shows that the relationship between sales and reviews of games released on the Steam platform after 2020 is likely to be 20-55 times.) According to the latest estimates of the Steam Spy platform, the number of users of "Finished" is between 1 million and 2 million. If 1 million sales are calculated, according to the 42 yuan mall pricing and the "37 share" convention, the current revenue of "Finished" is roughly 29.40 million yuan.
Chen Yurong, the producer and general manager of Xiaoyou Interactive Entertainment, revealed in an interview with the "Daily Economic News" that the total investment of "Finished" is about 5 million yuan.
Such a live-action interactive movie game has the possibility of nearly 6 times the cost of income, why is the "sci-fi sense" of "Finished" addictive, and whether its success can be replicated or continued? Shell Financial reporters interviewed game practitioners, analysts, and "Finished" players on the above issues.
More than 90% of users are male, and the "tap water" promotion triggers a herd effect
Chen Yurong has publicly stated that male users of "Finished" currently account for more than 90%.
Zheng Ziyan, one of the 6 female leads of "Finished". Picture/Screenshot of Steam platform
According to the plot setting of "Finished", players will start a love journey with six female protagonists with different personalities and appearances from the first-person perspective of the male protagonist "Gu Yi": Zheng Ziyan, the Midnight Elf, Li Yunsi, the Flower of Gaoling, and Xiao Lu, the deer in the forest, as well as Shen Comet, the proud lady, Lin Yueqing, the goddess of slashing men, and Zhong Zhen, the overbearing female president. "These 6 girls are all around you, and the actors’ small expressions are vivid and natural," the aforementioned male player Wood commented. If the player is too "scumbag", it will trigger the two BE (Bad Ending) endings of "Male Girlfriend" and "Lonely Family".
Most of the gamers surveyed said it all started with the day they were "pushed" by a video or social media platform. They also had some expectations about the quality of the game’s content before playing the game through video footage or comments: the cover is very page game, the plot is unbelievable, the sci-fi game…
The fun person option in "Finished". Figure/Steam platform screenshot
"There are a lot of’fun people ‘options in the short video, such as you can choose to fight the landlord or the big brother in the same ward. These options are not like normal choices that people make in social interactions, and there is a simple humor in them, so I wanted to go and see it," said Li Hua, a male player. "The producers also accept everyone’s evaluation of its’sci-fi game’, and I think it is very low-profile," Li Hua added.
"Some of its plots are particularly embarrassing. Usually, bullet comments are swiping’heaven defying ‘at this time, which makes people laugh, so I went to see where this game came from with an entertaining attitude." Wood was attracted by the name when he watched Bilibili UP’s "Pen Bar Evaluation Room" use "Finished" to test the performance of the computer game, and then "entered the pit" vertically.
Chen Yurong, general manager of Xiaoyou Interactive Entertainment, admitted in an interview that the original target user group of "Finished" was men, providing them with emotional value.
Men are less demanding on aesthetics, one woman told a veteran gaming practitioner. "It doesn’t have to be more than 9 points, 8 points is OK, and 7 points is not OK, but it may be more diverse." From a psychological point of view, real-life interaction meets men’s visual satisfaction needs and helps them establish a sense of sight or real experience in the game. "Men need to see real people to have an immersive feeling."
And female players who are not part of the target audience mostly mention the word "curious" when telling Shell Finance about the opportunity to play the game.
Cai Jing, a female player, said that many of Douyin’s couple accounts are playing "Finished", and "the video and comment areas will quarrel over the game, so I wonder why they quarrel over this."
As Zhihu blogger’s Wang Jia, I see the name of "Finished" on Zhihu’s hot list every day. "Because they all say’this is a man’s paradise, ‘I also want to experience for myself what kind of game men are after," Wang Jia said.
"At first, it was my boyfriend who said the game was very popular and wanted to play it. After seeing some negative comments, I thought’why don’t I play it first ‘." After playing, Shi Qi, a female player, thought it was "okay", and she sometimes distracted herself from what actresses wore.
Wang Jialun, founder of Game Teahouse, explained to Shell Finance that the videos could be interpreted as "tap water". He speculated that most of the buyout games on the Steam platform will not be too invested in publicity. "The gameplay is somewhat creative, and it is more suitable for live broadcast, so it will naturally become popular. There may be some help later, but it should not cost a lot of money," he said.
In the eyes of women, "paper people are perfect", and women have little chance of success in "Done"
"It’s so weird to have a Qi Sili around, the paper man is perfect!" Molly, a player of B Games, a love simulation game developed for women, stressed.
The above-mentioned woman told game practitioners that compared with the female market, the live-action interactive model is more likely to succeed in the male market. He analyzed that this is due to the difference in the mental mechanism of women and men to trigger imagination. Women can have imagination and happiness through words, but men usually have difficulty generating such brain supplements. "They rely on visual satisfaction, at least in the field of love games, they are more realistic."
Based on his own market observation experience, the practitioner concluded that women are extremely interested in the beauty of game characters, "they have fantasies about game art, characters, and even the game itself". He stressed that real-life play may destroy the perfection that women desire, while two-dimensional art is easier to meet women’s perfection requirements. To this end, the shell financial reporter asked the interviewed female players for their inner hopes of the real-life interactive B game male lead portrait, and received answers including very handsome, non-greasy, emotionally stable and the actor cannot collapse.
"If you choose a real person, girls may choose to chase stars directly," Shi Qi said. Female players interviewed by Shell Finance said they do not necessarily need to use love games to satisfy emotional needs and intimate relationships.
Cars, guns, and balls are the mainstream of the game market, and the sustainability of real-life interactive movie game products needs to be verified
"Love games are niche games. Even if’Finished ‘sells hundreds of thousands of copies now, it just seems to be popular," said the male player Li Hua. He introduced to Shell Financial reporters with years of gaming experience that the traditional "car, gun, and ball games" in Europe and the United States are the mainstream of the market. "Car" refers to fixed-speed games, "gun" refers to shooting games, and "ball" represents sports games. "Then it came to Japanese role-playing." The male player Wood also said that he prefers open-world, police and bandit racing games and other games, and "is not very interested in love games."
At present, the number of online players of "Done" has declined. According to the monthly player statistics of the little black box, as of November 22, the average online number of "Done" in October was 39,342, and the number in November was 22,028. The average online number has dropped by 44% in one month.
Wang Jialun, founder of Game Teahouse, believes that the live-action interactive movie game is a fixed track with a fixed player group, but "the scale is not certain". He also believes that "Finished" is a short-term product, and it can only be a series or IP-based if it is to be sustained, "but this is not something that ordinary companies can do". Women interviewed by Shell Finance also believe that the cost-effectiveness of IP-based games of this kind is not high, "because the cost of games is very high now".
Huatai Securities Research Report shows that the continuity of the follow-up products of this live interactive movie game needs to be verified.
"The combination of text and short video forms appeared early," the woman told game practitioners. In March 2019, Tencent launched the "1001" mobile end platform, which offered interactive narrative products including visual novels, anime and live-action dramas, but it was officially discontinued on February 8 this year. According to statistics, "Invisible Guardian" sold 1.40 million copies in 2019, but its production studio New One Studio has not yet launched a new product.
The practitioner believes that short video games such as "Finished" can be understood as FMCG, "it is similar to online articles and short dramas, and it is also a stimulating practice. After users watch it, they forget it, and then repeatedly stimulate users’ points of interest." Chen Yurong also said in an interview with "South Wind Window" that the team has borrowed the production method of short dramas, and they are more willing to position "Finished" as an "interactive imaging product" rather than a "game". He also said that he will promote exchanges with domestic platforms such as Douyin and WeChat Mini Program.
At present, the pace of content expansion in the micro-drama market is accelerating. According to the "2023-2024 China Micro-drama Market Research Report" released by iiMedia Consulting on November 22, the circulation of China’s online micro-dramas reached 150 in the third quarter of this year, nearly twice the total of last year.
On the other hand, the content ecology of micro-short dramas is uneven. Regarding the controversy caused by "Finished", Patrick Jagoda, director of the Department of Media Arts and Design at the University of Chicago, professor of the Department of Film and Media Studies and the Department of English Language and Literature, also said in an interview with Shell Finance that the issue of content ethics exists not only in the field of video games, but also in the media field in a broad sense such as movies and TV series.
The "tight hoop" of supervision on micro-short dramas has also been gradually tightened. On November 15, the China Network Audiovisual Program Service Association released an article saying that the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television will increase and refine the management of micro-short dramas in terms of formulating the "Detailed Rules for the Creation, Production and Content Review of Online Micro-Short Dramas", establishing the Mini Program "blacklist" mechanism and the online micro-short drama push statistics mechanism. (At the request of the interviewees, the interviewees except Wang Jialun are all pseudonyms)
Beijing News Shell Finance Trainee Reporter, Wei Yingzi, Reporter, Bai Jinlei, Qin Che
Editor, Yue Cai Zhou
Proofreading, Yang Xuli