On December 10, a series of salons with the theme of "New Opportunities on the Game Track" co-sponsored by Roski, Topon, and Titanium Technology were held in Wuhan. The event invited the heads of many well-known companies in the industry at home and abroad to share their experiences. The on-site guests started from their own areas of expertise and explained and shared their experiences through data analysis, case review and other dimensions.
At the event, Yans, CEO of Shenzhen Zhanhou Network, brought the "Review of the Development of the Hot Music Game Beat Blade". As this yearโs hottest casual game product, โBeat Bladeโ has swept the free charts in dozens of countries or regions as a music game. After the madness is over, looking back, what have you experienced during the development and release of "Beat Blade"?
The following is a compilation of shared content:
Hello everyone, I am Yans from Warcry Network. We are a R&D team headquartered in Shenzhen, with branches in Beijing and Wuhan. I am a native of Wuhan. I graduated from Wuhan University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a bachelor's degree and a master's degree respectively. Another partner of Zhanhou is also an alumnus of Huake. We have always missed the hot dry noodles and tofu skin in Wuhan, so now we are back in Wuhan and are building a full-featured R&D team with R&D, planning, and art. The content shared today is mainly about the product development process. I hope everyone can gain something, and I also hope that people with common ambitions and interests can do things together.
topped the download list in 13 countries. The music game "Beat Blade"
"Beat Blade" is a music parkour game. Let's briefly introduce the global performance of the product. SensorTower once mentioned that Chinese manufacturers achieved their best results in recent years in 2020Q3. In the download list, Chinese manufacturers explored the US market with various creative casual mobile games, among which the music game "Beat Blade" topped the list with more than 5 million downloads. The picture shows the product in July when it just reached the top, ranking first in the download list in 13 countries around the world.
"Beat Blade" product development review: three steps for project establishment
Next, we will review the research and development of this product.
So the first question is how to establish a project and why you choose to make this type of product. To evaluate whether to enter a category, look at the leading product, evaluate the cost after dismantling it, and multiply the cost by two. Of course, this is not the way we set up the project, it is the way a friend who is doing SLG sets up the project.
Back to "Beat Blade", I chose to make a music rhythm game. The main reason was the producer's preference. Our producer liked it, or I liked it. I had made music games myself when I was in school. The first time we made a music game was in 2019. At that time, WeChat mini-games and hyper-casual games were just starting to become popular. We developed the hyper-casual game for two months. After finishing it, we felt that it was not very good. The category was not settled. What was done? There is nothing left. So we decided to do some unique genres that we are good at.
This was the motivation for evaluating music games at that time, but when it came time to actually decide what to do, there were other considerations.
There are three main factors to consider:
The first is that there is a threshold. If you are serious about making a music game, or you have never done it before, there is a threshold. You need to understand music theory and planning. Making a good music game requires a sense of music and music theory, as well as a certain understanding of the music games on the market, so there is a certain threshold.
Secondly, we are a small team. To make good products and make breakthroughs, we still need to find room for innovation. At that time, we judged that music games had a lot of room for innovation.
When we decide to do this type, we will proceed in three steps. First, we will make three products. The first one is a trial. It does not require making money, as long as the game itself can be made well. The second is to further improve the game production process and game creative process. The third is to try to innovate on a larger scale and see if it can be made into a mid-range or even top-notch product in the market.
Our company actually started making games in the second half of 2019, and has made a total of three products.The first one is called "Rhythm Soul". The gameplay of the product is similar to an old Japanese game "Rhythm Heaven". At that time, we heard the news that the producer of "Rhythm Heaven" would not make a sequel, so we wanted to make one. Give it a try.
The second music game is compared to "Drumming for All", which is a classic four-track falling note gameplay. At that time, we were doing gameplay fusion, and we tried to synthesize gameplay types. This is the second one, which is to try to integrate some other systems on the classic music game to see if it can add peripheral gameplay and extend the life cycle.
The third one is "Beat Blade".
Next, letโs talk about gameplay innovation.
We spent some time conducting market research before making "Beat Blade". According to Google, music games have some subdivided categories. The largest category is called performance category, such as "Piano Tiles" which has the largest number of users; the second category is music parkour category; the third category is real category, which provides An instrument for players to use is more like a learning tool.
Before making "Beat Blade", a relatively new and relatively large-scale game was "Tiles Hop - EDM Rush" made by the Vietnamese company AMANOTES, but in fact, there have been no new interactions and gameplays in music games for a long time. . Secondly, after playing these games, we felt that these games were not very good, so we decided to make some new gameplay and new products that can reflect our understanding of music rhythm games.
What is our understanding of music rhythm games? We believe that music and rhythm are two different things. Another word for music is melody. Below are two waveform diagrams. The first is a melody diagram, a continuously changing waveform. The second picture is a rhythm diagram, which is a square wave. This is the difference between melody and rhythm. When we look back at the games on the market based on this concept, most of them are rhythm games. There were many music games in the early days of the console platform. What are music games? For example, your fingers and remote sensing perform different operations on the screen according to changes in the melody, and their operations are linear. This is the difference between music games and rhythm games at the interactive level.
So we thought about whether it was possible to create a new interactive method, combining melody changes and rhythm point hits. Finally, we tried a lot and made "Beat Blade". This is our different understanding of music games and rhythm games, so we try to make a game that has both cash out melody and rhythm, and a new way of interaction.
R&D process and product testing: Slow work leads to fine work. Spend 6 months polishing the underlying gameplay
Next, letโs introduce the general R&D process.
The first is the underlying gameplay + testing. Let me first talk about what the underlying gameplay is. In the Voodoo article shared by Rosky, level loops and core loops are mentioned. The underlying gameplay means the same thing, but itโs a different way of saying it, but we may be more basic than him. We judge that the underlying gameplay is human-computer interaction, such as how to hold the phone in mobile games, horizontally or vertically, left and right hands, one hand or both hands, tapping the screen or sliding the screen, etc. This is the underlying interactive part.
For example, when making music games, or making some interactive games with non-numeric values โโas the core experience, we will first look at the interaction or operation level to see whether we can design a good interaction method. Or is it a classic game, and there is no room for improving the interaction method. This is the underlying gameplay.
If a suitable gameplay is found, the next step will be testing to confirm whether this method is really fun or better than existing games on the market. If so, level design will be next. For music games, I will find a few very classic songs, design a level, and try to put interaction into the level to see how it can be fun and how much design space there is.
If the level is also passed, the third step is to design the game feel. Game sense is a word without a clear definition. When it comes to music rhythm games, it refers to the sense of attack, because it is a game where you use a lightsaber to chop notes.The second is the sense of rhythm, and the third is to allow players to experience changes in the melody, that is, the scene will change when the music melody changes.
has reached the game-feeling stage, and is more inclined to make game quality. For example, some content that can be done or not done. After these things are almost done, the next step is the middle-level gameplay. What Voodoo calls it is a level cycle, what is the relationship between levels.
In general, the first four together are the core part of the overall game experience. If the verification results are feasible at this time, slicing will be done next. Slicing means, for example, think of the game as a roast pig. I tried the seasonings before and thought it was pretty good. Next, I want to cut a piece of the best meat to see if it is really delicious. So slicing means making only one level, and making the most essential gameplay and levels in the game completely for testing.
If the test results here are all good, then we will enter the formal content production stage, such as art content, game music level content, etc. After these contents are completed, the next step is to design the external cycle, such as the gold coin system, upgrades, cultivation, advertising monetization, etc.
The above is the general process of making games. Generally speaking, our research and development process is relatively slow.
The next step is a very important point, the gameplay test. When making games, most people start from the operational level, so a very important point is to first confirm whether this thing is good or not. Because many times they are things that are not on the market or improvements to existing things on the market, and sometimes the changes may not be very good. So usually we do three kinds of tests. The office test of
is relatively simple. After making it, you can play it with colleagues in other project teams and see their feedback. If they all feel good about it, then the first level is passed.
The second one is the college test. The test in colleges and universities is to invite students from the school to play the demo after completing the demo, conduct a simple interview, and then analyze the results after returning to see if we have achieved our goals.
After passing the first two levels, it will be online for retention testing.
It can be seen that our game is relatively slow. During the development of "Beat Blade", it took 6 months to explore the basic gameplay to the intermediate version. During the process, I tried many different versions and different gameplays, such as table tennis-like gameplay, and also tried many different songs. The one on the right is close to the current version of Beat Blade, but the track is fixed.
When developing "Beat Blade", we attached great importance to level design. Because whether a music game is fun or not has a lot to do with the level. There is one part of the level that the developer cannot control, which is the music. Changes in melody and rhythm depend on the music itself. If you can choose a good song, you will spend a lot of time thinking about what kind of operations and level changes can reflect the design of the music rhythm.
Therefore, we will spend a lot of energy on each level. The team will also review how each level is done. After each level is completed, other colleagues will experience it.
From pure research and development to self-development, encountering music copyright violations and bottomless plagiarism
Next, I will share some experiences in the game publishing process. Once the game is made, the first question is choosing a publisher. At the end of 2019, we found a publisher that we cooperate with all year round. At that time, they were also testing a music game, and the data was average, so they said they didnโt want to play music games, they didnโt understand music games, and they didnโt have much confidence or interest. .
After listening to their feedback, we found that there seemed to be no particularly mature and reliable audio game publishers on the market, so we decided to do it ourselves.
"Beat Blade" launched a demo with only one level in November 2019. The main purpose is to collect user feedback. The main feedback I received at the time was that the game was fun, but it only had one level. Next we started to produce the content of the game. By January 2020, version 1.0 of the game would be officially launched, containing 15 levels. After the launch of
, the team took a vacation and adopted a remote working mode during the subsequent epidemic period.Remote working can satisfy basic discussions, but it is not convenient when close communication is required. Fortunately, the game was already online, and the main work at that time was content development and purchase volume. At this time, it enters the soft start stage.
The team didnโt have much experience in soft launch at that time, so they bought the game as soon as it went online. However, the game data performed very well. retained at 60%, so everyone continued to produce subsequent content for the game.
Because it is self-published, the purchase data is as follows:
The long-term purchase volume of most music rhythm games in the US market is 0.3-0.4 US dollars. The advantage of music games is that the natural volume is relatively large, which is higher than the natural volume of most categories. above 50. Conventional channels are FB, Google, Applovin, Tiktok, Unity, etc. One of the characteristics of music is that you can find Internet celebrities to make videos to increase the popularity of the game. We have approached many internet celebrities at home and abroad. The price is quite expensive, but the rough estimate is that the effect is still positive.
"Beat Blade" was launched in January, and the copycat product was launched in February. Then in July, after it reached the top of the free list through purchase volume and Internet celebrity promotion, there were a large number of copycat products. The picture below shows related games on Google Play.
When a product becomes popular overseas, a large number of imitators will follow up, and the speed is much faster than imagined. Imitation products appeared before the epidemic was over, and our game was not on the list at that time. There are domestic and foreign companies among them, for example. One day after the
game was launched, we received a complaint from Apple, saying that a company complained that we used his copyrighted music. He did buy the rights, but not the exclusive ones. However, he pretended that it was an exclusive copyright, and it happened that he, the anti-counterfeiting "Li Gui", met the real "Li Kui". Our products are legally authorized, so his complaint had no effect. However, the story is not over yet. About three weeks later, the publisher put a copycat product on the shelves, which shows that foreign companies also have deep tricks.
The emergence of a large number of copycat products has caused problems such as rising CPI and diversion of natural volume. Before "Beat Blade" we didn't have a publishing team, and we only started publishing for this product. Due to insufficient manpower and the impact of the epidemic, there is not much time and energy to deal with the losses caused by imitated products.
Because there are many imitators, we also asked about the data. The most successful product has nearly 10 million downloads. We have used various channels to find out the gap between "Beat Blade" and imitators.
First of all, "Beat Blade" has better retention than imitators, and the CPI is lower, but the ARPU is also low, and the monetization is not as good as others. To sum up the attribution, retention is good because the levels and feel of "Beat Blade" are better. The low CPI may be because the video is better. Most music games are screen recordings, which are relatively simple. "Beat Blade" has better rhythm and feel. The impact is better. ARPU is relatively low because our advertising monetization experience is still learning and exploring.
It has been almost a year since "Beat Blade" was launched, and the game is still iterating. We believe that music games are a niche field with certain thresholds for development. The categoryโs ARPU is not high and is similar to that of hyper-casual games. The only advantage is that the life cycle is longer than that of hyper-casual games, but this also depends on what kind of content and gameplay are designed to enhance the life cycle of the game.
Of course, there is a more direct way, which is to increase the ARPU of a single user. The current trend is towards mid-core games, and we are also thinking about how to make music games develop into mid-core games and increase the proportion of paying users and ARPU. If we can find a way to moderate the music game, and the ARPU can reach 1-3 US dollars, there is still a chance to make a music game with tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of downloads.
For the future, our thinking and summary
As a game developer, we still need to think about innovation. Generally speaking, innovation has three directions: art, theme, and gameplay. A small team may be more suitable for gameplay, but art and themes cost money.
choose a genre worthy of long-term development, continue to launch new products, accumulate experience, reputation, and talents in this genre, and become the leader of the category. We donโt care much about chasing hot spots.
In the end, it falls on games that are fun. Generally, fun games mean good retention and low CPI. This is reflected in the final advertising placement. If the fun game video is good-looking, the conversion rate will be high and the CPI will be low. If the game is fun, players will be more willing to play it and retain it.
Ad monetization lowers the threshold for in-app purchases. When there is no ad monetization, a lot of content needs to be matched with in-app purchases. With advertising monetization, the content of the game is very thin. As long as players are willing to play, there are opportunities for commercialization.
The entire game industry has increasingly higher requirements for developers, and there are many outstanding young people who want to join our team. I would tell him that game development is actually very hard. The only thing that can endure and eventually polish a fun product is a sincere love for the game, not a desire for money. The early days when products of average quality could earn huge sums of money are no longer available. The game industry is increasingly engaging in high-dimensional competition around high-quality products. Finally, we hope that game developers in Wuhan can communicate more and those who are interested in developing fun games can join us and make the next hit together.
