Recent years, games have become one part of the
daily life for most of young people, whether they are playing PC games,
consoles or mobile games. As the development of smart phones, mobile games are
more and more popular. For most people, they may not
have much time to play games on consoles, which must spend plenty of time on it
to get a good end. For some people, they cannot afford to buy consoles.
However, almost everyone got a smart phone. The
benefits of mobile game are easy to access and because of the mobility of cell phones;
people could play it anytime also anywhere they want. Mobile games are also
suitable for relieving the pressure from work or study.
As the picture shows, according to Global Games Market Report (Newzoo, 2016), there is an increasing
percentage of mobile games. In 2017, mobile games market will become the
biggest market comparing with other platform.
Yin-Yang-Shi as a great example of popular mobile game
Yin-Yang-Shi (阴阳师) is a Japanese style mobile game hat developed by
NetEase, a Chinese company. It is a Role-playing
game, a card game, also a Turn-based
game. It was launched in September 2016. According to the Top Charts of App
Store in China, Yin-Yang-Shi is now the TOP1 of the Top Grossing chart. And the
sum of online downloads in both iOS and Android has been more than 10 million.
The number of daily active user is more than 4 million.
The background of Yin-Yang-Shi is based on a
classic work of Japanese literature called The Tale of Genji (源氏物語Genji monogatari), it is about a story that an onmyōji (humans who
has spiritual power to combat with monsters) called Abe no Seimei who is looking for his memories by making contact
and combating with yōkai(monsters). Players could get Shikigami (the role on
the card that used to fight with yōkai or other players) by drawing on a blue card. There
are four levels of cards, which are N, R, SR, SSR. The SSR card is the most
rare card. However it does not mean SSR is the best or most powerful card. Each
card has its position; some R and SR cards are very useful as well.
The features of Yin-Yang-Shi
Besides the use of intellectual
property of The Tale of Genji, there are still
three main factors that attract people to play this game, the cast, the
game images and the diversified card. There are lots of famous Japanese Voice-over
actors dubbing for Yin-Yang-Shi, such as Kugimiya Rie, Ishida Akira, Mizuki
Nana， and Fukuyama
Jun and so on. Also the game images are very exquisite. Each Shikigami has their
own voice when they are fighting or telling their stories. For some players,
they are addicted to collecting Shikigami. To collect all the Shikigami is very difficult also very
expensive. It takes about 150 dollars to draw cards 40 times. You may not get
any SSR in 40 times, and there are 76 different Shikigami in total at this
moment (10 SSR, 27 SR, 27 R, and 12 N). For some other players, they may be
interested in training Shikigami and have a combat with other players. For
other players, they may be interested in the story line of Yin-Yang-Shi,
players could unlock new story by finishing some missions which is the use of “blockages”
that mentioned in week11’s lecture.
The reasons why Yin-Yang-Shi could be succeed
Yin-Yang-Shi could be succeed
is not a happenstance. The game itself was attractive, however, the operator
also used good skills and methods to propagandize and popularize. The
"hypodermic needle theory" implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences.
The picture above shows the SR Shikigami collection, on the right bottom, there is two share button that players could share their collection interface to Weibo or WeChat. (screenshot by myself)
First of all, they have decided
a specific user group - people who have huge interest on Japanese animations.
For this kind of people, usually they are loyal, jealous, closed, fastidious
and tolerant. Both the character of audiences and the celebrity charm made
Yin-Yang-Shi famous for a while at the beginning. One of the features of Web
2.0 is that users could be in control (Thackeray.R, Neiger. L, 2008). Then before the game was launched, the operator
posted an advertising video on Bilibili.com which is a very famous ACG
(Animation, Comic, Game) website in China. Then, they also hired two well-known
uploaders to make a fan song for Yin-Yang-Shi. Ian Spero Merlin Stone
(2004) stated that consumer spending is strongly influenced by peer group
pressure and internally defined values – not flash gadgets. As a result, famous uploaders
were joining in, which made Yin-Yang-Shi more and more well known. They also
held various off-line activities, such as fan illustration collection, fan song
competition etc. Now, Yin-Yang-Shi has become a conversation topic, even a way
to get in a social circle and socialize.
Therefore, the success of
Yin-Yang-Shi is not only because of the good game, but also because of the good marketing.
