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Text/Isaac

yesterday(August 4)At 2pm, Tencent first revealed a self-developed two-dimensional game "Virtual Ring". Looking at the entire history of two-dimensional games, this is definitely a very special product, because the main characters in the game are not designed out of thin air, nor are they various anthropomorphic, but virtual anchors who can perform and show talents in real life. This means that you can play this character when you open the game, and you can seamlessly connect to her live broadcast on Bilibili after closing the game.

This feels like the NBA, FIFA, and League of Legends Esports Manager, which turned the real-life "all-star lineup" into a game. But before Virtual Reality, no one would have thought that V-Circle could take advantage of the momentum of the second dimension and have such high-level treatment...

In the past, it was said that 2D players seek value in the virtual world. Now, with the release of Virtual Realm, I really can’t tell the difference between the virtual world and reality. So since the release of the PV yesterday, the entire V circle has been echoing one sentence:The person who came up with this plan is truly an angel.。

As the name suggests, this is a game with virtual anchors at its core - Virtual Circle, or V Circle. To this end, Tencent has teamed up with several companies with virtual anchor businesses and also contacted many individuals for cooperation. The list of thanks at the end already includes most of the well-known producers and top anchors in V Circle.

The official also mentioned that the game will start small-scale internal testing this year. If the recruitment goes smoothly, they will start the first test at the beginning of next year and officially launch it at the end of next year or the beginning of the year after.

Such a bold idea and a luxurious lineup are enough to make "Void Ring" a hot topic. So you can see that the official B station account has quickly grown to 100,000 followers, the PV playback volume has exceeded 3 million, and TapTap and Haoyou Kuaibao have both released the reservation interface. A variety of reviews, complaints and frame-by-frame analysis videos are also flying all over the sky.

I have to say that the quality of this PV itself is good. With the blessing of the 3D rendering and 2D art style, the personality of each character is very distinct, and many of the anchor's classic jokes are well interspersed in the video. For example, Shan Bao is a "thrifty" person. She once carried a bag of free mineral water that others didn't want home. Later, she was teased in the live broadcast that she would pick up bottles everywhere to make a living. So she also showed her true nature in the PV and went straight to the mineral water bottle on the table.

PV screen and live slice screen

There are countless other famous scenes and easter eggs, such as Xingtong's "Okay, little stars", Haizi's "Are you sick?", Shizuku Ruru's "The Chosen Country V"... All fans will smile knowingly when they see them. But I believe that these are distinctive enough features in most second-tier games, and they are attractive even to players who have not seen V.

And you, as a head coach in the game, will lead these "battle idols" to victory.

According to the information revealed in the official live broadcast last night, "Hyperlink" has already taken on a relatively clear form. It's a bit complicated to say, if you insist on making an analogy, this game can be seen as Mugen's battle + "Ou of the Sacred Beasts"'s strategy construction + "Uma Musume"'s development and system framework.

First of all, Mugen is an open platform for fighting games, where players can create their favorite characters and let them fight freely in the game.Mugen's BattleThis means that in Virtual Reality, your character will duel on the battlefield like in a fighting game. However, the personalities of these virtual anchors usually don't involve fighting, so Virtual Reality needs to fill this part with a lot of relevant content, such as weapons, skills, characteristics, etc.

Mugen

If the battles were completely like those in fighting games, the operating threshold of "Hyperloop" would be a bit high. Considering that it is a dual platform game of PC + mobile games, and that anchors will definitely play it in the future, the production team turned the battle part into automatic battle + performance of the characters.

On this basis, players do not need complicated operations, they just need to do something likeStrategy building of "King of Beasts": Before the battle, you just need to develop your character, configure a four-person team to form a build, and formulate a battle strategy based on the characteristics of the enemy. However, the strategy configuration of "King of the Sacred Beasts" is so detailed that it is at the "programming" level. "Virtual Ring" must be simplified to some extent based on its own situation.

Pre-war configuration of "King of the Sacred Beasts"

In battle, players can also switch battle strategies through limited operations to instantly affect the development of the game. From the PV, we can see that the design of these features and strategies also combines the memes or characteristic elements of the V circle and anchors.

As forThe development and system framework of Uma MusumeThe official has not yet released a detailed explanation for this part. The following is Grape Jun's guess based on the PV content:

On the one hand, the overall gameplay of "Hyperlink" may be similar to "Uma Musume", with the season cycle as the core - there are also elements of time cycle in the PV, which may become one of the packaging of "Hyperlink". On this basis, players choose characters, enter daily training sessions, and after a certain period of time, they begin to participate in various levels of competitions until the VFC competition to verify the results of team building and development. If you win, you can also watch the team members' "championship ceremony and special performance" in the end.

If I lose... restart?

On the other hand, "Hyperlink" certainly cannot copy "Uma Musume" and must make some new designs based on its own situation. The production team also mentioned in the live broadcast that they will make some optimizations related to reducing the burden.

In fact, with the V-circle as the core theme, "Hyperloop" is destined to do many different things. For example, it was mentioned in the live broadcast: players can get all the characters in the game for free. These characters are not divided into SR/SSR grades, and their strength depends more on the player's investment in the development process. In addition, the official adjustments in each season, although there will inevitably be some differences in strength between the characters, a dynamic balance will be formed.

At the same time, these characters have skins of different grades. The skins are not only good-looking, but can also be used as independent forms to fight. If you are a single player, you can collect several forms and let the same character form a team.

According to the anchor, there is also a favorability system between these characters. A high favorability will have a buff bonus, similar to the bond effect in "The King of Sacred Beasts". As for those anchors who are familiar with each other in real life and have little stories, whether there will be special interactions in the game is unknown at present.

After reading the basic framework of the game, I don't know what you think. But I believe that most people who know a little bit about the second game or the V circle will sigh: This is too crazy, the person who came up with this game is really a genius.

This idea and framework has many appealing aspects. For example, the most typical one is that in terms of characters, these virtual anchors all have their own personalities and fan groups, most of which have been operating for a long time and have even gone viral. In the second-hand game circle, this may be the first time that a second-hand game can completely put the right to interpret the characters outside the game like "Hyperloop", and the game only makes some adaptations and designs based on the outside world. This is too avant-garde.

The comment from the TapTap player above is very subtle and classic: "The characters really have their own lives" - they killed the competition in terms of subject matter, and successfully created an outrageously general second-tier game that is neither ML nor male/female oriented/fu/, while maintaining the overall ecosystem of still catering to otakus. This is the only second-tier game that does not sell ML/fu/fu at all, but is also not "hardcore and not otaku-friendly".

Ideally, Virtual Ring will have a large number of audiences with high paying power from the beginning, which will save a considerable amount of publicity and promotion costs in the early stage of the game; after the second-tier game players and general players are attracted, there will be unlimited consumption content - live broadcasts, videos, and secondary creations, and the quality of these contents is not inferior to the quality of the top second-tier game content. In this positive cycle, both the product and the V circle will benefit greatly.

Some secondary creations made by a Sixi Wanzi fan

But from another perspective, "Hyperloop" also has many inherent flaws.

For example, the profession of virtual anchors has many uncertainties, and the fan groups often have conflicts or rhythms. Not to mention that after combining with the second game, the second-dimensional players also have many thunder points. If one is not handled well, "Virtual Ring" may offend both the manager and the second-game players.

It has to spend more time on the design of framework, gameplay, payment, etc., because in such a new model, there is basically no product that can be directly referenced. In addition, even if the model is successful, how to gather enough anchors - at least a strong enough initial lineup - is also a problem.

For a project like this, I don’t think anyone, let alone Tencent, would try it among all the second-tier game manufacturers in the country.

But as fate would have it, this is really a project that only Tencent can do.

It is not developed by Tencent's four major studio groups, but by CDD under IEG.(Content Development Department, Content Ecology Department)Independent research and development. This department is actually the team behind Xingtong. In China, it is no exaggeration to say that they have the strongest technical strength and production pipeline in the virtual anchor business.

Star pupil

The project of "Virtual Ring" was launched last year. From the beginning, they had already thought of the overall framework and quietly prepared for a whole year. According to the live broadcast, Xingtong signed a confidentiality agreement of several million yuan for this project, while Guang Mang, the general manager of Tencent Interactive Entertainment's content ecology department, even had an unlimited amount in his agreement.

He also mentioned in the live broadcast that the process of convincing their superiors was difficult because just explaining this product was already very difficult.

Lao Jiu, a colleague of mine in the game project team of "Virtual Ring", is a senior audience of V Circle. When he first heard Guang Mang's idea, he also thought it was outrageous. He even criticized it passionately, saying, "What the hell are you doing? How can this be done?" He also raised a lot of doubts.

But Guangguang asked a question: If it is really made, do you want to play it? After hearing this, Laojiu was convinced. Guangguang also said, just think of us as the journey to the West to obtain Buddhist scriptures. There are 81 difficulties on the way. Anyway, we just need to find a way to solve them.

Of course, they are not just talking about it. As a group of people who have been paying attention to and working in the V circle for many years, CDD has also given a lot of thought to those practical issues.

For example, someone asked if there are male Vs in "Hyperloop"? Guangming replied: Only female Vs, because the scene would be too chaotic if they were mixed together; someone also asked if there is a chance for individuals to join "Hyperloop"? Guangming said: They don't want to make it a carnival for corporate forces, so they contacted many individuals in the early stage, and they can also sign up to join on the official website.

Regarding the question about the characters, Xingtong also responded during the live broadcast: Graduated anchors can also join the game depending on their own wishes and copyright ownership; if the anchor makes a mistake in real life but the crime is not punishable by death, some image elements will be modified in the game to make a distinction; but if a red line is crossed, such as the person in the game committing a crime, "Hyperloop" will remove the character and give compensation to the player.

In terms of commercialization, Guang Mang said that the entire payment model of "Virtual Ring" has not been completely finalized. But what is certain is that it will not be consistent with the commercialization template of traditional second-party games/traditional card RPGs, but will be designed in a unique way based on the actual situation of the V circle. At the same time, the money earned from the game will also be shared with the cooperating V circle anchors in various forms.

As for why they would take such a big risk to undertake such a crazy project, it has to do with the ecology of the V circle and CDD's ambition.

During the live broadcast, Guang Mang and the project team mentioned that the consumption content of the V circle is currently concentrated on live broadcasts and videos. After years of investment, they found that based on the foundation of the V circle, even if the stage performances are beautiful, it is difficult to stand out again and attract more people. Regarding this problem, they thought about it for a long time, but there is no particularly good answer. The power of Tencent alone is not enough to break through the bottleneck of the V circle.

At this time, they thought of games - games are a new form that does not conflict with live broadcasts and videos, and are also the most profitable form in the two-dimensional field. Since Tencent has such technical strength and pipelines, and CDD has unique appeal and connections in the V circle, they might as well work with partners in the circle to grow bigger and stronger.

Compared to Ultraman Gathering by fans

During the live broadcast, they mentioned that games can be the third stage of the V circle. What "Virtual Ring" needs to do is to unite active virtual anchors and operate them as a big IP.

And the game is just the first step of this vision. If "Hyperloop" can make money and feed everyone, they also plan to improve the overall quality and production form of the V circle, and make animations, TV series, concerts and more.

I have nothing to say when I hear about such a huge plan. I can only say it is really crazy. But if there is anyone in China who will really do it and has the potential to do it, it is probably only Tencent.