Zheng Bin, CEO of Milo Games: How can we link up movies and games to recreate a hit like "Flower Thousand Bones"?

How can we link up movies and games to achieve a hit like the mobile game "Flower Thousand Bones"? After the 2nd FGIS and 3rd Jinkou Awards Ceremony on December 26, the reporter conducted an exclusive interview with Zheng Bin, CEO of Mile Games, a mobile game developer of "Lao Jiumen". Zheng Bin said that the influence of IP itself has declined. Only games adapted from head-effect dramas are likely to become blockbusters this year, and the mobile game market may face industry barriers within two years.

Last year, a movie "Flower Thousand Bones" became popular. The mobile game of the same name that is synchronized with TV series has created the myth of 500 million yuan in three months and an average monthly flow of nearly 200 million yuan. For a time,"movie and game linkage" became a hot word of the year.

Since the beginning of this year, the popularity of movie-game linkage has remained undiminished, but until the end of the year, there was no such hit as "Flower Thousand Bones".

At the online audio-visual conference on December 9, well-known screenwriter and producer Bai Yicong once said that so far, only "Flower Thousand Bones" has been truly successful in the video-game linkage. It is also adapted from a large IP with over 10 billion views. This year's summer hit drama "Lao Jiumen" has also achieved good results, but there is still a certain gap between the mobile game "Hua Qiangu".

So, how can we link up movies and games to achieve a hit like the mobile game "Flower Thousand Bones"?

To this end, after the 2nd FGIS and 3rd Jinkou Awards Ceremony on December 26, the reporter conducted an exclusive interview with Zheng Bin, CEO of Mile Games, a mobile game developer of "Lao Jiumen".

Zheng Bin said that the influence of IP itself has declined. Only games adapted from head-effect dramas are likely to become blockbusters this year, and the mobile game market may face industry barriers within two years.

Choose IP: Drama reporter who only works on head effects

: The mobile game of "Lao Jiumen" was launched in July. It has been five months since then. What is the situation now?

Zheng Bin: From our internal perspective, the TV series "Lao Jiumen" has exceeded expectations, but the adapted mobile game did not meet expectations. There are mainly the following reasons. One of the more important ones is that our game may not be the same as general movie-game linkage. We have made some new attempts, such as deeply restoring the entire plot, while "Flower Thousand Bones" is more gamified, and the new attempt we want is to serve the script more.

At present, it seems that this path has not gone smoothly because the game model of "Flower Thousand Bones" is relatively mature. In terms of the entire magnitude, the production volume of "Hua Qiangu" reaches 500 million yuan in three months, while our production volume is less than half of that of "Hua Qiangu". There is still a certain gap. This year I learned that there are at least 10 visible video-game linkage products, but their performance may not meet expectations, so there are still many places worth thinking about.

Reporter: At present, except for "Flower Thousand Bones", no other movie-game linkage seems to be particularly successful. What is the reason?

Zheng Bin: The influence of IP itself has declined now. This drop should be put in quotation marks because its head effect will be very obvious, which is basically consistent with the game we are making now. There will be no more than 5 dramas that will be remembered by the audience in a year. As a result, only the games adapted from these 5 dramas are likely to become hits this year and can they become games of the level of "Flower Thousand Bones". The movie and game products of some well-known manufacturers are definitely much stronger than ours in terms of R & D strength. However, due to the low popularity of the drama, the final results are difficult to meet expectations.

As for the matter of cinema-game linkage, we are also doing screening now. When we do it in the future, we can only make adaptations of these dramas with head effects, and actually don't do anything else.

IP adaptations: User rankings are very important

Reporter: What are the difficulties in adapting film and television dramas into mobile games?

Zheng Bin: When we make a movie and game linkage, we need to serve four groups of players. The first group is core game players and has strong payment capabilities; the second group is ordinary game players; the third group is drama fans and fans of film and television dramas; The fourth group is Xiaobai, who may not have played a game. When making games, we must grasp the order. Ranking is very important which user the game serves first. "Lao Jiumen" ranks first to serve drama fans, and "Hua Qiangu" ranks the core players of the game first.

When we were making "Old Nine Gates", we thought about whether there was such a possibility to satisfy two groups of players in one game at the same time when the movie and game linkage was linked. First of all, I think there is no problem with the ranking of "Hua Qiangu". At least 50% of the game's content is intended to serve core gamers because they are contributing revenue. But can we use 20% to 30% of the content to serve this script, whether we can make some spoilers in the game, or expand some plots that cannot be seen in TV dramas?"Old Nine Gates" has done this, and the effect is still OK, but the problem it brings is also obvious, that is, core game users will find the protracted plot a bit boring and easy to be lost.

Reporter: What types of IP are suitable for the development of the entire industry chain?

Zheng Bin: I think we still need to be selective. Xian Xia and martial arts are extremely suitable for adapting them into games, especially some online novels, because the author has set up the upgrade of fighting monsters, what props to use, and how long to upgrade them. Very suitable. However, this type of IP is very expensive and the acquisition cost is very high. Moreover, if good IP is taken by large manufacturers, some of our small and medium-sized manufacturers cannot get it.

Therefore, for small and medium-sized manufacturers, they can consider taking the wrong approach and making some new attempts. In fact, in "Lao Jiumen", we also made an attempt, which is the "Republic of China Style". In the game industry, there is basically no particularly good end games, page games or mobile games. How to shape the concept of "Republic of China Style" is a challenge for our team. Of course, there are some relationships that are difficult to handle in the process of doing it. We are very cautious and try some new segments and routes. The advantage of doing these themes is that there is no competition or there is little competition.

Reporter: Can you disclose the current revenue situation of "Lao Jiumen" mobile game?

Zheng Bin: The investment cost of "Lao Jiumen" is very high, with research and development exceeding 30 million yuan. We think this product should bring about 20 million yuan in profits to the company within one year. From the current perspective, it should not be a big problem.

The mobile game market will form industry barriers

Reporter: What do you think will happen to the mobile mobile game market in 2017? Can we usher in an explosion period?

Zheng Bin: I think 2017 will definitely be worse than this year. From an economic perspective, in fact, the stories of mobile games are not sexy nowadays, nor are the video-game linkage. This will inevitably lead to less capital entering this field. The vicious result is that it is difficult for entrepreneurs and practitioners to get money. In 2017, there may be more small mobile game R & D companies left behind.

Reporter: Does this mean that the mobile game market will shrink?

Zheng Bin: The market will not shrink, but will increase, but it will gradually form industry barriers and the entry threshold will become higher and higher. For example, very few people are just starting to invest in end-games and web-games. It's not that they can't do it but dare not do it. The investment cost is too high and the risks are high.

I think mobile games will soon form such barriers. One result of this is that companies that survive will get better and better. A web game industry gathering is just a matter of two tables, but I think it's almost enough to move five tables and six tables.

Reporter: From the perspective of game companies, what do you think of the future of video-game linkage?

Zheng Bin: Maybe as it develops in the future, more people will enter from movies and television to games, and fewer people will engage in video-game linkage. I haven't found any movie game IP that is doing well this year, and it may be colder next.

It is better to initiate the film-game linkage by film and television producers. For example, a film and television company invests 150 million yuan in making dramas and sells 300 million yuan, and it will get a 200% return, which is equivalent to doubling your income. A friend in the film and television industry told me that I have already invested 150 million yuan anyway, and adding it to 170 million yuan would not be complicated. 20 million yuan to games is similar to the feeling of making film and television peripherals, losing 300 million yuan in revenue and earning high added value, so there may be more film and television drama investors participating in the movie and game linkage in the future.

The game industry can act as a contractor, and we may do this next. For example, some large film and television companies invest in a drama and allocate a cost of 10 million yuan to us to do it, but in fact the cost may be 8 million yuan, so the profit itself will be 2 million yuan. The change may be that my share ratio will become lower. Now, some CP share ratios may be about 15% of the total flow. If we just undertake the production, we can only get 10%.

But the benefit is that the company survives, can still make a little profit, and there are basically no risks. However, the difficulty is that the more experienced the company has in movie game production, the more business it will do, and vice versa, it is not easy to receive such orders. This may be the reason why there will be some game companies doing this video-game linkage work in the next year.

Editor: yvette