At the end of last year, the nurturing-type game “Travel Frog” became popular among friends. With the post-00s and post-90s as the breakthrough point, it quickly opened the Chinese market. During the Spring Festival, it ranked first in China on IOS platform, and the reading volume of UGC content generated by relevant topics on Weibo exceeded 2 billion. However, it didn’t last long. After the holiday, the popularity of “Travel Frog” gradually decreased, and the current search rate of keywords on Baidu was less than 1% of the peak. So, why the rapid rise and fall of Buddhist mobile game “Travel Frog”?
True or false, the frog has its ups and downs
With the acceleration of the pace of life and the intensification of work competition, people’s sense of urgency is strengthened. Under the heavy burden, people’s favorite entertainment methods tend to be simplified and Buddhized. Complex games take too long and require too much effort, and Traveling Frog is the opposite of that, where Buddha-like gameplay fills too little spare time for young people. Under this trend, “Buddhist” mobile game “Travel Frog” jumped up.
The operation is simple, and the Buddhist play is in line with the buddhist player psychology. Players who have experienced this game know that the interface of this kind of nursing game is simple, the operation is also extremely simplified, the single-player experience mode, no network can also play. For players, this kind of game is a very good choice, neither wasting time, nor wasting energy.
In Travel Frog, there are only four things to do: pick shamrocks, entertain the occasional snail, collect mail, and pack it for its trip. When you are outside, you can check your mailbox and receive postcards from the frog during his trip. Sometimes your fellow snail will come to the courtyard. When indoors, the player can’t decide what the frog will do. The frog can be seen eating at a wooden table, watching TV on the bed, doing carpentry and crafts, reading and writing in his diary. When he travels, he decides. These can not be artificially controlled with the sexual behavior, in line with the Buddha mentality of many players.
Without the krypton gold, the Buddhist cultivation method to fuel the fire. Unlike Love and Producer, which was popular in the same period of time, non-rmb players spend a lot of time and energy completing daily tasks, but spending a lot of time can only improve their popularity. Whether they spend money or not is also directly related to the quality of items. Travel Frog, on the other hand, is not worth the money. It only takes two or three hours to get the clover to grow, and there’s no waiting time or spending money on the items. The clover alone can accumulate and buy any item in the menu. Obviously, non-kryptonian games are better suited to buddhist cultivation than kryptonian games.
No social attributes. Buddhist propaganda elicits strong social attributes. At the beginning of the year, Without any publicity or even any translation, Travel Frog steadily topped the list of free games downloaded on The APP Store in China. Perhaps even the developers didn’t expect this kind of communication, and the original stand-alone game with no social attributes has evolved into a popular online game with strong social attributes.
Travel Frog is a game with no end, no ranking. There is no need for close interaction between friends, and no need to compare with friends in the rankings, zero interaction, no social, no skills. Perhaps because of its unique style and experience, it caught the eye of players and found a new way to become popular. The two games, which had no social attributes at all, were accidentally popular in wechat moments, with young people scrambling to download them and quickly sharing them in wechat moments.
However, no matter how popular the game will inevitably be neglected, subjective existence of various shortcomings to restrict the development of the game itself. The cycle of popular games changes, and new games are constantly launched, attracting the attention of players, resulting in “Travel Frog” and other Buddhist mobile games hot and cold fast.
On the one hand, the young group that cries “Buddhism” may not really be Buddhism, and the so-called Buddhist market may also be a fake market. Conformity psychology is the main reason for the formation of pseudo market. The new term “Buddhism” originally only exists in a small number of people, but the phenomenon of following the trend is spreading more and more widely, and many young people label themselves as “Buddhism”. Young people are so dazed by the hot word brush on the Internet that they have a misunderstanding of the real “Buddhism”, especially for young people who have not had much life experience, they are not really keen on Buddhism.
From the upsurge to the cold field, the monotonous and boring experience makes players have aesthetic fatigue and thinking about practical problems, which is also the reason for the formation of “fake Buddha system” in Travel Frog. There is no rich plot, and the game itself has no social attributes. Like online dating games or e-sports games, there is no strong picture feeling when opened, or players can make friends and have a sense of honor in it, so as to meet the rigid needs of users.
On the other hand, placement games can no longer retain users with their alternative gameplay and emotional resonance. The novelty wears off once the gameplay is figured out, and the player knows all the frog’s mannerisms, with nothing new to discover. When players around them abandon the game due to lack of novelty, the “old mother” mentality also gradually disappears, and there is no emotional transmission of Travel Frog in the circle of friends, the cold end is inevitable.
Young people’s tastes change over time, and in just four months, Travel Frog is already cold. Currently, the Japanese language game is no longer listed in the Free games charts of The Apple AppStore. And Ali at this time to win the Chinese district agency, can make the temperature has to the freezing point of the “frog” turn the corner?
Ali to get back to the top of the frog
Since April 25 this year ali games officially won the “Travel Frog” China agency, May 3 on taobao in a number of entrances began limited internal testing, and on May 9, the official volume of internal testing, renamed “Travel Frog · China journey”. However, the boom of raising frogs has passed, and the downloads of this game have declined sharply. The frog chose to land in the port of Ali after crossing the ocean. Can it return to the peak of frog life?
Although Ali has a strong strength, but in the game field, Ali is still a baby, compared with Tencent, netease and other competitors, is not dominant. In the first quarter of this year, Tencent accounted for five of the top 10 mobile game revenues in iOS China, while Netease accounted for four, according to Guangfa Securities Research. Due to the short entry time, the layout of game types has not been completely improved, and the mobile games that entered the game in the previous several stages are all empty. In this situation, it is not easy for Ali to share the same share with Tencent and netease.
Competitive social mobile games gradually occupy the market, while Buddhist mobile games are weak. Competition and socializing are always fresh and exciting for players; For the game itself, it is not only the focus of the game’s own marketing to game players, but also the media channel of UGC channel content built by game players themselves. Buddhist mobile games capture the female market, while competitive social mobile games capture the male market. Obviously, competitive social mobile games can meet the entertainment needs of more people, and naturally have greater advantages than Buddhist mobile games.
Ali cannot change the reality of short life cycle of Buddhist mobile games, and it is difficult to set off a second wave after popularity. For example, angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies and Fruit Ninja, which used to be popular on the Internet, rose quickly and fell rapidly, and escaped the fate of the cold. Now, the original game has been removed, and the upgraded version still retains few users. “Travel Frog” is still unable to get rid of such fate, and ali can achieve a warm combination, it is not known at present.
In current form, “Travel Frog” want to rely on taobao to help return to the peak, is still a very difficult task. Alibaba’s game operation and development technology is not mature, other mobile games take the “big cake”, and the game itself has defects, so it cannot stabilize the market for a long time. “Travel Frog” recovery difficulties, another way to find a breakthrough or the key.
Ali’s “Travel Frog”, can achieve “second attention”?
Travel Frog’s attempt to re-open the Chinese gaming market with a light mobile focus may not work, and Alibaba is aware of this. For this kind of light mobile game with simple operation and easy aesthetic fatigue, catering to players’ taste is the key to the development of the game after the freshness period. Only by expanding the market and finding a reasonable entry point while optimizing the game can it maintain longer popularity and stabilize more users. So, with Ali’s help, how can travel Frog achieve the “second eye”?
First of all, deeply cultivate local culture, integrate Chinese elements, and seize the Chinese player market with the large and stable number of users on Taobao. Limited by language and culture in the past, there are still many users who have not been exposed to this game, and those who have been exposed to the Japanese version will also suffer from the language barrier, so the game content can be set up to meet the habits of Chinese users when launching the Chinese version.
Secondly, Ali has a wide range of business, which can extend to more industries around the GAME IP of “Travel Frog” and lead to the road of IP commercialization. Ali game related person said: “Travel Frog as an IP with a large audience, very scalable, can not only show the emotional fetters, reflect the freedom of the Buddhist attitude to life, but also scenic spots tourism, local cultural transmission, is a very high quality IP.” At present, ali electric business platform each year, 552 million active consumers, ali and this game is embedded to taobao the electric business platform, to son “frog” as the marketing points, can launch a large number of surrounding travel the frog, and cooperate with travel city, hotels, restaurants, selling the travel service, people will meet again in every aspect of life “travel” the frog.
Finally, relying on Alibaba’s previous experience in public welfare and communication channels, the game should be endowed with more functions. June 5 world environment day, ali pictures, ali fish joint of environmental protection publicity and education center, alibaba public foundation, and ali game, Scott map, taobao jointly issued “travel frog charity tour”, called on people to pay attention to the endangered species and biodiversity protection, construction of “beautiful China” together. Through the popularity of “Travel Frog”, Ali created a public welfare coat for it, increased public attention to public welfare and environmental protection, and influenced more people to devote themselves to public welfare and environmental protection. In this way, more people can understand that Travel Frog has gone beyond the essence of a game. It combines education with fun in the form of a game to deliver positive energy of public welfare and realize the sustainable development of “Travel Frog public welfare Tour”.
For Alibaba, the commercialization of content IP is only one aspect, and the pursuit of using popular IP to stimulate the public’s good behavior is a higher level. Alibaba should also consider that the game IP market in China is updated at a very fast pace, and if it doesn’t maximize its value during the hot time, the IP will be at risk of being swamped. “Travel Frog – Journey to China” can rely on Ali to build tall buildings again, laughing pride, or unknown.
Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110