CEDEC2014 opening

"Fleet Collection", hereinafter referred to as "Ship Colle". Since its inception in 2013, it has grown in popularity, and as of August 2014, in just over a year, the game has been logged in by 2.2 million accounts, and it has shaken up the entire gaming industry as a veritable popular game. The game has created many miracles, but behind its popularity lies many hidden secrets.

Anyone who has played this game will probably experience that the paid elements of the ship colle are much less than other browser games and social games, and even the operation official has advised people on Twitter not to rely too much on the paid elements. Overall, it looks like it's a completely free game. According to the operation official, the game does not rely on internal charging props to make profits, but through the peripheral products and composite media plans of the game, to achieve a business method of generating income by royalties. This particular "income theory" has become a hot topic in the game industry and even outside the game industry for a while. In the end, can such a revenue theory really generate revenue? How does it do it?

At yesterday's CEDEC2014 on September 2 (a special discussion of the Game Developers Forum, which is the largest game developer forum in Japan, held in Yokohama this year, this year's 16th edition, the second largest in the world after GDC), Mr. Kensuke Tanaka, General Manager of the Fleet Collection Development Headquarters of Kadokawa Games, MR. MICHIO OKAMIYA, DIRECTOR OF POWERCHORDSTUDIO, THE DIRECTOR OF THE NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT, WAS ALSO PRESENT AND GAVE A TALK ABOUT HOW THE TWO WORKED TOGETHER TO CREATE THIS FABULOUS GAME.

"Ship Colle" born by accident

Before the two began their speeches, a promotional video of the ship colle was screened, which, according to Mr. Okamiya, was the original video that Tanaka had made all night long. However, this promotional video did not have much of an active opportunity. That's because, at the time of the launch of this promotional video, the game servers of Ship Colle were already saturated, and not only the promotional video, but even the plan to run ads on TV was canceled. At that time, the ship colle fell into an abnormal state, and the operating officials even begged everywhere to "not advertise". That's it, the explosive growth of the ship's popularity is completely unexpected for the producer. According to their speeches at the meeting, the idea of making the ZÒ ship CLE at the beginning was entirely due to the whims of Mr. Okamiya and Tanaka Seito Kolò.

Mr. Okamiya and Sezuto Tanaka used to be colleagues at the same game development company, but Mr. Okamiya later switched to DMM. By chance, Tanaka met Mr. Okamiya, and they immediately made an appointment to go to an izakaya for a drink. At that table, Tanaka revealed that he wanted to make a game based on a computer browser.

At that time, Tanaka already had a game that he had made out of interest, so he told Mr. Okamiya about his idea. It is said that after hearing this, Mr. Okamiya said on the spot that the game was worth making. Tanaka confessed, "I thought he said it because he didn't have a clear mind for a while after drinking. Originally, we usually go to karaoke when we meet, but if we hadn't gone to drink this time, we probably wouldn't have been born this game. Looking back on the trajectory of the birth of this game, Tanaka Suto admits that "the beginning of this game was indeed an accident."

Although the development of the game was carried out in a hurry, it still did not meet the scheduled release date of March 2013, and finally launched on April 23, a month later. However, in fact, at this time, the number of "changed" forms of some ship girls was only half completed, and the operator saw that the level of the gamer's ship mother continued to rise, so he had to hurriedly continue to rush to work on the rest of the work.

Some ship girls,After the transformation, the performance will be greatly improved.,But the operation later found that the improvement was too large.,When I plan to correct the number of jù, it's too late.,Because many players have already completed the transformation.。 At the meeting, Tanaka reflected, "It was too late."

Game systems, monetization paths, and characters

As mentioned above, Ship Colle was a rush game in the early days and couldn't get out on time, but the game can be divided into three parts. Tanaka said, "The three elements are: 'game system', 'revenue generation', and 'characters'."

In terms of the game system, Mr. Okamiya proposed to make it a card game. Tanaka and Mr. Okamiya themselves are very fond of simulation games, but compared to a certain card game that was very popular at the time, Ship Colle is really not suitable for wide promotion, but suitable for a small number of warship enthusiasts. Therefore, Ship Colle was originally designed with the goal of a sophisticated simulation game, and later introduced the form of a card game with the addition of Mr. Okamiya's Kenyì. Then there is the way to generate income, which is probably an iron principle that cannot be explained: you can't lose money. As a result, Ship Colle needed a way to generate revenue that would allow the game to stand on its own feet, and this iron principle ultimately influenced Ship Colle's entire game. Finally, there is the character, which Tanaka says: "The positioning of the character is like the engine that drives the game system and the way to generate revenue."

If you study the ship colle from these three aspects, you will find that it is not much different from ordinary social games. However, the most important feature of the ship colle is that the comprehensive use of development and operation is simply the setting of "operation of the town guard". Mr. Okamiya said, "The role of the town keeper is limited to strategic guidance, and it is an organization that realizes the trinity of development, operation, and service."

Tanaka continues to analyze these three systems, and the game is composed of precise calculations, so the whole game is full of values. Therefore, in addition to being classified as a browser game, Ship Colle can also be classified as a strategy simulation game. Ship Colle attaches great importance to static elements such as pre-battle preparation, military stations, and strategy, but weakens the combat gameplay that many games attach great importance to. In order to compensate for the lack of dynamic elements, the game uses a lot of voice actors, making Ship Colle a game that "talks all day".

In addition, the game also puts forward the concept of "not pursuing KPIs" (KPI: important performance indicators), which does not mean that the company does not pay attention to revenue generation, but the operator only earns the expenses necessary for operation, and focuses on how to make the game interesting and fun, rather than blindly pursuing KPI improvement like other games. Mr. Okamiya said, "The point of this project is to pursue a purely user experience." Therefore, the game does not contain game content that you have to pay for.

Finally, the ship mother is one of the biggest highlights of this work. At that time, one of the problems that plagued the production staff was how to make players feel the improvement space of the ship's mother, so that they could continue to invest their enthusiasm in the ship's mother. Therefore, the characters are set to a level promotion system, and while the relationships between the characters are basically designed based on historical facts, some reverie spaces and volcanic lines are also incorporated to attract players, and by the way, the secondary creation of the work is also possible.

Half a million people log in to the game every day, the future of the ship colle

When it went live on April 23, 2013, there were about 5,000 players who signed up in advance, and 8,000 in the first month of launch. "At that time, I wanted the game to have 100,000 players, and then an average of 20,000 players per day," said Tanaka. But around June, the number of gamers began to rise dramatically, and by the end of the summer, there had been a million players. Due to the overload of game servers, the operator also closed the game at one point and quadrupled the number of game servers, but until now, the number of game servers has not kept up with the explosive growth of players. In May 2014, the number of registered players reached 2 million, and it is now said that it has reached 2.2 million.

Although the growth rate of gamers has slowed down, it is still worth noting, because although the scale of gamers has reached 2.2 million, it still maintains a certain growth rate, and the monthly active users have reached about 40%~50%, and the daily active users have also remained at the level of 50%. That's one million people playing every month, and 500,000 more every day. This kind of continuous enthusiasm has not diminished even after more than a year and a half, and I believe that it is also thanks to the three major parts mentioned by Tanaka Setsuto and the management organization that runs the town guard.

Ship Colle will air a TV anime in January next year, and a new game on the PSVita platform, Ship Colle, will be released next spring. Where does the future of the ship colle, or where will the ship colle? We are looking forward to seeing more innovations and more brilliant "Fleet Collection"!