Abstract:
The number of online players in the game has exceeded 600,000. The "second college student in the village" who has attracted much attention in the gaming industry finally handed in his paper today. On October 29, the domestic 3A martial arts action game "Shadow Blade Zero" was officially released, landing on PC and PlayStation 5 platforms, and soon topped the Steam global best-selling list. One hour after the release, the number of simultaneous online players on Steam exceeded 300,000; as of 20:00 that day, the highest number of players on Steam had exceeded 600,000.
There is also a lot of excitement outside the game. Many related topics have been on the hot search. Feng Ji, the producer of "Black Myth: Wukong" (hereinafter referred to as "Black Myth") and the founder of Game Science, also posted a recommendation. Netizens joked that this is "the first college student in the village" to send blessings to the second one.
The industry has a lot of expectations for "Shadow Blade Zero". After "Black Myth", the market has been waiting for another work that can prove the strength of domestic 3A, and "Shadow Blade Zero" has been placed in the former's frame of reference from media ratings to the number of players to sales expectations.
At present, the overseas PC version of "Shadow Blade Zero" has surpassed "Black Myth" in media ratings, but player evaluations are still divided. Whether it can replicate the former's sales and commercial results remains to be tested by the market.
Game industry analyst Zhang Shule told China Business News that the start of "Shadow Blade Zero" is not the peak. Public memory often only remembers the first one as "Black Monkey", and it is difficult to remember the second one. The release date is only the first step. To truly break the circle, you need to follow the path taken by "Black Monkey", inherit and surpass it. Investors in the game industry mentioned to reporters that it would be difficult for "Shadow Blade Zero" to reach the sales volume of "Black Myth", but sales of 10 million copies in the first year are promising. The game is "unique and well-completed."
The score exceeds that of "Black Myth", and players' reputations are divided
Before its official release, there was a lot of discussion about "Shadow Blade Zero" in the industry. Some people compared its pre-order numbers, while others compared its media ratings.
According to data analysis website Alinea Analytics, as of October 20, the pre-sale sales of "Shadow Blade Zero" have reached 500,000 copies, with pre-order revenue of approximately US$24 million (approximately RMB 160 million), and the number of Steam wishlists reaching 2.5 million. Taking the 70 days before release as a node, its sales volume during the same period is approximately 73% of that of "Black Myth".
In terms of pricing, "Shadow Blade Zero" continues the price range similar to "Black Myth": PC digital standard version is 268 yuan, deluxe version is 328 yuan; the physical collector's edition gift box for collectors is priced at 1,199 yuan, and is limited to 20,000 sets worldwide.
Media reviews have further raised players’ expectations. Metacritic, a game review aggregation website, shows that the average score of the PC version of "Shadow Blade Zero" is 88 points, which is higher than the previous score of 81 points for the PC version of "Black Myth".
However, player ratings are more divided. As of press time, "Shadow Blade Zero" has received more than 3,700 player reviews on Steam, with a favorable rating of approximately 78%. Among the first batch of players who entered the game, some thought it was more fun and had a lower barrier to entry than "Black Myth", while others criticized the sense of attack, narrative writing and game rhythm.
Among the hot reviews in the Sream community, some players reported that "the prologue experience of the game is poor, and the overall action experience is good, but the impact of killing monsters is fluttering. The game has a score of 8-8.5, but the full score is a bit too much, and the advantages and disadvantages are obvious." This player believes that domestic games have a long way to go, and there are still many gaps between them and traditional 3A manufacturers in many details.
A serious player published a review of about a thousand words long, thinking that "Shadow Blade Zero" would be a good game, but he refunded the game due to some reasons, including the text of the character dialogue being too plain and losing the sense of substitution, the slow pace of the game, etc.
The first-day evaluation is not enough to draw a final conclusion for a large-scale stand-alone game, but it also shows that the players of the game are more diverse, and their feedback is not exactly the same as the public expectations established by media reviews. The subsequent direction depends on the actual experience of the players.
The selling point of "Shadow Blade Zero" is an action experience with the temperament of a Chinese kung fu movie. The game was developed by Beijing Lingyoufang and based on Unreal Engine 5. It builds an imaginary world that combines Chinese martial arts and steampunk elements. Players play the role of a swordsman who has suffered a severe heart injury and has only 66 days left to live. During the pursuit and escape, he uncovers the conspiracy shrouding the martial arts world.
In order to make this martial arts adventure possible, the team invested a lot of production resources. According to Liang Qiwei, founder and CEO of Lingyoufang, the total research and development cost of the game is between 300 million and 400 million yuan. This is close to the total development cost of "Black Myth".
The day before the release, Liang Qiwei published an article reviewing the development process: thousands of hours of motion capture, visiting Chinese towns and mountain villages for 3D scanning, and inviting Guangdong lion dance masters, Emei swordsman masters, and Shaolin Temple monks to guide lion dance, sword formation, and boxing respectively. The martial arts motion capture team led by action director Yang Liu, also under the guidance of Donnie Yen's consultant, created a large number of attack, defense, dodge, combo and execution actions for the game.
The high-investment development is backed by well-known capital in the industry. Tencent is one of the important investors of Lingyoufang. In 2021, it completed a strategic investment of hundreds of millions of yuan, providing key financial and resource support for the 3A-level development of "Shadow Blade Zero". In addition, Lingyoufang’s early investors include ZhenFund, NetEase Capital, Hero Entertainment, etc.
In the special acknowledgment list of the game "Shadow Blade Zero", "half of the people" in the domestic and overseas gaming industry appear, including Tencent Senior Vice President Ma Xiaoyi, Game Science founder Feng Ji, MiHoYo co-founder Liu Wei, Culuo Games CEO Li Songlun, Hero Games founder Wu Dan, Xindong Network co-founder Huang Yimeng and others. The release of a domestic 3A model affects not only the development team, but also peers who are paying attention to this track.
It is difficult to copy after breaking the circle, domestic 3A needs more recognition
For "Shadow Blade Zero", the inevitable comparison is "Black Myth".
Public data shows that the cumulative sales of "Black Myth: Wukong" across all platforms exceeded 30 million copies, of which the sales volume on the Steam platform exceeded 23 million copies, with revenue exceeding US$1.1 billion, setting a number of domestic buyout game records. Whether "Shadow Blade Zero" can achieve the results of "Black Myth" has become the focus of attention.
Some industry insiders believe that the success of "Black Myth" is phenomenal: the cognitive basis of the Journey to the West theme, the breakthrough significance of domestic 3A, and on this basis, it has attracted much attention and broken the circle. It has the right time, place and people, which together constitute a market window that is difficult to copy. Latecomers can learn from its development and distribution experience, but it will be difficult to replicate that breakthrough.
Investors told reporters that although it will be difficult for "Shadow Blade Zero" to reach the sales volume of "Black Myth", there is still hope of selling 10 million copies in the first year. Other industry insiders said that the pre-order performance of the game has been good and it has accumulated early momentum. Next, it depends on whether word-of-mouth can support continued sales; if the final sales volume can reach half of "Black Myth", that is, 15 million copies, it will be considered a huge success.
Zhang Shule told China Business News that the public is often more likely to remember works that are the first to break through. If "Shadow Blade Zero" wants to further break through the industry, it needs to find its own level of recognition. He compared it to the "second star" in China's gaming industry: just like a team cannot only have forwards, each star must also have its own unique skills.
In his opinion, the appeal of the two games is different. "Black Myth" opened up the market with the help of Chinese classical mythology and Wukong IP, while "Shadow Blade Zero" highlights Chinese martial arts action blockbusters, like a steampunk version of the game "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and has the opportunity to attract more overseas players through the kung fu theme.
Zhang Shule analyzed that from the perspective of communication potential alone, "Shadow Blade Zero" can be comparable to "Black Myth", and the popularity on the first day of release is a reflection.
After the game was launched, Feng Ji posted an article, mentioning that he and Liang Qiwei had known each other many years ago, "We both reached the same destination by different paths. At some point in time, we both decided to do what we liked more." He believes that for China's stand-alone content creators, the current era is a better era, but also a more difficult era.
The good side is that China has abundant talent reserves, a huge local market and convenient global distribution channels. There is no zero-sum game in stand-alone games, and the supply of high-quality products has been insufficient for a long time. However, the difficulty lies in the long development cycle of stand-alone games, the high experience threshold, the well-informed players, and the endless emergence of new entertainment methods competing for users' time.
Latecomers are enjoying the market opened by "Black Myth" and are also facing expectations that will be further raised by it.
In the past two years, after "Black Myth", many players have entered the AAA game industry, including "Return to Tang Dynasty", "Tide of Annihilation", "Autumn Sound: Jin Yiwei" and other Chinese self-developed stand-alone projects have gradually entered the public eye.
Some people in the publishing industry told China Business News that "Black Myth" has changed the external environment of domestic stand-alone games. Whether it is players who are willing to pay for domestic buy-out games, or the scale of investment by leading manufacturers in the stand-alone field, as well as industry investment and publicity efforts, etc., have been improved, and more practitioners are joining.
He judged that 2027-2028 will be the short-term explosion point for stand-alone games. A number of projects that have been launched in the past few years will enter the online phase in the next two years.
When more works come to the market, it may no longer matter who is the next "Black Myth". What is more meaningful is, can domestic 3A companies with different themes and different teams find players and get enough returns to support the next work? This is a more virtuous cycle for the industry.
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