LeTV missed the copyright of the Chinese Super League, and PPTV spent 1.35 billion yuan to take over. This seems to be a business competition among giants, and behind it is more reflecting the vigorous development of my country's sports industry. As an important part of the sports industry, Sport Game has gradually become a "soldiers' battleground" for many domestic game manufacturers.

Looking around the moment, although giants such as Tencent and Giants have been making frequent moves recently, there are not many sports games well known to players and practitioners. Among them, "The Best Lineup", which is published by Xianyu Games and developed by Aoshitang, has a total turnover of more than 200 million, is naturally the best among domestic sports games. On the occasion of the first anniversary of the game's launch, the reporter also interviewed Han Wucheng, the producer of "Best Lineup" on the project establishment, operation and future sports market changes.

Producer of the Sports Strategy Mobile Game "Best Lineup": Han Wucheng

Produced "Best Lineup" because of love, and innovatively joined QTE gameplay

When asked about the reasons for the beginning of the project of "Best Lineup", the word Han Wucheng talked the most was "love".

"The project "Best Line" was all due to our love for football. Our entire "Best Line" R&D team is a "hard old fan" who often teamed up to watch football and play football games together. At that time, we had a sudden idea and wanted to see what fun football games are there in the popular mobile game market. When we searched through the only ten football games on the market, we were very disappointed because there was no one that could be played for ten minutes. Most of the games were basically applied directly with card games, and we didn't see a sincere work. So we thought that since we love football so much, we might as well make a football game."

In "Best Team", players can win games by issuing instructions to let players activate their skills to attack or defend; they can also play the role of football managers and run their own teams to realize their dream of building a world-class football team. In fact, at the beginning of the project, Han Wucheng and his team also followed a lot of market research to determine the current full-core combat mode of "Best Lineup" QTE instant operation integrated with RPG turn-based. In response, he explained: "Why similar products are not fun is because they pay more attention to external beauty, allowing fans and players to 'watch the game' from the perspective of 'appreciation' rather than playing the game. So we decided to dig into football to make football games feel involved, so that players' active operations can affect the outcome of the game."

In fact, sports games have always been an important segment of the game market. Including FIFA, live, NBA 2K, etc., they are all game series that have been prosperous for more than ten years. Even if it isOn the mobile side, there are 1-2 sports games in the UK, the United States, Japan and the United States that can enter the top spot on their App Store best-selling lists. However, in China, sports games have always been relatively niche. How to attract a wide user group other than the core users of football games in the design of the game itself has become another problem before Han Wucheng and Ming Dynasty when the project was launched.

"Football gamers and football enthusiasts are actually two different groups. In order to balance the two, the concept of blood bars and skills is introduced in "Best Lineup". Even when not a football fan can get started quickly when the game is played. When football fans see the unique skills of "inverted gold hook" and "head dunk", they will quickly understand the usage of skills. For pan-game users, in order to maximize the operation habits of mobile game users, we carefully consider the actual experience in UI design and system operation before final development."

Continuously updating the game content keeps fresh, increasing competitive elements to retain users

The project establishment and R&D of the game are only the first step. How to attract players and do a good job in long-term operations after it is launched is the key, which also requires close cooperation between the R&D and the issuing parties. At this point, Xianyu Games and Aoshitang have undoubtedly become models of win-win cooperation in the industry. In terms of promotion, the publisher Xianyu Games launched a series of promotion activities in combination with important time nodes such as the European Cup and the Champions League, and also invited the famous domestic star Gao Lin to endorse the game and broadcast it live.

In terms of content, in addition to cooperating with the promotion and launching special themed activities, Aoshitang also constantly updates the game based on the feedback from the market and players. During the year of its launch, "Best Lineup" launched new systems and new gameplay such as coaching systems, cheerleader systems, and skill advancement systems on the original basis to maintain players' freshness and participation in the game.

Recalling the nearly 300 days and nights since its launch, the most unforgettable moment for Han Wucheng and his team was the day when "The Best Team" was officially authorized by La Liga. "As a football fan, it is of course an incredible honor to be able to cooperate with one of the five major leagues in La Liga; more importantly, it is to obtain the official authorization of La Liga, proving that our game is loved by players and recognized by professionals."

Best lineup

In the future, in addition to constantly digging deep into the game content and maintaining freshness, in recent updates, players can find that competitive gameplay such as "Community Shield" and "Champion Cup" have been added to the game. Han Wucheng also said that the biggest difference between sports games and other types of games lies in their competitiveness. The development team has also been working hard to optimize and expand the competitive parts between players and add more competitive gameplay.

The biggest challenge for sports games is the audience size at present, and there is a high probability that the future explosion will occur.Event

As a sports fan and a sports game producer, Han Wucheng also has a deeper understanding and view of the future of sports games. "At present, I think the biggest challenge for sports games is still the audience size. Sports mobile games are currently popular in the market. Among the major game lists, there are almost no traces of sports mobile games that have been at the forefront for a long time. This requires more manufacturers and high-quality sports mobile games to enter to cultivate and enhance users' awareness of sports mobile games."

But in his eyes, the outbreak of sports games in the future is also a high probability event, but like all other types of games, returning to the product is the key. "In the next few years, sports mobile games will definitely usher in an explosion. Important events such as the World Cup and the Olympics will help sports mobile games. These nodes can allow users to focus on this field, but if you want to do a good job in sports mobile games, you still need to rely on high-quality content to drive them."

At the end of the interview, the reporter also hoped that Han Wucheng could summarize the greatest insights from the "Best Lineup" in nearly three years since its establishment. After deep thought, he replied: "You cannot blindly imitate and plagiarize the products just because of the success of certain products. The products need to have their own characteristics and soul to be recognized and accepted by players. Being your own is the best."