, Is a very natural process. The board games are too light and lack the experience; the secret rooms are too heavy, and often need to change the internal structure of the building to achieve thematic renovation. Real-life scripts are just right, and if the plot and layout are good enough, the frequency of refurbishment can be very low. “The best thing in the industry is a script-killing shop at Bird’s Nest. It has always been on those two themes. It has been open for five or six years and it is still full. Many people are admiringly visiting.”
The script kills the experienced player “heartbroken”, and when we recall the rise of the script kills, it also provides a trajectory roughly the same as that of Amai’s memories. Compared with the real-life script kills, Heartbroken often plays the desktop script kills that do not require dress-ups and cross-scenario search, usually emphasizing the plot and reasoning experience. “The script killing in Beijing should have gradually become popular in 2018, mainly to replace the board game. You must hardly find another board game like before. It costs 50 yuan per person and can sit all afternoon. “.
Another reason why the board game bar is anxious to upgrade is the Internet. In the early years, the operators of board game bars knew that they could not make money by “turnover rate”, but at least they could hold offline games to make money. Around 2017, after the “Internet +” model was popularized and venture capital was aimed at tabletop games, the reasoning tabletop games represented by Werewolf began to move online, which further compressed the living space of offline tabletop games.
Actually, when Amai and his friends were looking for a store in Beijing in 2018, they took over an abandoned board game store.
The picture shows the movie “Brooklyn” stills
Compared with Beijing’s board game bar and escape room at the industrial upgrading node, the development trajectory of the script killing in her city is not the same, according to the memories of “Little Black Cloud,” the owner of a fourth-tier city in southern China. Too the same.
In 2017, Xiao Wuyun was introduced to script kill through a friend’s introduction. Previously, there was no script-killed shop in her city. It was a newly opened shop. The owner came back from another place. Xiao Wuyun guessed that the owner had been in contact in a big city, so he returned to his hometown to open one.
Because the development of the script-killing industry was still relatively limited, and there were fewer options for scripts and game modes, the script-killing shop was closed shortly after it opened. After 2018, local script killing shops have gradually increased; until now, this small town with a resident population of only a few million has more than a dozen shops specializing in script killing, but few bosses have previously operated board games or It’s the experience of escape room.
The development trajectories of other cultural and entertainment categories that are popular among young people in recent years have told us: sky-high rents, high manpower, congested traffic, and heavy permits are making the city’s offline culture and entertainment alive. The soil is driven from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen to the second, third, and fourth-tier cities.
Young people between 25 and 30 years old, two kinds of answers for big and small cities
While the hot trend of script killing spread to lower-tier cities, Amai’s script killing shop in Beijing opened until early 2020, and it was completely closed due to the epidemic.
At that time, his script to kill the shop was still break-even, basically able to balance the monthly rent of nearly 10,000. Human resources rely on themselves and friends to take time to operate, so the income is not as good as their normal work level. In the early days, in order to accumulate popularity, they also invested 20,000 yuan on Dianping. The decline in the flow of people during the epidemic has undoubtedly made profits far lower than expected.
However, in addition to the harsh external conditions, what is more fundamental seems to be the difference in the living conditions and mental outlook of consumers between large and small cities.
Nowadays, when friends ask Amai for some script-killing store opening experience, Amai usually advises them not to look at Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou anymore. The number of customers in second- and third-tier cities may be larger than that in first-tier cities. “This is not to say that opening a store in Wangjing, there are 15 million people in Wangjing, and these 15 million people will all play. Whether it is board games, escape rooms, or script kills, it takes time to really generate interest.”
Constrained by the high cost, the unit price of Beijing’s script can not be too low. The per capita consumption of real-scene script killing is around 300 yuan per person, and the per capita consumption of the desktop script killing store is around 150 yuan; there are also script killing shops that charge relatively lower fees due to remote locations, but that also means longer transportation time. .
Offline entertainment is something for young people, but the high cost of script killing excludes college students who have time but are shy in their pockets; every 4 or 5 hours of game time is involved in 996 Young people under high pressure are daunted. In the end, in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the target group of script killing was anchored in the age of 25 to 30, and in daily life.In addition to high-pressure work and life, there are young people who have time and energy to devote themselves to hobbies.
After screening through such a rigorous filtering funnel, the huge base of young people in first-tier cities is no longer enough to constitute a necessary condition for the prosperity and development of script killing. Coupled with the catalyst of the epidemic, Amai said that Beijing scripts who used to be in his circle to kill shop owners have closed their shops intensively this year.
For the entertainment industry, especially niche culture, the enthusiasm and effort invested by consumers will in turn affect the enthusiasm of the production side. After closing the store, Amai is often invited to go to the closed beta to kill the scripts of the new scripts, but he feels that there are fewer high-quality works and the hard-core reasoning part is weak. He believes that the entire Beijing script-killing community, from operators to creators, has become less active. “Instead, many second- and third-tier cities out of the country are doing better.”
The picture shows the stills of the movie “Which God Goes to the Village”
Little Wuyun, who runs a script-killing shop in lower-tier cities, also feels the difference between local script-killing players and those in first-tier cities. The players who often go to her store are younger, and many junior and high school students also come, as well as college students who return home during the winter and summer vacations. The low rent, manpower, and operating costs make her a unit price of RMB 6,70, which is far lower than the average unit price of Beijing and Shanghai. “It costs tens of RMB to watch a movie. It is okay”.
As for the mental exhaustion of work pressure and cost of living on young people, lower-tier cities are also more relaxed. Xiao Wuyun running scripts and killing shops is just her “side job”. In addition to the side job, she also has a regular commuting job. The commuting time is not long and the work pressure is not great. “With us, you can find the script when you go out for ten minutes. Kill the shop, not so tired.”
In addition, small cities do not have places like theaters and art galleries to provide entertainment for young people. Compared with game halls, Internet cafes and even movie theaters with limited update cycles and monotonous choices, script killing has a clear competitive advantage.
Compared to the first lineThe “rich but no leisure” in cities, the “no money and leisure” or even the “rich and leisure” in low-tier cities, are more naturally in line with the development soil required for script killing.
The important thing is “script”, not “kill”
Aside from differences in work pressure and cost of living, young people in large and small cities have a lot in common. For example, whether it is the squeeze of young people from the heavy work and life pressures in first-tier cities, or the social expectations of young people in lower-tier cities to get married and start a family early, buy cars, buy houses, and raise offspring, they all point to a problem: young people actually cannot In real life, get enough diversified life experience, and abundant and fresh emotional experience.
From this perspective, part of the function that script kills can play is actually similar to literary works such as movies and literature.
At the end of 2017, the player “Sun” was exposed to script kill for the first time. Before that, she was keen on reasoning and competitive board games such as Three Kingdoms, Werewolf and Avalon. But this kind of entertainment provides more the pleasure of reasoning and deciphering. Although each game will be different, it is a set of rules after all. “High play” will also be tired; the secret room experience will be richer and more complete, but the refurbishment cycle will also be Longer means that there are not many fresh choices.
The script kill provides the Sun with the right experience of understanding the mystery, and at the same time satisfies her “fantasy” experience that has been seldom satisfied in the past. “I’ve been a fan of fantasy since I was a kid, and I still do it now. When I walk on the street, I will stop and look at the lights of thousands of houses in front of me. I want to know how the people behind the windows live and what kind of life they have. Many times you may just be on your own. You encounter bad things in your life, but the script kill can make you trap your mind in those five or six hours. During that time, you are so personal, so it will really be a little bit relieved.”
The picture shows the variety show “The Great Escape” stills
There is no shortage of people on the market who are regarded as “skilled” by the script-killing players and evenThey overlap. The script killing is also driven by the “script” (text), which can be virtual and real, and has rich types.
After the script killing has become more and more popular, there are many examples on the Internet where hundreds of thousands or even millions of people can earn hundreds of thousands or even millions by creating scripts. The types of scripts are rapidly increasing. Antiquity, emotion, joy, and even “tearing” scripts have their own audiences and representative works that are widely circulated.
As the owner of the script killing shop, Amai shared his observations on player selections. Script kills are indeed fictional works, but among these fictions, script kills that are more realistic, biased towards social reality and hot spots, are more likely to be favored by players. Players are more likely to substitute their own experience and feelings and resonate with the plot.
When Xiao Wuyun chooses books for her store, she also prefers those works that have a personal expression that is close to reality and “aesthetically good”. As far as her own script kills the store, “Some talk about child trafficking, some talk about it. School violence also talks about corruption.”
This makes the script killing look a bit similar to online literature, and the appearance is chaotically crowded into the scene. Behind the scenes, there will still be creators trying to express personally in the script killing. It is impossible to say which four-hour investment. It will hit the soul of a certain player.
In addition, the high degree of freedom and openness of script killing allows players to choose the direction and ending of the process according to their preferences, value orientation, and this is similar to video games.
A report by “China Youth Daily” last year(“The “Script Kill” Favored by Young People: A New Experience of “Playing Fine” A New Choice for Social “) In , a case was mentioned. There was a script about the undercover police falling in love with a girl who broke the law. Almost all the undercover actors chose to forgive her, only once, one The player chose to arrest her-later the host knew that the player’s real-life occupation was really a policeman.
There are reasoning experience, literary nature, realism care, and social, competitive and entertaining-it sounds like script killing, like video games, is closer to the “ultimate entertainment form” than other forms of entertainment. A step away.
The picture shows the movie “Player One” stills
Of course, script killing is still a relatively early stage of development, and many of the problems faced by entertainment forms will be experienced more or less.
If the trend of “werewolf killing” was ended online, will script killing face the same problem? The script-killing APP “I Am Mystery” has already received tens of millions of investment in 2018, and by the end of last year, there were more than 30 million registered users. Although talking about script kills, most players are more concerned about face-to-face communication and interaction, and the hours when they can really concentrate. But Amai also said that the current online script killing is still relatively rudimentary, but if the VR technology is mature enough in the future and the setting of the scene is better, it is possible for the script killing to go online. Furthermore, if the degree of onlineization is high, what about the censorship problems faced by online content such as online literature?
Considering these, it is too early for practitioners at this stage. After all, no one can say whether the script killing will be the same as the previous offline tabletop game entertainment. The wind will come to an abrupt end after a few years. Xiao Wuyun, in general, is optimistic. She believes that the online experience cannot be fully restored for the time being. As for the business vision, the priority is low and high, but the word “likes”. Xiao Wuyun knows that a script to kill a shop can’t make a lot of money, but she just likes it.
Up to now, Xiao Wuyun is most proud of her selection of books. After graduating from the Chinese Department, she has been interested in literature since she was a child. She told us that the scripts she wanted to make were different from those that wanted to “make quick money” on the front line. She wants to do her best to find some content that can really inspire young people to grow and move their emotions. This is the source of her sense of meaning in her script killing.
Before the store officially opened, Xiao Wuyun went to Guiyang to play a script kill. In this southern capital city, there are now more than a thousand script kill stores. Xiao Wuyun remembers that she took a taxi from her residence to a certain scripted killing shop. She thought she needed to say the specific road name and location, but because the shop was well-known enough, the driver heard the name of the shop and drove over.
This article is from WeChatPublic number: North Park NorthPark (ID: northpark2018) , Author: Ya Ting