There are industry myths, and there is also a chicken feather
Author/ Hong Xian
Edit / Pu Fan
Krypton appointment column planning / Liu Han
This article is produced by ×Internet Zhibei United
Where do offline young people spend their money? The script killing that emphasizes “social” and “experience” is perhaps the answer that has the highest hopes in the industry.
This kind of offline multiplayer game with role-playing and brain-burning reasoning as its core selling points began to appear frequently in various industry media reports after entering 2020, and was described as “very characteristic of Gen Z The “consumption scene” is “one of the most favorite ways of socializing among young people at the moment”, and a series of subsequent capital entry also seems to support people’s judgment.
For example, in 2018, the online script-killing game platforms “I Am Mystery” and “Variety Detective” have successively experienced tens of millions of financing incidents. Among them, under the impact of the 2020 epidemic, along with the “pan-home economy” also took off, the “I am a mystery” server was squeezed to collapse during the Spring Festival, and the company immediately obtained Kunlun Wanwei financing.
(“I am a mystery” in Baidu Index)
Script killing as a business model has also been repeatedly verified at a more downstream level. According to the statistics of Meituan Research Institute, as of 20At the end of 19, there were 12,000 physical stores operating script kills, and this number reached 30,000 by the end of 2020. That is to say, script kills well-documented physical stores, during the “full period of the epidemic” “Under fermentation” has shown an overall state of growth-so much so that some people have asserted that it is the objective conditions of the epidemic home that quietly helped the script to complete the market education, and the industry is about to enter another stage.
But what exactly should this new stage be? There is no conclusion in the industry.
Some people think that the script killing should not stay in the “1.0 era” of “discussing the plot around a table”. The new trend should be that more consumers promote more practitioners and more capital to join. , And then push up the expressiveness of the script together, so in the future, “immersion”, “experience”, and “real scene” must be the most frequently occurring keywords in the industry.
However, some people feel that “script killing” is not necessary for this evolution, because the essence of this game is a script, which is “built on the content of the script. Players perform role-plays based on the script and experience another kind of life.” If this layer of boundaries is broken-such as sticking to the ancient style, dressing, real scenes, coupled with the cooperation of npc to build a “small film and television city”-“script killing” will become a living by the label of “current trend” New social toys.
“Like the Werewolf and the Three Kingdoms, it is good to be a toy, but people will always find new toys.”
Where is the future of script killing? Perhaps no one is more suitable to answer this question than screenwriters.
On the one hand, they are the de facto ceiling of the entire industry. Regardless of whether they are regarded as the scriptwriters (and the studios they set up) in the upstream of the industry, as the publishers of the scripts in the middle of the industry, or as the offline stores in the downstream, everyone agrees that “the script is the whole The core assets of the industry”, players, scenes, DM/NPC and other links that seem to be worthy of points can all be “ripened” through investment.
There are also various myths that “good script = get rich overnight”. For example, the 2019 hit script “Annual Ring”, which has been repeatedly mentioned by the media, is said to have sold nearly 10,000 copies of this boxed version with a price of about 500 yuan, and the author can divide it into a million yuan.
The screenwriters I met were very happy to accept the existence of this “myth”, and Hengheng adhered to the principle “good books are naturally available and priceless, and I am embarrassed to use bad books for free for my guests.”
Hengheng claims to be a humble script killer, because “I wrote 4 books in three yearsNone of them were sold.” He is better known as the owner of the script killing store. At the four-day Chengdu script killing exhibition that had just ended, he “purchased” more than 60 new books and bought dozens of them at high prices. A city-limited book (that is, a book issued in a fixed quantity in a specific city, usually priced at around 2,000 yuan).
Moreover, as a store owner, he understands the importance of “screenplay investment” better.
Hengheng’s script kill shop has nearly 80% of the consumption from regular customers, and for these regular customers, the script is “discarded after brushing”. Basically no guests will choose to use two brushes and three brushes, which makes “the script easy to consume.” “Products” and “input costs for new books” have also become the price that every offline store has to pay to maintain “freshness” and “consumer experience”.
(Chengdu “This plus script killing exhibition”)
But on the other hand, screenwriters generally live a very “satisfying” life. Because the career option of “Script Killing Screenwriter” is actually a luxury privilege for the industry to develop to a certain scale:
A few years ago, the script-killing market with an insufficient base was difficult to support and was unable to stably provide screenwriters with “life security”; a few years later, the expansion of the market does not seem to come from the constant security of the original audience, but It’s more like the result of “variety show” and “stars” driving out of the circle. Since the beginning of the broadcast in 2016, the popularity of “Star Detective” has continued to increase. By the sixth season of this year, it has become the existence of daily dominance hot searches— -The new consumers are no longer pure reasoning lovers.
The existence of these before and after factors make “Script Kill” essentially a buyer’s market, and it is an “acquired buyer’s market.” “Current buyer” and “past buyer” are not the same kind of people. Screenwriters who are more familiar with “Past Buyer” scripts have to try to adapt.
Hengheng found that if he insisted on his understanding of “good scripts”, the growth rate of regular customers in the store would not be enough to fill in the increase in the cost of buying scripts, and he would soon fall into the anxiety of small business owners. In the middle, I feel that “in this market, there are more and more customers, fewer and fewer good books, and authors are impetuous”.
Only the script publisher enjoys this anxiety. They are the brokers of the script. According to the description of the script-killing screenwriter Zhu Encouraging, the issuer needs to do is “write the handwritten book and discuss with the editor, the editor asks someone to do the evaluation and perfection, and entrustsThe packaging and printing of the issuer participates in offline exhibitions and sells them to stores or distributes them online. “
When shopkeepers buy a book online, they can only guess the content of a book through the title and introduction—commonly known in the industry as “blind buying”—according to the data of the online script killing platform “Little Black Detective” , As of the end of 2020, there are more than 3,000 scripts on the Xiaoheitan platform, and the total transaction amount on the Xiaoheitan platform exceeds 100 million yuan in one year.
(The score and netizen comments can be displayed on the little black detective pro, but the number of users is still too small)
Such an ingenious design made Zhu Xingqiang think that script-killing screenwriters can now “make a steady profit without losing money”, and she tends to “watch on the sidelines” as to whether it is impetuous or not.
The script she created was commissioned by the publisher to sell, and she wrote about the most popular emotional scripts in the industry (that is, the scripts that make people cry in Douyin), relying on this craft to “earn thousands” , Barely able to equalize the amount of money she has invested in playing scripts over the years.
She doesn’t think that scripts can affect the overall experience of script killing so much. She thinks that the common problem of script killing stores is actually “there is no way to provide players with a standardized experience”, even if it is the same script but different DMs (hosts) It will bring a different experience to consumers, not to mention that the number of people required to play script kills makes Zhu Encoura often need to “carpool” with strangers.
Hengheng’s opinion on the division of labor in the industry is completely opposite. He believes that the division of labor in the industry chain is gradually becoming clear as the reason for the escalation of the marginal door, which leads to “they have been unable to patiently polish a script”, like the author of “Annual Rings” It took more than half a year from the start of construction to the issuance, and there are not many books to test forty or fifty “cars”.
(The script “Scabbard” is the signature of the old corn studio. As a city limited edition, it is currentlyMore than 700 cumulative sales)
It’s not just “testing” that may be omitted.
The current industrial chain formed by the script kills, like the general 2C industry, has only three links, that is, “supply-channel-consumer terminal”. In theory, such an environment can make consumers’ emotional preferences and rely on a short industrial chain. It is quickly transmitted to the content producer, and a response is quickly formed, which is finally presented on the script. But the few screenwriters I have come across do not seem to need to listen to consumers’ choices.
Yin Wuyou, the author of the script-killing content creation head studio “Old Corn”, described the information transmission process like this: “Based on the sales volume of my own booklet and the sales volume of the works of my peers, I can get a rough estimate of the market. Players You can only choose to listen to the feedback.”
It can only be said that this kind of “partial listening” is somewhat “idealistic” compared to “impulsive”. Because even this kind of feedback that can only be conducted step by step on the basis of quantity will have a certain degree of distortion, if the screenwriters greatly change their creations according to the changes in fashion trends, the entire industry will basically face a situation of reshuffling. Even redefining.
Some people on the Hupu pedestrian street asked “What on earth is script killing?” and “Why make people cry like that?” These impressions came from the recommendation of the “Script Kill” algorithm on short videos such as Douyin Kuaishou. “Emotional book” occupies a high proportion of search content-people are immersed in the plot, crying for the experience of the characters played-this is in line with the rapid bursting of “short videos” and emotional contagion Prioritizing the law of transmission.
“No matter how you rank below, the hardcore reasoning book always despises the top of the chain.” Hengheng introduced, “but new players do play more emotional books.”
The script kills “Qian Jing Broad”. According to a report from CCTV’s Financial Channel, my country’s script-killing industry showed a rapid growth trend in 2019, and the scale of the industry exceeded 10 billion yuan this year. This kind of enthusiasm also allows the script killer to obtain the “luxury privilege”, and the large enough technology makes all links become a career choice, including becoming a script killer DM and screenwriter.
The script killing has even begun to sink in “luxury”. Meituan Research InstituteThe collected data shows that the immersive business format is gradually sinking from the first-tier cities to the second- and third-tier cities. Some industry media analyzes that “going to the lower-tier cities may be the way out for the next stage of the script.”
Zhu Qiqiang did indeed feel the rise of the local script-killing industry. She is in Nanning, and she can see with the naked eye that more and more stores are opening, but it is also difficult to call this phenomenon “the situation is very good” because “those (new) stores are always hiring people, but it seems that there are no Who has been recruited? In fact, there are not many good DMs in Nanning, and the old stores are still doing better.”
She believes that accumulating experience in this industry is very important, and latecomers can only “make miracles vigorously”.
In lower-tier cities, the pace of life is indeed more relaxed, and the cost of opening a store and competition are correspondingly lower than those in consumerist cities such as Chengdu, but at the same time it also means that it takes additional time and cost to develop an insufficient market. Come to cultivate, or just wait.
According to Gu Yu’s statistics, although the audience of script killing is mainly young people, this wave of young people and young people who play King Glory and eat chicken are not a group of people. Students account for 32% and white-collar workers account for 68%. . This means that the script killing industry has a natural pain point:
This industry needs to seize time, but time is a luxury resource for their audience, and it faces fierce competition from other industries, such as payment for knowledge, online education, online novels, etc.-they have a large As far as potential consumers are concerned, it is just a branch of the entertainment scene-this does not take into account the “high cost” positioning of the script killing around 100 per capita.
“Nanning is a city with an office vacancy rate of about 50%. There are actually not as many young people as imagined. Correspondingly, there are actually not as many script killers as there are in big cities. It is a bit singles to do script kills in Nanning. The feeling of fighting.”
(Script Killing Store in Nanning)
Script killing is also an industry with a very strong guild atmosphere. For screenwriters, after writing the book, in addition to offline testing and modification, you also need to go out of lower-tier cities to participate in offline exhibitions and exchanges with the same industry, which will generate more additional cost input. But no one wants to miss the possibility of raising the “income ceiling”.
When asked about the industry’s prospects, Yin Wuyou is still optimistic. He believes that the industry isAt a better stage of development, whether as a screenwriter, store or distributor, you can get a certain amount of income, and players can experience good content, and they can get what they need.
“But the question is what exactly is the script. The country still has no clear and complete specifications for its definition or copyright. The entire industry is still waiting for the national team to enter the stage… For example, the current unhealthy works (referring to pornographic violence) It will still appear, and now it is entirely dependent on industry self-examination.”
(Online cheap packaged scripts can be understood as pirated versions)
The issue of script piracy is even more urgent. Although Xianyu has blocked the entry #剧本杀#, and can still search for goods using homophonic sounds, I was invited to an online disk group of more than 70 people after spending 8.99 yuan, and got more than 700 copies. The script kills the electronic file. There are many famous scripts such as “Scabbard”, “Gu Mu Yin”, and “The 22nd School Regulations”.
The lack of supervision can also be felt in the content. The well-known public account “May Love Reasoning” in the script killing industry once published an article “Spreading pornographic products, I only admire the little black detective” and accused the script trading platform “Xiao Hei” “Tan” still put on the shelves “More Than One Day” and “Old Waste Club” and other pornographic scripts without knowing it, and did not perform the audit obligation. Subsequent to these two teams also developed disputes about “Internet violence” and sending letters to lawyers.
(“May Love Reasoning” Tweet)
The curse war is not only limited to online, but also offline exhibitions are also growing brutally. For example, at the beginning of this year, the Shanghai exhibition organizer “Xiaogongmao Publishing”, which was criticized by too many stores and too few stores, published a self-defense article. This lengthy narrative stated that he did not hold an exhibition in the early stage. Experience, the person in charge of the issuer is his lover, and conflicts with other studios due to ticket price issues before organizing the exhibition… and other issues.
The excitement is also attracting various creations”Exploring Season Six” ended in a low-key manner with a high score of 9.1 on Douban. Perhaps because it is currently in the off-season of script killing without holidays, Hengheng feels that more consumers come to play emotional books. They are full of emotions, keen on acting, and vent their emotions within a few hours, which has also brought about the industry’s feelings. After the change, the distribution studio also took the consumer “really crying” as the selling point of the book.
“It was the beginning of “Tang Detective 3″, and now there are more dramas who come to play the book, and the hard-core reasoning book is played by them with a very happy feeling.”
As a serious “pineapple head” (referring to hardcore players who don’t like emotional books, but only like reasoning books) Heng Heng is a bit helpless. He is looking forward to the summer vacation, the peak season of script killing, and the arrival of more time and patient students. Will this group of ideal consumers re-populate hard-core reasoning books?