3 episodes have been viewed over 80 million times, and game companies are bravely entering the short drama track

Recently, many well-known game companies, including "Honor of Kings", "Against the Cold" and "Fantasy New Zhu Xian", have launched their own short dramas, which have not only attracted the attention of a large number of players, but also aroused widespread attention in the industry to this new form of publicity. This article will explore how game companies use short dramas as a new form of marketing, and whether short dramas will become a standard feature of game publicity.

Recently, many well-known game manufacturers such as "Honor of Kings", "Against the Cold", and "Fantasy New Zhu Xian" have successively launched short dramas, attracting the attention of many players.

Judging from several short dramas, they basically integrate game characters and game props/skins into the plot to achieve the purpose of promoting the game and attracting users, and most of them choose elements such as "time travel" and "rebirth" that are popular in the short drama track.

Will skits become a standard feature of game manufacturers? How can games and skits be better combined?

1. Game makers fall in love with short dramas

"I, Xiao Daji, have been reborn! Reborn in the short drama track! This time I will take back everything that belongs to me!" "Okay, no more abstractions. Xiao Wang is brave enough to enter the short drama track with an advanced mental state!"

On July 24, the first martial arts short drama of "Honor of Kings" "Reborn as a Hero in the King's Rank" was broadcast on all platform accounts, starring Zhang Yuxi, Chen Youjun, Aikelia and others, with special guest appearances by Honor of Kings professional players, game bloggers and others.

It is understood that on July 16, "Honor of Kings" launched the "Mo Ran Jiang Hu Parallel World Skin" and released the game CG, the story background and characters of which just correspond to the short drama released this time. Moreover, the character modeling in the short drama is based on the hero skin and has been improved for film and television.

King of Glory is not the only game company that has set its sights on the short drama business.

On July 15, the short drama "Great, I can summon game beauties!" based on the popular mobile game "Fantasy New Zhu Xian" was released on Douyin.

"Great, I can summon game beauties!" combines game, counterattack, and urban elements. It tells the story of the male protagonist Meng Zhu who was framed and activated the summoning system of the game "Fantasy New Zhu Xian" after rebirth. He can summon the beautiful girls in "Fantasy New Zhu Xian" to the real world. Then, he counterattacked step by step by summoning the beautiful girls in the game, completed the slap in the face of his family, and achieved success in both career and love.

The game characters and the story settings behind them are all brought into the short drama, and the main characters are chosen to be in line with the image of the game, allowing users to further immerse themselves in the content of the short drama and experience the mysterious oriental fairy world created by the game. This short drama has been updated to episode 27, with a total playback volume of 598,000.

The short play setting in which game characters appear in the real world is undoubtedly its biggest highlight.

Whether it is the cute and tender-looking "Nian Nujiao" who is actually very powerful, or the blindfolded "Ghost" who serves as a guide, they all bring the audience a full range of visual and auditory enjoyment. There are 3 such wonderful character settings in this short play, and there is still one beautiful character who has not yet appeared.

NetEase's "Ni Shui Han" also produced a short drama titled "I am a Royal Physician in a Palace Fighting Novel", and has now released a trailer on major social platforms.

This short drama tells the story of the protagonist Ni Xiaohan who travels through time and space to a palace fighting novel, becomes a royal physician in the palace, and begins an extremely high-risk working life. Ni Xiaohan's daily life is to get involved in various disputes in the harem and resolve them.

The short play follows the official "abstract" style of the "Against the Water" mobile game. It not only incorporates game props such as the "Crystal Box of Love Stronger than Gold" and the "Big Plums Picked from Tianshan Mountain", but also adds a lot of "earthy" Internet hot memes.

2. How to make a game skit?

In addition to making their own short dramas, game manufacturers also choose to cooperate with top influencers. For example, the mobile game "Journey to the West: Drawing the Journey to the West" cooperated with "Chen Xiang Six-thirty" to launch the short drama "The Love of the Iron Bull" to promote the new character Bull Demon King in the game.

"Iron Bull's Love" is a funny comedy. The drama has been updated to the third episode on Douyin, with a total playback volume of 86.29 million times, and it once ranked second on the list of Douyin's popular dramas.

This short play tells the story of Princess Iron Fan of Rakshasa who was deceived by her sister and chose to escape the marriage with Bull Demon King. However, on the way, she met the Bull Demon King in disguise. The two pretended to be a couple and took risks all the way. In the end, they slapped Princess Copper Pot of Rakshasa in the face and achieved a happy ending.

The plot of the entire short play revolves around the marriage between Princess Iron Fan and Bull Demon King. The various skills of the game character Bull Demon King are reasonably displayed in the plot, and the key points of the game promotion such as "new game characters" and "0 krypton gold" are all displayed one by one. Even users who have not played "Journey to the West: Drawings of the West" before can understand the whole plot.

In terms of plot, the short play incorporates some lines from classic movies and TV series, which increases its watchability and fun. For example, the classic line "I'll support you" from the movie "The King of Comedy" starring Stephen Chow and Cecilia Cheung appeared in the third episode of the play, but in order to adapt to the plot, the classic line was also modified to "I'll protect you."

Judging from the short dramas produced by several game manufacturers, they basically integrate game characters and game props/skins into the plot to achieve the purpose of promoting the game and attracting users.

In terms of the elements of the short dramas, game manufacturers have basically chosen popular themes such as "time travel" and "rebirth"; and in order to give players a better experience, games like "Honor of Kings" and "Fantasy New Zhu Xian" have added player perspectives to make the audience feel more involved and as if they were in the game world.

As for the content of the skits, due to the different game types and promotional purposes, the final styles are also quite different.

For example, the overall style and elements of "Fantasy New Zhu Xian" are more inclined towards male frequency, with a typical "Long Aotian" cool script, mainly based on the feeling of coolness; the costumes, props and scripts of "Against the Cold" are full of a "funny" feeling, allowing the audience to notice the theme of "liveliness" at a glance.

3. Can it become a standard feature of game marketing?

In a sense, the short dramas produced by game manufacturers are more like secondary creations: the story background and characters are ready-made, but the short dramas can extend and amplify a certain character or part of the plot, thereby bringing about an intensive communication effect.

In fact, long before game manufacturers started shooting short dramas, the craze for secondary creation surrounding games had already brought higher popularity to the games themselves.

As a very popular mobile game, "Ni Shui Han" has a lot of game materials available for netizens to edit. Previously, many short dramas that used game materials for secondary creation have appeared on the two platforms of Xiaohongshu and Bilibili.

These short dramas are quite popular thanks to the exquisite game graphics, and players often urge for updates in the comment section.

As early as April this year, Xiaohongshu launched the "I shoot short dramas in games" activity, and supported content including "stories that happened to game characters in real life", "vlogs unfolding from the perspective of real scenes + game characters", etc.

However, some game manufacturers have turned the short drama into a promotional video, aiming to introduce the game's world view and show the scenes of the game world.

No matter which aspect, we can see that games and short plays are a natural fit.

On the one hand, short dramas can serve as a traffic entry point, attracting users through content and then guiding them to download games. For example, in the short drama of the mobile game "Journey to the West: Drawing the Journey to the West" co-produced with Chen Xiang Liudianban, a download link for the game was posted.

On the other hand, as a natural content marketing scenario, short dramas are obviously more likely to resonate with users and resonate emotionally.

In addition, there are also game manufacturers exploring the deep integration of games and skits. It is understood that the American "Princess Revenge: Drama & Match" adopts the design of "three eliminations to get props rewards" to watch the new episode of the skit in the App, that is, "short drama + elimination".

How to better combine games and short dramas, whether short dramas can become an important emerging channel for game promotion and marketing, and what the conversion effect is, all require more exploration and are worth looking forward to.