[People's livelihood and economic highlights] The market scale exceeds 10 billion yuan, and the new social favorite "script killing" explores the secret
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In recent years, "Script Killing" has continued to seize people's offline entertainment time.
Driven by demand, China's "script-killing" stores have expanded rapidly, and the industry market has continued to grow. It has now exceeded 10 billion yuan and is expected to increase to 17 billion yuan in 2021.
However, there are also some chaos in the rapid development of the industry.
Industry insiders pointed out that high-quality original scripts are the core of attracting players. The joint development of script kills and film and novel IP can promote the creation of high-quality scripts.
Your friend has lost contact and has not responded to your message for three or four hours. He is likely to be immersed in a "script kill".
Shopping, watching movies, singing, dancing... once occupied the bulk of the cultural and entertainment consumption of young people, and with the popularity of reasoning variety shows such as "Star Detective", "script killing" continued to seize people's offline entertainment time and became the new social favorite .
According to CCTV reports, the market scale of my country's "script-killing" industry has exceeded 10 billion yuan.
According to the company’s data, as of the end of 2020, there were more than 6,500 related companies and individual businesses that included "script killing" and "board game" in their names or business scope. Jiangsu, Shaanxi, and Hubei had 674, 650, and 526 companies, respectively. Ranked in the top three.
Why is the time-consuming, brain-burning, and multi-player "script killing" more and more popular?
And why is it attracting investors to enter the game?
What is the current development status and prospects of this industry?
Recently, a reporter from the Workers’ Daily conducted an interview.
Addictive "Script Kill"
In 2016, several "script-killing" shops appeared one after another in Beijing. Zhou Yuekang, who always likes to get in touch with new things, played with his friends several times, but the game experience was not high.
"The script at the time was very rough, and there were no highlights except for the dressing."
Until the 2020 epidemic, Zhou Yuekang discovered several online "script killing" apps.
"I feel immersed and addicted. I play different roles in different constructed worlds every night. The background of the story is ancient, sci-fi, and campus. It allows me to experience a different life." Zhou Yuekang believes, The most attractive part of "Script Killing" is that it allows players to find exciting and interesting new experiences beyond the boring and repetitive life.
After the epidemic improved, the suppressed demand for offline entertainment was released, the "script killing" went out of the circle, and the industry took the lead.
IiMedia Consulting analysts believe that the reasoning and suspensefulness of "Script Kill" can satisfy players' reasoning hobby and performance desire.
At the same time, "Script Kill" also provides a platform for players with social needs.
Driven by demand, China's "script-killing" stores have expanded rapidly, and the industry market scale has continued to grow. It is expected that the market size will increase to 17 billion yuan in 2021.
Data shows that more than 40% of players play "Script Kill" mainly for leisure and entertainment, and 26.5% of the interviewed players play "Script Kill" for the purpose of decompression.
In addition, social interaction, curious experience, etc. are also important reasons for playing "Script Kill".
The status quo of practitioners
During the interview, the reporter found that "Script Killing" is divided into two types: real-scene and boxed.
The real scene refers to the script with the scene of the crime, the evidence search link, and the participation of NPC (non-player characters).
“Real-life books have better gaming experience, a strong sense of immersion, and higher social attributes. In Beijing, a good real-life books need to be booked a week or more in advance, but the cost of opening a store is much higher than that of a boxed store. "Chen Xin (pseudonym), the person in charge of the Beijing Jishi immersive "Script Killing" Pavilion, said.
"Rent + decoration + script + DM (Dungeon Maste, generally referred to as the host in'Script Kill'), is all the costs of the'Script Kill' physical store." Chen Xin introduced that there are currently three types of scripts: Boxed books can be purchased in every store, the price is between 500 yuan and 600 yuan; city-limited books, only a few stores in a city, the price is around 2,000 yuan; exclusive books, only one store in a city, the price is Around 5,000 yuan, but as high as 10,000 yuan.
After the author completes the script, it will be sold by a professional publisher. The author provides the script, and the publisher is responsible for some simple modifications and all subsequent packaging, publicity, and distribution.
At present, there are two forms of contract in the industry, one is direct buyout and the other is divided.
Liu Zhongxin, who has opened two "script-killing" shops in the past two years, has invested nearly one million yuan in funds. She admitted that the "script-killing" industry is a high-cost industry. In order to allow players to have a good gaming experience, the room decoration is not only of good quality but also Must be distinctive.
"'Script Kill' is an experiential game. Most players of a script will only play it once, and the replay rate is low. This requires the store to continue to buy good-quality scripts from the market to fill the inventory. Calculated at 1,000 yuan per script, open A shop with 100 scripts would have to spend 100,000 yuan for the purchase of scripts alone."
Liu Zhongxin said that for a few hours of "script killing", if there is no DM with strong voices, the player's sense of substitution will be very poor.
Selecting and training a competent DM requires not only money, but also a lot of energy.
Industry chaos and the future
Li Lifeng, who has transformed from the "Script Killing" shop owner to script publishing, is an experienced player.
What makes him difficult to understand is that in order to control costs, some distributors in the industry have printed scripts coarsely, and there have been phenomena that the quality of some pirated scripts is better than the original ones.
"Creating a steady stream of good scripts is the fundamental driving force for the development of this industry. Piracy is rampant, making non-profitable authors and distribution even more constrained."
A reporter searched for scripts such as "She Li", "Gu Mu Yin", and "Annual Ring" on an e-commerce platform and found that the prices ranged from 4 yuan to more than 10 yuan, and some stores had sold more than 3,000 copies.
Li Lifeng told reporters that in order to save costs, many newly opened stores will choose to buy pirated copies, and they may not even have formal stores.
Many people open the scene directly in the apartment they rent, and use the method of sweeping the building to pull people into the "shop."
"Players only need thirty or forty yuan to play a game, and if the store opens seven or eight games, one month's rent is earned back, but this is a disrespect for intellectual property rights." Li Lifeng said, some practitioners opened in residential areas This shop is also very annoying to the people.
Insiders said that as an emerging industry, "Script Killing" has not yet issued a matching industry regulation, and there are also many problems in its development.
With the introduction of industry operating regulations, increasing penalties for plagiarism or pornographic scripts, protecting authors’ copyright income, strengthening practitioners’ qualification training, etc., can all make the industry go more stable and farther.
Li Lifeng believes that high-quality and original scripts are the core of attracting players. Therefore, the joint development of "Script Kill" and film and novel IP can promote the creation of high-quality scripts. At the same time, by creating well-known "Script Kill" IP, it can also increase the influence of the store.
The joint development model of IP and "Script Killing" will bring new development paths to markets such as games and online literature.
Zhou Yi