No immersion, no experience
"Immersive experience" seeks new "exports" for the digital transformation of traditional industries
On August 2nd, the annual China International Digital Interactive Entertainment Exhibition (China Joy) ended. In this feast in the field of gaming and e-sports, the tour of the exhibition itself is an immersive experience——
The first appearance of "Dawn Awakening" moved the game scene and gameplay offline, turning the booth into an offline survival camp; "Zhu Xian World" directly "moved" Qingyun Gate to the exhibition site, and the panorama was designed and matched with Qingyun Gate; worldwide The largest virtual reality (VR) e-sports international competition, VRES, has started, attracting many players to "immerse yourself"...not immersed, no experience, this kind of art product that is interlaced between virtual reality and reality has become the general trend of cultural consumption .
Time goes back one Jiazi. In 1962, when the bankrupt film director Morton Helich walked out of the door of the United States Patent and Trademark Office with the patent "Retractable TV for Personal Use" (Note: the earliest immersive experience) It may not be expected that the immersive experience will drive the industry with a market value of 100 billion yuan to flourish in half a century.
However, the development of today's immersive industry needs to integrate more elements: key competitive advantages tied to cutting-edge technological innovation, commercial monetization capabilities integrated with consumer demand in the digital age, and cultural IP management linked to content production creation, all of which will affect the immersive industry Can the future be stable and far-reaching.
Technology
Binding key competitive advantages
The reason why the annual ChinaJoy is moving is that it creates an immersive experience field for each participant.
This year's CJ added multiple theme exhibition areas for the first time, such as smart travel, virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR), and science fiction, presenting a panoramic view of the grand development of the digital entertainment industry powered by new technologies.
The Tencent exhibition area itself has become the scene of the plot reality game "Looking for SOLA". Every visitor can be an agent, decrypting, interacting, and checking in in the interactive plot full of science fiction, and the final destination "mysterious cabin" Inside, interact with the device through the blessing of motion capture technology, and feel the sci-fi atmosphere at your fingertips.
From the traditional "walking exhibition" to the immersive "exhibition", more and more exhibition areas are beginning to adopt this model to attract young people.
There are also small scenes in the big scene with its own plot, the purpose is to let players "experience the game in the game."
For example, "Tianlong Ba Bu Mobile Games" entered Jin Yong's martial arts world, and restored the scene of the "Tianlong Mountains and Rivers Painting Environment" on the spot.
Here, exhibitors can participate in the "Tianlong Master Contest", use somatosensory technology to wave their arms to choose their sect, throw virtual throwing knives to attack, and compete for the ranking of martial arts masters.
In the "Master Certification Area", cosplayers such as Qiao Feng and Duan Yu visited the scene in person, and Miss Guigu appeared on the scene to help the Guigu School to return to the line, making the live experience more three-dimensional.
In addition to the on-site immersive atmosphere, high-tech blessing also makes the experience of games and e-sports full of tension.
The reporter saw at the Huya booth that this platform, which debuted with live games, has begun to integrate cloud games with live broadcasting ecology, and artificial intelligence technology is the "matchmaker."
"The audience is no longer a simple spectator, but has the opportunity to participate in in-depth interaction. Not only can they send enemies to the anchor through barrage and other methods, but they can also take over or join the team with one click to play games with the anchor, even if he may only have a tablet. Computer or mobile phone.” Wang Chenyu, head of Huya Cloud Games, described the possibilities brought about by technological innovation.
In order to achieve this function, Huya YOWA Cloud Game has made a customized and in-depth optimization of many mainstream games on the market, so that the audience can immerse into the live broadcast ecology at a minimum cost.
Wang Chenyu said frankly that, whether it is technology or solution, Huya is completely self-researched based on the data of the live broadcast platform to build a "moat".
Some psychology researchers believe that the immersive experience “is the positive performance of individuals who highly concentrate their limited attention resources on current activities and actively control the environment during their actions.” Although ChinaJoy is only an exhibition of gaming and e-sports, it To some extent, it represents the trend of cutting-edge technology. From the many demonstrations on the scene, we can get a glimpse of the imagination space that technological progress has given to immersive industries.
With the development of digital information and computer technology, the interaction between immersive industries and technologies such as virtual reality, human-computer interaction, and intelligent Internet of Things is becoming more and more smooth.
Take ChinaJoy as an example. When VR first appeared at the exhibition 5 years ago, the feedback from participants was "not optimistic" because the dizziness caused by time delay has become an obstacle to immersive games for a long time. Development is a stumbling block. Now that in the past five years, VR helmets and VR glasses have become a clear track in the game industry. The pleasure brought about by interactive experiences has led to the vigorous development of the wearable industry.
Some analysts believe that games are gradually evolving from “entertainment” as they were previously known to “scenarios”. Today, when game industrialization and cutting-edge technological innovation complement each other, the way games are opened is more and more like reality itself. The scene capacity has shown exponential growth, which also brings new motivational goals for the immersive experience.
Business
Balance of standardization and customization
Games are just a branch of immersive industry empowerment, and the latter's empowerment for thousands of industries has gradually shown its unique commercial value.
Just before the opening of ChinaJoy, another exhibition, Taobao "Creation Festival" driven by immersive experience, was also held in Shanghai.
In a "leaf" of the National Convention and Exhibition Center (Shanghai), the 30,000 square meter venue is turned into a fantasy ancient city-it is also the world's largest secret room experience, in which approximately 15 movie-level scenes have been created, including Zhenxiang Restaurant , Tiangongfang, Tianji Pavilion, Jiuzhou Nishangfang, Shanhai Biological Museum, etc., this immersive experience is also true and illusion, from the "Chang'an Twelve Hours" art concept design team.
"The element that young people are most concerned about this year is script killing and room escape, so we decided to do the world's largest hidden room treasure hunt and let 5,000 people break through the barriers together." Alibaba Group Chief Marketing Officer Dong Benhong said the original intention of the plan.
The reporter's on-site experience found that in this fantasy city, in addition to the realistic scenes, many non-player characters (NPCs, a profession in the escape room) appeared for the first time, and participants could interact with them, find clues, and drive the plot. The advancement of the story.
Spending a huge cost to build a city, what does this have to do with Taobao?
Some analysts believe that this is related to the immersive shopping scene that e-commerce has been pursuing. Whether it is VR shopping, the "Double 11" carnival night party or the creation festival, they all hope to give consumers a different shopping experience.
In fact, no matter how cool the scenes are, most of them fall into the four quadrants of business, entertainment, culture, and technology. Through the scenes, sacred shops and sacred objects are driven, so that more niche products can enter the public's attention.
This touches on the commercial nature of the immersion industry, that is, through content creation, technology integration and scene interpretation, the realization of the consumption of cultural goods is realized.
Unlike other cultural industries, the immersion industry must do its utmost to meet the audience's personalized experience needs while providing a systematic, stylized, and large-scale business model, and find a balance between standardization and customization.
Based on the above background, experts believe that the business goal of the immersive industry is to increase revenue and effects, achieve commercial profit growth, and creative innovation. "This requires strengthening the'interactivity' in the value of art, and paying attention to the'influence' in the social value. "Effectiveness" and attach importance to "profitability" in terms of economic value".
From the perspective of industry classification, China’s immersive industry has formed more than 30 different types of segmented formats, including immersive live entertainment represented by "Zhiyinhao", immersive new media art represented by Van Gogh Exhibition, etc. The immersive performance represented by "Night of Sleepless Night" and so on.
In recent years, immersive escape rooms and immersive business marketing have shown significant growth momentum, and the development momentum of complex business complexes including multiple types is also very bright.
To some extent, this adds more possibilities to the digital transformation of traditional industries.
The Moonrise Hotel, hidden on the B1 floor of the BFC Bund Financial Center, opened during the "May 1st" period last year. The biggest highlight of the opening show was the first to introduce immersive experience formats such as "escape rooms" among high-end domestic commercial entities.
"It took only 4 months to go from 0 to 1!" Livril, the principal, clearly felt that "the whole industry is booming." "There was only one script kill in Shanghai four or five years ago, but now there are three script kills alone. Four hundred".
Meituan’s data shows that during the “Five-five Shopping Festival” this year, the consumption of new business formats represented by script killing increased nearly 5 times year-on-year. Many sensitive scenic spots have innovative operation methods that combine script killing with cultural tourism. Created a special service of "script killing + homestay + food + tourism".
Cultural IP
Content conveys cultural value
As the immersion industry develops in depth from point to surface, the key element of cultural IP becomes more and more important.
Still take the successful benchmark "Sleepless Night" in China's immersion industry as an example. Since 2016, it has performed more than 1,000 shows, with an average ticket price of 700 yuan, an attendance rate of over 95%, and an audience of more than 300,000. As of December 2019 In the month, the cumulative box office revenue exceeded 200 million yuan, and the peripheral derivative income exceeded 70 million yuan.
Whether it’s immersive dramas like "Nights" or theme parks such as Disney and Madman’s Country, soft power has created a strong cultural IP, bringing more market advantages and expanding business opportunities for the development of the entertainment and tourism industries, and also immersing the whole Industry development brings enough enlightenment.
Some people regard IP management as "cross-media content management with long-term vitality and commercial value."
From a theoretical point of view, IP content is a key element of immersive experience, including five levels of presentation form, story content, common elements, values, and character characteristics. Only when these five levels are available, immersive experience can convey cultural value through content , Which resonates with consumers.
In other words, the IP development link of immersive experience is to take content as the core, and through multiple gameplay, build an industrial ecological closed loop centered on content creators, cultural and entertainment products, and consumer audience groups to create an immersive and novel experience.
From this perspective, the current popular immersive formats such as VR/AR experience, script killing, and room escape appear to be relatively thin, and their vitality is not long enough.
For example, the most challenging aspect of script killing is the plot design, that is, the content IP itself, but many newly opened stores use "city-limited" or "limited edition" batch scripts. It is okay to earn a wave of popularity, but long-term management is not enough. Not to mention cultural value.
Some analysts believe that the current domestic immersion industry hardware investment costs are relatively high, and the emphasis on cultural IP is not enough, resulting in many immersion experience projects unable to have sufficient marketing expenses to carry out large-scale brand promotion.
There are also many businesses that choose to "take shortcuts" by cooperating with IP and migrating flowers.
Although it has made considerable profits, after all, because of the lack of its own IP, it can only "make a wedding dress for others"-a large amount of cost in IP cooperation, which needs to be used to pay for the expensive IP cost.
Of course, with the rise of the immersion industry, more and more brands are beginning to pay attention to the important soft power of IP content, or to deeply consider the connection between immersion scenarios and their own brands.
In any case, this product born from the cross-border integration of technology, art and commerce will surely bring new value due to the resetting of the scene. To what extent can it improve the original scenic spots, business districts and other own IP, or The extent to which new cultural IP is created will also affect the subsequent development of the immersion industry.
With the development of digital information and computer technology, the interaction between immersive industries and technologies such as virtual reality, human-computer interaction, and intelligent Internet of Things is becoming more and more smooth.
While creating many new business formats with more commercial value, it also finds more “exports” for the digital transformation of traditional industries.