It's time to come, it's really coming.

4月16日，《王者榮耀》和《哪吒之魔童鬧海》登上成都天府雙塔，高調官宣聯動。

After the "Honor of Kings" version update on 17/0, the game will be the first to launch the "Official Announcement Event Limited Time Voice Pack", which players can receive by participating in in-game activities, and will also launch linkage skins including Nezha, Ao Bing and the other two suspense characters.

In the game circle, IP linkage is not uncommon, and there are not a few IPs that have been linked to "Honor of Kings". But from another point of view, this is not only the linkage cooperation that players are looking forward to; It is also a collision between the tens of billions of head domestic works of the game and the animated film track; Tracing back to their roots, their creative teams also originated from the land of Chengdu.

Now combing through the ins and outs, we find that behind this linkage, there are many more intriguing things hidden, and there are also hidden ways to go further when Guochuang reaches its peak.

01

Double kitchen ecstasy, top heat

In the eyes of most players and practitioners, the linkage between "Honor of Kings" and "Nezha 2" may be the least unexpected and surprising thing in the near future.

From a business point of view, IP linkage has always been the most commonly used way to play big DAU mobile games and head film and television works.

In order to meet the needs of users who almost overlap with the general public, big DAU mobile games need to quickly access various popular cultures in fashion, and maintain the supply of in-game content and the appearance rate outside the game. Cinema film and television is a limited-time experience, and after the film is released, the core commercialization cycle will come to an end, and licensing is a way to lengthen the commercialization cycle and maintain the vitality of IP.

In a specific field, there are not many choices that are really suitable for "Honor of Kings" and "Nezha 2".

《王者榮耀》在2020年曾宣佈日均DAU突破1億，去年10月，又有“一億玩家峽谷慶生”，根據第三方平台統計，2024年這款遊戲全年流水超過377億元，位列全球第一。種種跡象顯示，邁入第10個年頭，它依舊是當之無愧的斷層頂流。

同樣，《哪吒之魔童鬧海》在今年初爆發出極高的熱度。全球票房156億的記錄，還帶著國旗衝到了全球影史票房榜第5位，成為國內、也是全球影史單一市場票房的總冠軍，影響無數觀眾。

Therefore, the two leading IPs joining forces to engage in double kitchen ecstasy is a grand event that players and fans alike. Since the launch of "Nezha 2", the public opinion of users on major social media can also be seen to the extent of public expectation.

At the beginning of this year, with the release of "Nezha 2", more and more players and audiences began to associate the characters of the game with the animated movie, looking forward to the game's launch of the linkage skin of "Nezha 0".

關於新皮膚的猜測更是層出不窮，不僅有玩家順著思路，把《王者榮耀》的角色與《哪吒2》逐一關聯起來，更是有不少玩家自發為遊戲設計聯動皮膚。在很短的時間內，相關話題在抖音、小紅書上的累計閱讀量就超過5億。

With the continuous excavation of users, we also found the inextricable connection between two works that also originated in Chengdu. For example, in the past, the Chengdu Cocoa Bean Dumpling team has slashed many CGs of "Glory of Kings", and many voice actors who participated in "Nezha 2" have also cooperated a lot with "Glory of Kings".

Now, on the occasion of the official announcement of the linkage between "Glory of Kings" and "Nezha 2", it is not difficult to imagine the popularity of this news - top stream + top stream, of course, will create another top stream.

After the official announcement was issued, it quickly occupied the top two hot searches on Weibo

02

There is no road ahead, so there is a way

However, just because of the voice and chance, this linkage is not enough to be established. At a deeper level, the similar IP temperament and development direction of "Honor of Kings" and "Nezha 2" are the top priorities for the establishment of linkage - they are all trying to take a new path.

First of all, both have pushed cultures and media that were once despised and even misunderstood to a higher level.

In a sense, "Honor of Kings" and "Nezha 2" are both unbelieving protagonists in pop culture stories, and the public opinion faced by the game industry and Nezha's dilemma in the plot are all "the mountain called prejudice in people's hearts", which makes people breathless.

However, "Honor of Kings" has used ten years of evergreen performance to make mobile games, which were once fragmented "playthings" and a short-lived business of "two or three years at most", into a world-leading digital cultural and creative industry with Chinese market characteristics; "Nezha 3" broke the public perception of animation as a sub-supply, and the cost curse that has plagued domestic 0D animated films for many years.

This spirit of breaking through the limits and daring to be the first in the world has injected subtle energy into the user groups of the two, making everyone more willing to be proud of the works they support, and making it easier for public opinion to explode into amazing heat.

Second, both are interpreting traditional culture and finding ways to reconstruct it in line with the popular perspective.

For a long time, in the process of continuously strengthening the attributes of the story, "Glory of Kings" has continued to interpret traditional culture and its characters, and expressed it in a way that young people like and are more acceptable.

For example, the cultural and creative skin "Drunken Moon" launched in the Mid-Autumn Festival last year not only made rigorous research and restoration of the characters' costumes, but also combined with the game scene in which he was located, using Li Bai's representative poems as the characters' voice lines, showing his thoughts and feelings at different stages of his life. At the same time, this skin even helped Jiangyou's cultural tourism popularity during the National Day holiday.

This point is in line with the narrative idea of "Nezha 2003" - iterating a classical image born from Chinese mythology into a magic boy with a more modern appearance, habits, and personality, which is also another image that is more in line with the cognition of contemporary young people after "The Legend of Nezha" in 0.

Note that this interpretation is not a rebellion, but a fusion of mainstream thought and classics, and the activation of national memory. That's why users are moved by the characters they create.

Again, after having enough content accumulation, making IP has naturally become a new way to go further.

As early as four or five years ago, "Honor of Kings" achieved the ultimate goal of most mobile games, standing at the pinnacle of the industry, there is no too clear reference, and going further means that this product has to try to make breakthroughs in every aspect.

As a result, "Honor of Kings" conceived a large enough IP territory, and produced and spawned many derivative works, fanfic creations, peripheral items, etc., from new games, competitions, audio-visual, online and offline, etc., forming a huge ecology.

It's just that theoretically, these things that rely on time to accumulate slowly can be imitated by any game. In order to achieve obvious breakthroughs and improvements, it is necessary to introduce strong external forces.

積極的聯動外部IP是《王者榮耀》一直在做的事，去年我們就能看到來自各個領域的IP聯動成功案例，從皮影戲，到Hello kitty，再到創下號稱單日20億流水的名偵探柯南……到了今年，也能看到近期的小黄鸭IP聯動，這些舉措無不給IP帶來極大的熱度、話題和商業回報。

For "Nezha 2", it also needs a partner with national-level influence like "Glory of Kings", which can not only create more commercial value, but more importantly, even if the movie is released, fans can continue to have a relationship with Nezha through the game's extensive influence.

For users, seeing their favorite IP symbols come to the wider world and meet greater challenges, of course, everyone also likes to see such things.

Finally, these two top-notch products are shouldering greater responsibilities, and they represent the explorations made by their respective industries, and the sparks from the collision also have the opportunity to inspire more domestic creations to embark on a new path.

今年3年中，有關部門剛剛通過了《提振消費專項行動方案》，鼓勵國潮IP的發展。如今時隔一個月，遊戲與動畫影視領域的兩個扛鼎作品就站出來做了表率。這也算是時代變化的一個切面。

Perhaps it is also because of this common temperament that there is no way ahead and a new road must be taken, so that the two major national top-notch works can reach cooperation in such a short cycle. After all, everyone has a similar sense of responsibility and mission.

One detail is that in 2020, "Glory of Kings" said for the first time on the poster of the fifth anniversary of "Let the national creation have more possibilities".

Today, the phrase "let Guochuang have more possibilities" appeared again on the official announcement posters of "Glory of Kings" and "Nezha 2".

In the past five years, we have seen countless outstanding works and more possibilities for national creation. And now the strong alliance of the two top ministries is also creating more possibilities for the country.

03

Conclusion: See each other at the top and move forward with weight

A few months ago, we used the term "unprecedented problem" to describe the situation that Honor of Kings faced after entering its tenth year: how to develop a national game with a big DAU after reaching its peak.

Judging from the many measures taken from the beginning of the year to the present, "Glory of Kings" is gradually dismantling this question and giving its own answer.

From the player's point of view, this answer is to comply with the player's voice and meet the player's needs with quality and quantity;

Standing in the position of the industry leader, the answer is to combine vertically and horizontally, and use the power of another industry leader to make progress with each other;

From the perspective of the times, it is to find like-minded IPs, meet at the top, find a narrative method for traditional culture that is in line with the current trend of the times, and transform stories that are not optimistic about them into good stories that are enough to be seen by the world.

What's even more gratifying is that we also see "more possibilities" for national innovation.

Games and animated films used to be labeled as "young" and "playthings", but now they are the protagonists of cultural and economic narratives. Nowadays, there is the "king" of the track taking the lead, and there is an example of "Wang Zha"-style Wang Zhan, and along the same line of thought to explore the road of "creating works that belong to China", good works are easier to stand out.

Domestic works have accumulated into the heritage of national creation, and many national masterpieces have gathered together, so that the general trend of the national tide will pour into more places and form a hot common memory...... I hope that this linkage will have the opportunity to become the starting point of everything.