RPGs have had a large and loyal audience. As seen from the advertising data in 2021, RPGs had been massively advertised with creatives that are of diversified forms and updated frequently.
RPGs are characterized by many types and gameplays. According to RPGs’ recent advertising activities, SocialPeta has sorted out and listed below the main types of RPGs that were popular recently:
In the following, we will focus on the overall analyses of quality creatives that have relatively high estimated impressions and are selected from several representative games, in order to summarize the designed features of the latest creatives of RPGs. As is known to all, the first 3 seconds of a video creative is the key. So in the analyses below we will list the main information of the first 3 seconds of video creatives, just for your convenience.
1. Anime-styled Games: Dress up bishōjo characters? No, dress up my wife!
In respect of gameplay mechanics, [放置少女~百花繚乱の萌姫たち] is mainly a gacha and training idle game featuring beautiful concept art of characters and perfect 2D body movements, as well as the attractive and exciting storylines which are old but classic. By combining the classic Three Kingdoms and pretty girls, the game concentrates on bishōjo characters that are targeted at Otaku. The game is advertised as a fantasy for girlfriends. Here is an example of its creatives:
- Video Length: 19s
- Video Dimensions: 640*360
- Advertising Platform: Google Ads
- Duration: 1 day
- Estimated Impressions: 377.1K
- Main Scenes: Japanese gardens
- Main Elements: Dress-up items, dress-up dolls, dress-up display, players’ hands
- Main information of the first 3 seconds of the video:
(1) Totally black dress-up doll
(2) A complete set of dress-up items ranging from hairstyles to weapons
This creative shows how a player dresses up his idle girlfriend from totally naked to gorgeously dressed. The most obvious characteristic of this creative is that it displays in detail a dress-up mode that actually doesn’t exist in the game, creating a romantic atmosphere that “your girl is to be designed by yourself“. Starting with a totally black doll is as exciting as playing blind boxes. The player adds items for the character to gradually complete the character’s concept art. We can see how exquisitely and cutely the character is dressed from every angle of view in the last 10 seconds of the video, giving the player a great sense of achievement and satisfaction from his success in dressing up the character.
Improvable Aspects: It may be better if the dressing up is faster, and more attractive if more characters or outfit sets are added.
2. Girls’ Games: A 1-day tour to the cold palace
[Empress’s Choice] is a very typical girls’ game about emperor’s women. Players need to make the right choices or put on proper costumes for banquets or parties hosted by the emperor’s concubines, emperor himself, or mother of the emperor, in order to win the emperor’s heart and get promoted among all emperor’s women. The game was officially released in June this year and later it released a lot of ad creatives. As of today, it had totally over 1700 deduplicated creatives on iOS and Android combined. One of its creatives is shown below:
https://youtube.com/shorts/gKRb_v7meEg?feature=share
- Video Length: 30s
- Video Dimensions: 720*1280
- Advertising Platform: Instagram
- Duration: 22 days
- Estimated Impressions: 2.3M
- Main Scenes: illustrations, imperial palace
- Main Elements: stick person, luxury clothing, palace NPCs
- Main information of the first 3 seconds of the video:
(1) A stick person wearing a hairstyle of the Qing Dynasty
(2) Persuade players to download this real palace mobile game
This creative starts with a cartoon stick figure who calls on players to uninstall fake palace games. Then the creative displays multiple options for stages and several splendid costumes, fully showing how beautiful and rich the in-game items are. After selecting a family background, the player makes choices in several stages with typical storylines such as emperor’s invitations, being framed by a scheming girl, etc. In the end, the character fails and is imprisoned in the cold palace. The challenge of changing this bad ending attracts players to download the game. Interestingly, creatives for over 70% of the top 100 palace games end with the characters failing to get promoted.
Improvable Aspects: It displays too few stages, and uses a lot of voice-over and subtitles. It should apply more silent scenes.
3. MMO’s biggest type: Xianxia or Korean style?
As the regular type of game on the advertising chart, Xianxia MMO games experience fierce competition with patterned and straightforward creatives.
First of all, they are often endorsed by a celebrity who has quite an influence in the Asian-Pacific region and looks good in ancient Chinese costumes. Then the creatives will show redeem codes offered for various virtual and actual items, arousing the interest of gamers who love free things.
Also read: Genshin Impact Sees Biggest Quarter for Games Consumer Spend Since Pokémon GO in Q3 2016
Unlike Xianxia MMO games’ advertising strategy featuring prizes and advertising endorsement, MMO games of Korean style have very simple creatives. Take [Black Desert] for example, and one of its creatives is shown below:
- Video Length: 31s
- Video Dimensions: 1280*720
- Advertising Platform: Messenger
- Main Scenes: Game Interface
- Main Elements: Various NPCs, in-game cultures and customs
Creatives for Korean-style MMO games are very fond of displaying beautiful in-game landscapes which are the result of many years’ hard work, switched scenes, and interactions between NPCs, all highlighting the games’ richness and high-quality graphics. In addition, their creatives usually display gameplays. Different from Xianxia MMO games which display all classes in one creative, Korean-style MMO games usually focus on displaying the skills of one main class in one creative by controlling a character of that class to defeat Bosses. The big differences in body sizes and strength give gamers a sense of achievement.
4. Open world will be the future
[Genshin Impact] is an open-world action-adventure cross-platform game, and also the highest-grossing game in the world with its excellent ACGN characters, vast and exquisite map design, wonderful characters and storylines, as well as world-class cross-platform syncing services and optimization ability. It is also a benchmarking game for all ACGN 3A mobile games. Many game companies have announced their open-world mobile games in development, and Tencent and NetEase have already started the globalization of their best IPs. The following is one of [Genshin Impact]‘s creatives:
- Video Length: 22s
- Video Dimensions: 1920*1080
- Advertising Platform: YouTube
- Duration: 2 days
- Estimated Impressions: 706.9K
[Genshin Impact]‘s creatives are mainly about the vast territories of its open world, or the appearances and skills of the currently available banner characters. The above creative displays [Genshin Impact]‘s unique elemental reactions and real-world physical system. In the creative, three different characters race against each other across a river in different ways, each demonstrating their own special skills. It’s a full display of its open world’s characteristics. A real machine display of the game is a better way to show its open-world features than broadcast advertising by streamers or beautiful graphics by UE4.
From the above typical creatives of RPGs, we can see that the failure displayed in creatives would stimulate players, making them feel challenged, upset, the desire to try the game themselves, etc. And players will be further attracted by the words “One more time”, “You can help him/her” or other similar words added at the end of creatives. Negative complaints are more impressive to players than positive rewards. Through an interview with players by SocialPeta, it is noticed that negative complaints can leave a deep impression on players, but frequent “stupid moves” may annoy players so much that they won’t play the game.
