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Onmyoji - The Analysis On Its Players

Image 1: the official poster for Onmyoji

Recent half years, there is a very popular game appears in the mobile game of China. That is Onmyoji. The fans of Onmyoji wearing the clothes of those characters that they like to go to the Comic show. And the owner and publisher of this mobile game – WebEase hold several propagandas to support those games. Onmyoji is a kind of simulation game that developed by NetEase and first published on Sep. 2nd, 2016 at Appstore.

Video 1:  Onmyoji Features and Gameplay 

This game uses Japanese Onmyoji as its theme and full of the styling of Japanese traditional culture. It is not very common in the mobile game of China. The overall game world structure is setting at Japanese peace era, four monsters Chi, Mei, Wang and Liang that originally should stay under the ground appeared in the world and they create troubles for the human. Otherwise, there is a kind of people named Onmyoji who has the special ability. They can drive the magic mantra, service to the spirits and more with the spirits of the contract received as ‘God’ for the order. Onmyoji uses their own ability to reconcile the disputes between mankind and ghosts and contradictions, to maintain the balance between Good and Bad, Yang and Yin (that means the good part of the world and the trouble that those monsters made). This game set the player as one of the famous onmyoji - Abe at the beginning, and improve his ability during player completed missions through the game. And the player can earn more onmyoji in the future. They also can collect monsters and use them to fight others player. Monsters in this game have 4 levels: N, R, SR and SSR. SSR is the strongest and rarest monsters they can collect.

Image 2: the number of followers and posts on Baidu Post Bar

Image 3: the number of  followers number on Sina Weibo

Image 4: the rank of top ios games of China on Newzoo

Image 5: the income of game company, data from App Annine, October 2016

From the first published of Onmyoji at AppStore on Sep. 2nd, 2016, it became the one of ten most popular game of iPad at Sep. 4st, 2016. And at 29th of the same month, Onmyoji announces the player in the game that they have the download record over ten million. In the Baidu Index Detection (measure the amount of people research) of Onmyoji, the number increased begin from lower than 2 thousand to the peak of 173 thousand in less than one month. In the static of Baidu Post Bar shows that until Dec. 6th, 2016, Onmyoji owns over 918 thousand followers and has more than 9,250 thousand posts. Until right now, they have almost 2,097 thousand posts totally. (Baidu Post Bar, April 9th, 2017). Onmyoji also has great performance on Wechart and Microblog. The official followers of Sina Microblog up to 1,188 thousand and the blog topic #Onmyoji mobile game has been read more than 720,915 thousand times. (Sina Microblog, April 9th, 2017) App Annie released the ranking of income of the game company in October 2016, and Onmyoji’s publish company NetEase become the first one on the list. (App Annie, Oct 2016)

Image 6: four Onmyojis in the game

Image 7: basic game platform of Onmyoji

By go through many images of this game and doing audience analysis for those images, Onmyoji meet the love of Japanese and the love of mobile game’s attention, but there also have the hidden dangerous that people getting too addictive.

Onmyoji provides many different kinds of game styles. The player can have many different ways to interactive with the game, and have many different ways to increase their level in the game, and collecting many different things to help them being stronger. So the different ways of form attracting the attention of mobile games lover.

Image 8: narrative plot in Onmyoji

Image 9: making group in Onmyoji

Image 10: one example of union in Onmyoji

Image 11: Shi Ju: one of the boos in the game

This game has its narrative plot, the player needs to overcome the competition in each chapter to see the further more stories. After each section completed, the game system will give user rewards for that section. Not only for the chapters reward, but also user has the same daily mission to completed. And using the reward that received, the player can summon monsters to collected, and those monsters can help the onmyoji to fight with others. As in the images shown, sometimes the game are not limited in PvE (Player versus environment), but also have the form of PvP (Player versus Player). For example, Onmyoji set one to one dual meet at a fixed period of time every day. Players can choose to join the union in the game named ‘Liao’. That is same as the group of player combined together to play in the game. They can challenge with other unions in the same game world, and get rewards to the whole union. This setting giving player the feeling of belonging. It also keeps the player stay in the game because there have the conscious that they have the responsibility of their union. Players can add friends in the game and make the group fight with the boss in the game that is not easy to overcome with one person.

In the image, we found out that the layout of the game structure is clear, people can easily find the section that they want to go. And they set the fixed different time period for special game form. And there are system messages bar all the time on the top of the game screen and it shows who need teammates to fight together, who just get a rare onmyoji. This message bar attracting people has links between other players in the game, and also giving them the desire of earns more rare onmyoji.

Image 12: the Onmyoji’s decorator in KFC

Image 13: young people go to KFC buy the combo of Onmyoji meal

Image 14: monsters that illustrate by fans

The publisher of onmyoji also has many activities to letting their player communicates offline. WebEase has the corporation with KFC recently, people can get the ticket to summon onmyoji by bought specific meat combo at KFC, because of that, we can more clearly to see that most fans of Onmyoji are teenagers or young people. When holidays coming, WebEase will create some game event in the game world. For instance, at the valentines' day, users can use the game bill to confession with other players, and the system's message will telling all the players what and who you has been confessed. It is really popular that publisher holds those special events, That also shows that the audience of Onmyoji is younger.

 Video 2: Japan: KIMONO - Japan's Traditional Clothing for Men and Women

Image 15: traditional Japanese cloth 1

Image 16: traditional Japnaese cloth 2

Onmyoji using Japanese styling as the theme. The visual style and culture elements of Onmyoji is a wisp of fresh air in the Chinese mobile game market. Traditional Japanese character design plus movie level of music, high-quality illustrations and excellent voice acting helped catch many people’s attention. Those special features attract many Japanese styling lovers. Firstly, the game background is setting in Japan, and the narrative plot in each chapter is small but delicacy. It has the styling of Japanese features. And the cloth that Onmyoji wears is kimono (traditional Japanese cloth). It is really obvious to see in the image. For female onmyoji, lots of them cloth contain the elements of Japanese styles, such as yukatas, hand Fans, obi, hair accessories, geta, tabi, parasols. For male onmyoji, they have happi coats, katana (Japanese sword), jinbei, etc. The colorful and meaningful Japanese cloth styling make the game frames beautiful and consistent.

  Video 3: Voice actors recorded video to celebrate the new year of China with Onmyoji players 

There are more features in this game can get the love of Japanese styling. Under each onmyoji and monster’s picture, they have indicated who dubbing for it. For example, Abe’s dubbing speaker is Sugiyama Noriaki, he also dubbing for Uchiha Sasuke in Naruto. The dubbing speaker for the second onmyoji – Kagura is Kugimiya Rie, She has the experience of dubbing same character Kagura in SUNRISE as well. Suzuki Tatsuhis dub the third onmyoji – Minamoto no Hiromasa. For the last onmyoji - Bhiksuni, the dubbing character is the person that dubbing for Kurapika in Hunter X Hunter – Sawashiro Miyuki. For more dubbing characters for those monsters: Ibarakidouji dubbed by Fukuyama Jun; Judge, Warrior Figures, Mountains and Iron Rats dubbed by Ishida Akira; White Impermanence dubbed by Suzumura Kenichi. In those voice actors, Fukuyama Jun, Ishida Akira, Suzuki Tatsuhis and Suzumura Kenichi are ranked at position 3rd, 8th, 14th and 22nd in the top 50 Voice Actors with best voices, respectively. (statics collecting by the roll of Crunchyroll at August 22, 2013.) Use famous voice actors to help to dub this game can attracting more people who already have some knowledge about Japanese comic. And it also increases the quality of the game.

WebEase also hired the excellent composition named Shigeru Umebayashi. He is a famous composition in Asian. He has to get the reward of 24th annual Hong Kong Film Awards and get nominated for best original film music at 38th annual Golden Horse Awards.

Image 17: fans wear ‘Shan Tu’ cloth to the KFC

Image 18: Fans of Onmyoji cosplay characters in the game.

Image 19: A coser cosplay the monster in the Onmyoji named ‘Gui Nv Hong Ye’ 

For offline, people love Onmyoji’s beautiful Japanese clothing style. The fans of Onmyoji wearing the cloth that appears in the game, and make up themselves as the outlook of onmyoji or monster to the comic show. Lighting color, beautiful accessories, unique weapon have been attracting many young people to play as them. And because of the corporation of WebEase and KFC, some people recently even play as characters in the game go to KFC. And for attracting more people, KFC decorates them store with the poster of Onmyoji all around.

Because of the popular of Onmyoji mobile game, there are also some hidden dangerous that becoming visible. One of them is people spending their time too long on this game.

In the population of Onmyoji’s game, people giving a name of people that spend too many time on the game – ‘Gan’ it is the Chinese pronunciation of liver. Because player spends their time on the game longer than the normal will have disadvantage of their liver. Combined with the different form of the game and those many tools that can be collected, players has to spend lots of time and energy to increase the level of the game.

Image 20: Average time spend playing games per day, date from Verto Analysis

In the report of The Average Mobile Game Day written by Connie Hwong on August 17th, 2016, after the excerpt of the report of Leveling Up Your Mobile Game: Using Audience Measurement Data to Boost User Acquisition and Engagement, she point out usage is far from uniform from mobile player to mobile gamer. While the average gamer spends 24 minutes each day playing games, Heavy Gamers (representing the top 40 percent of gamers) spend more than 2.5 times that amount. Among Core Gamers (the top 20 percent of gamers), the average time spent with mobile games each day is four times greater.

Image 21: daily task for Onmyoji

The game lovers spend more than 2.5 times time compare with others, it is not good for our health and daily life. But the system of Onmyoji set the daily task to ask players to complete.

Image 22: the number shows the money that people spend on this game (115,990 yuan)

Image 23: all the SSR monsters are collected by ‘White Worf’

Some people more easily to has the magpie when they playing games. That means they are enjoyable in the collecting things. That can be really obvious for the audience for Onmyoji. As previously said, Onmyoji has many different forms to play with. Collecting different monster and onmyoji, different cloth of then, and the different mitama (the tool that can make monster stronger) for those monsters will be the goal of those magpies. And players in the game also can collect different picture frame of them own. Those elements can be collected by play the game and overcome some hard level of the game. Player will get the new element by getting the achievement. Each time players want to abstract the monster, they will need one ticket or 100 magatamas. But the way to getting ticket and magatama is hard and slow, for the additional of the scarcity of great monsters, to getting higher level and being strong than the other players is really hard. So some people will choose another way that is using the money to buy the ticket from the store of the game. For those magpies, they want to use quicker way to collecting all the monsters, but the explode rate of SSR is really low, the official game company does not give the explode rate of SSR, but some players have tested it and get the conclusion: There is no more than 1% to get an SSR. So people will spend lots of money and still hard to collect them all. And the WebEase add new monsters and mitama continuity, so it will be a game that has no ending properly.

There are some extremely events that show those players that have magpie or trying to get the monster that they want. A player named White Wolf post one image of his collection of monsters. He got all of the monsters and systems shows that he has spent 10.56 billion yuan (about 211 thousand Canadian Dollar) until that time. And he also posts image of SSR that he have by types. He said he at least has more than 220 SSR monsters, compare with the explode rate of SSR monsters we can roundly count out how many tickets that he bought.

It is not one case of the player spend lots of money on this game, there are also many images collected. The number shows on the picture are the amount of money that player spend. (Yuan)

Image 24: the cosplay of Onmyoji Kagura

To sum up, the successful of Onmyoji is necessary, because it meets the demand of Chinese mobile game players. On the contrary, we can say, is the player of Onmyoji make the game successful. After the analysis of Onmyoji’s players, we found that they has the features of the lover of the mobile game, and they pursuing the high quality of the game environment and various forms of game experience. WebEase satisfies this with the rarely topic, beautiful gaming environment, familiar voice actors and famous composition. And those advantages also meet the requirement of the lovers of Japanese Styling. They can dress as their favorite characters in the real world, and communicate with people that have the same hobbit. The age of players in the Onmyoji is younger because the offline event always gathering lots of young people around. Although there is good to have a high quality and creative mobile game to spend time, but it can become the disadvantages in some ways. For people who likely having magpie to collecting things in a game, it might be spending too much money on the game. And the different forms of the game will attract spend too much time on that. They can not easy to control themselves play the game in a limited time.

Image 25: Fans of Onmyoji picture on comic show

Audience studies can explore the richness and complexity of audiences’ engagement with visual materials while paying attention to social power relation. They can also offer reflexive accounts of the research process. However, the specificity of visual materials can be lost in more sociological accounts of audiencing. (Rose, G. (2016). Visual methodologies. Place of publication not identified: Sage Publications.). That means because the limitation of visual materials, it might not get completed feature for audiences. For example, some people that do not eat fast food will not likely to go to KFC. Because the high quality of the game, some company might do research for the game and they do all the same things as other normal players. We cannot recognize the job of them by just take limited types of images. So getting more categories of audiences, at the different place and time, analysis the sociological for the audience might be able to help researchers get the more accurately answer.

References:

Chapter 10, To Audience Studies and Beyond, Rose, G. (2016). Visual methodologies. Place of publication not identified: Sage Publications.  

HWONG, C.A day in the life of the average mobile gamer (Hwong, 2017)

Hwong, C. (2017). A day in the life of the average mobile gamer. [online] Verto Analytics. Available at: http://www.vertoanalytics.com/average-mobile-game-day/ [Accessed 8 Apr. 2017].

Anon, (2017). [online] Available at: http://www.vertoanalytics.com/average-mobile-game-day/http://www.wsm.cn/youxidongman/shoujiyouxi/17324.html [Accessed 8 Apr. 2017].

POLL: JAPANESE POLL RESULTS FOR TOP 50 VOICE ACTORS WITH BEST VOICES (Crunchyroll, 2017)

Crunchyroll. (2017). POLL: Japanese Poll Results For Top 50 Voice Actors With Best Voices. [online] Available at: http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2013/08/22-1/poll-japanese-poll-results-for-top-50-voice-actors-with-best-voices [Accessed 8 Apr. 2017].

NETEASE UNVEILS GAMING PIPELINE (Techtradeasia.info, 2017)

Techtradeasia.info. (2017). NetEase unveils gaming pipeline. [online] Available at: http://www.techtradeasia.info/2016/12/netease-unveils-gaming-pipeline.html [Accessed 8 Apr. 2017].

NetEase Games_News (Inc., 2017)

(2017). NetEase Games_News. [online] Game.163.com. Available at: https://game.163.com/en/16v1/news/2016/12/23/25247_663706.html [Accessed 8 Apr. 2017].

KIMONO — ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JAPAN (Encyclopedia of Japan, 2017)

Encyclopedia of Japan. (2017). Kimono — Encyclopedia of Japan. [online] Available at: https://doyouknowjapan.com/kimono/ [Accessed 9 Apr. 2017].

WIELEN, B.Top iOS Games in October: NetEase's Onmyoji #1 by Revenues in China (Wielen, 2017)

Wielen, B. (2017). Top iOS Games in October: NetEase's Onmyoji #1 by Revenues in China. [online] Newzoo. Available at: https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/top-ios-games-in-october-with-new-1-onmyoji-netease-dominates-revenues-in-china/ [Accessed 8 Apr. 2017].

数据解析阴阳师：费时费钱的游戏如何成为现象级？(36kr.com, 2017)

36kr.com. (2017). 数据解析阴阳师：费时费钱的游戏如何成为现象级？. [online] Available at: http://36kr.com/p/5058792.html [Accessed 8 Apr. 2017].

Three video’s reference:

video1: https://youtu.be/jcYJKMkQ0_U

video2: https://youtu.be/Quzuu4bDeFY

video3: https://youtu.be/LBM2QG8V8a8 

Combined reference of images：

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GcnnqVqTSqE/maxresdefault.jpg

http://img.9553.com/uploadfile/2016/0602/20160602025650699.jpg

http://pic.paopaoche.net/up/2016-9/2016091910092335113.jpg

http://www.duotegame.com/picfile/gl/contents/2017/01/17/20170117105433443.jpg

http://img.yxzoo.com/allimg/161101/1611011049551.jpg

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/onmyoji/images/c/cd/%E9%99%B0%E9%99%BD%E5%AF%AE.png/revision/latest?cb=20170109113232&path-prefix=zh

http://pic2.mofang.com.tw/2017/0106/20170106110217278.jpg

http://read.html5.qq.com/image?src=forum&q=5&r=0&imgflag=7&imageUrl=http://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_jpg/kKemwYicNM6sh9JHwTDqNI4icCNzNSVHKscuzO3w4kJZr1Yj9SfyCpTHkYzKuxSr1MiaiaVUGE9iaa419CToBpuaficg/0?wx_fmt=jpeg

http://img.game234.com/2017/0214/20170214014246730.jpg

http://i1.img.969g.com/sy/imgx2016/10/10/493_103016_b3fd1.jpg

http://i1.img.969g.com/syyys/imgx2016/11/02/497_164218_f29f1.jpg

[erica-onmyoji-blog]

IAT206  Scoping and introducing methodology

The topic that I am interested in and research is Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale and his fairy tale effects by his experience. Hans Christian Andersen is a famous author of Denmark, and he is the father of fairy tale. Because of him, Denmark has been called the kingdom of fairy tales. Some famous fairy tales written by Andersen are The Ugly Ducking, The Little Mermaid, The Emperor’s New Suit, The Little Match Girl, The Princess and the Pea, Thumbelina, The Snow Queen, etc.

  Hans Christian Andersen was born in a very poor family on 2 April 1805. His father is a shoemaker, and his mother is a laundress, although his father does not have a change to under instruction, he still really like literature. His father always telling the story to Andersen, and under his mother’s support, they building a small theater at home, change the room to a game world. But when Andersen was only 10 years old, his father passed away and only left him and his mother. So he goes out working for life, be an apprentice of the weaver, dressmaker, be an unskilled laborer, one after another. Later he wants to be a opera singer and he was hired by the Danish Royal Theatre, but after several years, his voice was broken. Anderson lost his job and no anywhere to go, suffering from cold and even almost starved to death. Fortunately, he get help from his lifelong friend Jonas Collin and his friend persuade Frederik 6 to subsidize Andersen study at Slagelse school. As we see, the life experience of Andersen is not very happy, and it effects on his literary creation in the future.

  The methodology that I proposed is psychoanalysis. Unconscious thoughts and feelings can transfer to the conscious mind. And Andersen feeling that emotion when he was very young, and developing that feeling and involve them into his fairy tale, It is not hard to see that the experience of Andersen affects on his fairy tale a lot. Most of his story has pessimism color. In The Little Match Girl, the little girl died on the first day of the year sadly, and the day before, she imagines those beautiful things that she want to have, although it is at new year night street, no one care this little poor girl. And the society background is also taken as the reason needs to be considered. Roughly speaking, Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale creation in Europe after the 1830 revolution failed to Paris commune between forty years. These forty years is the expansion of the western capitalism malignant. And after 1815, Denmark becomes the vassal of British. Danish has oppression by Danish ruling class and the British capitalists. Andersen using fairy tale to irony and reveal those weak and vanity Danish ruling class. In his fairy tale, such as The Princess and the Pea, the princess even can feel the small pea under twenty mattresses and twenty eider-down beds. It shows how luxury in daily life. And the princess in the story of Swineherd is also very absurd. She giving the swineherd that she actually despises 100 kisses just for a small toy. Andersen’s fairy tale all can reflect how he think for the society, because his Psychological activity and the feeling of the environment situation.

  Resources:

http://www.simplypsychology.org/psychoanalysis.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Christian_Andersen