Netease’s Badlanders — First-mover disadvantage?

Introduction

Badlanders is a free-to-play survival shooter developed by NetEase.

• Genre: Shooter-Looter
• Platforms: Mobile and Tablets (Android, iOS)
• Launch Date: 24th October 2020

Game Overview

• Players enter the combat map at random points, where the main objective is to explore, collect resources on the battlefield by extracting in-game loot and killing other players for their loot. The players need to make it out to the extraction points alive to keep the loot.

Badlanders: The overview of the game.

Core Loop

• The player enters the combat map through solo/squad modes and depending on the player’s performance and the loot collected, the player can collect exp, through which the player achieves a progression level.

Badlanders: The core loop of the game.

Game modes

Badlanders has three maps, and the incoming player’s load-in inventory weapon scores limit entry into each map. (resource gating)

Badlanders: The types of game modes available for the player.

Badlanders: The game modes and player modes available through the game.

Monetization

The economy is highly cosmetic-driven and is shallow in depth. Cosmetics are available through Battle Pass, direct purchase, or gift boxes(crates) in character outfits and weapon skins from the store.

Badlanders: The gift box (crates) is available with different drop probabilities of items.

Badlanders: The character outfits available through the store along with other cosmetics .

Apart from Cosmetics, Consumables also are available for direct purchase. Hence, the economy is centered around the pay to win and look cool.

Badlanders: Double XP Card to double the player XP obtained within the hour of activation.

Badlanders only have the following currency systems in use:
• Cashpoint
• Silicium coin
• Cash

Cashpoint

Cashpoint is the primary hard currency that is acquired through direct purchase.

Badlanders: The hard currency available through direct purchase.

Silicium coin

The season exclusive soft currency can be acquired through Battle Pass and is used to acquire season exclusive rewards and crates (gift box).

Badlanders: The season exclusive items that are available upon redeeming the Silicium coins.

Cash

Cash is the primary soft currency obtained in-game, trading, or selling the loot. Players can get Cash through monthly and weekly subscriptions. It is majorly used for insurance or for buying resources directly.

Badlanders: Cash acquired upon selling the items soon after extraction.

Badlanders: The weekly and monthly subscription cards through In-App-Purchase.

Metasystems

Built around the core loop, the player has the following metasystems inside the game

• Battle Pass
• Trading
• Skill Tree Progression
• Crafting
• Insurance

Badlanders: Dismantling the game down to gameplay, core loop and metasystems.

Battle Pass

• The Battle Pass contains 100 tiers. The reward for progression through each tier are season exclusive cosmetics and various other rewards depending on the free and premium tracks of the Battle Pass.
• The progression is achieved by completing the daily and weekly missions or directly skipping the progression tiers using hard currency.

Badlanders: The Battle Pass progression tracks along with the cosmetic rewards.

Trading

The loot or resources gained through in-game or crafting can be sold by the player, either directly to the in-game company (Prism) or other players by listing the items for a limited time, or can even be exchanged depending on the perceived value of the item.

Badlanders: The types of trading available for the players in-game.

Badlanders: Service Fee and Deposit applicable for player’s to sell resources for cash.

Skill Tree Progression

The players receive seasonal and permanent attribute talent certificates as in-game rewards to upgrade their skill tree in various categories of weapon handling (as a stand-alone category with its subcategories), physical fitness, concentration, skill, and speed of the character.

Badlanders: The types of skill tree upgrades available for the character.

Badlanders: The types of weapon handling skill tree upgrades available for the player.

Crafting

The player can craft various resources like consumables and armor by the in-game materials extracted through looting or directly purchasing the materials through Cash.

Badlanders: The crafting mechanics available through the workshop

Insurance

The player can insure the items pre-combat, for getting the items back in case of the player’s death, provided that no other player loots the items during the game.

Badlanders: Player insurance available pre-combat.

Current State

The current state of Badlanders does not seem good, with over 140,000 downloads and an underwhelming $30,000 revenue to date. (iOS+Android- worldwide).

Even though the game’s current revenue could reflect a potential failure, Badlanders seem to improve itself with continuous updates constantly. Most of the updates focus on making better weapons, adding new combat maps, time-exclusive cosmetics, an overall better gameplay experience in addition to the inevitable bug fixes.The game seems to be vocal and accessible to its community via discord and other social media platforms.

I think Netease steered away from the mainstream region exclusive soft launch plans and towards a worldwide soft launch by increasing the player base slowly but steadily. Badlanders seem to be catering to the niche audience who are craving “Escape From Tarakov” on mobile for now and waiting for the genre to evolve to become the next big thing slowly.

Suggested Improvements

Being the first game of the shooter looter genre on mobile and especially with no rivaled competition in the segment even after a year, Netease should consider the following potential problems and rectify (based on my experience of the game) to reach its full potential.

PPA Analysis

While the existing games like Vigor and Rust suffered and survived the direct comparison with “Escape from Tarakov,” It is inevitable that the players would compare all the games in the survival shooter genre to EFT. The studios need to deliver the same throat punching experience on mobile as EFT does, which would send the players crying home but can’t resist coming back for more to break the glass ceiling.

NetEase with Badlanders and Lost Light, Tencent with Arena Breakout and Ubisoft with Rainbow Six Extraction, and other new studios betting on survival-oriented extraction shooters as the next big thing on all platforms. Badlanders does seem to have the first-mover advantage; We are yet to find out which games would successfully survive the upcoming Survival-Extraction Shooter Royale.