Cinemas and movie studios have testing murder mystery games. But it's uncertain whether players will like them enough to open their wallets, and the show may be already over.
Photo from CFP
By JIANG Yunan
Eleven people sit in a cinema. The lights go down. Ominous music plays. Something sinister is brewing.
This is not a movie. This is Jubensha (script-based murder), a mystery game popular among China’s Gen Z’s. For a long time, it was a party game played in cafes and college dorms. With a script and nothing else, participants can sit for hours trying to solve a murder - one takes the role of a killer trying to hide his crime and the rest work together to expose him. In 2020, the game’s popularity exploded as a result of a TV show that coincided with a post-lockdown boom in interactive activities. Tens of thousands of venues have popped up around the country, providing props, costumes and rooms.
Now cinemas have joined the game, boasting an even more immersive experience with theater-quality audio and lighting. But out of necessity rather than simply a love for party games. With new releases postponed and box office at a ten-year low, games promise a small, but not insignificant, source of income for empty cinemas.
Mr. Kang, who manages a cinema in Beijing, said he had been approached by many Jubansha producers since early 2021. By then, there were already 45,000 venues across the country with a total market of around 15 billion yuan (US$2.2 billion).
But cinemas are cautious. The traditional theater layout is not game friendly. Players cannot easily move around rows of seats, and the low light makes it hard to read. And most groups are quite small. “There are many previous industrial spaces that are available for rent these days,” said Kang. “They are more cost-competitive.”
MA Xinzheng works as a movie producer and distributor HY Media. His company decided to make Jubensha for cinemas that work with instead of around the cinema space. The plot is set in a theater, for example, and the clues are delivered through sound and video. There can be as many as 14 characters in each story, more than the usual 5, who are guided through the plot by hired actors.
The game, called Theater Horror Game combines a suspense-driven narrative with cinema and theater and lasts around two and half hours. Theater Horror is not ready for launch, and common feedback from test players is that the experience is not immersive enough. Also, it doesn’t make money, even after cutting the number of actors from four to two. Ma estimates that it costs ten times more to produce a cinema-based Jubensha than those with only props and costumes. Jubensha diehards will probably still opt for specially designed props and stage setups. Beginners probably don't want to pay the cost involved in cinema production.
HY Media remains confident of the commercial prospects for Jubensha. The market may not be as big as that of movies, but there will always be demand for interactive games. For now, the biggest risk is pandemic lockdowns, even more so for cinemas than game producers. HY Media can work with cinemas in different cities.
Jubensha is already cooling after one good year. Venue owners are complaining that there's no more money to be made, some have already shut down.
On Alibaba's second-hand goods platform Xianyu, the number of clearance sales for spare props, costumes and furniture more than doubled in April from the previous month.
But Kang will keep Jubensha in his cinema even after the hype passes. "When the pandemic passes and the movie industry returns to normal, it won’t hurt to have an additional source of revenue," he said.
