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MiniGames: A Review of Sina Weibo’s Beast War

In a bid to monetize its user-friendly but financially dragging giant, Sina recently imbued its Weibo microblogging platform with its own currency — the weibi — and games. But are these games actually any good? I dove into a few of them to find out. This is the seventh in a series of reviews of Sina Weibo games. Now that is what I’m talking about! The image above is the first thing that greets you when you fire up 魔兽战争, a Sina Weibo game whose title I’ll be loosely translating as Beast War because it sounds cool. The game — its name recalls the Chinese name for World of Warcraft — isn’t quite as cool as the image, of course. But given some of the stuff I’ve seen doing these reviews so far, it’s not bad.

At its core, Beast War is very similar to Toy Legion. It sports the same RTS-meets-tower defense DNA, and the same tacked-on social components. Yet I liked it a lot more than Toy Legion. Why? To begin with, the game starts quickly. Recognizing a flaw that’s apparent in many other Weibo games, it gets you into the action very early in the surprisingly short tutorial, trusting you to figure things out as you go (and guiding you with missions along the way). Before you know it, you’ve got a base that’s cranking out resources so you can build an army of monsters, having successfully used defense towers to fend off a small attack.

The mechanics, as I said, are not new: you collect resources, use those resources to create buildings, use those buildings to create and improve monsters of various sorts, and then, whenever you feel like it, use the monsters to attack any Weibo friends you have playing the game, or a number of computer-controlled monster farms. On paper, it’s Toy Legion. The difference is all in the execution. (OK, the concept makes a difference too; who doesn’t want to raise an army of beasts to destroy their friends?) Beast War does a much better job of implementing monetization in a way that doesn’t kill the game for non-paying users. Yes, it has an in-game currency system. Yes, this allows you to speed up processes that otherwise take some time, or unlock expensive beasts right out of the gate. But they’ve done a great job of balancing things so that you always feel like you can wait, and you’ll have things to do while you do. It’s not as engrossing as a real RTS, of course, but it’s a fun diversion from work rather than an annoying cartoon that seems dedicated to making you wait whenever it isn’t begging you for money. Speaking of cartoons, I’m also fairly impressed with the art direction of Beast War. OK, it isn’t Diablo III, but the game itself looks good enough and when you’re selecting beasts — see the menu image below — you get to see cool drawings for each beast you can buy. Does talking about cool drawings of beasts make me sound like a six-year-old boy? Perhaps it does, but in my defense: shut up.


Of course, Beast War isn’t all rainbows and kittens (metaphorically; in the more literal sense, there are no rainbows or kittens). I’ve been playing it on and off for a couple days — far longer than any other Weibo game has held my attention — but I do get the impression there is a glass ceiling for non-paying players. Some of the higher-end beasts require millions of resources (gems, mostly) to unlock, and I just can’t imagine myself playing long enough to rack up those numbers. Like all these games, it is also constantly trying to get you to spam your followers with messages about how great Beast War is. And although I fully realize the hypocrisy of this statement, having no background music or sound at all for most of the game feels odd (I still prefer it to the inane loops of most Weibo games, though). Even so, Beast War is the best Weibo game I’ve played yet. Or, perhaps my expectations are dropping and I’m just learning to settle. Either way, it doesn’t matter — there’s still nothing here that would convince me to spend money because the fundamental monetization strategy of all these games is: spend money to make the game not boring. Beast War stands on its own better than any of the other offerings I’ve seen, but that doesn’t mean it deserves to be in the pantheon of games I will pay money for.

So, for the moment, it’s goodbye to Beast War and back to Battlefield 3.