The second season of "Iron Armor Ambitions" Douban 9.1, Maker Planet linkage "Five Varieties + Event

Recently, the maker planet that created a new category of iron armor variety with "Iron Armor" and "This is Iron Armor", and the second season of "Iron Armor" came again. Douban scored 9.1. 98% of users gave four stars and Above praise. Coupled with the global influence of its KOB iron armor fighting robot contest, Maker Planet has established a head position in the field of domestic science and technology.

As an important member of Hongtai Family, Maker Planet completed a pre-B round of financing of nearly 100 million yuan in May 2018; earlier in July 2017, Hongtai Fund led its tens of millions of A+ round of financing, which is a creative A solid fan on the development path of the guest planet.

Today's article comes from an exclusive interview with Ru Chen, the founder and CEO of Maker Planet. May wish to hear his thoughts on the IP industry chain of robotics competitions and youth sports, "learning with comprehensive competitions and learning with competitions". He said that it is the current goal to build a complete industrial chain for the future super competition of robotics. At the same time, further sinking into the youth STEM education market is a key step in creating a closed loop in the robot sports industry chain, and it is also the next ambition for Maker Planet and Iron Armor fighting.

"Obviously, the market, the audience, and the brand customers' recognition and recognition of the category have really been established, and robot sports has really established its head position in technology and entertainment programs." Recently, "Iron Armor Ambitions" and " This is the Maker Planet that created a new category of iron armor variety in Iron Armor. With the second season of Iron Armor Ambitious, founder Ru Chen also admitted that the market has changed.

However, there are not many problems in the second season of "Iron Armor". If the difficulty of "Iron Armor" is to open the threshold for the production of new categories, "This is the Iron Armor" is to entertain the entertainment of star managers, the second season of "Iron Armor" needs to face, it is a more difficult challenge: Make a fundamental innovation in the gameplay of robot fighting, break the inherent model originating in Europe and America for more than ten years, make it more suitable for the viewing habits of young people today, and lay the foundation for the mainstream form of robot fighting in the next decade .

At the same time, in Ru Chen's view, similar projects in Europe and the United States often fall into a bottleneck period after several seasons. The root causes are mainly three points:

❶ Without breaking the circle to the pan-user group, the audience hardening of the niche hard-core project is difficult to generate commercial value;

❷ Has not formed a complete industrial chain, lacking the support of consumer-level business;

❸ Insufficient creativity leads to audience fatigue.

"These three points are also our focus. At present, we are the most successful in expanding the pan-user group. This year's content has also begun to extend to youth education. On the core of innovation, we believe that this The movement to professionalism and club team confrontation is the only way out. This is also the starting point of the "Future Legion" in the second season of "The Iron Armor"."

Based on this, the second season of "Iron Armor" made a comprehensive upgrade in the rules of the system: the introduction of star managers and the concept of team battles. It is understood that the program is mainly divided into three stages of armored armor formation, armored team battle and championship battle, and ultimately competes for the championship in a bloody battle; the star manager is the team’s style symbol and decision brain, serving team battles. Of course, they are also an important cornerstone of betting on the market and leveraging the pan-audience.

"The charm of competitive sports is often presented through teamwork. We used the three-round team fight mode to extend the original 3-minute single-game viewing time to 9 minutes, making the audience's viewing experience more enjoyable. The platoon formation before the game is full Demonstrating the decision-making ability of the manager and the team, and enhancing the variables also greatly enhance the suspense and drama of the game. The mode of bloody battle is very easy to produce a hero template and highlight moments that lead the team to victory with one person. "Teamfighting is equivalent to adding a dimension to the original form of robot fighting. After upgrading the dimension, the tension, excitement, and appreciation of robot fighting are increased several times," Ru Chen pointed out. With a score of 9.1 on Douban, 98% of users gave a four-star or above praise, which is undoubtedly the biggest recognition given by the market.

As we approached, we were more pleasantly surprised, and while constantly exploring new ways of fighting robots, the second season of Maker Planet and "Iron Armor" also aimed at the youth group-an artificial intelligence-based living language, but urgently needed to be enlightened in the field of robots. The future group, and launched a special section "Iron Armor Small Ambitions" for them, really let "ambitions regardless of size", build a bridge between teenagers and robot fighting.

1. Break the wall, embrace and innovate: create a grip between iron armor fighting and teenagers

"When we made the first season of "Iron Armor", we had a plan that there must be a program called "Iron Armor Little Ambitions", which is a youth armor competition," Ru Chen revealed. After a year, with the second season of "Iron Armor" coming, the reality show "Iron Armor" of the young AI intelligent robot experience class also appeared as expected. It's just no denying that any program that tries to push young people to the center of the stage is not inferior to large-scale program production.

For Maker Planet, the inclusion of young people in the robot sports ecosystem is not only the inevitable for enterprises to build a complete industrial chain, but also the mission and responsibility entrusted by the era of artificial intelligence and the objective market environment. "When doing program audience analysis, we found that the proportion of young audiences is much higher than other programs, and the proportion of audiences between 4-14 years old is more than 20%," Ru Chen revealed, while the KOB iron armor fighting robot global tour was held offline. Many young people participated in the competition.

And this also made it determined to build "Iron Armor". "From the perspective of the program, it is how to make teenagers go from watching lively to looking at the doorway, or even delving into the things inside. However, the large armored fighting programs on the market have too high a threshold for teenagers, which requires us to create a This is more suitable for their age group, specifically for their competition form, product form, and curriculum training form."

This is a hit with Youbi. "Making AI and robot education more universal is the social responsibility of AI technology companies, but the barriers of existing robot variety shows are too high, and it is too difficult for elementary and middle school students to participate." But the question also comes, how Create a complete closed loop in "The Iron Armor", convert young people's interest in robots into knowledge points, and encourage them to work together and complete challenges?

Ru Chen called it a new product development: "What kind of robots can children play? How can they be transformed from the interest in armor fighting to the learning of robots, so that they have a clearer understanding of the principles and logic behind the interactive behavior Cognition? How to stimulate their imagination and creativity step by step through learning, hands-on practice, and competition?" Based on this, Maker Planet and Ubisoft have carried out many communication and communication from program planning to knowledge education, technical level, etc. , Developed a unique form of "online open class" for robot and AI education.

In the end, the presentation of "Iron Armor Ambitions" in the market was mainly led by Shen Tao, the manager of the second season team of "Iron Armor Ambitions", and together with the two iron armor players, called 8 robot-loving, creative little Mengxin participates in the robot summer camp, and guides them to learn various skills such as robot construction, operation, programming, and complete related game tasks and group competitions, to truly realize the fun of education.

As a grip between the robot fighting competition and the youth group, "The Iron Armor" is as pioneering in the market as the iron armor variety show last year. As an “online window” for young people and pan users to understand and approach the robot fighting movement, its appearance also means that Maker Planet is committed to creating a picture of the entire industrial chain of robot fighting, which is equipped with a “talent relay” forever. motivation.

2. The Robo Genius Youth Tournament set sails to improve the competition ecology of the KOB iron armor fighting?

In 2018, the popularity of the iron armor variety made the large-scale technology entertainment sports project KOB King Of Bots launched by Maker Planet ferment from the sports circle layer to the entertainment circle layer, causing a lot of attention; one year later, and "Iron Armor Small" "Ambition" came into the public's vision together, as well as the Robo Genius Global Youth Robot Challenge (hereinafter referred to as RoboG) jointly organized by Maker Planet.

It is understood that RoboG mainly stimulates the scientific and technological innovation spirit of young people through the educational concept of "learning with competition", through team competitions and fun events. At present, RoboG's projects mainly include green teenagers, rookie basketball players, super-changing battlefields, etc., multi-dimensional all-round training to help young people grow, and the integration of football, basketball and other sports elements into robot competition, also makes it more interesting and more Easy to reach the public.

"RoboG is a link in the entire robot fighting sports industry chain. After it is added, it is a complete event ecology." Ru Chen affirmed the value of RoboG and admitted that the development goal: "Strive to make RoboG into China within three years. The top youth robot competition brand." And it relies on the common vision of Maker Planet and Ubisoft to "let intelligent robots enter into thousands of households", as well as complementary advantages at the IP and product levels.

On the one hand, after years of hard work in the field of robot fighting, the KOB Iron Armor Fighting Robot Competition launched by Maker Planet is already the highest-standard event in the world, and its accumulated game experience, fan community, and guidance for the spirit of courage and innovation are all It is a powerful boost for RoboG; on the other hand, Ubisoft's strong technology and product supply chain in the field of robots also makes RoboG's promotion more professional and efficient.

At the same time, in Ru Chen's view, there is a common pain point in current AI education and robot education: What is the ultimate exit of the youth group after learning? This is the most important part for parents, and it is also a huge advantage of RoboG: "RoboG and online programs are very good outlets for young people after learning and playing. They can compete on this stage to show their skills, and they can also compete with Other people interact."

At present, RoboG has reached cooperation with the Social Sports Guidance Center of the State Sports General Administration to jointly reserve talents for the future of Chinese robots. According to Ru Chen, this year Maker Planet is expected to host more than 30 RoboG offline events. So far, there have been more than 5,000 registration teams, and the scale has grown rapidly.

Online program linkage and internationalization of events are also the main layouts of RoboG. It is understood that RoboG will launch an offline tour event this year, relying on the effect of online programming, so that more teenagers can meet, feel and fall in love with the iron armor; and the winners of the offline event will also show their talents in the next season "Iron Armor". On the road to internationalization, 500+ outstanding young players will be selected each year to participate in the RoboG Global Finals and challenge the honor of the championship.

3. With the comprehensive belt competition and the belt learning, is a nationwide "iron armor culture" coming?

"The time for teenagers to learn to master robots is much shorter than expected, and their learning ability is very strong." The promotion of "The Iron Armor" and RoboG made Ru Chen deeply realize that "in the future, artificial intelligence is something like water and air, which exists in all aspects of life; and for 00 later, artificial intelligence and robots are their generation. Human language is inherently integrated into the blood."

What Maker Planet is doing is to help teenagers learn more about the principles behind this, the overall operating mechanism, and how to make design changes and innovations. Based on this, Maker Planet has created the linkage of the four ecological chains of "variety + competition + education + product", and fully penetrated into the youth competitive robot consumption and education market by means of "combination competition and learning with competition", with a view to The society provides more innovative talents.

The "Iron Armor" and RoboG mentioned above are precisely their layouts in variety shows and offline events. In addition, they also created the robot competition education training course "Iron Armor Small Class", and Youbi The consumer-grade products represented by the jointly created "JIMU Ultra-Variable Iron Armor Series" are selected. The former includes teaching content such as robot creative building and programming, and the latter is capable of building a variety of iron armor forms and supporting a variety of stimulating fighting games.

It is worth noting that "The Iron Armor" pushes the robot to the public; the RoboG Youth Competition combines fun and competitiveness; the Iron Armor Classroom and consumer products enhance the logical thinking, creativity and problem solving ability of young people In other words, the efficient linkage of the four ecological sectors and the ability to cultivate teenagers in all directions and multiple dimensions also form a closed loop of "promoting robotics to become a favorite emerging sport for teenagers."

Just under the extremely forward-looking layout, Ru Chen and Maker Planet are still well-organized and have clear goals: In the future, Maker Planet will still focus on two important grasps of online communication and offline events. In his view, interest is the best teacher. Constantly expanding the influence of the event, making the event's cultural communication and value communication better, and making more teenagers full of enthusiasm and interest in robotics are the core of the moment. Strengthen.

"I hope that in the fastest and shortest possible time, the threshold, influence and professionalism of RoboG can be raised to a level that clearly surpasses the same event; in the future we will further increase the threshold of courses and consumer products, including offline channels, But these are the later stages, and now we still focus on online programs and events." Ru Chen breaks down the development goals of each step.

And as Ru Chen has always believed, "Even if there is still a long way to go in the future, robot sports will become a major trend in the future"; we also believe that "the ambition is big or small", the young maker planet is already This is the most critical step in the future. In the future blueprint for the market, Maker Planet will surely become the most gorgeous stroke, and it is also expected to bring more new possibilities for robot fighting.