As young people today increasingly seek a release from stress through a sense of achievement in games, coupled with a growing desire for deep emotional connection and self-expression (a 2024 survey by the Fudan Development Institute shows that game-related videos have topped the list of content consumed by young internet users for ten consecutive years), the protagonist-centric design of traditional single-player RPGs is gradually revealing its limitations. Players are no longer satisfied with passively following fixed storylines or simply engaging in combat and leveling up. Instead, they crave more engaging character roles, warmer virtual companionship, and a space to cultivate unique personal experiences. Against this backdrop, a new genre of strategy-focused RPGs centered on first-person supporting roles has emerged—where players step into the shoes of secondary characters (the male/female second lead) and drive plot branching by determining the profit margin of individual quests. Combined with AI-powered humanized protagonists and a co-creation community, this design precisely caters to the spiritual needs of contemporary youth, opening up a new track for the publishing and gaming industries.
This "supporter narrative" setup completely subverts the character logic of traditional RPGs, transforming players from "saviors of the world" into more down-to-earth companions. Unlike functional supporting NPCs such as Princess Laura in Dragon Quest I HD-2D Remake, who only provides combat buffs, the supporting role played by the user is the core strategist of the storyline. In main quests, players can choose to lay out perfect tactics for the charging protagonist, securing full rewards and unlocking the "highlight ending"; alternatively, constrained by limited resources, they may opt for a conservative strategy—though this reduces quest profits, it triggers the protagonist's rarely seen vulnerable side and hidden story arcs. Players can even deliberately create "accidents" to foster subtle alliances between opposing factions, spawning cross-faction collaboration side quests. This design not only caters to the preference of over 40% of RPG players (per data from the Nerdburglars Gaming community) for supportive roles like strategists rather than core combatants, but also endows every decision with real weight through the "quest profit determines plot direction" mechanism, avoiding the "false choices" plaguing traditional branching storylines.
In-depth AI integration is the cornerstone of bringing the "supporter narrative" to life and the key to breaking the loneliness of single-player gaming. Traditional NPCs are like "puppets on strings," bound by fixed scripts in their dialogue and actions. In contrast, through large model fine-tuning technology, game protagonists evolve into "soulful companions"—equipped with perception, cognition, decision-making, and memory capabilities, they dynamically adjust their behavior based on the player's support strategies and even retain details of interactions across quests. If players sacrifice resources to protect the protagonist in one mission, the latter will express gratitude in subsequent storylines and instinctively cover the player's position in combat. If players repeatedly adopt high-risk strategies, the protagonist may tease their "reckless style" yet still cooperate seamlessly with their tactics. NetEase Fuxi has already validated this potential with its AI teammates in Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile—intelligent partners that respond to voice commands and provide emotional feedback, infusing single-player experiences with the companionship typically found in multiplayer games. Applying this technology to protagonist characterization will forge a truly unique two-way emotional bond. Players no longer advance the plot alone but grow alongside a virtual partner with distinct personality and warmth, addressing contemporary youth's longing for "deep companionship."
The construction of a community co-creation ecosystem extends the game's longevity beyond single-player gameplay, forming a positive cycle of "in-game experience to out-of-game sharing." Drawing inspiration from Final Fantasy XIV, whose player co-creation has spawned a vibrant "meme universe" and sustained long-term popularity, the game can build an exclusive community platform where players share unique interaction stories with the protagonist: some may trigger plotlines about the protagonist's hidden childhood trauma; others may unlock a reconciliation ending between the protagonist and the villain through repeated strategy adjustments; some may even engage in lighthearted cross-quest banter with the protagonist. These diverse experiences will become core community topics and feed back into game updates—developers can extract ideas from high-profile player stories and dynamically train the AI model to continuously enrich the protagonist's behavioral logic and plot branches, allowing the game world to evolve and grow. Additionally, the community can implement a "co-creation points" system: high-quality player-shared stories and creative dialogues can be redeemed for exclusive in-game items or beta test access, with top contributors even invited to participate in storyline polishing. This transforms players from "consumers" into "co-creators," a sense of participation and belonging highly valued by young internet users in their cultural consumption (research from the Unity Developer Community indicates that co-creation-focused game communities boast 3x higher user retention than traditional ones).
From a market perspective, this game precisely aligns with three core trends: first, the untapped demand among young people for supportive gameplay, filling the gap in deep supporting role experiences in single-player RPGs; second, the integration of AI technology with game interaction, where humanized protagonists help single-player games overcome the barrier of loneliness; third, the trend of "experience co-creation" in content consumption, where community sharing mechanisms extend the game's lifecycle and expand its reach. For the publishing industry, the game's "supporter narrative" can be extended into derivative novels, comics, and other media to form an IP matrix. For the gaming market, this innovative design is poised to break the homogenization of competition and emerge as a potential blockbuster appealing to both core and casual players.
NRCap. Research Department believes that in an era of diversified spiritual needs, in-depth technological application, and co-creational consumption experiences, the combined model of first-person supporting roles + AI-humanized protagonists + community co-creation is more than just an innovative game design—it represents an exploration of the next generation of entertainment products. It transforms games from "one-way entertainment products" into "two-way emotional carriers," satisfying young people's basic need for stress relief and achievement while addressing their higher-order demands for deep companionship and self-expression. This model is expected to become a benchmark for driving cross-border integration between the publishing and gaming industries.