The importance of the mobile game market is self-evident at present.
Recently, according to SensorTower's latest data, a total of 8 mobile games have exceeded $1 billion in global revenue so far in 2021, compared with 5 models in 2020, 3 models in 2018 and 2019. And in addition to these 8 games, there is actually a potential product "Horse Racing Lady", although this game is only available in Japan, but so far, the game's revenue has approached $965 million.
Among these 8 games, Tencent has two yuan, and its "PUBG Mobile" and "Honor of Kings" are ranked in the top two. Sensor Tower pointed out that the two games have attracted 2.8 billion yuan in the global market this year, and the growth rate is 9% and 14.7% year-on-year, respectively.
It was followed by Mihayou's year-old "Original God", which has reached $1.8 billion in revenue in 2021. Sensor Tower noted that regular updates have maintained player engagement, and since its launch at the end of September last year, the game's total revenue has cumulatively reached $2.4 billion.
The fourth and fifth are Roblox and Coin Master, respectively, of which Roblox's mobile revenue this year was $1.3 billion, an increase of 20.3% year-on-year, while Gold Master's revenue was also $1.3 billion, an increase of 13.8% year-on-year.
The last three are Niantic's Pokemon GO, King's Candy Crush Sage, and Garena's Free Fire. Sensor Tower pointed out that Pokemon GO has a revenue of $1.2 billion this year and is expected to be the best year in the five years since the game's launch. In addition, "Candy Fun" has $1.2 billion in revenue this year and "Free Fire" has $1.1 billion.
In fact, the above 8 games are basically star products in the industry, and in addition to "Original God", the rest of the several have been used for more than 3 years, if you put them together for research, you can find that behind these "super games", there are some commonalities worth summarizing and exploring.
"Setting up a project to determine life and death", technology and culture determine the height
Games have always been known as the "ninth art", precisely because it integrates elements such as music, graphics, and plot to a new height.
From this point of view, these "super games" actually have similar commonalities, that is, the product itself is extremely open and inclusive in both technology and culture, and can keep pace with the times and constantly innovate.
Among the above 8 games, nearly half of the products are open world or open IP, open world, open platform type games, such as "PUBG Mobile", "Free Fire", "Roblox", and even have the prototype of Metavalse.
Its gameplay, game content, etc. have their own high degree of freedom, allowing them to continuously introduce new content and realize the connection with the real world. In Roblox, for example, players can create games with different ways to play.
In addition, there are products such as "Original God" and "Glory of the King" that can integrate culture and digital products and reach a certain height.
In particular, the game "Harajin" does not adhere to a single civilization culture, such as the game has both European-style Mond City and Chinese-style Ryukyu, and this year, "Harajin" has updated indazine country with Japanese culture.
Due to the open-world architecture design of the game itself, it can continuously produce different game content with different styles and characteristics, providing a steady stream of inspiration for the game. At the same time, the diversified and inclusive attitude has also become a key factor in the popularity of "Original God" in the global market, which not only increases the depth of the game world, but also allows fans around the world to find resonance and enjoy it.
In this regard, "Glory of the King" is actually similar, but more vertical, more focused on the excavation of traditional Chinese culture. For example, under the new cultural and creative strategy, "Glory of the King" has launched the "Liang Zhu" series of skins, cooperated with the Dunhuang Research Institute, etc., connecting the virtual and the real.
The most special "Pokemon GO" is actually the same, because of its unique AR gameplay, to some extent, even the entire earth has been digitized, so the game itself has a strong connection with reality.
Although with the development and change of the times, the screen of "Pokemon GO" may gradually lag behind, but the openness of the underlying architecture, technology and culture of the game makes it have unlimited imagination, and after Niantic opened the Lightship AR platform this year, it has raised the openness of the product to a new height.
Not only kryptonite, but also a variety of business models
Technology and cultural attributes have promoted the prosperity and evergreen of game content, and the diversification of game content has stimulated the development of commercialization, so it can be found that in addition to "Gold Master", these games are often very rich and diverse in business models, which is actually another commonality of these "super games".
For example, the seemingly simplest "Candy Fun", in fact, is the leader of the advertising + in-app purchase model, which has one more dimension than the traditional pure in-app purchase business model, and in "Roblox" even spawned a set of its own economic system, the business model is more abundant.
The remaining larger products behave more commercially and in a more complex and diverse manner. For example, "PUBG Mobile", "Free Fire", "Glory of the King" and other products not only have in-app purchases, with the development of IP in recent years, but also can launch derivative games, peripherals, and even according to their own game characteristics for a variety of cross-industry cooperation, commercialization capabilities and value have risen to a new height.
For example, "Free Fire" and "Glory of the King" are based on the gameplay mechanism and characteristics of their games, expanding and extending their roles and appearances, which can not only implant the star image, but also cooperate and link with fashion clothing brands.
Open-world games like "Peace Elite" can even achieve the integration of different cultural carriers and gameplay, for example, "Peace Elite" has been linked with the movie "Godzilla vs King Kong", combined with the plot setting in the movie, the classic screen image of Godzilla and King Kong has been moved into the game map, and even the strong duel between the two can be reproduced. The game's open-world design makes these bridges implanted smooth and natural, and at the same time can be combined with the gameplay.
It can be seen that the height of technology and culture not only determines that these products can continue to keep pace with the times in content, extend and expand, but also carry out multi-dimensional attempts and explorations in business models, and even based on the development of games, knowledge science can be popularized and the positive value of games can be played. In fact, games such as Peace Elite and Glory of Kings have carried out similar activities.
And these linkage and cooperation content eventually fed back into the game, which not only enriched the gameplay and content of the game, but also enhanced the exposure and popularity of the game, attracted more players to join it, and realized the positive cycle of ecology.
Large teams are added, and production capacity is also key
If you want to achieve the above characteristics, it is natural to have a large-scale team support to ensure the landing of content and continuous output.
It is not an exaggeration to say that in the above 8 games, there are basically no products with low content production capacity, but some game companies produce, some are filled with UGC content, and half of these games are open world products, and the content created by this type of game developer is often much higher than the content that players can experience, which also proves the importance of team size and production capacity in a "super game".
For example, the first and second "PUBG Mobile" and "Glory of the King" naturally do not need to say more, the former is online in many countries and regions around the world, the support team of the domestic "Peace Elite" alone has exceeded 100 people, and the latter "Glory of the King" is also the same reason, as Tencent's fist products, domestic and overseas are online, the number of support teams will naturally not be small.
The same is true of the two products of "Original God" and "Roblox", at the beginning of this year, Cai Haoyu, CEO of MihaYou, revealed that the number of employees of Mihayou has exceeded 2400 in 2020, of which the team size of "Original God" has reached 700 people. It is also because of the huge team size that "Original God" can maintain such a high production capacity in the year after release, and continue to produce high-quality content.
For "Roblox", the situation may be more special, because the developers of the above 8 games actually develop more than one game, and only the developers of "Roblox" focus on one product, so "Roblox" is likely to be the one with the largest number of supporters among these 8 products.
The remaining products, such as "Free Fire", "Candy Fun", "Pokemon GO", etc. are also roughly the same, for example, the number of development and operation teams behind "Pokemon GO" Although the number of people in the industry is little known, public information shows that its developer Niantic has set up 8 offices around the world, so the team size is definitely not small.
Even products such as "Gold Master" have a large-scale team behind it. Its developer Moon Active already has more than 1,300 employees, and half of the 400 people recruited this year are R&D teams, although these employees will certainly not all be used in the "Gold Master" product, but enough to prove the importance of manpower.
It is not difficult to find that behind the "super game" is actually a "super team" support, and mobile games are a long-term service product, the importance of team size is self-evident.
Of course, this does not mean that it can "do the opposite", with a large-scale team can achieve a "super game", the key decisive role is actually the game technology and its cultural attributes of the height and openness, which is not only the breakthrough of such products, but also the way to survive and prosper.
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