Wen 丨 zinc scale, author 丨 meteor, editor 丨 Li Xiaolin
"Every year is the industry winter", has always been a joke in the game market, although this statement is somewhat exaggerated, but also indirectly reflects some of the difficult situations faced by the game industry in recent years, in the case of intensified industry volume, tightening regulatory policies, although the size of the game market is still growing, but the manufacturer project has been cut, laid off, closed The news is also one after another, shocking.
Of course, for many game enthusiasts who pay attention to the industry, the performance of those phenomenal explosive products will always make people forget the grim fact that "every year is the industry winter", but obviously, in 2021, the temperature of the explosive models is not enough to force back the industry's imminent chill.
On December 16, the Game Working Committee of the China Music and Digital Association and the China Game Industry Research Institute released the "2021 China Game Industry Report". The report shows that in 2021, the actual sales revenue of China's game market was 296.513 billion yuan, an increase of 6.4% year-on-year; the scale of game users reached 666 million people, an increase of 0.22%; the actual sales revenue of the mobile game market was 225.538 billion yuan, an increase of 7.57% year-on-year, and the scale of mobile game users reached 656 million people, an increase of 0.23% year-on-year, and the demographic dividend was becoming saturated.
From the less beautiful growth data, it seems indisputable that the game industry is entering a bottleneck in 2021.
However, at the same time, under the background of "game industrialization", the undercurrent of transformation is also surging in the market, and major game manufacturers have accelerated the layout of high-quality games, investing, acquiring, establishing studios, and brewing new projects.
In a sense, the game industry is currently in the process of cocooning butterflies, and the answer is still unknown whether it can successfully break out of the cocoon and find new growth points. In this regard, Zinc Scale sorted out the products and events worth paying attention to in the mobile game industry this year, hoping to provide some reference value for game manufacturers through relevant cases and find a breakthrough direction in the confused "industry winter".
Key word 1: periodic winter
The pressure has risen sharply, are the new entrants too optimistic?
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the game industry is "every year is a cold winter", and 2021 seems to be unable to escape this spell, in the domestic game market growth force of mobile games in recent years, the frustration performance is more obvious - in 2020, the actual sales of the mobile game market increased by 32.61% compared with last year, and this year's data has a gap of more than 4 times.
Such shocking data has undoubtedly poured cold water on investors who have been encouraged by blockbuster game products such as "Original God" and then have high hopes for the future of mobile games, and the topic of the mobile game market has also returned from the previous various fanciful prospects to the user scale after touching the ceiling, how manufacturers should fight a bloody road from the fierce fight.
If the cold winter of the game industry is really the norm of "annual", the topic of the market will not suddenly become so worried, obviously, there are some objective realities behind this that cannot be ignored - for example, the sudden tightening of game regulatory policies.
At the end of August, the domestic game market supervision policy finally landed on the ground. The State Press and Publication Administration issued the "Notice on Further Strict Management and Effectively Preventing Minors from Addicting to Online Games" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"), requiring all online game enterprises to provide 1 hour of service to minors from 20:00 to 21:00 every day on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays, and not to provide online game services to minors in any form at other times; strictly implement the requirements for real-name registration and login of online game user accounts. Game services may not be provided in any form to users who are not registered and logged in under their real names.
Image source: Xinhua News Agency Weibo
Although the domestic concern for juvenile anti-addiction has been increasing, and the relevant policies are constantly following up, among all the anti-addiction regulations in recent years, the restrictions of the Notice can be described as unprecedented. A large number of underage players were therefore "turned away" by game manufacturers, and the remaining underage players in order to continue to play the game, can be described as "eight immortals across the sea to show their magic", and even made a joke of "The Old Man of Huajia played "Glory of the King" at 3 a.m. to take five kills".
Of course, for those large factories that are sensitive to the policy wind, anti-addiction has been an important part of their business in recent years, and even some companies have written restrictions on minors' play and recharge as a result into the financial report.
Taking Tencent as an example, in the fourth quarter of 2020, Tencent disclosed the consumption data of minors for the first time, and in the second quarter of 2021, Tencent further refined the age classification, disclosing that the proportion of gamers under 16 years old in the Chinese market was only 2.6%, while the turnover of players under 12 years old was only 0.3%.
However, although the big factory said that the anti-addiction ban had no impact on the flowing water, the reaction of the small factory was completely different, and the official of the music game "Synchronous Rhythm" had spit bitter water on the TapTap platform, saying that after adding the restriction on minors, the daily income of the game was reduced to only 600 yuan.
The reasons for this contrast are more complicated, and one of the important reasons is because after the introduction of the "Notice", some minors can still play games by requesting or stealing adult identity information, and this part of the "fake adults" cannot be eliminated from the adult player team through feasible technical means, so the data released by the big manufacturers may be untrue.
In addition to the loss of a large number of underage players, which has caused a lot of blows to game companies, or those small and medium-sized enterprises whose own products are difficult to compete with head products, the tightening of domestic game regulatory policies is also reflected in documents such as the Interim Regulations on the Management of Internet Culture and the Detailed Rules for Game Review and Scoring. The content of these documents is relatively broader, mainly related to game review, review to obtain version numbers, and the dissemination and promotion of games without version numbers, etc., the strictness is further than the previous relevant regulations, so that the threshold for game companies to monetize online products has increased a lot, especially companies that operate IAA games (in-app advertising monetization), because the policy is forced to lay off many people.
Of course, in addition to the sharp increase in policy pressure, the old problem of version numbers has also plagued game manufacturers - especially those small and medium-sized enterprises with small product reserves.
For them, the "quality inner volume" of game products in gameplay, art, music and other aspects brought about by the trend of high-quality games in recent years has exhausted them, and the changes in the policy environment have also exacerbated their anxiety, and the suspension of version approval has cast a shadow on their way forward.
However, according to the statistics of game media game new knowledge, as of December 10, there were 847 game companies that closed in 2021, and the number of games decreased slightly compared with 2020. At the same time, the number of newly established companies in 2021 exceeded 40,000, reversing the decline in 2020, which shows that many entrepreneurial teams still have great expectations for the game market at the juncture of industrialization and transformation.
However, the transformation of industrialization and the embrace of the "quality is king" trend means that game companies need to invest more resources and time to develop game products than ever before. Although the success of the phenomenon-level mobile game "Original God" as a "predecessor" has established the confidence of small and medium-sized enterprises to win the "curve overtaking" over the big factories, but in the same way, "Original God" has also pointed out a new direction for the big factories, when the big factories with more financial resources and resources start to march into the "second dimension", "open world" and other fields, how many opportunities do the small factories have?
The answer may not be optimistic.
Keyword 2: big factory boutique
From Harry Potter to Tower of Illusions, do players really hate the Big Factory?
In 2020, "Original God" turned out to be born, in 30 days the global gold absorption of 245 million US dollars, the topic of the double harvest, and such a phenomenon-level products, not from Tencent, NetEase and other domestic game giants, but from a deep ploughing of the two-dimensional field of "small workshop", this fact to many small and medium-sized game companies to revitalize confidence, they began to imagine, one day, they can also make a "original god" such a blockbuster product, and then jump into the first echelon of mobile game developers, with Tencent, Giants like NetEase are on an equal footing.
The imagination of the manufacturers is very beautiful, however, as time passes, Mihayou's "survivor bias" becomes more and more prominent, and some people begin to realize that the success of reproducing "Original God" may be an impossible task.
There are many reasons for this, such as the global scale of home isolation may not be reproduced; for example, the concept of "two-dimensional" has been guided by mainstream video websites in recent years, and other subdivided tracks may not have such a good time for the time being; for example, it is difficult for general game manufacturers to emulate Mihayou to operate the player group into a cohesive force similar to that of traffic star fans. Of course, among the many reasons, for small and medium-sized enterprises that want to "overtake in curves", the most difficult ones are the traditional manufacturers who have returned to Their senses.
In the "channel is king" era, the game market is a market with a rather serious head effect, the head of the big factory has the best channel, can simply and rudely harvest the player group through the "human sea tactics" of the skin changing game, the small factory has almost no way to compete with it, and with the continuous upgrading of mobile terminal equipment, the quality of the game products that can be carried is also rising, and the way players choose the game is also forced to accept from the past, to the initiative to find high-quality game products, and the playing style of the skinning game gradually fails.
It was also during this period that many vertical categories of high-quality game products began to emerge and achieved great success, and to "Original God", the trend of "quality is king" ushered in a small climax, and also made many small and medium-sized enterprises have the illusion of "I can do it".
Obviously, this part of the enterprise does not realize that, first of all, the cost of 3 years of development and costing 100 million US dollars like "Original God" is "unbearable pain" for most small game developers; secondly, the big factory will not always stay in the era of skin changing games, at least, compared with most small and medium-sized enterprises, the big factory has more resources and trial and error space to try to develop a new era of mobile game products with high investment and high returns like "Original God". And they're obviously happy to see such a product appear in their own game camp.
In fact, the big factories have indeed changed their thinking and tried to continue to dominate the trend of the "quality is king" era. In the past year, it is not difficult for us to find that the new "Original God" or "Miha Tour" has not appeared, and it is the "Moore Manor" represented by A-share company Gigabit, "Harry Potter: Magical Awakening" developed by NetEase, the new work "League of Legends Mobile Game" by Tencent's subsidiary Fist and the "Magic Tower" owned by Perfect World.
Among them, Tencent's "League of Legends Mobile Game" is more prominent among several other products. On the one hand, it is the mobile derivative game of the world's top MOBA IP "League of Legends", which is born with a huge player base, which is also the top IP, but the non-game IP adaptation of "Harry Potter: Magic Awakening" can not do; on the other hand, a month after the game was launched, the premiere received a Douban 9.2 score and Rotten Tomatoes freshness 100% high evaluation, the "League of Legends" derivative animation "League of Legends: Battle of Two Cities" that caused a global topic fell from the sky. With excellent graphics and controversial plot content out of the circle, in the trigger for players to revel but also attracted a lot of general netizens who have not been in contact with the game before, under the blessing of these two doses of "strong medicine", "League of Legends Mobile Game" can be described as a soaring, although it is still unable to shake the dominance of "Glory of kings" in the domestic mobile MOBA game field, but in terms of the game's online revenue, its trend of becoming the "second pole" of mobile MOBA is very obvious.
Of course, whether it is a top game IP such as "League of Legends" or a soft advertisement such as "League of Legends: Battle of Two Cities", which emits the fragrance of "burning money" every frame, it is obviously not something that ordinary game manufacturers can touch.
League of Legends: Battle of Two Cities poster
In addition to the unique product of "League of Legends Mobile Game", other new works of big factories this year have a very obvious feature, that is, they are no longer the simple skins of SLG, Dota Legend and various card cultivation games commonly used by big factories in the past, but have begun to use more exquisite 3D modeling, more diversified gameplay, better performances and music, and more attractive copywriting, so that players can produce an intuitive feeling of "the quality of the game is higher than before" from the actual playing experience.
On December 16, the two-dimensional MMO "Magic Tower", which was approved by players as a competitor of "Original God", opened for public beta. Like the "Original God" that took the lead in entering the two-dimensional open world mobile game, in the subdivision of "open world + MMO + two-dimensional + mobile game", "Magic Tower" is also the existence of "unique world", and the bugs that broke out in the game mainly involve the krypton gold system, which does not have much impact on the game itself, therefore, "Magic Tower" faces the operational crisis of the mountains and seas, only by issuing some compensation, it has calmed the anger of a large number of players, and even repaired part of the word of mouth.
In this regard, the independent game producer Dog Brother believes that from the "Magic Tower", we can see some of the preferences and characteristics of domestic players.
"At first, players said that big factories can't make two-dimensional games, and then they said that they can pinch their faces is not a two-dimensional game, and then they said that second-dimensional doesn't like social networking and won't play MMOs." Now "Magic Tower" is to say that the player said these thunder are stepped on, but it is now alive and well, many people in the game pinch their faces and share content on various platforms, it is believed that there will be no players like the world channel is very active every day, if you ask a player what is the reason, they can not say, at most 'expel' those people's 'two-nationality' (people who are not recognized as two-dimensional identity). Brother Dog said. He believes that "Magic Tower" can survive the blow because although the negative voice from players is very large, not all players are speaking out, and there are many players in China who are actually quite tolerant, as long as the quality of the game product passes, they will still support manufacturers in the form of flow data.
"Just like 'disgusting big factories' is considered a big label on Z generation players, judging from the several explosive mobile games launched this year, if the big factories can really come up with high-quality products, it is not difficult to make players willing to pay krypton." Brother Dog concluded.
Keyword 3: mobile game heavy
Mobile games are becoming more and more "heavy" and players have less and less time
"I didn't play any of those blockbuster games this year, there was so much content that I felt tiring." This is 23-year-old Xiao Luo's evaluation of mobile game products in 2021.
This year is Xiao Luo's first year out of school and into the workplace. Once, he was called "mobile game maniac" by college classmates, and he would play three to five mobile games every day, and often disliked the game content too little, and played not enough. But after leaving the campus, the heavy work pressure will soon be Xiao Luo's enthusiasm for the game is exhausted, once the "mobile game maniac", now play the most, but it is a hang-up placement game that only needs to be online every day to "collect vegetables".
"When I was in college, I had plenty of time, but now I only have the fragmented time to commute and take a lunch break to play mobile games, and I don't want to play games at all when I come home from work every day, and when I rest on weekends, I am more inclined to play terminal games, and mobile games are playing less and less." Xiao Luo explained.
Of course, work pressure is an important factor for Xiao Luo to put down mobile games, but in his own view, there is another reason that cannot be ignored - that is, the gameplay of mobile games has become more and more serious.
"In the past, mobile games had very low requirements for operation, and even many vertical screen games you can play with one hand, the gameplay is relatively relaxed, basically it is to repeatedly pass a certain level, brush the material to raise characters, and then go to attack new levels, these game daily tasks can often be completed in about two or three minutes." But in recent years, the game is different, one by one on the screen is full of a variety of interactive buttons, each time you play must be 'on the hand', and the game needs to brush the types of props and materials are becoming more and more numerous, some games also appear a level that needs to be played for a particularly long time, and the kryptonite currency required for the game card draw is used as a reward, forcing the player to have to play. This makes the player play the game longer and longer, and sometimes it takes a whole day for a game to play all the activities, as if I am not playing a game but going to work. Xiao Luo said.
In fact, there is more than one player who feels that mobile games are becoming more and more tiring, and there are also many players who compare the current game heavy content playing experience to "going to work" and "going to jail".
Playing games is a joke that is like going to work, but it also provokes some thought. In the process of mobile game development, in order to play the characteristics of mobile device portability, light games are considered to be the development direction of mobile games, and "play and stop" has also become a promotional point for mobile games.
And with the change of circumstances, nowadays, the mobile terminal is full of a variety of heavy game products, and even no lack of FPS, MOBA, action adventure and other types of game play with strong feedback, and this year's hottest batch of mobile games in China has almost completely lost the characteristics of "play and stop": "League of Legends Mobile Game" As a MOBA game, you may not agree to the team members who stop; "Harry Potter: Magic Awakening" in the card battle, racing, sound game and other gameplay are not allowed to interrupt; as for "Phantom Tower", Players can indeed find a place to stand in a daze when they're not in the dungeon — provided they're away from the red-named monsters everywhere.
From mild to moderate to severe to a variety of heavy gameplay that can foresee the future, why has mobile gaming evolved into a completely different form than originally expected? In this regard, Lina, the operator of a mobile game company in Chengdu, said that it may be related to the operation strategy of mobile games.
Lina believes that today's mobile game market has basically been dominated by the operation mode of kryptonite lottery, which is different from the "one-hammer" buyout game, which requires the game to keep players in the game for a long time, and constantly use new lottery pools to attract players to recharge krypton gold and continue to liquidate. However, if you simply update the plot, characters, or weapons and equipment that do not change the gameplay, it is easy to make players get bored with the same game and choose to abandon the pit.
In order to make the game have game content that can continue to attract players, most manufacturers will add some new gameplay content to the game after the game has been operating for a period of time, so that players can find some new fun in addition to the main play content, clear the boring emotions, continue to stay in the game, and continue to be harvested by manufacturers with card pools, monthly cards and other ways.
"But this also leads to a problem, the game content in the mobile game is becoming more and more numerous, the game volume is getting larger and larger, the time that players need to spend on various gameplay is naturally getting longer and longer, and those rewarding gameplays often take the longest time, which leads to players hating the levels that require a lot of time to repeat on the one hand, but on the other hand, the rewards of the levels have to be played." Lina said.
According to the "2021 Mobile Internet Industry Observation" data released by Master Cicada, the average daily use time of mobile Internet users is 5.27 hours, while netizens across the country spend nearly one-third of their mobile phones watching short videos instead of games. So, in addition to short videos, long videos, e-commerce platforms and various social software, how long will players be left for mobile games? 3 hours? 2 hours? 1 hour? Or less? And as the game content continues to be heavily refined, how many hours a day do players need to go to the "liver" game? There is no doubt that this is a difficult problem that cannot be bypassed in front of the game market.
Image source: 2021 Mobile Internet Industry Observation
Of course, at such times, some manufacturers have shifted their horizons from time-consuming and laborious heavy games to light games.
In fact, in overseas areas, light games are still a breakthrough for domestic manufacturers, in the relatively solidified overseas game list, domestic match-3, strategy and other mild game works can often kill a blood road in the market through excellent performance in art, gameplay, etc., such as McGee Taiwen last November launched the European and American match-3 game "Project Makeover", the game has been rising since its launch, and now a year has passed. The game still ranks in the top 20 of the US IOS free and best-seller list, and even beats Lilith's heavy SLG "Awakening of Nations".
However, players around the game preferences are not the same, although there are also outstanding performance of the flow of match-3, fishing and other game products, but in the end is still pressed under the heavy game.
However, just like the big factories that are considered not to do the second dimension can perfectly throw out the "Magic Tower" and can be among the top of the best-selling list to attract gold, the domestic exploration of light games is still in the stage of shallow taste, when the heavy game track "roll" does not move, manufacturers will not turn to light games and bring innovation, and then find new growth points, it is still worth looking forward to.