The mini-game seems to be on fire again.
Recently, an ultra-casual mini-game dominated the social platform, and the name of this game is called "Summoning Dragons".
The gameplay of the game is very simple, similar to the "big fish eat small fish" mechanism, constantly eating fish into larger fish, and carefully avoiding fish that are larger than yourself. Although it is not very complicated to say, there are still many players who fall before the synthetic "dragon" because of "hand cripple".
And it is the micro-umbrella game that once launched the explosive H5 game "Synthetic Big Watermelon".
Hot, but short-lived
According to the platform's data, "Summoning the Dragon" has a total of more than 1.1 billion plays on the Douyin platform, and the topic of "Summoning the Dragon" on Weibo has also been viewed 100 million times. A large number of players share their own ways of playing through and videos on social platforms, and a variety of "memes" and internet pop memes are also emerging.
However, compared to the previous "Synthetic Big Watermelon", today's "Summoning Dragons" seems to be less popular and shorter-lived. On the Weibo hot search list, the topic "Summoning the Divine Dragon" is only 16 at the highest, which is somewhat insufficient compared with the popularity of the "Synthetic Big Watermelon" airborne Top3.
Moreover, after "Summoning the Dragon" entered the hot search on December 30, 2021, it reached the peak of its popularity that night, and the subsequent heat only rose for a short while, and completely withdrew from the hot search list on the 31st.
This is similar to the former "Synthetic Big Watermelon", except that the fire incident of "Synthetic Big Watermelon" is slightly longer.
However, unlike the short-term traffic of the hot search list, "Summoning the Dragon" has been in a continuously rising state after landing on the TapTap platform, and is currently at the top of the hot list.
But the embarrassing thing is that because of the sudden appearance of many bugs after porting to the mobile terminal, the current TapTap score of "Summoning Dragons" is only 3.1 points. Clicking on TapTap's comment area and forums, the most players said was not how interesting the game was, but that there were too many bugs in the game.
Click-to-play ads
Along with the BUG, there are also ads that are scattered, and many people say that the ads are very easy to touch by mistake.
This seems to be a common problem of micro-umbrella games. On TapTap, it can be seen that the official micro umbrella game has released a total of six games on TapTap, including the previously fired "Synthetic Big Watermelon" and the sequel "Synthetic Big Pumpkin".
But without exception, all the games were not too highly rated, and every web game made into an app was advertised, and the highest-rated Fruit King among the six games was still the same.
Chronic disease
Micro Umbrella Games introduces itself on the official website: Based on the interests of global smartphone users, we provide a simple, fun and free mini-game every week, all games do not need to be downloaded, click-to-play.
Small games eat is the volume mode, short research and development cycle and start-up costs, users can bring benefits by clicking into the game, which is not difficult to understand why manufacturers like micro umbrellas and other small game manufacturers can often launch a large number of games in a short period of time.
However, the short research and development cycle has also become a "chronic disease" of small games.
The fast development cycle means that the gameplay of the game has not been polished, and players will soon find that the game is not fun at all after experiencing a brief freshness, and then directly uninstall. Another problem is that bugs in games often can't be fixed in time, because when problems occur, the original developers may have already started to make the next game.
Also problematic is the cost of customer acquisition. Due to the year-on-year increase in the cost of buying, it is impossible to achieve positive growth in game profitability by simply buying, and the unit price of game customers with in-app purchases can even soar to hundreds of pieces, which is not at all dare to think about small games.
The game still needs to be a little more fun
Different ways of profiting and different roles, the life cycle of small games depends entirely on whether it can catch fire, rather than simply looking at retention rates.
This kind of practice is tantamount to waiting for the day to reward the meal, and the risk is still too high.
In 2018, backed by ByteDance's super APP, and announced that it has 9 products with a monthly turnover of more than 100 million, Ohayoo, which sits firmly in the leader of casual games, has removed 39 games in 2021, and 27 are still online in 2021.
There will never be a shortage of blockbuster games in the mini-game market, but the explosive games accumulated with the number of blockbusters cannot become stable income.