Can game streaming go ahead?

Editor's Guide: With the fading of the content dividend, can the game live broadcasting industry shine with new vitality in 2022 and open up a more effective profit model? This requires practitioners to have a clear insight into the advantages and disadvantages of the game live broadcast field. In this article, the author made a comprehensive interpretation of the development of the game live broadcasting industry, let's look at it together.

Standing at the beginning of 2022, review the mainstream platforms that have game live broadcasting business in the market:

Penguin e-sports is suspected of being about to stop operations, and the anchors have been terminated one after another;

Baidu's business performance after the acquisition of YY was not good, and it preferred to lay off the game live broadcasting department;

Fighting fish tiger teeth flowing water and activity declined, after the merger was frustrated, the financial report was more depressed;

Panda and national live broadcasting has been closed.

Big platforms that live on other businesses:

After the listing of Kuaishou, the stock price plunged, and the game content department did not have a high internal evaluation, and it was powerless to affect the overall situation;

Douyin is still the largest platform, but game live broadcasting is also slightly mediocre compared to short videos and e-commerce live broadcasts, with no obvious growth and content.

Looking at the lap does not seem to have any good news, aside from the platforms that have lost in the competition, the surviving players are generally not happy, what is wrong with the game live broadcast?

The author has the privilege of working in the game industry and several mainstream live broadcasting platforms, supervision, closure, merger, these years have changed very quickly, the situation is different, but aside from the boss can only consider the various external factors, I want to explore the reasons for the current decline from the pure business perspective of product form and operation mode.

One-sentence summary: dividends are gradually exhausted, follow-up growth engines are long-term absent, and platform features are insufficient.

First, the content dividend fades

Live broadcast has two attributes of content and interaction, the content of game live broadcast is stronger, and the influencing factors I probably divide into the following categories.

1. Game bonus fades

I define it as a high-production content creation tool, the basis for the existence of game live broadcasting, and it is also a natural model dividend. The anchor disseminated the basic information and advanced skills of the game, and also showed his own language and performance characteristics in the process, meeting the needs of users to watch entertainment content and game compensation.

When the platform rose a few years ago, for the first time to meet the needs of smooth multiplayer viewing, from the quantitative point of view of the accumulation of many years of various types of games have a display opportunity, it is considered to have reached the high point of the value of game content. But at the same time, it also opens up content consumption, and with the passage of time, the update of old games will gradually fail to keep up with the expectations of players, and the production speed of new games will inevitably not reach the content density when the platform was first started.

From the quality point of view, moba mobile and battle royale and the development of live broadcast complement each other, it can even be said that there is no rapid growth of chicken games without live broadcasting, and the high-value scenes unknown to each game are perfectly combined with the immediacy of live broadcasting, and everyone has spent their own golden age.

In addition, if you define a word called content depth, with the host, players of the game's understanding, familiarity and then to creation, several old games are basically dug up almost the same time, it is difficult for anyone to produce high-value content.

This kind of enabling tool that is both a high-production content creation tool and an enabling tool that can show the personal characteristics of the anchor will not always exist, and then no more high-quality game types have been born, and even compared with the growth of the knowledge area in the video field, there is no similar magnitude of gameplay in the live broadcast field.

2. Creator bonus fades

Although there is an efficient creation tool such as games, the content is inseparable from people after all.

A few years ago, the platform was born, allowing us to see a variety of interesting people who could not stand out in the traditional media, there were professional players with their own achievements, there were folk masters hidden in the top few of the national uniform, and there were various funny anchors or featured anchors that the screenwriters could not create, to paraphrase a phrase in the game field, "easy to get started, difficult to master", they constantly defined the upper limit of the content value of game live broadcasting.

But human creativity comes from personal ability, education, and experience, and these platforms and guilds have shown that they are incapable of effective intervention, and they will not grow rapidly after consumption.

3. Incentive bonus fades

Looking back at the scene when the Thousand Broadcast War was fought, every day was a sky-high signing fee and a new star anchor, and under the low threshold and high-yield model publicity and the case of the star anchor, the incentive dividend was naturally formed.

Guilds and anchors are full of motivation, stimulating the greatest subjective initiative to do live broadcast effects, and new anchors and new guilds will also invest enough costs to try and make mistakes under the expectation of high returns.

However, with the stability of the guild and anchor pattern, the upward channel is smoothly blocked, and the dividend will inevitably gradually fade. Not to mention that the anchor group is a group with poor self-motivation, and the new anchor also knows that it is more and more difficult to get ahead, and the legendary sky-high signing fee will not fall on their heads. The platform's resource policy for guilds will also be mostly given to medium and large guilds under the pressure of KPIs, and the Matthew effect will become more and more serious.

4. Audience creativity dividend

The audience is the watcher, a participant in the live content, and can even be counted as a part of the content creation. High-quality live broadcast content is indispensable to the interaction of the audience and the creation of the stem, and even a platform that inherits the excellent bullet screen audience, and the live broadcast quality of many small and medium-sized anchors is raised by interesting audiences.

The creativity of the audience began to show efficiently when the live broadcast platform exploded, but the consumption of several years, coupled with the "content raw materials" - the host and the game have not been updated, there has been no mature incentive for this link, and the quality of the content they participate in production will naturally decline.

Second, the revenue dividend fades

1. Status Quo – Expectations are disappointed

In the past two years, the decline in the income of well-known large anchors in the whole network is shocking, and the news of large user consumption is rarely heard, and the live broadcast was originally considered to be a model of fast monetization and high arpu value, and all parties will inevitably expect a high revenue and growth rate after the DAU rises, but from the financial reports of each company, it has not met expectations, and even the beautiful data in some periods has been the result of exhaustion.

And I tend to think that this is a return to normal, and the previous high flow is an illusion.

2. Dividend fading - high ARPU value of the payment scenario is difficult to maintain

From the perspective of the paid scene, the major anchor fans maintain the noodles and participate in the whole site brushing activities belong to the entertainment list & coffee position competition; most of the local tycoons pay a large amount of tips to obtain social currency in the newly emerging field, and even to establish the guild to participate in the ecology of the advertising fee.

These scenes naturally exist during the platform melee period, but after the anchor ranking is gradually fixed and the user relationship is established, the platforms obviously cannot effectively maintain this consumption scene, and the decline is expected.

3. Dividend fading - regulation of probabilistic gameplay

In recent years, with no change in the model, there has been some growth in the total turnover of various platforms at certain times. A large part of this is due to the deep digging of the probability game, and the perfect combination of the small and broad gameplay and the scene of strong and impulsive consumption of live broadcasting is equivalent to creating a new paid scene.

However, once this function is not paid attention, it will be used by some people to go to the category of breaking the law, and it is also reasonable to gradually be regulated.

4. Characteristics - low revenue utilization

The high share has caused the utilization rate of funds to be low, and the income of anchors is only consumed as personal income compared to the creators of long and short videos, and rarely invested in reproduction, and because people are not machines, even if the growth rate of investment ability will not grow as efficiently as feeding machine data, but this is too large for a content production platform.

5. The core problem – the lack of a truly efficient business model

I think that the business model of game live broadcasting has not run through so far, and the income mentioned above can only be regarded as related to game live broadcasting, but the really related behavior, purely for the purpose of hosting game content, the amount of payment is very small, and the payment frequency is not stable. Because tipping is a business model that originated in the show, live game broadcasting is more like an interactive way than a universal way of monetization.

The most direct way within the platform is that game live broadcasting is used as a traffic pool to supply the show, relying on the mature model of the show to monetize. Because of the decline in the quality of its own content, even if the monetization efficiency of the show remains unchanged, the total revenue will inevitably decline.

On the contrary, the logic outside the platform illustrates the true value of the live broadcasting platform. That is, live broadcasting drives the active and paid game itself, and game manufacturers complete the value realization of the content of the game live broadcast platform through acquisition or cooperation, but with the binding of each platform and the game manufacturer, there seems to be no continuous blood transfusion, and if this is a model, the content quality of the anchor can not be quickly fed back, and the monetization efficiency of too many links is not high.

6. Imagine future revenue models

The same as the product of the entertainment field, compared with the game field, the game live broadcast platform is similar to playing free, but playing happy needs high consumption of heavy games, now we know that after the national heavy game, there are also low arpu high payment rate of various game types, and even moba and battle royale This kind of skin selling "single payment model", that in the user volume and income are stagnant now, which will be the platform to explore the new form of payment?

Third, the follow-up growth engine is absent, and the interactive exploration is shallow

Live broadcast has two dimensions of content and interaction, in general, the live broadcast of the game is now more content than interaction, the show is more interactive than content interaction, I think the relative neglect of interaction is also a reason for the embarrassing situation of the platform.

1. Definitions

Interaction has many specific forms of expression, from the user - anchor to the user - user, anchor - anchor can list several dimensions, the basic gift,voting,lottery,PK is interaction,complex to say that a variety of gameplay unique site-wide activities, various task systems are also interactive, and even refer to the same as the virtual online entertainment game field, different game play are different interpretations of interaction, interaction has enough depth and reference materials in this regard.

2. Need

Some people may say that live broadcasting as a unique content form is enough, but against the standard short video, the content density is certainly not comparable, and the user time is still constantly eroded by the short video platform.

Live streaming is an online way that relies on high costs, and not playing interaction is a waste of costs paid by users. From a wide range of competitors to compare, games, short video platforms, live broadcast platforms are entertainment providers, users will not be classified according to the so-called industry classification to each family to set aside time, will only choose the highest happiness density of the place to survive. Continued growth requires increased value density or uniqueness, and engagement is another big potential direction.

3. User needs

There is a lot of overlap between game live users and gamers, from the theoretical benchmark of 4 kinds of gamers, the current form can meet the strong interaction of social and some explorers, achievers and killers, and also need to look forward to a new form of mixed content and interaction.

4. Look at the potential from existing cases

In fact, there are already some successful cases of interaction, and the essence of the probability game is that the platform provides the play anchor as the host and maintains the vitality of the function through continuous updates to the game.

Some of the all-site list activities are also a kind of online multi-person money brushing game, coupled with the once popular online answering questions, which belongs to the multiplayer online interactive gameplay at the same time.

These data and patterns illustrate the potential of interaction, but also confirm the platform can be powered points, online answers can only last for a period of time because of the inability to dig deep in the gameplay and question bank, while the probability of play through the increase of different dimensions of gameplay, and even the adjustment of values can sustain the vitality.

Fourth, the platform features are insufficient

1. Content has no scale effect

The connection effect between anchors is weak, there is no aggregation effect, and each platform can meet the basic viewing of users as long as it maintains a certain number of anchors. And live broadcasts need to be watched online synchronously, and cannot produce content aggregation effects like asynchronous short video platforms.

2. Lack of mechanisms for the replacement of creators

Most platforms are monopolized by some anchors and guilds, so that the bargaining power and control of the platform continue to weaken. Originally, live broadcasting has a aggregation effect, which naturally produces a head, but in the development of the platform, it relies too much on the data of the head and the layout of the guild's efforts, ignoring the construction of the platform replacement mechanism, which is not a superficial thing that can be reversed by adjusting the allocation of resource strategies.

3. There is no control over how core content is produced

The game can not be controlled, dimensionality reduction has become a venue, from the field of deduction, there is no own customer base and event resources, the latecomers have few opportunities.

4. The importance of the platform's basic services is reduced

At the beginning, audio and video technology was immature, which was the basis for the existence of the live broadcast platform, but after several years of development, it gradually became the infrastructure configuration of each family, but the platform did not provide follow-up important functions, and naturally fell into competition in other aspects.

5. An efficient revenue model has not yet been born

A good model should be to improve the efficiency of monetization or create new payment scenarios, such as constantly exploring ways to make anchors at all levels capable of monetizing. In addition to the platform pressure of Douyin Kuaishou, which relies on other monetization methods, to maintain a relatively healthy and extensive live broadcast ecology, other independent live broadcast platforms lack internal strength, in order to cope with external pressure, and even derive a set of stimulant brushing water methods.

The above lists some of the unfavorable factors that I think, and together it can be clearly seen that game live broadcasting, especially independent live broadcasting platforms, lack platform in competition, and their respective development is slow and cannot appear a monopoly platform.

From the perspective of development path, after the collapse of the concept of the Internet, all parties need to find an industry that can be quickly realized, the live broadcast platform grows rapidly with various dividends, it will indeed ignore the cultivation of internal strength, lack of follow-up and other growth engines, and the result has become a small intermediary in the entertainment field, watching game content venues and television instead of program providers, the overall mediocre state is expected.

Fifth, future opportunities

Can't this road go on? Is the experience and model cognition of the existing platform really useless?

As the next stage of video, I still think there will still be new models in this area. Any innovation is the inheritance of existing experience plus the reorganization of new variables, and there is no breakthrough in the short term in the means of production, starting from the reorganization of production relations. In reverse from the shortcomings mentioned above, I simply listed several directions and feasibility estimates.

1. High potential and high cost

1) External request play

Gameplay is the core content creation tool, which can stabilize production or control the upstream, and the natural content quality will be improved accordingly. However, most platforms have been linked to Tencent, and the remaining platforms have no shortage of production ends or content display ends, coupled with the uncertainty of the game industry, the internal output of high-quality products cannot be stabilized, and the external is vulnerable to policy, so it is difficult to walk this road overall.

2) In-house self-made gameplay

It can be proved from the success of probabilistic gameplay and gameplay activities that as long as the platform is controllable and the gameplay reaches a certain quality, it will efficiently form new active and paid scenarios. But the difficulty is that after many attempts at pan-entertainment gameplay such as answering questions and werewolf killing, there is no non-probability gameplay area to dig deeper, and it is very difficult to create a new one.

2. Small potential and small cost

This layer is mostly optimized by the experience of existing platforms.

1) Ensure that the ascent channel is unobstructed

Prevent being kidnapped by the head, ensure the growth of the waist, give them hope. For example, give cash to the head, give the waist non-cash but growing resources (flow/opportunity/props), and give the long tail low-security resources. This can reshape the layout of the coffee position and maintain the incentive for anchors at all levels.

2) Improve operational efficiency

Provide refined operation tools for guilds: Open various task systems and activity systems to capable guilds, improve their anchor data, and use platform-level tools to operate anchors for guilds with poor operational capabilities, so as to achieve the effect of weakening the guild's influence and reducing the share.

Gameplay and data are interconnected: Complement the gameplay of each platform, adapt to different anchor levels, and open up functions and matching pools at different ends.

3. Large potential and low cost

This category can only be guessed, but considering the conservative development speed of mature platforms and the Internet's pursuit of high production ratio, I think it is most likely to be in the direction of small and broad.

1. Provide low-threshold game creation tools

Live streaming generates content through the creativity of a wide range of creators, and can also provide tools similar to game editors to produce gameplay.

For example, the current PK platforms have different gameplay, anchors also tend to play self-created challenge content, the platform only needs to provide the number of people, win and loss conditions, punishment methods, challenge content and other basic dimensions of the editor, so that the audience or anchor with ideas to set, there is a high probability that the platform can not think of the game.

Another dimension can also be to play it, hago social games, small game direction, such games are not high quality can not compete with other entertainment products, so the number of domestic users is not prominent, open to the majority of users to absorb their creative dividends may be a way out.

2. Satisfy the content and interactive game community at the same time

The platform has a natural matching pool (user) + node user (anchor), but also has a user's game interest profile, starting from the value of efficient links and online numbers, it can carry the game-related interactive needs such as user teaming, selling props, and information exchange, and play a discord-like game community role.

3. Game e-commerce

General monetization methods are often divided into advertising, e-commerce, games, I define the game as the sale of virtual items / services, that learn from the characteristics of live e-commerce, can you join the role of the anchor, so that the anchor sells virtual props in the game through live broadcast or even props with the exclusive logo of the anchor.

4. Intermediate forms leading to the metaverse

Because the metaverse is just an overheated concept, there are no successful cases and paths, and only one imagination is made here.

Whether it is live broadcasting or games, it is virtual entertainment, and to a large extent, it also has some overlap with the metaverse. Different from the long road of directly creating a virtual space, the live broadcast platform is good at producing consumer relations from content, using third-party creativity to provide content, if coupled with a reasonable incentive form, there may be a high-production path to create a virtual world and the corresponding gameplay scene.

Overall, I still have expectations and hopes for the field of game live broadcasting and even live broadcasting. The content is weak, the interaction is gradually rising, and the product form that belongs to the era of 5G interaction has not yet been born, and we are welcome to discuss the future form together.

Author: Test Ink; Product Manager in the Entertainment Field, willing to exchange ideas at any time; Public Account: Test Ink

This article was originally published by @Test Ink on Everyone is a Product Manager. Reproduction without permission is prohibited

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol