Source: Financial community
Since 2021, the "metaverse" has quickly entered people's field of vision and attracted a lot of attention. What is the metacosm? How will the metaverse affect our lives? As of now, open-world games are perhaps the closest product form to the metaverse architecture. In open-world games, identity is the entrance and carrier of user experience, and in the metaverse, the user's identity is both the entrance to the metaverse experience and the carrier of digital assets.
Standing at the moment, with the heat of the meta-universe, the open world game market may benefit from the accelerated investment layout of technology giants and game manufacturers, thus achieving rapid growth. Recently, the open source securities media team released the industry in-depth report "Meta-universe series 3: Open World Games - Growth Space Opens, Engine, Design and IP Creation Capabilities or the Key to Winning - Industry Depth Report", which provides you with an in-depth analysis of the development trend and business model of the open game world, and finds game developers who can stand out from the perspective of engine, design and IP building capabilities.
Open-world games or trends that represent game forms
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The core of the open world lies in "openness". In open-world games, game developers often design multiple exploratory elements that allow players to explore the world more freely, rather than being limited by a pre-defined or tightly restricted order of regional exploration. Open world has become a popular game setting in recent years, and more and more games are close to the concept of "open world". While shaping the new development pattern of the game industry, the open world is also constantly improving and evolving.
The openness of open-world games evolves from the surface to the lower layers. There are three conditions for judging the open world: the openness of the map, the openness of the player, and the openness of the law. The opening of the map, that is, the player can freely explore the map; the player's openness, that is, the player's core experience is no longer a linear task by playing a fixed route, but through free exploration to find unknown areas and solve puzzles or freely create and change the world as the core experience; the opening of the law, that is, the game world has its own development law, the game world will not stop, not because the player stops, and the changes in the world will affect the player, constituting an important experience.
We divide open-world games into Open World 1.0, Open World 2.0, and Open World 3.0 according to how many conditions are met. Open World 1.0 can realize the openness of the map, Open World 2.0 can realize the openness of the player on the basis of the open map, and the open world 3.0 meets the three conditions of map openness, player openness, and law opening.
Open World 3.0 requires a lower level of openness
Source: Open Source Securities Research Institute
Open-world games have metaverse elements and mature business models, or are metaverse prototypes
1. Open world games have initially possessed metaverse elements such as identity, socialization, immersion, and anytime, anywhere
As the first company to propose a metacosm in its prospectus, Roblox gave the eight elements of metacosmonics: identity, socialization, immersion, low latency, diversity, anytime, anywhere, economic system and civilization. We believe that before the concept of metaverse was widely recognized, open-world games continued to explore the construction and experience of virtual worlds, and have initially possessed some metaverse elements, or product forms closest to metaverses.
In open-world games, identity is the entrance and carrier of user experience. RPG is a role-playing game, which naturally gives the player a certain role identification or identity, whether the game allows the player to choose a different role or class, etc., the player needs to play the given identity of the game to carry out activities in the virtual world is the core experience of the RPG. For example, in the open-world MMORPG "Magic Tower", different user names and character images become the authentication of user identities. In the metaverse, the user's identity is both the entrance to the metaverse experience and the carrier of digital assets.
Character names and IDs are the carrier and entry point for the player's identity
Source: The Phantom Tower
2. The mature business model of open-world games may provide inspiration for the commercialization of the meta-universe
In the more than 40 years of open-world gaming development, open-world RPGs are dominated by console-side and PC-side stand-alone games, and buyout system is the most important business model, that is, pay to play mode. This business model determines that game sales are the most important source of income for game manufacturers, and whether players are willing to spend a lot of time immersed in games will not bring direct economic benefits to game manufacturers, and further determine the quality of games and marketing as two major factors to attract player consumption, especially the quality of games.
The buyout single-player open world game industry chain is mature
The mobile open world game industry chain is mature
In Roblox, Vans launched Vans World, a skateboard-themed virtual amusement park where players can try on new Vans products in a virtual avatar in the Vans Store and then make purchases in the real world, realizing virtual and real, player-brand interaction. In addition, LOL Surprise, Gucci, Hyundai Motor and many other brands have also cooperated with Roblox, advertising or become a new growth point of the platform. Roblox's diversified business model may inspire the commercialization of the metaverse.
Roblox is based on Robox's creator trading program to build a creator economy model, or an optional way for the meta-universe platform to meet users' massive demand for digital content and scenarios. Roblox introduces a unified virtual currency Robux within the sandbox game creation platform, the creator trading program allows creators to get a part of the income from their works, creators can design their own economic models and paid content in their games, users consume Robux in their works, creators can get a part of the remuneration of Robox, and Robox can be directly converted into cash. The Creator Trading Program has helped Roblox build a good developer ecosystem, by cultivating enough high-quality developers and maintaining a high level of developer activity, producing a large amount of high-quality game content, so as to attract more players to pay and more developers to join, so as to form a virtuous circle and establish a positive feedback mechanism.
Roblox builds an economic model of creators based on the virtual currency Robux
Source: Roblox Prospectus, Open Source Securities Institute
Open up the world mobile game market space or reach tens of billions
1. Under the neutral assumption, the scale of the open world mobile game market in 2025 may reach 44.8 billion yuan
Since the domestic open world mobile game market in 2021 is mainly based on the representative product "Original God", we use "Original God" to measure the overall situation of the industry. According to Sensor Tower data, in 2021, the domestic IOS revenue of "Original God" is 504 million US dollars, which is about 3.251 billion yuan according to the annual average exchange rate of 1:6512 in 2021, according to the data of the flow observer, the domestic Android channel revenue of "Original God" is about 1.6 times the revenue of IOS channel. In 2021, the domestic mobile terminal revenue will be about 8.454 billion yuan, that is, the domestic open world mobile game market will be 8.454 billion yuan in 2021. According to Quest Mobile data, the average MAU of "Original God" in 2021 is about 12.4 million, and the ARPU value is about 681.77 yuan, that is, the overall average MAU of domestic open world mobile games in 2021 is 12.4 million, and the ARPU value is 681.77 yuan.
According to Quest Mobile data, in 2021, the monthly active users of domestic mobile games will be about 548 million, the penetration rate of MOBILE GAME users in the MOBA category is 30.11%, the penetration rate of MMORPG category mobile game users is 11.22%, and we estimate that the user penetration rate of open world games and mobile games is only 2.26%, which has a large room for improvement. According to gamma data, the compound growth rate of domestic mobile game user scale in 2018-2021 is 2.73%, and the user growth is close to saturation, we assume that the mobile game MAU remains stable in 2022-2025, that is, 548 million; the ARPU value of the domestic mobile game market in 2021 is 343.81 yuan, and the APR value of the open world mobile game is significantly higher than that of the market as a whole, and we assume that the ARPU value of the open world mobile game remains stable in 2022-2025, that is, 681.77 yuan. According to the domestic manufacturers' product pipeline situation, the open world mobile games of various manufacturers or will begin to be launched in 2023, under the neutral assumption, we expect that the open world mobile game user penetration rate will reach 12% in 2025, multiplied by the arPU value, then the open world mobile game market size in 2025 is about 44.832 billion yuan, and the compound growth rate of the domestic open world mobile game market in 2021-2025 is about 51.75%.
Under the neutral assumption, the domestic open world mobile game market may reach 44.832 billion yuan in 2025
Data source: Sensor Tower, Quest Mobile, Gamma Data, Open Source Securities Research Institute (Note: We use the relevant data of "Original God" in 2021 to represent the overall data of the open world mobile game market, marked in red font as a hypothetical variable)
2. Engine, design and IP building capabilities may be the key to winning open world games
Open-world game development threshold is higher, and leading manufacturers with capital and talent advantages may have more advantages. Open world games because of its system complexity and plot, art and other work volume of huge, often require a lot of money and personnel investment, the current head of open world games basically need hundreds of people more than a team for several years of development, and the corresponding cost or can reach hundreds of millions of dollars, with funds, talents, brands, IP to create advantages of the head R & D manufacturers in the field of open world games or more advantages.
Open world game R&D and development threshold is high
Source: Company official website, company announcement, Open Source Securities Research Institute
The game engine is one of the important underlying technologies for building the industrial production system of games, which determines the performance level of open-world games. The game engine consists of core components such as an editable computer game system or an interactive live image application that provides the tools needed to design a game, so that game designers can quickly program games without having to start from scratch, but directly refer to some of the functions in the engine. The game engine not only directly affects the development process and development efficiency of a project, but even enough to determine the upper limit of a game's expressiveness, and the rendering system of the game engine has an important impact on the process performance of the game.
Game design is key to determining the core experience of a game. Open-world game NPCs combined with events, player choices of influence on the world and other systems are more complex than non-open worlds, even with the help of mature machine generation technology, requiring developers to do a lot of design and development. According to Tencent Tianmei Studio, the design of open world games can be divided into 7 stages of project establishment, research, documentation, white mold, playable, completed, and polished, and each stage can be split into more and more small design links, and the entire open world game development requires both mature research and development methodologies and rich creativity. At present, the excellent open world games on the market are mainly developed overseas, so the head companies that have introduced more relevant overseas talents and experience, such as Tencent and NetEase, have more advantages in game design.
The design of open-world games needs to be polished through 7 stages
Source: Tianmei Club public number
IP is both a source of creativity for open-world game design and an important means of commercialization. As the ninth art of games, creativity is one of the cores of game design. On the one hand, IP can provide a source of creativity for open-world design, on the other hand, IP can greatly enhance the commercial value of open-world games.
It is recommended to lay out IP to create outstanding head game developers and head game engine developers
The open world is an important game form in the future, which can effectively improve the scale of game users, extend the game life cycle, and increase the game life cycle income. In addition, the open world has metaverse elements such as identity, socialization, and immersion, and a mature business monetization model may lay the foundation for the commercial monetization of metaverse products. According to our calculations, under the neutral assumption, the scale of the open world game market in 2025 may reach 44.8 billion yuan, with large room for growth, and manufacturers are actively deploying. In the development of open-world games, the game engine determines the performance level of open-world games, game design determines the core experience of games, AND IS is an important source of game creativity and commercial means; in addition, drawing on the rapid development experience of overseas blockchain games, the combination of de-financialized NFTs and game IP may effectively enhance users' willingness to pay and payment scale, reduce game acquisition costs, and further extend the game life cycle. Therefore, we believe that head game developers with advantages in IP creation, as well as head engine developers, may benefit more from the rapid development of the open world game market.