Recently, Sensor Tower released the February mobile game revenue report, in the revenue growth list, GameLook found a familiar and unfamiliar name - "Merge County" (official Chinese name: Synthetic Magic Island, hereinafter referred to as MC) launched in November last year.
The reason why it is said "familiar" is because the developer of "Merge County", Microfun, is a veteran domestic leisure mobile game manufacturer, and its match-3 mobile game "Bingo Match" has been in operation since its birth in 2014, and there are still many players in China. The reason why it is "strange" is because the synthetic gameplay used in "Merge County" is a relatively new category compared to domestic players and developers.
In terms of revenue performance, The estimated revenue of Merge County in the past 30 days has reached about 30 million yuan, more than half of which comes from the US market, and the number of downloads in the last 30 days has been about 1 million times, and it has maintained double-digit rapid growth every month. At a time when many overseas manufacturers are focusing on medium and heavy games, what are the characteristics of this product of Microfun, which can grab a place in the competitive global market of leisure manufacturers?
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Similar recipe, familiar taste
The first impression of MC is closer to the simulation farm management game that is quite popular in Europe and the United States. The core game logic is that players need to start with a small piece of land, continue to produce, operate, develop, and finally establish a prosperous paradise.
Hands-on demonstration
Unlike farm games, the player's production method is not limited to sowing seeds and harvesting vegetables on time. Conversely, with compositing gameplay, players have more time to be fixed in front of the phone screen.
Entering the game, the player will start merging from the most basic bottles, and unlock the first base production unit in the game by merging three small bottles into one large bottle and then merging the three large bottles into a bottle basket. The bottle basket will automatically accumulate milk, the player only needs to collect the milk on time like a collection game, and the bottle basket can be further upgraded to a more efficient milk station. Other production units are basically synthesized, upgraded and automatically produced according to this logic.
The protagonist of the game will have a "la carte" demand from time to time, and the player can wait for automatic cooking and delivery by collecting the corresponding ingredients to obtain the prop "windmill" that opens up the land. In addition to crafting and production units, large parcels will also appear on the land, requiring the player to hire workers to open the contents of the parcel. This process consumes stamina and time, and the number of times the parcel can be mined varies, and the whole process is similar to mining in RTS games.
Overall, MC is an upgraded match-3 game with the entire island as the stage, and players need to constantly rearrange and merge and upgrade the content of the land to achieve their own development. However, compared to the fixed and harsh gameplay of traditional match-3 games, players have more freedom under synthetic gameplay. Players can move any mergable item into any vacant plot, and as long as two identical mergeable items are adjacent, the player can move a third identical item anywhere on the map above both to evolve new units.
Compared with traditional farm games, MC's synthetic gameplay makes players need to complete more interactive operations, enhances playability and exploration fun, so that players' interest is not prematurely consumed by the mechanical repetition of "picking vegetables to order".
However, in GameLook's view, this seemingly unremarkable merger game simulation business game contains accurate insight into user groups and a new exploration of business models.
More accurate user positioning, more flexible paid design
Whether it is character design or scene performance, MC reveals a mature art style that has been repeatedly tested by the European and American markets. This typical colorful imitation style is popular among casual players in Europe and the United States, especially recognized by female players.
At the end of last year, data company GameRefinery posted that synthetic games are expected to become the next match-3 category, and its scale is even expected to reach $3 billion. As a representative of synthetic games, 70% of merge Dragons players are women, while 31% of players are over 45 years old.
Synthetic games with women and middle-aged and elderly groups as important audiences have therefore a clearer idea in terms of gameplay and monetization logic - the gameplay should be sustainable but not high-threshold, and the monetization should be diversified but not tough. These two requirements are also directly reflected in MC's unique payment design mechanism.
Based on the description above, you may be mistaken for thinking that MCs with more freedom will be simpler to play than traditional match-3. But in fact, as the number of lands and content objects unlocked by players in the later stages becomes more and more varied, the entire "game stage" will appear more and more messy and complicated. This can also lead to the following situations:
1. There is too little free land to circulate too complicated contents;
2. There are many types of contents that are only 2, and the third content can never be found, resulting in a large amount of land occupation;
3. Production, cooking, mining and other scenes that need to wait are more and more, and the time is getting longer and longer;
4. The physical strength consumed by the workers to mine is not enough to make ends meet, and a large number of packages waiting to be mined appear on the land.
As you may have seen, the above four scenarios already hint at four paying points that can be exploited: land, (rare) content, time, and physical strength. But it's also important to note that if you have enough patience to wait for the natural passage of time, these problems can be solved without paying, of course, at the cost of your game progress lagging behind paying players.
MC design has two main game tokens, one is a paper currency that can be purchased directly to the top up or obtained in small quantities in the game, and the other is a coin that is easier to obtain in the game. Roughly speaking, this is also equivalent to the relationship between diamonds and gold coins commonly found in games of the same type.
From the pricing point of view, MC's banknotes are priced at about 12 yuan to get 200 banknotes, which can be roughly exchanged for about 800 gold coins. Although the price of a single content item is also around 30 to 50 gold coins, considering the huge demand for props in the game, and all the items can actually be obtained through continuous play, in essence, this pricing strategy is to encourage players to exchange time for money and reduce kryptonite demand by increasing the online time.
At the same time, MC does not follow the popular pass mode, which invisibly reduces the psychological pressure of players, although it is a game that can be heavy liver, but female players who receive vegetables lightly can also play MC as a vegetable placement game at their own pace.
"Heavy" leisure new track, the advantages of domestic manufacturers began to appear
Unlike other casual mobile games, on Google Play, some foreign players complained that the game entered the middle and late stages of "like a garbage heap" and it took a lot of effort to sort out the props. In fact, this also coincides with how GameLook felt after the trial play - it is a casual product with a more "heavy" experience.
Leaving aside the mechanics of synthetic gameplay, MC itself incorporates a wealth of content such as simulated management, card collection, and custom dress-ups. If you switch to turn-based combat, you'll find that MC is on par with many quadratic card games in terms of depth of content. It's just that the two-dimensional player collects the character and dresses up his base (home), while the MC player collects various materials and dresses up the entire island. The synthetic gameplay is the same as turn-based combat, although simple, but requires the player to constantly "brush brush" to cultivate and upgrade.
After "Bingo Entertainment", although Microfun has maintained the new speed of at least 1 new game per year in recent years, from the perspective of market performance, due to the fewer breakthroughs in the gameplay of these products, the performance is not very eye-catching. In contrast, the MC based on synthetic gameplay has become a dark horse in this year's overseas casual mobile games with its high degree of completion, rich game content and innovative gameplay. This relatively heavy casual play is also the advantage of domestic manufacturers compared with overseas counterparts.
In fact, MC is not an isolated case of domestic manufacturers succeeding in synthetic categories. Previously, Beijing Jiangyu Interactive's "Top War" achieved an excellent market performance of more than 200 million yuan per month by virtue of the innovative gameplay of military SLG + synthesis. In contrast, mcs, which also adopt the European and American cartoon style, have opened the door to the European and American women's casual mobile game market with the simulation of management + synthesis.
GameLook believes that the two products of the two companies also prove that European and American players are not unable to accept medium and heavy game products. Based on highly localized art and settings, through innovative gameplay and flexible paid design, the "heavyweight products" with a high degree of completion can also be recognized by overseas players. For local leisure mobile game manufacturers who are ready to go to sea, MC's case is of great significance: in addition to the internal volume in art and technology, using gameplay innovation to highlight the research and development advantages of domestic manufacturers may be a more effective way to break the situation.
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