Entering late March, the annual earnings season is also on schedule. Compared with previous years, due to changes in the domestic market environment, going to sea has become the key word in the game industry this year, and the performance of domestic manufacturers overseas has become more and more concerned.
Recently, the relatively low-key Japanese subsidiary of Happy Elements Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as HEKK) also followed the practice of Japanese companies to release the 2021 annual account announcement, and its net profit by leaps and bounds was particularly eye-catching, and this is also the 12th year that Happy Elements has entered the Japanese market. According to the report, in 2021, HEKK's annual net profit reached 5.702 billion yen (about 300 million yuan), an increase of 45.39% year-on-year, and the company's current assets were 15.6 billion yen (820 million yuan), which has surpassed many Japanese medium-sized game manufacturers.
In GameLook's view, in addition to excellent performance, the unique success methodology and overseas mode of Le Element HEKK are more worthy of the attention and thinking of domestic overseas manufacturers.
Net profit triple jump, star IP performance outstanding
According to the data, HEKK's net profit in 2020 reached 3.922 billion yen, up 249.55% from 1.122 billion yen in 2019. Horizontally, in the past five years, HEKK has maintained a high-speed growth trend, which is also directly related to its accurate insight into the Japanese market.
Unlike the domestic market, which is famous for its match 3 products, in the Japanese market, Raku Element uses female-oriented products as its core track. HeKK's most famous IP is "Idol Dream Festival". As an important branch of Japan's two-dimensional mobile game market, women's secondary products have ushered in explosive growth in the past few years, such as "A3! "Dream Kingdom and the Sleeping 100 Princes" and so on.
According to the team structure information released by HEKK's official website, the average age of HEKK employees at the end of 2018 was 29 years old, art employees accounted for 51%, programmers accounted for 22%, planning 22%, of which female employees accounted for 56%, which is unimaginable in the male-dominated Japanese game industry, perhaps this is one of the reasons why Le Element Japan can develop a number of explosive female games.
Unlike these drama-oriented works that focus on love stories, the "Idol Dream Festival" series of works has been successful through the prosperity of Japan's local idol culture, and its sound play method is also distinct from the pure love cultivation game. The first "Idol Dream Festival" work was launched in the Japanese market on May 1, 2015, and was favored by female players with its luxurious voice actor lineup and Q Meng's painting style, and landed in the national service market by Tencent after a year of localization.
In 2020, when HEKK's performance soared, the company launched two products in one go, "Idol Dream Festival!! Music" and "Idol Dream Festival!! Basic》。 Among them, the latter is based on the original work to add a new story chapter and rename the online, while the former came to the sixth place in the Japanese App Store best-seller list on the day of launch.
In "Idol Dream Festival!! In Music, the background changes the Q print style of the previous game, but uses the 3D performance screen of the game characters. The luxurious voice actor lineup in the previous game has not only been used, but also further expanded, and in recent years, Japan's popular male voice actors have all joined, including many big names with singer backgrounds, which also makes the audiovisual experience of the game to a higher level.
Different from the general two-dimensional planning, the special nature of idol planning allows it to obtain higher economic benefits and wider social dissemination through offline activities and sales. "Idol Dream Festival" IP peripheral derivatives are sold in Japanese anime product specialized sales agencies such as Animal, and they perform well. In October 2017, the IP's first CG concert was held at Tokyo's largest Live House, TOYOSU PIT, with an audience of over 1,000 people, and toured Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and Sendai in the following two months. In the whole of 2017 alone, HEKK's sales around idol fantasy festivals exceeded 10 billion yen.
In 2020, HEKK launched a women's card mobile game "HELIOS Rising Heros" while it was hot, and the game quickly topped the Japanese iOS free list a few hours after the game was launched, which also made HEKK solidify the name of "women to the game manufacturer".
Today, two years after its launch, the current "Idol Dream Festival!! "Music" is still in the top ten of Japan's iOS best-seller list, and it is also the best and most stable product in Japanese women's mobile games, and the monthly flow is still maintained at about 100 million yuan.
After 12 years of deep cultivation, the localization of talents has borne fruit
Although "Wilderness Action" is now in the Japanese market, and its developer NetEase has also acquired or established several studios in Japan, in the matter of opening up the Japanese market, Le Element is not only far earlier than most domestic manufacturers, including NetEase, but also the most successful representative of localization.
As early as 2010, Happy Elements registered what is now Happy Elements Co., Ltd. (HEKK) in Japan. At the beginning of its establishment, HEKK's business idea was the same as that of many domestic manufacturers later, focusing on representing domestic game products. But at the suggestion of Japanese investors, the company turned to R&D and distribution in Japan, and its first move after the transformation was the acquisition of Nippon Computer Production Co., Ltd. in 2011, and computer production president Motoki Arai has been THE CEO of HEKK since the company was acquired. In June 2021, HEKK further merged with Happy Elements Asia Pacific, another Japanese subsidiary of Le Elements.
Today, HEKK has more than 200 employees, 3 known R&D studios, and more than 90% of Japanese employees, which is also a stark difference from most domestic manufacturers that have entered the Japanese market.
The direct result of talent localization is that almost every PRODUCT of HEKK has grown on the pain points of Japanese players. Prior to "Idol Dream Festival", HKEE also launched a male-oriented two-dimensional mobile game "Merc Storia" in 2014. Unlike the current beautiful girl mobile game that often takes the fat buttocks as a selling point, this fresh mobile game that focuses on the healing system has played The Japanese fantasy to the extreme, winning the best fantasy game in the first half of Google Play 2014 in one fell swoop, and even the European and American mobile game review bloggers on YouTube have used "Super Cute" to describe this "super cute" mobile game.
Although the national costume and taiwan costume have been discontinued in 2017, on January 31, the "Meruko Story" japanese service ushered in its 8th birthday, and on the day of the birthday, it even squeezed into the top 200 of the Japanese iOS best-seller list again. For a two-dimensional mobile game that has been in operation for 8 years, such an achievement in the Japanese market, where the supply has been saturated, is enough to prove its deep understanding of Japanese players.
Another example comes from the discontinued Gakuen Dream Festival (also translated as "Girls' Ensemble"), which is called "Ensemble Girls" in English, and the English name of "Idol Dream Festival" is "Ensemble Stars", from which you can probably see that there is an inextricable connection between the two. In fact, "Gakuen Dream Festival" is also a story-oriented game created by Day-to-day, but it is a school girl training game for male players, which has been operating since 2012, underwent a renovation and name change in 2016, and was closed in February 2018 for various reasons.
But after shutting down, HEKK launched another one called Ensemble Girls!! ~Memories~" free app, players can download and read the story of the characters in the original for free, and later HEKK is even updating this non-profitable product, just so that players can get back more memories of the game.
The way of the happy elements behind long-term operations
For the music element, the cognition of domestic players may still stay on the national match-3 games such as "Happy Match", "Happy Aquarium" and "Happy Aquarium", which have been operating for more than 10 years. Therefore, there is not much controversy about the concept of "long-term operation" of Le Element, but there is not much applause, after all, the user audience and product characteristics of the match-3 product make many people think that its long-term operation is not difficult.
However, it is not difficult to see from heKK's story that Le Element's long-term trust in the management team of Japanese subsidiaries and Japanese employees, as well as boutique research and development and long-term operations, are the temperament that permeates the bones of this company.
Even the most difficult secondary IP to achieve long-term operation, HEKK is constantly trying to continue its life cycle, even if the game itself has ended operation, it will provide players with a way to remember. This "very Japanese" way of operation has also reaped the results of "very Japanese" - from "Meruko Story" in 2014, to "Idol Dream Festival" in 2015, to "Idol Dream Festival Music" in 2020, in the Japanese mobile game market that will be completely exhausted, each product of HEKK has received enthusiastic support from players in long-term operation.
Because of this, the new rhythm of le elements and HEKK products is obviously much slower than many of its peers. In this regard, Le Element Japan said in an interview that the focus of Le Element at this stage is not to emphasize what kind of company it is, but to serve users well and let Chinese and Japanese players like it.
In GameLook's view, this is actually the goal that all manufacturers should strive for. The Japanese market's own game culture accumulation and relatively closed market environment has always been regarded by the outside world as "easy to defend and difficult to attack", in the twelve years since the establishment of HEKK, there are still countless Manufacturers from China, South Korea or other countries tossing Japan, and HEKK has demonstrated in its own way how to gain a firm foothold in this highly competitive market.
In the matter of success at sea, long-term operation is only an appearance, and the localization of talents, the spirit of craftsmen, and THE creation of IP behind it may be more worthy of careful consideration by manufacturers.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
Global vision / depth is material