E-sports Big Business No. 336, grasp every e-sports business opportunity
Wen | Kouyong
Esports big business reporter
Recently, Gamma Data released the "2021-2022 Report on the R&D Competitiveness of Chinese Game Enterprises" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"), and the 2021 market value of TOP10 game companies invested more than 30 billion yuan in the research and development expenses of the game business. The sales revenue of the self-developed online game market of Chinese game enterprises maintained a growth trend in 2021, and the actual sales revenue reached 255.819 billion yuan, an increase of 6.51% year-on-year.
The "Report" analyzes the changes that will occur in the independent research and development of games in 2021, summarizes the development trend of game research and development, and announces the "Top 15 R&D Competitiveness of Chinese Game Enterprises in 2021", namely Tengxu Games, NetEase Games, Sheng qu games, Miha You, Sanqi Interactive Entertainment, Perfect World, Youzu Network, Duoyi Network, Le Element, Palm Fun, Kingsoft, Zhongmao Game, Lilith, Qujia, and Gigabit.
In 2021, China's game enterprises will have the top 15 R&D competitiveness
In 2021, the sales revenue of mainland self-developed games in overseas markets reached 18.013 billion US dollars, an increase of 16.59% year-on-year. As the main component of the mainland game industry, independently developed games reflects the continuous strengthening of the comprehensive research and development strength of the game industry in recent years. The actual sales revenue and market share of China's self-developed online games in the global game market have been improved, and the global competitiveness of China's self-developed game products has also continued to strengthen.
In 2021, the revenue of self-developed games exceeded 255.8 billion, becoming one of the core development goals of game companies
With IP adaptation of games and self-developed IP gradually becoming an important development direction of the game industry, it will also carry more cultural output tasks in the future. Nowadays, under the background of the continuous fermentation of self-developed and comic games and the increasing emphasis on cultural originality in China, the game industry is expected to embark on a path of game characteristic development by virtue of self-developed game IP and adaptation of classic IP.
As one of the most valuable self-developed game IPs in China, "Glory of the King" has long evolved into a game matrix covering e-sports, TV series, animation, stage drama, virtual idol and other fields, from game culture IP to national cultural IP.
The success of "Glory of Kings" once again confirms the commercial value and long-term operational value behind the self-developed game IP. With the prominence of the value of self-developed game IP, more and more enterprises have begun to pay attention to and increase self-research investment, and this type of IP has become one of the most core own assets of more game companies.
Glory of Kings
Since 2018, the investment of large domestic game companies in game research and development has maintained a high growth trend. The sales revenue of The self-developed online game market of Chinese game companies also maintained a growth trend in 2021, an increase of 6.51% year-on-year, but the growth rate declined significantly.
Due to the gradual improvement of the epidemic situation, the domestic mobile game market has declined in terms of the actual sales revenue of the market and the growth rate of user scale, and the flow is increasingly concentrated on the head product.
Revenue from Self-developed Games in China
It is worth noting that China's current self-developed game IP accounts for a more dominant proportion of revenue in the Japanese and Korean markets than the United States and some far-sea countries. However, in recent years, there have also been some Chinese self-developed IP games that have successfully sailed to the European and American markets, bringing new experience to the industry, such as Mihayou's "Original God" and Lilith's "Awakening of All Nations", which do not have IP adaptations based on Chinese culture, but also integrate more Chinese cultural connotations.
Original God
At present, the innovation ability of independent original game products is generally enhanced, and the types of game products will be diversified and expanded, and high-quality works focus on long-term development. At the same time, game companies will upgrade their strategic layout, relying on independent research and development, and will continue to exert efforts in many fields such as technology application and IP operation, and continue to promote the global distribution strategy, opening up a diversified development path with refined operation and localized marketing.
Since 2021, "meta-universe" has become the hottest topic in the interactive entertainment industry. At present, the development of game IP has long been not limited to a single field, but has continuously carried out extended development, and carried out long-term operations in animation, music, film and television dramas.
Self-developed game IP does have good market opportunities. Although some users show a certain interest in mature IP adaptations such as national comics and film and television works, they are also interested in mythological stories and historical stories, and games adapted based on such cultural IP will not have to be limited to the original IP architecture, and game developers will have a higher degree of freedom, and will not be subject to the restrictions of copyright owners.
The revenue of self-developed game IP has increased from 71.57 billion yuan in 2016 to 145.6 billion yuan in 2020, with a cumulative turnover of more than 500 billion yuan in the past five years, and has shown a steady upward trend. In addition to the huge commercial potential, the long-term operation and continuous development of game IP have increasingly become the focus of frequent discussions among major game companies and industry people.
Overall, self-developed IP games have advantages in the competition of the future stock market, and self-developed IP tracks are still an important area of competition for head game companies. After continuous exploration, the business model of self-developed IP is also more mature, and the quality of gameplay and art is getting higher and higher.
With the frequent layout of overseas studios, game companies are paying more and more attention to the development of overseas game markets
In recent years, many large domestic game companies have laid out a number of overseas studios and continued to increase investment in overseas game research and development. Tencent currently has overseas studios or offices in Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, Montreal, Singapore and other places, of which 3 overseas studios will be added in 2021 alone.
After setting up the Montreal Studio and Sakura Studio, NetEase set up a third overseas studio in Japan in January 2022, The Nagoku Studio, and well-known producers of the "Like Dragon" series such as Minoru Nagoshi and Daisuke Sato joined the studio. As an emerging game company in China, Mihayou has also established a game research and development team in Montreal in 2021, aiming to develop a new open world 3A shooting game.
In 2021, the number of countries and regions involved in the mainland game industry going overseas has increased significantly, and the types of products are more diverse. The United States, Japan and South Korea are still the main markets for games to go global, but from the data of the past three years, their total proportion has declined year by year, and the proportion of other regions has increased year by year, indicating that mainland self-developed games are constantly expanding emerging markets.
Zhang Yijun, first vice chairman of the China Audio-Visual and Digital Publishing Association and chairman of the Game Working Committee of the China Audio-Visual and Digital Publishing Association, said that games have become a strategic choice for most game companies, and with the improvement of the international competitiveness of the mainland game industry and the growth of the scale of going to sea, the international influence of Chinese culture and Chinese elements will also be enhanced and expanded.
The construction of overseas studios of some domestic game companies
In the self-developed mobile games exported overseas, the three types of games such as strategy, role-playing and shooting have accounted for more than 60% of revenue in the past three years, and the ranking of other types has often changed. In view of the strong appeal of strategy games in the overseas and even domestic game markets, most of the mainstream game manufacturers in China have strengthened the research and development of strategy games.
In China, the strongest of strategy games are often veteran game manufacturers that have accumulated for many years. Taking IGG as an example, IGG has been conducting product research and development in the field of strategy for more than 10 years, from the cumulative revenue of the "War of Lords" series of more than 100 million US dollars, the cumulative revenue of "Castle Battle" exceeding 500 million US dollars, and then to the global revenue of "Age of Kingdom" exceeding 1 billion US dollars, thanks to the accumulation of IGG system design and numerical system, IGG's main strategy products can achieve stable growth, and the products have been recognized by users in the global game market.
Among them, "Mobile Royale" has shown a certain market potential on a global scale, in addition to this game, other game products also have their own representative and innovative gameplay.
Age of Kingdoms
In 2021, the outstanding performance is the elimination class, multiplayer online tactical competition and simulated management class, indicating that the self-developed games have shown multi-type parallel development and continuous improvement in competitiveness.
As the dark horses of domestic games going global in 2021, Project Makeover and Puzzles & Survival have been developed according to the characteristics of the European and American markets based on their specific needs, filling the gap in the domestic mobile game elimination game market in the United States.
Among them, "Puzzles & Survival" integrates the popular local zombie survival theme and SLG gameplay, and "Project Makeover" integrates the mode of dressup + cultivation on the basis of elimination gameplay, and domestic games have made new breakthroughs in the European and American elimination game markets.
Puzzles & Survival
According to media statistics, the success rate of IP mobile games in 2021 is significantly higher than in previous years, reflecting that game companies have begun to pay attention to the core of game culture and emotional value, and have a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of research and development competitiveness. In addition, domestic large game companies have paid more and more attention to the development of overseas game markets, while mobile games have been successful in the sea, through PC games, console games in overseas to open up new markets, in the prosperous environment, I believe that there will be more and more overseas game products in the future, the spring of China's self-developed games has quietly arrived, Chinese culture, Chinese elements of the international influence will also be enhanced and expanded.
Note: The images used in this article are from the Internet