At the beginning of the year, GameLook had reported that due to the lack of new products aimed at the Spring Festival stalls, the attention of users in this hot period was concentrated on old products. Looking at it now, the old product dominating the Spring Festival stall is more like a microcosm of the current game circle.
In the past two years, the "home economy" dividend has gradually faded, and the domestic mobile game market has once again become saturated. In addition, since the second half of last year, the domestic game version number has not been issued for eight consecutive months, which has further led to a general decline in the ability to obtain new products, and the flow of water has become more and more concentrated on the head products that have been operating for many years.
Indeed, the "2021-2022 China Game Enterprise R&D Competitiveness Report" released by Gamma Data shows that in the past three years, the game flow of the TOP100 in the domestic mobile game market has been concentrated in old products that have been online for more than one year, and this trend is more prominent in 2021.
However, GameLook found that in the case of the collective decline of new tours in the domestic mobile game market, the second dimension has become the only category with an increase that exceeds the industry average.
The growth of the game market is weak, and the second dimension has become the biggest breakthrough
Also derived from gamma statistics, the overall growth rate of China's mobile game market in 2021 will slow down, an increase of 7.57% year-on-year. In contrast, the performance of quadratic games is particularly eye-catching. It can be seen that the annual revenue of two-dimensional games last year exceeded 28 billion yuan, an increase of 27.4% year-on-year.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the secondary element category has achieved the growth of only one of them against the trend, and has also become one of the most important growth poles of the domestic mobile game market in 2021.
In GameLook's view, the reason why the revenue of two-dimensional mobile games has maintained rapid growth stems from the increase in the number of new tours last year, but more because of the steady increase in the flow of old products such as "Yin and Yang Division" and "Original God" in 2021.
After all, from the perspective of user attributes, although two-dimensional players are more inclusive, it is difficult to balance multiple games in the same period. To put it bluntly, which game they are fire and which game they play. But at the same time, the loyalty of this group of core users is extremely high, and high-quality products can accumulate a large group of core players in the early stage without even bothering to publicize.
Because of this, the Matthew effect of the two-dimensional track is particularly obvious, and the head product has won the vast majority of market share. GameLook estimates that Mihayou's domestic revenue in 2021 will be about 10 billion yuan, accounting for 1/3 of the domestic two-dimensional game market.
It is not so much the growth of two dimensions, but rather that individual companies and individual blockbuster games have driven the rapid growth of the entire category. Especially for latecomers who want to enter the game, this is both an opportunity and a challenge, once the layout of the second dimension can not avoid the head-on competition with a number of top products and head manufacturers.
"Old two-dimensional" evergreen, new games come together
According to the data summary of the statistics of the main "domestic secondary mobile game observation" of the B station UP, the total number of secondary products with more than 100 million revenue in 2021 is 27, of which only 4 are new products. Obviously, long-term operation is another feature of domestic secondary products.
It can be seen that whether it is the earliest "Royal Three Houses", "FGO", "Yin and Yang Division", "Collapse 3", or the rising star "Ark of Tomorrow", "Battle Double Pamish", or the "Original God" that is popular all over the world... These old products that have been online for many years are still the hottest two-dimensional games on the market, and their popularity has not declined much.
A small number of top products have a first-mover advantage, which undoubtedly poses a higher challenge to the latecomers. Not to mention, these head quadratic manufacturers are also preparing new projects step by step.
Last year, Mihayou's new turn-based work Crash: Star Dome Railways opened its first small-scale closed beta. After the release of the "Cloud Map Plan", the scattered explosion network announced five new works of Shaoqian IP in one go, conducted two tests on the orthodox sequel "Shaoqian 2: Chase and Release".
Following "Blue Route", Yongshi Network brought ARPG's new work "Eyes of Deep Space"; Kulo Games, the developer of "Battle Double Pamish", also set up a 3D two-dimensional game. Just recently, the buyout of the new work "From Stardust" exposed less than half a year of Eagle Horn, but also released the 3D real-time strategy RPG "Ark of Tomorrow: The End" of the 3 videos and official website, which triggered a lot of discussion.
In addition to the head company, there is no shortage of new faces in the fiery two-dimensional track. For example, the "High-skilled Hand Group" launched in 2020 not only rushed into the top 20 of the domestic iOS best-seller list, but also performed well after going to Japan and South Korea. Especially in the Korean market, it has also entered the top 10 of the best-seller list. At the end of last year, game developers even received investment from companies such as Station B and NetEase.
What's more interesting is that Deep Blue Interactive, which has just been established for a year and has not even announced its first product, has also received investment from Tencent.
In fact, not only Tencent, with the PV of Pop style and the character standing painting with the style of the times, the company's modern retro occult two-dimensional strategy mobile game "Back to the Future: 1999", soon attracted the attention of a large number of core users, and the current TapTap reservation volume has exceeded 700,000.
What impressed GameLook was also the wargame mobile game "Laigu Mi xin" released by Longyuan Network. The game positions the rare theme of national style culture and blog, and also cooperates with the "National Treasure" program team to anthropomorphize the cultural relics, attracting more than 500,000 players to make reservations without testing.
Strictly speaking, the second dimension, once regarded as the cradle of creative games, is no longer synonymous with simplicity. More and more secondary manufacturers have begun to develop with stand-alone and host-level ideas, and product quality has been continuously upgraded and iterated. With the crazy inner volume of the category, 3D visual performance, CG and other host-style packaging publicity have long become the standard of two-dimensional games.
Although the frequency of the current two-dimensional explosion and dark horses is decreasing, the exposure of the new tour of vertical manufacturers indicates that there are still opportunities for market segments, and the next 1-2 years will usher in a wave of two-dimensional games.
Scramble for layout, veteran manufacturers transform the second dimension
In fact, not only the secondary element manufacturers are constantly raising, but even a number of established companies have entered the market and begun to lay out the second dimension. Some of these products have won many laurels at home and abroad, and some are still poised to develop.
Bearing the brunt of this, Perfect World successfully transformed itself with the two-dimensional finale "Magic Tower" at the end of 2021, and won the eye-catching results of 50 million flow on the first day and 200 million yuan in the first week. Recently, this two-dimensional open world RPG also announced that it will join hands with Tencent's international business brand Level Infinite, which will be launched in Japan, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other regions within this year.
Also last year, Tencent itself broke the spell of "goose factory does not understand the second dimension" with the "White Night Aurora" launched overseas. At that time, the game invited more than 150 artists to participate, and the two-dimensional art "volume" was "rolled" to the extreme, and it also became the focus of domestic players' hot discussion. In Japan and South Korea, the main battlefield, "White Night Aurora" has achieved brilliant results, with more than 200 million flowing water in half a year.
Perhaps tasting the sweetness, Tencent decisively chose to increase the two-dimensional track. In the second half of last year, Tencent released a recruitment information for a self-developed project in Shanghai, and its description of the "3A-level two-dimensional original IP open world" caused a lot of discussion. In March this year, the two-dimensional mobile game "Nikke: Goddess of Victory" by the former "Sword Spirit" owner Mei Hengtai Studio continued to announce that Japan-Hanbok will be issued by Tencent's international business brand Level Infinite.
In addition, the wuxia factory Xishanju also brought a two-dimensional science fiction TPS mobile game "Dust White Forbidden Zone"; and the two-dimensional new game "Kara Picchu" of Dreamworld is a sci-fi style TPS game that integrates 2D/3D switching each other. At the same time, Shanghai Candle Dragon used Unreal Engine to develop a two-dimensional game of ancient sword IP, "White Thorn Corridor" and so on.
At the beginning of the year, NetEase's 2021 blockbuster mobile game "Harry Potter: Magical Awakening" also announced that it will open a global release this year, and will be jointly released by Warner Bros. Games and Portkey Games.
On the other hand, the "Dawn Apocalypse" launched by Asahi Lightyear and Mu Hitomi has successfully entered the top of the best-seller list in Japan and South Korea through the two-dimensional transformation of localized products. At the same time, Chaoxi Lightyear also obtained the distribution rights of Kunlun Wanwei's 3D open world MMO mobile game "Tower of the Sacred Realm" in Chinese mainland. The game has previously been launched in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, with a single-day revenue of more than 2 million yuan.
In the face of the wind and fire of the two-dimensional track, the nomads who are not willing to wait have chosen to restart "Mountain and Sea Mirror Flower". The game is the first self-developed product of Youzu's Xinfan Studio, and the development and polishing time is more than 3 years. When it was launched in April 2020, it did not lose popular products such as "Princess Link Re:Dive" in the same period, and it received 8 million downloads in the first month of launch.
Unfortunately, the game's popularity has not returned to the beginning, and even experienced nearly a year of silence, until March this year, it was officially announced to be restarted, and it was handed over to a new team.
epilogue
Honestly, the popularity of the two-dimensional category is not difficult to guess. Not only is the art style more acceptable to young players, in the creation of the theme, the lack of IP constraints, the development team's creative freedom is higher, but also more suitable for creating original products.
Although the two-dimensional sea trip itself has limitations, most products are only popular in Asian markets such as Japan and South Korea. In the European and American markets, only Smile Gate's "Seventh Epic" and the global killing of "Original God" are really standing. But this does not prevent more and more domestic manufacturers from starting to pay attention to the two-dimensional track, including both high-profile head companies and latecomers with strong funds and leading technology.
But the problem is that there are not many truly successful long-term secondary products, and at present, a few companies such as Mihayou and Eagle Point are still dominant.
In GameLook's view, this does not mean that there is no opportunity to break the domination of the track by the "old two-dimensional", and even many big manufacturers are waiting for the opportunity.
Before that, it must be understood that in the serious secondary element of the inner volume, the dominance of vertical companies is even greater than that of listed game companies. However, considering the high tolerance of secondary users and the ease of empathy, most established companies urgently need to break the inherent brand image in order to gain the favor of core users and truly join and sit in the few seats of the secondary yuan track.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
Global vision / depth is material
![Played Princess Link! Re:Dive" for two years, found that it beat 90% of mobile games[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)