Summary: When the year of the fight
Author: Shinoya
Image: From the web
In 2018, Xiong Yu, the author of Touch Music, wrote in the article "The Day the Edition Number Was Discontinued": "That small and medium-sized but 'slightly famous' game company has died 600 times. ”
At the same time, "when the game industry generally feels the cold wind, the big manufacturers are like a safe haven, and the manufacturers have withstood the cold wind, so that most of them do not have to face the wind and frost." ”
At that time, Tencent even held two consecutive internal meetings on the topic of "how to break the bottleneck of the game". It is hard to imagine that such a spirited number one company has also begun to use "bottlenecks" to describe its situation.
History is always strikingly similar. Since 22 July 2021, the General Administration of Press and Publication has not released a game version number for 7 consecutive months. On January 29, "Securities Daily" reported that due to the suspension of the issuance of game version numbers, many small and medium-sized game manufacturers have laid off employees or even shut down.
As a result, the game went global from an optional option for game companies to a mandatory option. Overseas version numbers are not required, and overseas meet the needs of "related".
Recently, the famous data and statistics agency App Annie recently released the top 30 of the 2021 Chinese publishers' overseas revenue rankings, and Funplus won the championship for five consecutive years.
Looking at the entire TOP30 list, it is not difficult to find that SLG game manufacturers have taken away one-third of the places, and the proportion of the top position in the list is also the largest.
In fact, now that the entire industry is shouting that the battlefield of the sea is white-hot, the market may be more appropriate to use the blood sea.
When the smooth road is long gone, the SLG track is full of power, Funplus can still firmly hold the position of the sea king, what is the secret?
01 Originated in the "steal food" game, won ten million MAU on Facebook
In 2008, with the popularity of the "stealing vegetables" game, Renren became a company with a market value second only to Tencent and Baidu that year.
FunPlus keenly sniffed the opportunity, and in 2011, its subsidiary launched a business game on Facebook, "Family Farm", which won 15 million monthly active users. According to media reports, the game still maintains a monthly turnover of tens of millions of yuan.
Based on this, the following year, Diandian Interactive launched the mobile version of "Family Farm" and "Seaside Farm", which also achieved a good market response. Once released, it squeezed into the Top 10 of the App Store best-seller list in 87 markets around the world.
"1 in 7 Dutchmen have grown vegetables in The Seaside Farm", which comes from this. It can be said that funplus's initial overseas foothold was not SLG, but a simulated operation.
By 2013, overseas players who love to "steal vegetables" have been able to bring in $3 million a month for Diandian Interaction.
After "Clash of Clans" and "Game of War" were launched in 2012 and 2013, there were few popular SLG mobile games on the market. At that time, most of the domestic games focused on cultivating local players, and overseas products were in a stage of inactivity.
Diandian Interactive seized this gap in the market and launched "King of Avalon" in the global market in 2016. While shifting the main battlefield to SLG, it also swept the App Store best-seller list in 67 markets. Launched the following year, "Musket Age", its game with an average monthly turnover of more than 100 million yuan, also helped Diandian Interactive achieve a two-pronged approach in the SLG market.
(Revenue changes for several popular mobile games from April 2017 to January 2019)
In addition, it can be seen from the 2 billion yuan of betting profits of Century Huatong when it acquired Diandian Interactive in 2016 that this game company that mainly attacks overseas markets may not be the so-called "dark horse of the industry" or "rising star".
Wu Tao, FunPlus's co-chief technology officer, said in an interview: "FunPlus has been a company with a global vision from the beginning. This has to do with the overseas background of its founder, Andy Zhong, who worked at Bell Labs and american social game companies. ”
It can be said that as early as ten years ago, when people did not know what it was to go to sea. Funplus has been a great success in the European and American markets.
Time to 2018, China ushered in the first year of SLG game development. Judging from the list of overseas mobile game revenue released by App Annie, SLG mobile games are still responsible for revenue generation. Among the top 15 game companies with overseas revenue, 8 companies mainly rely on SLG mobile games to enter the list, and the battle for going to sea has gradually become an SLG offensive and defensive battle. Under the competition, the early entry and two-pronged interaction are naturally advantageous - its 2 mobile games "Musket Age" and "King of Avalon" ranked 3rd and 4th in overseas revenue in 2018, respectively, and in 2018, it was in the Sensor Tower monthly mobile game revenue ranking top 5.
According to its director of U.S. operations, by the end of April 2019, the two "king bombs" brought more than $1.2 billion in revenue to the company.
02 SLG is a "deathless gold medal"
Looking at the list of overseas in the past ten months, it is not difficult to find that almost no list can avoid the fate of being slaughtered by SLG.
According to the 2019 China Game Overseas Report released by the well-known data analysis company Sensor Tower, SLG mobile games issued by Chinese companies occupy more than 76% of the global market share of the category, making the overseas SLG market almost become a "own person" arena.
So, why is SLG able to travel unimpeded overseas and achieve such impressive results?
In the past few years, based on the continuous high popularity of casual games in the global market, a large number of manufacturers have scrambled to fill such markets, although the number of category downloads is higher, the year-on-year growth rate is declining, the leisure category with low entry threshold has signs of saturation, and it is necessary to continuously tap the way to play, "leisure" has been going in the direction of "leisure +"; and the SLG life cycle is far better than other types, is a test of long-term operation of the category, most manufacturers will focus on the most capable products. Therefore, in such a format, if a manufacturer owns two "king fried" game products, in the overseas market dominated by SLG, it is tantamount to having one more big move skill than others.
In addition, the general use of players paying to fill a large number of consumption of resources model, which makes low DAU can bring a considerable ARPU, providing a basis for game heaviness.
Heavy games, focusing on complex operations, deep content, players need to pay a lot of energy and financial resources to receive a complete emotional closed loop, investment - satisfaction. The more gameplay we say it is, the heavier it is, the more "fun" the player will feel.
It can be said that from 2018, when the situation of going to sea was just formed, SLG has been a stable genre that allows many manufacturers to gain a foothold overseas. Although the threshold of "casual +" is low, it is difficult to monetize, even if it is the product of Voodoo, the "king of small games" in France, it is difficult to compete with SLG in terms of revenue.
Previously, a report by Guojin Securities pointed out that the stable income period of "Age of Muskets" and "King of Avalon" will remain for 2-3 years. With these two or so protectors, Funplus, sitting in the position of "ring master", is in the "year of the fight".
Although the SLG model is a safety card to solve the problem of survival at sea, homogenization is still inevitable.
This side of the box "Musket Age", "King of Avalon" and other old SLG solid foundation, the other side of the box, with the same category into but constantly differentiated new SLG gradually opened up a diversified situation, last year suddenly entered the final circle of "Sopredia" is an example, Youta Network grasped the blind spot of gangster themes, combined with the characteristics of SLG and the preferences of overseas markets, making the product a hit.
03 Combination fist strategy to tap market segment users
Unlike other SLG companies that focus on only one game as a growth point, Funplus takes the "combination fist" routine. Strategic mobile games are different from eating chicken, not exclusive, and the accumulation of resources in strategic mobile games will form a certain threshold for new users to enter, and users' demand for new games will always exist.
It is not difficult to see that Funplus's SLG mobile game overseas strategy is based on a successful mobile game to continuously tap market segments and users.
The earliest "King of Avalon" was set in the early Middle Ages; "Age of Muskets" featured european and American styles with firearms as the theme; and the latest post-apocalyptic survival SLG mobile game - "State of Survival". It can be said that Funplus has done everything in its power to experiment with themes and artistic styles.
Officially, "State of Survival" took only 17 months to go online, and the monthly turnover exceeded 80 million US dollars.
80 million, what is the weight of this achievement in the industry?
SensorTower once gave several statistical tables of the time it takes for representative SLGs to reach peak monthly revenue in a report. Among them, as an old predecessor of SLG, it took 19 months for Zhixingtong's "Clash of Kings" to reach a monthly revenue peak of $50.6 million; IGG's "Age of Kingdoms" only achieved a monthly revenue peak of $36.8 million in 35 months.
According to App Annie data, since the launch of "State of Survival", it has topped the App Store best-seller list in 18 countries/regions around the world and entered the top 10 in 98 countries/regions. It is worth mentioning that more than 1.6 million people in the Google App Store have scored a high score of 4.4, which is more popular than the above two SLG mobile games with the same theme.
Whether it's data or word of mouth, State of Survival is a success. The reason for its success, in addition to the novelty of the theme, in terms of art style, compared with "Age of Muskets" and "King of Avalon", "State of Survival" is more realistic, and the atmosphere creation is more depressing of the apocalyptic theme.
In terms of gameplay, "State of Survival" is roughly the same as other doomsday SLGs of the same type, all of which follow the underlying framework created by COK, and have done some category iterations and gameplay integration on this mature framework, adding hero cultivation, PVE mode, and using the concept of alliance territory to strengthen social networking. PVE can control the hero character for tower defense, and the puzzle solving is mainly to manipulate the character to slide the trap, collect items and finally get out of the maze.
Objectively speaking, State of Survival is not a product that completely subverts the concept of SLG. In the author's opinion, its brilliance lies in the fact that it places some key buildings, such as military buildings, research institutes, etc., in the locked area in advance, and the player must gradually explore and liberate these areas according to the process in order to open the functions of recruitment and scientific and technological research.
This "business-oriented" gameplay still follows the mainstream SLG framework, but each type of optimization and innovation is just right, and the early rhythm control is in place, which is friendly to novice players.
Based on this, 4 months after its launch, State of Survival successfully went to the TOP 30 list with its own two other SLG teachers, SensorTower, miraculously won 3 seats on the list, and all of them were SLG categories, and maintained the results until now.
It can be said that these three games are not only the heroes of Funplus's promotion to the lord of the sea, but also the heavyweight weight of its defensive ring.
Famous baseball player Ted. Williams, in his book The Science of Hitting, elaborated on his batting technique: He divided the hitting zone into 77 grids the size of a baseball, and he would only swing the bat if the ball flew to the area where he could hit a hit, even if he might be out of the game with three strikes. This is highly admired by Buffett, who believes that the same is true of investment.
In a sense, the secret to Funplus's success is actually the same.