Game to sea in Southeast Asia: small and medium-sized enterprises break the "encirclement" of large manufacturers

After the domestic traffic dividend peaked and the version number was suspended, overseas has become a more important battlefield for domestic game manufacturers.

Liu Wuhua, CEO of Sail Out to Sea, told First Finance and Economics that compared with the situation that the domestic game market is occupied by head manufacturers, the charm of the overseas market is that it is a diversified area, not a large factory can monopolize, which gives some waist and other companies a lot of space and opportunities, "There are constantly some new products, new companies can run out." ”

Southeast Asia is considered to be one of the most potential markets for games to go global, not only is it the fastest growing Internet region in the world, but also the world's fourth largest game market, and its cultural habits are similar to the Chinese market, becoming one of the first choices for Chinese game manufacturers to go to sea.

According to Sensor Data, in 2021, a total of 48 Chinese mobile games were shortlisted for the Southeast Asia Best-Seller List Top100, with a total of about $980 million, accounting for 54% of the total revenue of the Top100, and some domestic waist companies rely on localization operation and optimization, with outstanding revenue and download performance.

Small and medium-sized factories are rising in Southeast Asia

When it comes to game manufacturers in Southeast Asia, it is necessary to mention Mu Hitomi Technology, a company from Shanghai, whose "Mobile Legends: Bang Bang") is already a super national product in Southeast Asia, comparable to the position of "Glory of the King" in the domestic game market.

"Southeast Asia is very enthusiastic about this game, a dozen matches are a lot of spectators watching, on some weekends, young people will gather under the TV set of the 711 convenience store, some people play the game, a bunch of people in front of the convenience store to watch." Liu Wuhua described it this way.

Infinity Showdown is a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Tactical Competitive Game) mobile game that was launched in 2016. In 2017, Kaesang Pangarep and Gibran Rakabuming, two sons of Indonesian President Joko Widodo, publicly expressed their love for Endless Showdown in a YouTube video.

After 6 years of operation, Infinity Showdown is still one of the hottest games in the Southeast Asian market. In 2021, Infinity Showdown ranked second in both downloads and revenue in the Southeast Asian market, after Garena Free Fire, a shooter owned by Singaporean game publisher Garena.

SensorTower data shows that Infinity Showdown will earn more than $100 million in Southeast Asia in 2021 and have 47 million annual downloads.

"Whether it is a domestic list of downloads or a game paid list, the Top30 is basically occupied by several heads, leaving room for some small and medium-sized enterprises is actually very small, but put this list overseas, you will find that there may be more than two dozen different companies in the overseas Top30, and the region is not the same." Liu Wuhua said.

In the Southeast Asian market revenue list, Tencent's competitive mobile game "PUBG MOBILE" ranked 4th, and the MOBA mobile game "Glory of the King" similar to "Endless Showdown" ranked 8th.

In overseas markets, there are some new products popping up every few months. In 2021, three new games were successfully shortlisted for the Top 20 downloads in Southeast Asia, including Heartbeat Network's "Sausage Party", Forever9 Games' "Island King Pro" and Chaoxi Lightyear's "RO Wonderland: The Birth of a New Generation".

Sausage Man is a tactical competitive game that was launched in China in April 2018 and is one of the most profitable games. At the end of June 2021, "Sausage Party" was launched in Southeast Asia, and the financial report of Heartbeat Network shows that it has received more than 15 million downloads in the 30 days of launch.

Heart-moving network related business people revealed to First Finance that after the launch of "Sausage Party" in Southeast Asia, without too much time and too much cost to buy, it reached more than 1 million daily lives in three days.

Configuration optimization and social fission help localization

"At home, we can use scale and capital to crush opponents, but it is difficult to achieve global unification and scale overseas." Liu Wuhua said that "Endless Showdown" in Southeast Asia actually based on the local network has done a lot of optimization, localization is very important.

Southeast Asia is relatively similar to domestic geography and cultural habits, which is the advantage of domestic games going to sea, but there are also many aspects that need to be optimized, including the network base of local users, mobile phone habits, and cultural payment capabilities, which is a comprehensive situation that needs to be considered in a variety of ways.

In terms of doing a good job in the Southeast Asian market, the optimization of the configuration is a more basic point.

Heart-moving network related business people told First Finance that whether it is Indonesia, India or Malaysia, the mobile phone configuration of Android users may be weaker than the domestic 2-3 years, "Now the domestic basic per capita Snapdragon 888 or Snapdragon 865, and some parts of Southeast Asia may still be the chip at the beginning of Snapdragon 6." ”

For such areas as Indonesia, in the case of poor network and mobile phone performance, direct migration to Southeast Asia according to domestic standards, although all aspects of the product are exquisite, but put on the local network, mobile phones and networks can not be loaded, and the user experience is not necessarily good.

Heart-touching network related business sources revealed that the role of "Sausage Party" takes sausages as a prototype, rather than being realistic, and part of the consideration is that the 3D implementation of sausages at the technical level has very low performance requirements for mobile phones, which is more suitable for some players whose mobile phone performance is not too good to play. Similarly, as the hottest game in Southeast Asia, Garena's shooter "Garena Free Fire" has also made a lot of efforts in optimization, matching more models.

Localization is the key to success in Southeast Asia, and in addition to the consideration of the basic configuration, the local cultural aesthetic and language are also required.

Previously, Google held an online seminar on games going global, and Hongxian Li, head of Google's mobile business in Greater China, shared some localized cases. Taking Chuangku Interactive's "Call Me Pipe Lord" as an example, in the Thai market and in the Vietnamese market, the characters in the game will be different, such as Thailand will implant a lot of Elements of the Thai royal family, and Vietnam is a country that is deeply influenced by Chinese culture, so the image, makeup, costumes, etc. of the entire character will be closer to the aesthetics and configuration of the entire ancient China.

"Endless Showdown" has been successful in Southeast Asia, and it has also used many elements and IPs familiar to locals in the game. According to the official website of Mu Hitomi Technology, "Endless Showdown" has made in-depth exploration in local operations, in addition to game content, UI, heroes, and art, the official has also set up a local game operation account.

"As a window for players to dialogue with the official, on the basis of fully understanding the history, culture, religion, customs, etc. of different regions, social media can try to stand in the same context as players in different regions and truly realize dialogue with players, rather than one-way output of content." At present, "Endless Showdown" has more than 17 localized accounts, and the number of fans on mainstream platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube has exceeded 50 million, maintaining a high activity and interaction rate.

In southeast Asian markets, the power of social networks is also valued. Heart-moving network insiders say that social fission is a large part of the reason why "Sausage Party" can be successful, and this way also far exceeds the cost performance of the purchase.

In the second half of 2021, "Sausage Party" became a hit after it was launched in Southeast Asia, and the internal post-event review, "We did not buy on a large scale, it was Tik Tok who made a very huge contribution to us." ”

Heart-touching related sources revealed that "Sausage Party" has some funny or interesting gameplay, born with a certain social fission sharing attribute, about ten seconds of short videos in Southeast Asia Tik Tok is very popular, bringing a very good addition, three days of daily life more than 1 million.

"Southeast Asian gamers have a strong sense of community, and under a strong sense of community, players are very eager to play with their friends and family." Hongxian Li once mentioned that based on community awareness, esports occupies a very important position in Southeast Asia.

After the game exploded, "Endless Showdown" then successfully built an e-sports brand, and its e-sports events also have a strong appeal in the southeast.

According to the esports report released by Esports Charts in the third quarter of 2021, according to the peak audience statistics, in the eighth season of MPL ID held in Indonesia, the group stage between The two major teams in Indonesia, EVOS.LGN and RRQ Hoshi, attracted more than 2.4 million simultaneous online viewers.

Southeast Asia is undoubtedly an important market for mobile games, on the one hand it is a sizeable and growing market, in addition, mobile devices occupy a dominant position in the Southeast Asian game industry.

Sensor Tower store intelligence data shows that the Southeast Asian mobile game market revenue was $2.79 billion in 2021, an increase of 15.4% year-on-year. In 2021, the total number of mobile games downloaded and revenue in Southeast Asia will increase by 6% and 15% respectively from 2020, and this trend will continue due to the long-term impact of the new crown epidemic.

"These regions of Southeast Asia did not go through the PC era, and they were mobile games from the beginning, so mobile games naturally seem to grow in the hands of these young users in emerging markets." Liu Wuhua said that the Southeast Asian market is a gold mine in the mobile game industry.