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The reboot of the version number is dissolving the cold winter that is in the hearts of the gamers
Written/Meteor
Editor/Lee Ha-lin
On the evening of April 11, the State Press and Publication Administration announced the approval information of domestic online games in April, and a total of 45 games regained version numbers.
Version number, has always been the crux of the heart of domestic game companies, without the version number, game products can not be published and operated online, flow revenue will become empty talk.
And this version restart, although the number of approved games compared with the past is a bit of a discount, but the good thing is to draw a close to the game market "version number winter" that began in July 2021, symbolism and practical significance.
The effect of this news is also immediate, on April 11, the US stock market in the game stock market before the market higher; on April 12, more than 80% of the A-share market in the game sector rose sharply. The domestic game concept stocks have been reddishing, allowing investors to regain a wave of confidence.
Of course, the biggest beneficiary of the blockbuster benefit of this version restart is the small and medium-sized game companies that have difficulties in surviving in the context of the epidemic. With the restart of the version number, for a time, the voices of game practitioners celebrating that "the company has been saved" and "the project is promising" have risen and fallen on social media, which makes people feel a lot of emotions.
However, although the reboot of the version number is a major positive, the current situation of the game market is not optimistic.
After experiencing rapid development in recent years, the game market in the post-epidemic era has begun to gradually enter the bottleneck, the growth rate of player scale has slowed down significantly, the homogenization of popular tracks has become increasingly serious, and the head effect of large factories has been further highlighted... In such an environment, just restarting the version number, can it really bring spring to the game market?
"Cold winter" 263 days, is the game market okay?
To be honest, the domestic game market has almost reached the point where the four words of "version number winter" will almost trigger PTSD.
In 2018, the domestic game market for the first time encountered the "version number winter", for 9 consecutive months can not get the version number of the online game pressure, making many game companies unsustainable, according to the CCTV financial channel released news, in 2018 a total of 9705 domestic game companies written off, revoked, and the following year, this number is surging to 18710. Even a giant company with a solid foundation like Tencent once fell by 47% in 2018, which shows the power of "cold winter".
The current round of "cold winter" is the second "cold winter" experienced by the domestic game market, from July 2021 to April 2022, this round of "cold winter" lasted a full 263 days, the duration is not much different from the 18 years of "cold winter", and the impact is not small.
According to the "2021 Mobile Internet Industry White Paper" released by Qimai Data, by the end of 2021, the number of online game apps in domestic app stores reached 687,000, down 20.8% from the same period last year.
Image source: Seven-wheat data
Obviously, domestic enterprises still have not learned the method of "cold protection".
Of course, it is biased to attribute the collapse of game companies and the decline in the number of online games in 2021 to the "cold winter of the version number".
In fact, as many players and practitioners can personally feel, in recent years, with the rapid development of the game market, the domestic supervision of game products is also increasing day by day, and just last year, when the "edition number winter" just began, the Economic Reference Daily issued an article calling the game industry "spiritual opium", it is not difficult to see that even if it grows into a large industry of hundreds of billions, it is still difficult for games to gain mainstream cultural recognition.
And at the end of August 2021, the "strictest" anti-addiction new regulations, but also to the game market has brought a lot of impact, although the big manufacturers have come up with financial report data to prove that "anti-addiction does not affect revenue", but because of the loss of minor players and the flow of water and the surge in operational pressure surge of small and medium-sized game developers are also everywhere, such as the music game "Synchronous Rhythm" officially in the game community on the underage anti-addiction restrictions affected the revenue situation of the big spit. After minors are blocked from entering the game, the "plumbing" of game revenue is much clearer to small and medium-sized enterprises than the big manufacturers.
Media criticism, policy tightening, version suspension... The combination of many factors has jointly built the version environment of the current game market. Of course, for practitioners, the inability to obtain the version number is the first pressure on the top of the company's head, and now the restart of the version number is undoubtedly a life-saving straw for the game companies (especially those with smaller sizes) that are struggling in the game market with sharp increases in pressure.
As long as the game can get the version number, it can be launched in the domestic channel, it is expected to recover the cost, pay the salary of employees, and obtain funds for continuous operation, and as long as the game product can survive, the enterprise will also stand firm, if the game product happens to bet on the vertical segment, maybe it can also be like the new cutting-edge enterprises represented by Mihayou and Eagle Point, "flying flat", stepping into the team of the top developers of the category in one fell swoop.
For the restart of this edition, Mi Ke, who is engaged in the operation of a mobile game company in Chengdu, concluded: "In any case, this edition restart is still very encouraging to the industry, giving many small and medium-sized enterprises that hesitate to transform and give up the game business a reassuring pill, and with the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, the game industry can create a lot of taxes and employment opportunities, and can also drive consumption, I believe that in the future, the development of the game industry will have more policy help." ”
Mobile games are still the absolute workhorse, and light gameplay is easier to pass?
The version number is restarted, the joy of the game companies is indescribable, and the manufacturer bosses have also "opened champagne" in the circle of friends to celebrate. However, after a short period of joy, players and practitioners began to return to calm and began to study the lucky ones who had obtained the version number in order to find the rules and tricks for obtaining the version number.
In the context of the previous tightening of domestic game regulatory policies, game companies can be described as cautious in content development, afraid of accidentally violating the audit rules, helpless to rework, and repeating the long review process.
The game products that have been studied do have a certain reference value, at least to understand what type of game products are more likely to obtain version numbers, so as not to force developers to get involved in "unprepared wars".
The number of approved games has shrunk in number, a total of 45, down 47.67% year-on-year. Among them, the number of mobile games reached 39, the number of client games was 5, and the host game was only 1, and the landing platform was the National Bank Switch.
Image source: State Press and Publication Administration
In terms of data, mobile games accounted for 86.67% of the approved games, which is consistent with its dominance of the game market at home and abroad in recent years.
According to the data in the "2021 Global Game Market Report" released by the analysis agency Newzoo, in 2021, the size of the game market reached 180.3 billion US dollars, while mobile games accounted for 52%, while in the "2021 China Game Industry Report" released by the Game Working Committee of the China Music and Digital Association, the domestic game market reached 296.513 billion yuan, while mobile games accounted for 76.06%.
It's not hard to understand why mobile gaming has gotten to where it is today. On the one hand, the main device for playing mobile games - smart phones have a higher popularity than personal computers and game consoles, which makes mobile games can reach a larger user group, and the portability of smart phones and the convenience of mobile game downloads and play are more in line with the fragmented game habits of contemporary players, making mobile games can obtain more diverse play scenarios and play time than client games and console games, which greatly enhances its competitive advantage.
On the other hand, the mobile game itself in recent years is also constantly upgraded, the product from the art style, modeling quality to the gameplay and other aspects of the improvement is obvious, the game type is also more rich and diverse, constantly opening up new vertical fields, of which, the new track represented by the second dimension is widely loved by the Z generation young players, in addition to creating a flowing miracle, but also the entire track art style and operation mode has a profound impact, laying the leading position of mobile games in the market (mainly the domestic market).
Considering that the decline of client games is difficult to reverse is already a clichéd topic, and the popularity of host devices in China has just begun, it is foreseeable that mobile games can sit firmly in the position of the first segment of the game industry for a long time in the future. However, as more and more entrepreneurial teams pour into the mobile game track, the competition on the track has become more and more intense, and the problems of homogenization and serious head effects will become more and more prominent - this we will leave for later.
In addition to the high proportion of mobile games, another outstanding feature of the approved games is that a considerable number of games appearing on the list are light casual games.
At first glance, only the "Interesting Manor" in Hangzhou and the "Want Want Ranch" of Nanjing Five Finger Games in this approved game have selected the classification of "mobile-leisure puzzle" in the declaration category, but according to the screenshots and introduction information released by some of the approved game products, such as "Dream Puppy", "Phi Phi Shrimp Legend Game of Dongtu Village", "Super Fusion Duck", "Graffiti Adventure", "Super Phantom Cat: Small Island" and other approved game products are actually relatively light casual games.
As for why there are so many casual games on the list, the independent game producer Big Dog believes that this is related to the "safety" of casual games, he said: "Most casual games have a feature, that is, in the art style of the game, they tend to choose a more fresh and cute style, and refuse to use horror, violence and soft pornography and other elements that are not suitable for all-age players." In addition, the in-app purchase content of casual games is relatively small, and it is not easy to be regretted by players after impulsive consumption. Therefore, in a way, casual games are a relatively 'safe' type of game. ”
According to the statistics of the industry analysis agency Mob Research Institute, from 2019 to 2020, the proportion of domestic casual puzzle games in reviewed mobile games has increased from 18.8% to 43%, and this number seems to be verifying from the side that the "security" of casual games is not a simple assumption.
As the epidemic dividend subsides and people return to work and life, light games that take less time and play may include players who cannot continue to play heavy games, and the life of light games is shorter, the head solidification situation is not obvious, and for those smaller companies, the competitive pressure in the light game track will be relatively low.
Of course, light games are also often because of the simple gameplay, less content, resulting in difficult long-term operation, and the type of in-app purchased content is single, the number is small, but also led to its ability to absorb money is far less than the top of the game's best-selling list of heavy games, and even often appear that the head of the heavy game a month of flow exceeds the annual and even several years of revenue of casual games, so although from the data point of view, casual games in The country may be easier to obtain version numbers. However, getting the precious version number can only be used in the light game that significantly lags behind most popular game products in terms of gold absorption ability, and whether such a result is a gain or a loss, I am afraid that the game company needs to consider it itself.
The quality of the game is soaring, can small and medium-sized enterprises still catch up?
The reboot is a good thing, but not everyone on the track can laugh. For those small and medium-sized enterprises, even if they can regain the version number, it is difficult to change their difficult living conditions.
According to the "2021 Global Game Market Report" released by analyst firm Newzoo, the game market generated $180.3 billion in total revenue in 2021, an increase of 1.4% over last year, and the growth rate slowed sharply in 2020.
In the "2021 China Game Industry Report" released by the Game Working Committee of the China Music and Digital Association, the growth of the domestic game market is not much better, the actual sales revenue is 296.513 billion yuan, an increase of 6.40% year-on-year, while the growth of user scale has gradually stagnated, with a total of 666 million people, an increase of only 0.22% year-on-year.
The game market seems to have finally ushered in a ceiling, and the reason for this, in addition to the subsidence of the epidemic dividend mentioned above, the impact of factors such as the consumption of the demographic dividend, the sharp increase in development and publicity costs under the boutique play, and the increasingly prominent head effect in the track are also very obvious.
According to the "2021-2022 China Game Enterprise R&D Competitiveness Report" released by Gamma Data, the proportion of products in China's mobile game market top 100 in 2021 that have been online for 4 years or more is nearly 50%, while the proportion of new products in 2021 is only slightly more than 10%.
Image source: Gamma Data
"Nowadays, the situation that the big channel will reach the top on the first day of publicity no longer exists, even if it is a new product of giants such as Tencent and NetEase, it is easy to 'roll over' after the launch, such as Tencent's big world exploration game "Noah's Heart", which spent a lot of effort to publicize before going online, but the game did not even enter the top 60 of the best-seller list on the day of launch." As a Tencent product, this achievement is really a bit 'crotch-pulling'. Miko said.
As the trend of high-quality products becomes the mainstream, the influence of channels has weakened significantly, and early mobile game developers have gradually failed by constantly reproducing low-quality "short-life" mobile game products and harvesting players with the help of large channels, while the life of those game products with large investment and high quality has become longer and longer, establishing a stable user group and gradually occupying the top position of the list. These loyal user groups can generally obtain higher profitability for the game in the long-term operation process than the traditional channel "skinning" game, and the high flow of water can provide financial support for the continued operation of the game, forming a virtuous circle.
Game companies such as Mihayou and Eagle Point have stood out from a number of small and medium-sized enterprises in this way and become cutting-edge game companies that can compete with big manufacturers. However, as the quality of game products continues to improve, the success of such game companies has become increasingly difficult to replicate.
"When Eagle Horn's "Ark of Tomorrow" became a two-dimensional dark horse, the game market triggered a wave of two-dimensional boom, and many two-dimensional games imitating Eagle Horn's vertical painting style and UI design emerged, among which a group of latecomers represented by Tencent's "White Night Aurora" actually tasted some sweetness. But when the developers are busy making the "Ark of Tomorrow" style game, the two-dimensional track suddenly jumped out of the "original god" such a quality monster, small and medium-sized enterprises do not have the capital and ability to imitate, can only watch the trend get farther and farther away from themselves. The big dog said.
In the eyes of the big dog, only perfect world, Tencent and other big manufacturers can barely keep up with the trend, such as perfect world's "Phantom Tower", since the launch of the monthly flow has been at the forefront of the two-dimensional game products, although the revenue is still a lot of gaps from the "original god", but in the end it is to eat the dividends of the new track, and for smaller game developers, open world game products are areas they can not reach, these game companies can only go back to continue to develop the relatively low threshold of "Ark of Tomorrow" As a reference to develop game products, but this also led to a few companies on the open world track, while most of the remaining game companies can only continue to kill in the space-limited 2D game field.
Nowadays, the domestic game industry has entered the stock market, the head product of "longevity" has almost eaten most of the players in the market and most of their game time, and the small and medium-sized enterprises that continue to repeat the "micro-innovation" play style in the popular track have become more and more uncompetitive, but under the influence of the entire market environment, their investment in art, music, publicity and other aspects is unabated, which makes them feel huge pressure.
In this context, in the future, it is really difficult to say whether small and medium-sized enterprises will continue to curl up in the shadow of the head enterprise to share some leftovers, or flee the "inner volume" mobile game market and turn to PC or host platforms.
But in any case, only if the game can be launched, the game market can have further development, and the version restart may not immediately bring the warmth of spring to the market, but it is undoubtedly dissolving the cold winter that is depressed in the hearts of gamers.
END
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