Per reporter: Li Jianning Wen Menghua Per reporter: Liang Xiao
Stepping on the tail of April, game listed companies have also handed over their 2021 report cards. Affected by multiple factors such as tightening supervision, rising purchase costs, and peaking user dividends, the performance of most game companies is not satisfactory.
However, in the case of general pressure on the industry, the performance of some board game manufacturers is not bad, and the overall revenue has increased significantly year-on-year.
As early as 2018, when the regulatory policies of the game industry were tightened, there was a wave of shutdowns in board games, and the head company Boya Interactive (0434, HK) was also fined 943 million yuan for gambling in the game business. In December of the same year, the game version was re-issued after a nine-month suspension, and the previously approved board game has since disappeared from the version number list.
Today, board games such as "mahjong", "fighting landlords" and "fried golden flowers" have not obtained a new version number for 4 years, what do board game manufacturers rely on to make money? In the face of the pressure of missing version numbers, how to transform?
On April 29, game industry analyst Zhang Shule said in an interview with the "Daily Economic News" reporter WeChat that the board game itself has a certain user stickiness, and the verticality of its product type and the user's all-age nature have formed a stable but general pattern of growth, so it does not rely much on the issuance of new game versions. As a product with similar user attribute needs to board games, casual mini games may become a choice for chess and card manufacturers to develop derivative chains and revitalize user resources.
Revenue bucked the trend, and the proportion of "card games" declined significantly
Judging from the 2021 "report card" handed over by various game listed companies, in 2021, the performance of game listed companies is generally under pressure, while board game manufacturers are still performing well. According to the statistics of each reporter, the overall revenue of listed companies in the head board game in 2021 increased significantly year-on-year.
Specifically, among the five listed companies, Kunlun Wanwei (300418, SZ) and Yao Ji Technology (002605, SZ) are two A-share companies, and the remaining three are Hong Kong-listed companies. Among them, Kunlun Wanwei and Yaoji Technology have seen a sharp decline in net profit in 2021; Hong Kong-listed company Chanyou Technology (2660, HK) has the fastest growth rate, achieving a net profit of 503 million yuan in 2021, an increase of 125.3% year-on-year.
Yao Ji Technology said in the performance express report that the revenue growth is mainly due to the rapid growth of the company's Internet innovation marketing business segment; at the same time, the company's mobile game sector and playing card business are operating well, and the revenue is also continuing to grow. The net profit attributable to the shareholders of the listed company decreased from the same period last year because the company's equity assets were changed from equity method accounting to financial assets measured at fair value and the change was included in the profit or loss of the current period in the same period of the previous year, and the change in accounting methods formed a large non-recurring profit and loss.
Compared with the decline in the net profit of Kunlun Wanwei and Yaoji Technology, the performance growth of Zenyou Technology listed in 2019 is inseparable from the rapid rise of board games. According to the latest financial report data, Zenyou Technology's "board game" revenue increased from 64.39 million yuan in 2020 to 919 million yuan in 2021, accounting for 62.3% of total revenue from 8.7% in 2020.
The "card game" that once supported half of the company's revenue had a revenue of 517 million yuan in 2021, and the proportion of revenue fell to less than 40%. As of December 31, 2021, ZenYou Technology has a total of 86 game versions, including 55 board game numbers.
Image source: Screenshot of ZenYou Technology's 2021 financial report
Not only ZenYou Technology, from the specific point of view of the financial report, Yao Ji Technology, hometown interactive and card game-related "poker cards" and "private game room cards" and other business revenue have also declined, and the room card model is the part that is easier to be used for gambling and other behaviors.
According to the financial report, the proportion of Yaoji Technology's "poker card" revenue decreased from 29.6% in 2020 to 24.54% in 2021; the revenue from hometown interactive's private game room card business accounted for 11.4% of total revenue from 27.1% in 2020.
Image source: Hometown Interactive 2021 financial report
After 2018, it is difficult to see the card game version number, and board game companies are looking for new growth points
In 2022, the first batch of game version numbers were issued to make the game circle "Xida Puben", but there was no board game company in it. In fact, with the strengthening of industry supervision, some board games have disappeared from the list of edition numbers at the end of 2018.
According to the incomplete statistics of each reporter through the State Press and Publication Administration, in the first three months of 2018 (before the last game version number was suspended), there were at least 896 "card games" containing keywords such as "card", "poker", "mahjong" and "landlord", which can be said to account for almost half of the total number of game versions.
However, after the game version number was re-issued in December 2018, the number of board game versions dropped sharply, and only one client game under Poker City, "Poker Volkswagen Mahjong Game Software V1.0", received the game version number that month. Since then, no card games such as "Landlord" and "Mahjong" have obtained new versions, and only some board games such as "Backgammon" and "Chess" are left in the annual version number list. In addition, every reporter also noted that fishing games have not appeared in the list of editions since the end of 2018.
Game industry analyst Zhang Shule told every reporter: "If board and card game companies do not have a particularly novel board game introduction, they do not rely too much on the version number, but iterate on the previous board game platform." At the same time, as one of the forms at the beginning of the birth of domestic online games, board games have a certain degree of user stickiness, and the verticality of their product types and the all-age nature of users have formed a stable but rising pattern. ”
However, although board games can maintain a relatively stable flow for a long time, the lack of new version numbers will inevitably affect the long-term development of game companies, and in the context of increasing industry supervision, board game companies need to find new growth points.
In addition to the exploration of the compliance of board games, Zenyou Technology has also added new ways to play for old products under the condition of limited version numbers to meet user needs, improve user activity and extend the life cycle of game products.
In addition, ZenYou Technology has also launched some casual games in recent years. Every reporter searched for the game version number operation unit through the State Press and Publication Administration and found that ZenYou Technology had obtained the two game version numbers of "Fingertip Guangxi Mahjong" and "Fingertip Yunnan Mahjong" in March 2018, and then obtained the version number of 10 games between February 2019 and June 2021, mostly for casual games such as elimination and pinball.
Zhang Shule believes that the user attribute requirements of casual small games and casual competitive games such as chess and cards are very close, and board game companies can use this to develop derivative chains and revitalize user resources, but the innovation and income level of casual small games is average, so the enthusiasm of game companies to develop and apply for version numbers is not too high.
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