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.
However, it seems that board game companies have not been greatly affected, but are making profits.
For example, the performance growth of Zenyou Technology, which was listed in 2019, is inseparable from the rapid rise of board games.
According to the latest financial report data, in 2021, the revenue of the board game business represented by mahjong of Zenyou Technology directly increased from 64.397 million yuan in 2020 to 918 million yuan in 2021, an increase of 1325.6% year-on-year.
From the perspective of the proportion of revenue of each business of Zenyou Technology, the proportion of card game revenue in total revenue decreased from 66.1% in 2020 to 35.1% in 2021; while the proportion of board game revenue increased rapidly from 8.7% in 2020 to 62.3% in 2021.
The decline of cards and the strengthening of chess have become another development feature of board game companies.
At the same time, some people have counted that in the face of policy supervision and version number restrictions, the game industry is fiercely competitive, or many small and micro chess and card manufacturers have not survived the end of 2021 to become a "silent majority".
According to Tianyancha statistics, since July 2021, a total of 14,000 game-related companies have been written off.
With the enterprise investigation, with "liquidation / suspension / revocation / revocation / cancellation / closure / order to close" as the filter, with "board game" as the keyword, about 2500 search results were generated, many of which were revoked in 2021.
However, from a general point of view, today, "mahjong", "fighting landlords", "fried golden flowers" and other board games 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?
In this regard, Li Jianning, a reporter of the Daily Economic News, had an exchange with Shule, and poor Dao thought:
If there is no particularly novel chess and card game introduction, board game companies do not rely too much on the version number, but can be iterated on the previous board game platform.
At the same time, the board game itself has a certain degree of user stickiness, as one of the initial forms of the birth of domestic online games, the verticality of its type and the user's all-age have formed a stable but general pattern of rising momentum.
Of course, board game companies are not static, and they are also seeking self-transformation.
After all, in the direction of the industry, board game companies do have the possibility of automatic demise under pressure, and the breakthrough point is to jump out of the chess and card.
For example, Zenyou Technology has enriched the gameplay of the original board games on the one hand to extend the product life cycle, and on the other hand, some casual games have been developed in recent years.
But the reality that must be recognized is that the innovation of board games is actually extremely difficult, and it is not easy for a new type of chess and card to be popular (you can't just look at products like "Three Kingdoms Killing").
And the attribute needs of casual competitive game users such as board games are close to those of casual games, and board game companies can be developed as derivative chains to revitalize user resources.
But the level of innovation and revenue of casual mini-games tends to be average.
Therefore, as a supplement, the enthusiasm of game companies to develop and apply for version numbers is not too high.
However, the trend of chess becoming stronger and the cards falling, or indicating that in the pursuit of leisure and experience, board game companies have begun to stop "rushing to make quick profits" and try to avoid the red line involving gambling that is easy to touch.
Author Zhang Shule, columnist of People's Daily and People's Post and Telegraph, senior commentator of The Internet and game industry