Will the heavy mobile game open the "Pandora's Box" of the industry?

Image source @ Visual China

Text | Zinc scale, author | Meteor, edit | Li Xiaolin

"Nearly two weeks after the version restart, what is the current state of the game market?"

As many practitioners expected, the restoration of the version number, although it boosted the morale of the industry, did not immediately eliminate the profound impact of the winter on the entire domestic game market. Although large and small game companies have begun to re-draw the pie for players, the explosive products that belong to 2022 are still in a state of "difficult production" and are difficult to find.

And this seems to be related to the industrialization transformation that the game industry is experiencing.

With the rapid progress in the quality of game products, especially mobile game products, in recent years, high-quality new games with high investment and high returns have defeated the cheap skinning game products that follow the traditional channel play method, and all this has directly led to the development cost and development cycle of domestic game products soaring while "forcing the industry to be boutique", and many smaller game developers cannot withstand the pressure of the surge, can only leave the field, or are forced to turn to other tracks with relatively moderate competition.

At first glance, the sharp increase in competitive pressure has greatly improved the quality of the game's products, which should be a welcome thing for players, but it is not the case. Taking the mobile game market as an example, game products that chase the trend of high-quality products seem to be on a "crooked road", and game developers are tirelessly stuffing a large number of heavy gameplay that exists in the terminal game and requires players to invest a lot of time and energy into the product, and regard this as a winning trick to improve product quality, but they are likely not realizing that these new products that are increasingly "terminal game" are bringing some subtle troubles to the industry.

Playing games is comparable to going to work, and heavy players also have "liver pain"

When it comes to mobile games, the popular track of the second dimension is a topic that cannot be avoided in recent years.

As a veteran player who has "entered the pit" from "Diffuse Million King Arthur" (released in 2013), Liu Qin's biggest feeling about the two-dimensional mobile game launched in recent years is only one word - that is, "liver".

The so-called "liver", a popular buzzword widely spread among young players, usually refers to the player spending a lot of time and energy to play a game, at the same time, it can also be used to describe a game has a lot of content that requires players to invest a lot of time and energy to play.

As a veteran player with nearly ten years of experience in two-dimensional mobile games, Liu Qin has a lot of experience in the "liver", and even once was crowned the title of "liver emperor" by friends because he played six two-dimensional mobile games at the same time. However, even such a "liver emperor" has a feeling of more than enough and insufficient strength in the face of newly launched game products in recent years.

"Before 2016, the mainstream of two-dimensional games was still a card cultivation game represented by "Yin and Yang Division", the core gameplay of this type of game has almost no operational difficulty, and many games even have their own functions of automatic combat and double-speed combat, which makes players not have to spend much attention on the game, and even while doing other things, while 'hanging up' mobile games to complete daily missions, so even if you play multiple such games every day, it will not cause too much burden to players." Liu Qin recalled.

At that time, he said, the daily tasks of a card cultivation game would take him about 5 to 10 minutes a day, and there was a more light placement game, and all he needed to do every day was to go online to harvest resources like "collecting vegetables" and then go offline, which required him to spend less time every day, sometimes two or three minutes was enough.

Although at the beginning he was also amazed by the quality and gameplay of such game products that are different from ordinary mobile games, with the increase of game time, Liu Qin soon found that these exquisite game products were really "tiring".

Horse Racing Lady game screen

The game has become playable, is this a good thing? Or is it a bad thing? This is an intriguing question.

For a long time, mobile games have given the impression of mild game products that fit players' fragmented game time. No one expected that the mobile game that used to be considered a diversion for people to commute and queue up has now become a "killer" of players' free time, and the time that players can allocate to mobile game products is becoming less and less.

You think that mobile games are taking away the player's time, but in fact, it is taking away the flow of competitors

For a mobile game product, the player's game time is of great significance. The longer a player of a game is online, the better the player's stickiness and retention, and the more likely it is to pay. Therefore, how to increase the player's online time has always been a major problem faced by mobile game manufacturers.

Before the rise of the "quality is king" trend, the way for mobile game manufacturers to increase the player's online time is simply to extend the player's training cycle, increase the random content that the player needs to brush repeatedly, etc. The random content that needs to be repeatedly brushed by the player is increased, etc. For those medium and mild mobile games that can originally solve the various gameplay content of the game through "hanging up", such a method cannot significantly extend the player's play time.

However, with the leap in the quality of mobile games and the continuous transfer of heavy gameplay common to PC and console platforms to mobile platforms, mobile game companies have achieved an almost "cheating" effect in extending players' play time.

The head product of the current two-dimensional circuit, "Original God", although the Daily Mission can often be completed in about 15 minutes, but the daily mission involves a relatively limited proportion of the entire game, including the large map exploration, activity tasks and various ways of consuming physical strength in exchange for equipment and materials, the original god even needs players to invest several hours of time to play a day.

The difference between these game products and the old players such as Liu Qin in their memories, represented by card cultivation games, only costs the player five minutes a day is enough to see.

Judging from the benefits of extended player game time mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph, these "end-game" and "heavy" game products can be said to be excellent performance, however, these new game products that perform too well soon also caused a new problem - the player's game time is not enough.

According to the data of the "2021 Mobile Game Population Insight Report" released by data consulting agency QuestMobile, the average monthly use of mobile games in mainland China is about 20 hours, in other words, players spend only about 40 minutes a day on mobile games.

The direct consequence of such a situation is that the head effect in the game market has become more and more obvious.

Or take the two-dimensional track as an example. According to the statistics of the B station UP main domestic two-dimensional mobile game observation, in 2021, the flow of a game of "Original God" will account for 57.88% of the entire two-dimensional track, and the remaining more than 60 two-dimensional mobile games, most of the products account for less than 1% of the flow.

In this regard, Mi Ke, the operator of a mobile game company in Chengdu, said, "The growth of the domestic player group has approached saturation, and enterprises are fiercely competing for player resources, and in the two-dimensional track, the popularity of "Original God" has attracted a large number of new two-dimensional mobile game players, and almost occupied all the game time of this group of players, which makes it difficult for them to try other two-dimensional game products, and even the other game products of "Original God" developer Mihayou are also facing such problems. ”

At the same time, with the popularity of the "end game" mobile game with heavy gameplay, the younger generation of players are becoming more and more like to demand new mobile game products with high standards close to pc and console platform game products, and as the player's "taste" is too high in the end game, the survival pressure of smaller game companies in the track is also rising.

The high cost of being "playable" mobile games is dissuading small and medium-sized developers

For the game industry, there is a view that games are creative content industries, and small and medium-sized enterprises may use innovation to kill a bloody road even if their resources cannot compete with large manufacturers.

However, a sad fact is that whether it is a buyout game or a mild mini-game, there are often problems such as single monetization, easy to be plagiarized, and unsustainable heat, even the aforementioned "Dyson Ball Project" and "Synthetic Big Watermelon" and other small "lucky people" can not escape the curse.

Taking "Synthetic Big Watermelon" as an example, according to the Baidu Index, the search index of this popular social networking game in 2021 reached a staggering 195485 on January 29 of that year, but then, the popularity of the game immediately fell rapidly in an irreversible trend, and on the same day a year later, the search index of "Synthetic Big Watermelon" has been less than 2,000 online and it is difficult to find posts about this game.

Image source: Baidu Index

Moreover, game products such as mini program games that can be developed as individual subjects will not be subject to the pressure from the cold winter of the version number, the competition in the track is continuous, relying solely on "creativity" without a certain research and development strength, and the products are often submerged in the army of competitors, and it is difficult to succeed.

However, the head echelon of the mild mini-game market and the buyout game market is not solidified, and in the mobile game market that has been red-sead, considering the highlight of the head effect of the track mentioned above, the survival pressure faced by small and medium-sized enterprises is even more severe.

For small and medium-sized game companies with weak financial resources, the current game market is obviously "not very friendly", unable to bear the pressure of cost growth, and companies that finally choose to withdraw from the market are also everywhere. According to Tianyancha data, in 2021, 22,000 game-related companies will be deregistered, and 51.5% will be small and medium-sized game companies with a registered capital of less than 10 million yuan.

Of course, many practitioners will mainly attribute this phenomenon to the impact of the recent "version number winter", but in fact, in 2020, when the version number is issued normally, the number of game companies cancelled throughout the year is as high as 18,000.

"The 'cold winter of the version' makes people ignore the fact that the pressure of competition in the game market has made small and medium-sized enterprises miserable." Miko sighed.

Nowadays, although the version number has been restarted, the overall trend of "terminal game" and "heavy" in the game market has not changed. When game products compete for players, will they bring new development opportunities to the game industry? Or is it a "Red Sea flood" disaster? I'm afraid only time will give us the answer.